Bone Idle in the Charnel House (2014)
Hippocampus Press
For more than two decades, Welsh writer Rhys Hughes has been entertaining and befuddling readers with his distinctive mix of terror, humor, fantasy, and absurdity. Although influenced by such writers as Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, his work is utterly unique in its melding of weirdness and comic grotesquerie.
In this substantial collection of new and reprinted stories, Hughes displays the literary skills that have brought him a wide and devoted readership. Many of these stories have been published in leading magazines and anthologies over the past decade; but several are unpublished and reveal their wonders and mysteries for the first time. With this book, Rhys Hughes stakes a claim to being one of the most original writers in contemporary weird fiction.
Contents:
The Swinger * Bitter in Sour * The Old House Under the Snow * Degrees of Separation * The Warlord * Vampiric Gramps * Bone Idle in the Charnel House * What I Fear Most * Rediffusion * Casimir the Converter * Smuggling Old Nick to Newfoundland * Shelling the Toad * The Hydrothermal Reich * The Spoon * Chameleons * Happiness Leasehold * Life and the Plumbline * The Unsubtle Cages * Signma Octantis * The Century Just Gone