Will Wiles - Böcker

A bold and brilliant debut from a darkly funny new voice.Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for his piece ‘Variations on Tram Timetables’. He lives with his wife and two cats in an unnamed Eastern European city. But this book isn’t really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage dismantled by lawyers. Meanwhile, he has entrusted an old friend to take care of his perfect, beautiful apartment.Despite Oskar leaving extensive notes on how to keep his flat in pristine condition, a tiny oversight initiates a chain of farcical, and even fatal, disasters. ‘Care of Wooden Floors’ is about loneliness, friendship and the quest for, and struggle against, perfection. And it is, a little, about how to take care of wooden floors.

‘Funny, chilling, intriguing: each tale offers something different from the last, and the overall result is like listening to a perfectly made album.’ —Mark WatsonAn anechoic chamber is a soundproofed room with no echo. The profound silence it produces is disturbing enough. But listen carefully and you’ll hear something worse … In this new collection of uncanny short stories, award-winning author Will Wiles finds sinister creatures and subtle nightmares in mundane modern environments and bureaucracy. A cursed NHS file brings doom to whoever handles it. A memory-foam mattress breaks down the walls of sleep. A marketing executive for a property developer turns to the occult. And horror seeps from the most unexpected places: eBay purchases, boxes of holiday photographs, and the hidden corners of the smart TV menu. While mostly modern in setting, this is a collection steeped in the tradition of the weird tale and the ghost story, and includes homages to the greats of the previous century: a doomed Edwardian antiquarian is drawn into a murderous plot involving a Roman mosaic, and river boatmen uncover eldritch terror in a deserted mining town. You’ll never look at some things the same way again.