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Downside
Series · 3 books · 2011-2013

Books in series

The Mall book cover
#1

The Mall

2011

Dan is an angsty emo-kid who works in a deadly dull shopping mall. He hates his job. Rhoda is a junkie whose babysitting charge ran off while she was scoring cocaine. She hates her life. Rhoda bullies Dan into helping her search, but as they explore the neon-lit corridors behind the mall, disturbing text messages lure them into the bowels of the building, where old mannequins are stored in grave-like piles and raw sewage drips off the ceiling. The only escape is down. Plummeting into the earth in a disused service lift playing head-splitting Musak, Dan and Rhoda enter a sinister underworld that mirrors their worst fears. They finally escape, but something feels different. Why are the shoppers all pumped full of silicone? Why are the shop assistants chained to their counters? And why is a café called McColon’s selling lumps of bleeding meat? Just when they think they’ve made it back to the mall, they realize the nightmare has only just begun...
The Ward book cover
#2

The Ward

2012

“Startlingly well written”, Diane Awerbuck, The Times Lisa is a plastic surgery addict with severe self-esteem issues. The only hospital that will let her go under the knife is New Hope: a grimy, grey-walled facility dubbed 'No Hope' by its patients. Farrell is a celebrity photographer. His last memory is a fight with his fashion-model girlfriend and now he's woken up in No Hope, alone. Needle marks criss-cross his arms. A sinister nurse keeps tampering with his drip. And he's woken up blind... Panicked and disorientated, Farrell persuades Lisa to help him escape, but the hospital's dimly lit corridors only take them deeper underground - into a twisted mirror world staffed by dead-eyed nurses and doped-up orderlies. Down here, in the Modification Ward, Lisa can finally have the face she wants... but at a price that will haunt them both forever. “S. L. Grey’s depiction of postmodern horror is practically peerless”, Niall Alexander, Tor.com “A thoroughly unnerving read that straddles the line between visceral horror and Kafka-esque paranoia beautifully”, Will Salmon, SFX “A dark and scary read”, Keith Brooke, The Guardian “A stunningly visceral horror novel … a terrific piece of nightmarish engineering”, Pornokitsch
The New Girl book cover
#3

The New Girl

2013

There's something strange about the new girl. Ryan Devlin, a predator with a past, has been forced to take a job as a handyman at an exclusive private school, Crossley College. He's losing his battle to suppress his growing fascination with a new girl who seems to have a strange effect on the children around her. Tara Marais fills her empty days by volunteering at Crossley's library. Tara is desperate, but unable, to have a baby of her own, so she makes Reborns - eerily lifelike newborn dolls. She's delighted when she receives a commission from the mysterious 'Vader Batiss', but horrified when she sees the photograph of the baby she's been asked to create... As the new girl's unusual influence continues to spread through the corridors of the school, both Tara and Ryan are being drawn into a terrifying scheme - one that will have an impact on every pupil at Crossley College.

Author

S.L. Grey
S.L. Grey
Author · 6 books
S.L. Grey is a collaboration between Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg. Sarah is a novelist and screenwriter and die-hard zombie fanatic. She writes crime novels and thrillers under her own name, and as Lily Herne she and her daughter Savannah Lotz write the Deadlands series of zombie novels for young adults. Louis is a Johannesburg-based fiction writer and editor. He was a bookseller for several years, and has a Master's degree in vampire fiction and a doctorate in post-religious apocalyptic fiction.
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