Pretty Little Dead Things / Gary McMahon
“Gary McMahon’s vision is as bleak as a Yorkshire moor, but it glows with a wintry light that illuminates the dark we live in. His prose and his sense of place are precise and evocative, and his characters are as real as you and me. He’s one of the darkest – which is to say brightest – new stars in the firmament of horror fiction.”
- Ramsey Campbell
” ‘Pretty Little Dead Things’ is a very disturbing read. Gary McMahon seems intent on taking readers through the looking glass and tearing down the walls between the living and the dead. He creates dark, hallucinatory images that burn in your brain forever. One very creepy dude, and this is his creepiest to date.”
- Christopher Fowler
“Thomas Usher is a great character treading a twilight world between Manhunter and Most Haunted; conflicted by grief, haunted by blame, a ‘magnet for ghosts’ who sees the skull beneath the skin. In Pretty Little Dead Things, Gary McMahon nails genuine horror as few British writers can – or dare. He gets under your skin, then burrows even deeper. Terrifyingly, dangerously, hauntingly so.”
- Stephen Volk, creator of TV’s Afterlife
“Gary McMahon’s horror is heartfelt, his characters flawed and desperate, and this book is a rich feast of loss, guilt, and redemption. His vivid ideas are given life in beautiful prose, and the book leaves you staring into shadows that weren’t there before. His talent shines, and is set to burn brighter still.”
- Tim Lebbon
THOMAS USHER HAS A TERRIBLE GIFT.
Following a car crash in which his wife and daughter are killed, he can see the recently departed, and it’s not usually a pretty sight. When he is called to investigate the violent death of the daughter of a prominent local gangster, Usher’s world is torn apart once more. For the barriers between this world and the next are not as immutable as once he believed.
File Under: Horror [ See The Dead | Skin Trade | Beyond Reality | A Sacrifice ]
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Who Is Thomas Usher?
His name is Thomas Usher. A normal man. An average guy. Until he is involved in a tragic accident and his wife and daughter are killed.
After that, things begin to change. Usher is no longer normal. Or average. Now he can see the dead, and the dead can see him. They seek him out to help them, to usher them to the next level so they might face whatever comes next. The lost. The lonely. The departed. They never speak to him; they only ever demand his attention.
The ghosts are drawn to Usher, and he is compelled to help them in the hope that he might once again see his family. But sometimes, just sometimes, it isn’t enough and his efforts make things worse.
His name is Thomas Usher.
He is an usher for the dead.
It’s who he is.
It’s what he does.
“All this fits neatly into a normal horror detective tale. The sort with a touch of Sam Spade. It’s an increasingly popular sub-genre… The focus is slightly different to most, however. This slight difference, this reality of corpses and vacancy of death makes this novel just a bit different to its peers. It makes sense of the changes and why the theme springboards into what it finally becomes. Which is good… It makes McMahon’s novel more real… [it has] tight plotting and good characterisation and nice movement from the personal grief to the wider danger”
- Gillian Polack
PRETTY LITTLE DEAD THINGS
Gary McMahon
Horror
Cover: Argh! Nottingham / Getty Images
UK/Australia
November 2010
416pp A-format paperback
£7.99 UK
ISBN 978 0 85766 069 5
US/Canada
January 2010
416pp mass-market paperback
$7.99 US $8.99 CAN
ISBN 978 0 85766 070 1
eBook
November 2010
price £3
ePub ISBN 978 0 85766 071 8
