Midnight Call and Other Stories

An artist is summoned to paint the portrait of sinister Mr. Finster in a decaying mansion...

A suburban couple is vexed by the inveterate lawn-mowing of a ghost...

In ice-bound Vermont, one farmer’s crop is suspiciously bountiful...

A miniature nymph is found swimming in an office water cooler...

These are the bizarre conceptions of Jonathan Thomas, a powerful new writer of weird, horrific, and supernatural fiction who introduces himself to the reading public with this rich and varied short story collection. Thomas is, however, a practiced hand at terror-weaving, and his work spans the spectrum from comic fantasy to psychological suspense to science fiction. Unifying all his tales is a prose style of singular fluency and grace, enlivened by keen observation and mordant satire.

“Jonathan Thomas has an enviably impressive range – from the gentle to the gruesome, from science fiction through fantasy to the spectral and horrific – but his wit is reliable, and so is the clarity of his eye, and the precision of his prose. He’s an asset to all his fields.” – Ramsey Campbell.

“Thomas’s dynamism in plot-weaving and his pungently satirical prose testify to a prodigious fund of creativity and a fine eye for observing the little absurdities of life in the twenty-first century.” – From S. T. Joshi’s Foreword.

Contents:

• Foreword S. T. Joshi
• Eben's Portrait
• The Weird Old Hole
• The Returns of Johnny Mapleseed
• Fingers of Stone
• The May Day Melée, Explained (Beltane)
• Doctor Farrell's Goddesses (Lughnasad)
• Sonic Days Before Shadow Damsel (Samhain)
• In the Wake of Bridget (Imbolc)
• Midnight Call (Beltane Again)
• Damn the Wheelwright
• The Road to Schwärmerei
• McEveety Among the Leisure Elect
• The Judgment Birds
• An Office Nymph
• Another Psychic on Comp
• Towbear to Hell
• The Christmas Clones
• Awakening of No Return
• A Vampire Heart
• Subway of the Dead
• Graveside Friday Night
• Dappled Ass
• An Alternate History of Annette
• Tendrils in Formaldehyde
• Ariadne's Hair