Wicked Things (With Bonus Novella!)

Wicked Things
by Thomas Tessier

This Cemetery Dance Limited Edition hardcover includes the bonus novella "Scramburg USA" by Thomas Tessier!

Update for Collectors:
The Lettered Edition sold out within 72 hours of being officially announced.

About the Book:
Private investigator Jack Carlson is traveling to the small, remote upstate city of Winship to look into a rash of suspicious insurance claims.

Like the farmer who accidentally blew himself up in a garnet mine, and the teenager who died in a peculiar car crash.

The Winship police and Medical Examiner appear cooperative but offer no real help.

Local insurance agent Joe Bellman is evasive and fearful.

And shortly after meeting Jack, both Bellman and his secretary Chris Innes turn up dead, an apparent case of murder-suicide.

Jack isn't buying any of it.

As he pokes behind the Norman Rockwell exterior of Winship, he finds a place smoldering with crime, corruption and bizarre religious fervor. He becomes involved with a club dancer named Kelly, who may know some of the secrets but who may also be a mortal threat to Jack.

The town of Winship is itself part of the puzzle, a place where unseen choirs can be heard, where the ground appears to glow, creating confusion and mental disorder in anyone nearby, where gangs of young thugs roam free to bully and beat people.

A friend of Kelly's disappears in an open meadow, as if swallowed up by the earth.

Behind it all may be a cherubic old priest, Father Jimmy.

And as Jack tries to unravel the growing number of mysteries — both criminal and mystical — he finds himself in a fight to save his own life, and sanity...

"Freelance insurance investigator Jack Carlson is looking into a rash of accidental deaths in the rural town of Winship. When he reaches the Norman Rockwellesque community, he finds that people there aren't just dying, they're disappearing as well. Soon Carlson is awash with more questions than he can handle: who murdered the town's insurance salesman and his secretary? why did the town doctor commit suicide right in front of him? who, or what, is the mysterious Order of St. Michael? And what's with the town's unearthly, late-night glow? Carlson is an appealing creation, and Tessier has dropped him into the middle of an intriguing twilight zone scenario..."
— Publishers Weekly

Thomas Tessier was born in Connecticut and educated there and at University College, Dublin. He lived in Dublin and London for thirteen years, during which time three books of his poems were published and three of his plays were professionally staged. For several years he wrote a monthly column on music for Vogue (UK).

His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Borderlands, Cemetery Dance, Prime Evil, Dark Terrors, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and Best New Horror. His first collection, Ghost Music and Other Tales, received an International Horror Guild Award.

He is the author of several novels of terror and suspense, including The Nightwalker, Phantom, Finishing Touches, and Rapture, which was made into a movie starring Karen Allen and Michael Ontkean. His novel Fog Heart received the International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel and was cited by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year.

Thomas Tessier lives in Connecticut. He is currently working on a new novel and completing his second collection of short fiction.

Published in two states:
• Hardcover Limited Edition of 750 signed and numbered copies bound in full cloth and Smyth sewn ($40)
• Traycased Hardcover Lettered Edition of 52 signed and lettered copies bound in leather with a satin ribbon page marker ($175)

Excerpt... coming soon

Artwork