Lucius Shepard – författare

Lucius Shepard''s acclaimed Dragon Griaule stories are presented here for the first time in a single volume. This Fantasy Masterworks edition contains:''The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule''''The Scalehunter''s Beautiful Daughter''''The Father of Stones''''Liar''s House''''The Taborin Scale''''The Skull''This is the definitive tail of the Dragon Griaule: a beast so immense its body forms part of the landscape ...

Dr Ezawa had made some remarkable discoveries about the Voodoo beliefs that persisted in the Louisiana bayou country - like how to create zombies by injecting corpses with the dirt from old slave graveyards.The eyes of the awoken dead blazed with a brilliant green luminosity, and before they burned out, strange visions and superhuman abilities tormented them.The poet Harrison didn''t want to remain a guinea pig. He wanted to find out the truth behind the scientists'' sinister manipulations - and he wanted to stay alive.But when he escaped and began to test his growing powers on the superstitious Cajun swamp dwellers, another terrifying world began to unfold before his green eyes...

Castle Banat: a stronghold of insane enormity, created by a monstrous architectural genius. The size of Banat is such that it even has its own weather. Inside, room after room is filled with fantastical horrors: Banat holds an infinity of mystery and terrible wonder.The castle is home to the Family, the clans that make up the vampires of the world. One of their greatest rites is the Golden, the sacrifice of a victim whose blood is the sweetest and most powerful there is. But in 186-, at a gathering three centuries in the planning, the Golden is murdered, brutally devoured by person or persons unknown.The Parisian vampire Beheim, new to the game, is charged with finding the culprit. So begins a journey through the vastness of Banat and into the very core of the vampire mind; a personal odyssey of sublime terror.Set against a backdrop that is one of the greatest imaginative feats since Gormenghast, and full of the passionate games and sheer sexual force of the vampire, The Golden is fabulous gothic mystery and exceptionally powerful storytelling.

Curtis MscKinnon is an intemperate, naïve fool. Sure of his invulnerability as an American expatriate, he comes to Borneo to play at being disreputable. His illusions and charm make him a dangerous man: soon enough, he is in trouble and forced to hide in the jungles of Kalimantan. He discovers a drug once used to the Punan Dayak, a lost race remembered as ''the dream wanderers''. Seribu aso does not, however, alter the perceptions of only the user. It changes the concrete reality of the land itself. MacKinnon has awoken the spirits of Kalimantan, the guardians of an unspoilt land. And he has no idea how powerful they are... With its echoes of Altered States and Heart of Darkness, Kalimantan has all the enthralling dark magic and superb story-telling that have made Lucius Shepard one of the most acclaimed fantasists today.

A chilling and mysterious voice becomes audible to Sanie shortly after she and her husband Jackson move into the decaying antebellum mansion that is the Bullard ancestral home in rural South Carolina. At first, she wonders if the voice might be a prank played by Jackson''s peyote-popping brother Will or his equally off-kilter sister Louise.But soon Sanie discovers that the ghostly voice is merely a single piece of the decadent, baroque puzzle that comprises the Bullard family history, rank with sensuality, violence, repression and madness.

Lucius Shepard''s short fiction ranges far and wide over the field of SF and fantasy, and is crammed with show-stopper ideas and an intense originality. The Ends of the Earth is a testimonial to a genius of the genre, and a major American writer. Winner of the 1992 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection.Contents:The Ends of the Earth (1989)Delta Sly Honey (1987)Bound for Glory (1989)The Exercise of Faith (1987)Nomans Land (1988)Life of Buddha (1988)Shades (1987)Aymara (1986)A Wooden Tiger (1988)The Black Clay Boy (1987)Fire Zone Emerald (1985)On the Border (1987)The Scalehunter''s Beautiful Daughter (1988)Surrender (1989)

In the town of Trujillo, in Honduras, on the edge of the Mosquito Coast, Dr. Arturo Ochoa, a semi-retired psychiatrist, has a single patient: a troubled young man named Thomas Stearns, the son of a wealthy Atlanta family. Stearns has been found adrift on the Caribbean in a vessel owned by two Nicaraguans, both of whom are missing; he has been alone for eighteen days and has little memory of that time. Suspected of murder, Stearns is unconcerned. He knows his family will buy off the police. But he is reluctant to leave Trujillo, having developed an odd affinity for the town. As therapy progresses, he tells of a mysterious stone figure regurgitated by, improbably, a whirlpool, and Dr. Ochoa - drawn into his pathology - begins to doubt not only Stearns'' sanity, but his own . . .

Lucius Shepard is a grand master of dark fantasy, famed for his baroque yet utterly contemporary visions of existential subversion and hallucinatory collapse. In Dagger Key, his fifth major story collection, Shepard confronts hard-bitten loners and self-deceiving operators with the shadowy emptiness within themselves and the insinuating darkness without, to ends sardonic and terrifying. The stories in this book, including six novellas, are:"Stars Seen Through Stone" - in a small Pennsylvania town, mediocrity suddenly blossoms into genius; but at what terrible cost?"Emerald Street Expansions" - in near-future Seattle, echoes of the life of a medieval French poet hint at either reincarnation or a dire conspiracy."Limbo" - a retired criminal on the run from the Mafia encounters ghosts, and much worse, on the shores of a haunted lake."Liar''s House" - in the grip of the legendary dragon Griaule, destiny is a treacherous and transformative thing."Dead Monty" - a small-time New Orleans criminal ventures outside his proper territory, and poker and voudoun conspire to bring him down."Dinner at Baldassaro''s" - a gang of immortals debates the future in an Italian resort, only for events to outrun any of their expectations. "Abimagique" - a glib college loser falls in love with a witch, becoming an involuntary part of a world-saving - or world-destroying - magical ritual."The Lepidopertrist" - a small boy on a Caribbean island witnesses the creation of preternatural beings by a Yankee wizard..."Dagger Key" - off the coast of Belize, the ghost of a famous pirate seems to control a spiral of murder and intrigue; or is someone else responsible?

"Richly peopled, highly literate, and brilliantly drawn ... one of the finest science fiction writers of all time" - Science Fiction Chronicle

"Seminal. Like a book on Vietnam, but science fiction. Amazing!" - Amazon Reviewer, 5 stars

"The prose astounds. Lucius Shepard was a genius!" - Goodreads Reviewer, 5 stars

In the jungles of Guatemala, David Mingolla is struggling to survive among rotting vegetation and his despairing, drug-pumped fellow foot soldiers. He knows he is nothing but an expendable pawn in an endless, amoral war.

During some well-earned R&R he meets Debora - an enigmatic young woman who may be working for the enemy. David now finds himself a pawn of secret, ruthless forces lusting for world domination, and stumbles into a deadly psychic conflict where the mind is the greatest weapon.

Lucius Shepard''s work ranges across the fields of fantasy, science fiction and magic realism, garnering comparisons with Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Best-known for the story suite The Dragon Griaule - available as a Gollancz Fantasy Masterwork - he has won or been nominated for every major SFF award.This omnibus collects his ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD-shortlisted novel GREEN EYES, WORLD FANTASY AWARD-winning collection THE JAGUAR HUNTER and SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD-winning novella VACANCY.

Lucius Shepard explores the after-effects of trauma in this haunting story.

Bobby is a Columbia grad student studying philosophy who has taken a year off from school to help with the meticulous clean-up at ground zero after 9/11. Each day, he enters a nightmarish otherworld of smoke and ash, where pieces of broken lives emerge from the rubble like lost soul fragments. Haunted by what he has seen, he finds himself collecting pieces from the wreckage. Yet he is unable to talk about his experience—until he finds himself drawn to an enigmatic older woman at the bar he frequents after work. Every evening she sits there alone, fending off men who approach, seeking some kind of solace or resolution. Inexplicably, Bobby feels compelled to share stories with her. In a changed world where no one is quite whole, they may offer each other a missing piece.

The itinerant gun show draws together many subcultures from the margins of society: survivalists, Aryan brotherhoods, and the team of Rita Whitelaw and Jimmy Roy Guy, dealers in collectible arms. Rita has made Jimmy an exception to her general disdain for whites, for Jimmy’s got a storytelling ability that borders on mystic vision, which he delights in applying to the weapons he acquires. When Jimmy makes an agreement with the widow of white supremacist martyr Bob Champion to broker her husband’s infamous Colt .45, the widow stipulates that he keep it out of the hands of Champion’s disciple, who considers it a powerful talisman for his racist agenda. Jimmy and Rita run afoul of “the Major,” but aren''t intimidated by his veiled threats. The gun has launched a story, and when Jimmy begins a story, one way or another, he’s bound to see it through.