The Concrete Grove

This new volume of the world's most acclaimed Year's Best Horror series includes a masterful selection of the finest supernatural short stories and terrifying novellas from many of the biggest names and most exciting newcomers currently working in the genre. This is the very best of new short stories and novellas by today's masters of the macabre. Contributors include such names as Neil Gaiman, Michael Marshall Smith, Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman and Glen Hirshberg. This is required reading for any fan of ghoulish fiction.

Winner of the 2009 British Fantasy Award.

Award-nominated author Gary McMahon takes us “In the Skin” of a man who is losing his sanity, and in the tradition of films like “Memento", “Taxi Driver”, and “I Stand Alone”, shows us the derioration of a human mind in intimate detail.

And when that mind finally snaps, there will be blood. So much blood.

Gary McMahon is the author of several award nominated novellas, novels and short story collections. His latest mass market novels are published by Angry Robot and Solaris Books.

Ben arrives in the Concrete Grove to research a book about the Northumbrian Poltergeist, an infamous paranormal incident from the early 1970s. A set of twins were haunted by a spirit they nicknamed Captain Clickety, and the media of the time were split between derision and hysteria.

As Ben teases out the supressed details of the story, he finds himself drawn to an emotionally damaged woman whose young daughter went missing years ago during a period of similar child abductions.

Then the scarecrows appear, their heads plastered with photographs of the missing and the dead. House pets are found slaughtered, their bodies built into bloody totems. Hummingbirds flock to certain areas of the estate, as if awaiting the arrival of something…

A door has been opened and a presence is about to step through. The Hummingbird Twins, beset by strange visions, might know the secret, but they aren’t talking. It is up to Ben to put the ghosts to rest and unravel fact from fiction. He is about to discover that the story he seeks is in fact his own story, and only he can plot the ending.

Keep repeating, it’s only a story, it’s only a story, it’s only a story…

Welcome to Number One Oval Lane, the last house at the top of the hill. Robert Mitchell thought he lived there with his wife and children, but he doesn’t. Not anymore. A new family—the Corbeaus—has taken up residence, and they are on a deadly mission for mischief.

Soon Robert will understand the true nature of ownership, and he will discover that real life is nothing more than a story… a horror story.

We’re playing games now. We’re just beginning.