Nocturnes
Bestselling author John Connolly's first collection of short fiction, Nocturnes, now features five additional stories – never-before published for an American audience – in a dark, daring, utterly haunting anthology of lost lovers and missing children, predatory demons, and vengeful ghosts.
In "The New Daughter," a father comes to suspect that a burial mound on his land hides something very ancient, and very much alive; in "The Underbury Witches," two London detectives find themselves battling a particularly female evil in a town culled of its menfolk. And finally, private detective Charlie Parker returns in the long novella "The Reflecting Eye," in which the photograph of an unknown girl turns up in the mailbox of an abandoned house once occupied by an infamous killer. This discovery forces Parker to confront the possibility that the house is not as empty as it appears, and that something has been waiting in the darkness for its chance to kill again.
Contents:
- The Cancer Cowboy Rides
- Mr Pettinger's Dæmon
- The Erkling
- The New Daughter
- The Ritual of the Bones
- The Furnace Room
- The Underbury Witches
- The Inkpot Monkey
- The Shifting of the Sands
- Some Children Wander By Mistake
- Deep Dark Green
- Miss Froom, Vampire
- Nocturne
- The Wakeford Abyss
- The Reflecting Eye: A Charlie Parker Novella
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John Connolly
John Connolly’s writing explores the dark corridors where crime, horror, and the supernatural collide. Born in Dublin in 1968, Connolly’s journey into storytelling was anything but predictable. After earning degrees in English and journalism, he started his career as a freelance journalist, contributing to The Irish Times. But it wasn’t long before the allure of fiction pulled him away from articles and into the world of novels.
Connolly’s first novel, Every Dead Thing, marked the beginning of the now-iconic Charlie Parker series, a gripping collection of crime thrillers laced with elements of the supernatural. The novel, praised for its atmospheric tension and deeply flawed characters, earned Connolly the Shamus Award for Best First Private Eye Novel in 2000, making him the first non-American author to receive this honor. This achievement set the stage for a career built on blending crime fiction with darker, almost mythic elements that resonate with fans of both mystery and horror.
Nocturnes
Nocturnes consists of two books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.

