James Blaylock est un auteur de fantasy américain célébré pour son style distinctif et humoristique. Ses personnages sont connus pour leurs manières particulières de se déplacer et pour engager des conversations qui remettent humoristiquement en question l'impossible, comme la faisabilité du vol. Les œuvres de Blaylock mêlent souvent le fantastique à notre monde actuel, un style appelé fabulisme ou réalisme magique. Mentoré par Philip K. Dick, il collabore fréquemment avec son confrère auteur Tim Powers.
"With a 100-year storm threatening the southern California coast, Jane Larkin is approached by a strange, audacious woman who wants to invest much-needed money in Jane’s Old Orange Co-op. Meanwhile Jane’s husband Jerry discovers an ancient excavation beneath the Larkin home. On that ominous morning in autumn, shadows descend over the deceptively quiet neighborhoods of Old Orange, ushering in a flood of chaos, terror, and murder
The story begins with an inheritance. Following a protracted legal battle, Alice St. Ives, Langdon’s wife, has come into full possession of Seaward, the house left to her by her late Uncle Godfrey, a man with a number of bizarre proclivities. Heartened by this good fortune, Alice, Langdon and their surrogate son Finn prepare to take possession of the house. From this point forward, events spin out of control, taking on a madcap logic of their own that is exhilarating and—in typical Blaylock fashion—often quite funny. What follows is, in a sense, a tale of two houses. The first, of course, is Seaward, a “rambling, eccentric old house” with it its history, its secrets, its priceless accumulation of volumes of arcane lore. The other is a neighboring house known, for good reasons, as “Gobblin’ Manor,” home base of The Gobblin’ Society, a “culinary establishment” with its own peculiar—and very dark—traditions. In the course of an event filled few days, St. Ives and his cohorts will encounter smuggling, mesmerism, kidnapping, cannibalism and murder. It is, in other words, a typical—and typically eccentric—Langdon St. Ives adventure.
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The secret log of a murdered lighthouse keeper falls into the hands of the immensely wealthy Gilbert Frobisher, who discovers encoded within it a stunning and dangerous mystery. Against all odds Langdon St. Ives and his companions set sail in the dark of night for the West Indies aboard Gilbert Frobisher’s steam yacht, pursued by murderous pirates and bound for an uncharted volcanic island on the verge of eruption. There they undertake the perilous search for a hidden treasure protected by an unspeakable pagan god, and in the process unleash a power that will ultimately threaten the devastation of London.
Mentored by Philip K. Dick, James P. Blaylock is best known for his Langdon St Ives sequence - one of which, Homunculus, won the Philip K. Dick Award - and, along with contemporaries Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter, is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Steampunk. All three of the novels collected in this omnibus were shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award.
Winter in Südkalifornien: Alles scheint grau und feucht. Nach dem Unfall seiner Frau bewohnt Phil Ainsworth das alte Haus seiner Familie ganz allein. Sind die schattenhaften Gestalten, die sich in der Nähe des Brunnens herumtreiben, die Wahnvorstellungen eines Einsamen? Phil atmet auf, als nach dem Tod seiner Schwester deren 10-jährige Tochter Betsy zu ihm zieht. Doch er weiß nicht, dass Betsy ein sehr besonderes Kind ist. Sie hört die Stimmen der Toten und ahnt, welch ein Unheil sich über dem Haus zusammenbraut ...
Blaylock's Night Relics is a chilling novel of unearthly emotional power, a ghost story that pushes beyond the classic form. It is the tale of a man haunted by the ghosts of the human heart--both real and imagined--where lost memories and lost loves whisper on the wind. It is a perfectly captured nightmare.
