A Hazy Shade of Winter

Experience the dark, atmospheric tales of “one of the most accomplished and eloquent British horror writers” in his first collection (Ramsey Campbell).

In A Hazy Shade of Winter, Simon Bestwick delivers stories that reveal the darkness of a Christmas Day, revive a blood-soaked Halloween, and drench you in the sweat-inducing terror of a hot summer’s day. No season is off limits as he drapes the past, present, and future in familiar themes, easily twisted to reveal an underside—and otherworld—that expose humanity’s bleakest instincts. 

Bestwick’s supernatural horror gems include the title tale in which a man spends the holidays with his new girlfriend’s parents, only to discover an insidious evil in their midst. In “Love Knot,” a friend’s suicide by hanging ropes a man—and a bevy of missing women—into the blackest magic. The tables are turned on a toxic boss who is continually harassed by threatening letters from an unused computer on an empty desk in “Severance.” While “Until My Darkness Goes” follows an avid reader who finds nasty comments scribbled in the margins of a used book—a dead man’s spite that bleeds into his life with far-reaching consequences. 

Fourteen stories in all comprise “a strong and engaging collection of tales that engage the supernatural but are ultimately about human fears, hopes, and courage” (The Harrow). 

Praise for the writing of Simon Bestwick

“Bestwick is brilliant.” ―The Guardian

“Simon Bestwick’s stories are sharp, bleak, odd, full of grief and grace . . . In a genre full of unsung treasures, his song deserves to be heard.” ―Gemma Files, author of Experimental Film