From the editor of This Dreaming Isle, and in collaboration with Together for Mental Wellbeing, a dark fantasy and horror anthology about mental health. Personal stories of the black dog of depression, anxiety and schizophrenia, these stories prove what fans of horror fiction have long known - that we must understand our demons to overcome them.
Beryl Gore is a lonely orphan living and working at the Palace Theater in London. Night after night, the company performs tales of guts and glory to an audience of drunken louts while young Beryl cranks the artificial wave machine, entranced by the drama. The plays color Beryl's otherwise humdrum life amongst the slaughterhouses and cobbled alleys of the city. In her attic room, she pens her own melodrama, a bloody yarn of pirates and damsels where goodness is always rewarded. When Beryl shyly shows her work to Mister Perry, the Theater Manager, he shoos the child away.As Beryl enters adulthood, the theater ages with her, becoming shabbier and emptier with each passing season. As theater-goers turn to fresh spectacles elsewhere, Beryl realizes her theatrical world is in trouble. If the Palace is to be saved, it will need a bold new playwright.
A dark spirit haunts an isolated Norfolk retreat in this unsettling and sinister historical horror set in the early 1900s, perfect for readers of Michelle Paver, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Andrew Michael Hurley.