Our Lady of the Shadows — Tony Richards

"In any other city in the world, the discovery of Mary-Jane Palmer's body floating in the river would have been sad, and disquieting, that was all. A four line filler on the inside pages of the newspapers. A minor tragedy passed over like a dead bird in the road. But this was Paris, the river was the Seine, and because of that the proceedings were tinted with a vague gothic suggestion of romance. A small crowd gathered - middle-aged businessman in their sleek, well filled suites; art students and booksellers; a few tourists; a few old women with faces wrinkled like contour maps. The gendarmerie arrived and kept their siren going long after it was necessary, as though to add to the occasion. They walked around the body and gazed at it through squinted eyes. L'amour, they muttered. L'amour. Until they turned her over. And Saw her face..." What is a ghost? Merely a desembodied spirit? You'll find plenty of those here, but there are other kinds as well. An entity created by a child's imagination. A mysterious pale figure on a bleak, deserted moor. A madman who is not dead yet but... Tony Richards has been hailed as "one of today's masters of dark fiction," and has been penning supernatural tales for more than thirty years. Come with him as he voyages the world in search of the dark arcane. The jungled slopes of Penang, Malaysia. The night-bound alleyways of Tokyo and New York. Everywhere that holds a shadow also holds a deadly secret and this book reveals them all, in a collection that includes the critically acclaimed novella Postcards from Terri and four brand-new stories, never seen in print before.