
Something strange is happening on British shores. Britain has a long history of folk tales, ghost stories and other uncanny fictions, and these literary ley lines are still shimmering beneath the surface of this green and pleasant land. Every few generations this strangeness crawls out from the dark places of the British imagination, seeping into our art and culture. We are living through such a time. This Dreaming Isle is an anthology of new horror stories and weird fiction with a distinctly British flavour. It collects together fifteen brand new horrifying or unsettling stories that draw upon the landscape and history of the British Isles for their inspiration. Some explore the realms of myth and legend, others are firmly rooted in the present, engaging with the country’s forgotten spaces. Featuring new and exclusive stories from: Ramsey Campbell, multi-award winning author of over 40 novels. Andrew Michael Hurley, author of The Loney and Devil’s Day. Catriona Ward, author of Rawblood and Little Eve. Robert Shearman, World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award and Shirley Jackson Award winning author of four collections. Jenn Ashworth, author of Fell, Cold Light and more. Gareth E. Rees, author of Marshland and The Stone Tide. Tim Lebbon, screenwriter and author of over 35 books including Dusk, The Silence and Relics. Alison Littlewood, author of The Crow Garden, The Hidden People and more. Aliya Whiteley, author of The Beauty, The Arrival of Missives and The Loosening Skin (forthcoming from Unsung Stories). Stephen Volk, screenwriter and author of Whitstable, Monsters in the Heart and more. Kirsty Logan, author of The Gloaming, The Gracekeepers, A Portable Shelter and The Rental Heart. James Miller, author of UnAmerican Activities, Lost Boys and Sunshine State. Jeannette Ng, author of Under the Pendulum Sun. Richard V. Hirst, co-author of The Night Visitors. Alison Moore, author of The Lighthouse, Missing and more. Gary Budden, author of Hollow Shores. Angela Readman, author of Don’t Try This at Home and The Book of Tides.
Authors

Angela Readman is a twice shortlisted winner of the Costa Short Story Award. Her stories have won the National Flash Fiction Day Competition, The Mslexia Short Story Prize, and The Fish Short Memoir Prize. They have also been shortlisted in the Manchester Fiction Prize. Her debut story collection Don't Try This at Home was published by And Other Stories in 2015. It won The Rubery Book Prize and was shortlisted in the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She also writes poetry: her poetry collection The Book of Tides was published by Nine Arches in late 2016. Angela's debut novel, Something Like Breathing, will be published by And Other Stories in 2019.

Jenn Ashworth is an English writer. She was born in 1982 in Preston, Lancashire. She has graduated from Cambridge University and the Manchester Centre for New Writing. In March 2011 she was featured as one of the BBC Culture Show's Best 12 New Novelists. She previously worked as a librarian in a men's prison. She founded the Preston Writers Network, later renamed as the Central Lancs Writing Hub, and worked as its coordinator until it closed in January 2010. She has also taught creative writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Lancaster. Her first novel, A Kind of Intimacy, won a Betty Trask Award in 2010. An extract from an earlier novel, lost as a result of a computer theft in 2004, was the winner of the 2003 Quiller-Couch Prize for Creative Writing at Cambridge University.


I love writing, reading, triathlon, real ale, chocolate, good movies, occasional bad movies, and cake. I was born in London in 1969, lived in Devon until I was eight, and the next twenty years were spent in Newport. My wife Tracey and I then did a Good Thing and moved back to the country, and we now live in the little village of Goytre in Monmouthshire with our kids Ellie and Daniel. And our dog, Blu, who is the size of a donkey. I love the countryside ... I do a lot of running and cycling, and live in the best part of the world for that. I've had loads of books published in the UK, USA, and around the world, including novels, novellas, and collections. I write horror, fantasy, and now thrillers, and I've been writing as a living for over 8 years. I've won quite a few awards for my original fiction, and I've also written tie-in projects for Star Wars, Alien, Hellboy, The Cabin in the Woods, and 30 Days of Night. A movie's just been made of my short story Pay the Ghost, starring Nicolas Cage and Sarah Wayne Callies. There are other projects in development, too. I'd love to hear from you!


CATRIONA WARD was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Her fourth novel, the gothic thriller Sundial (2022 - Viper, Tor Nightfire) was Observer Thriller of the Month and a USA Today, CNN and Apple Books selection for best new fiction. Stephen King called Sundial ‘Authentically terrifying…. Do not miss this book.’ Ward’s third breakout novel The Last House on Needless Street (2021 - Viper, Tor Nightfire) won the August Derleth Prize and has been shortlisted for the Kitschies, the British Book Awards, the South Bank Award, and the World Fantasy Award. Esquire magazine listed it as one of the top 25 best horror novels of all time. Rights have been sold in twenty-nine territories, it was a Richard and Judy Book Club selection, a Times Book of the Month, Observer Book of the Month, March Editor’s Pick on Radio 4’s Open Book, a Between the Covers BBC2 book club selection and a Sunday Times bestseller. The Last House on Needless Street is being developed for film by Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish’s production company, The Imaginarium. Stephen King said of The Last House on Needless Street, ‘I was blown away. It's a true nerve-shredder that keeps its mind-blowing secrets to the very end. Haven't read anything this exciting since GONE GIRL.’ Ward’s second novel Little Eve (2018 - W&N, Tor Nightfire) won the 2019 Shirley Jackson Award, the August Derleth Prize at the British Fantasy Awards and was a Guardian best book of 2018. Nightfire will publish Little Eve for the first time in the US in 2022. Ward’s debut Rawblood (2015 - W&N, Sourcebooks) also won the 2016 August Derleth, making her the only woman to have won the prize three times. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and have been shortlisted for various prizes. She lives in London and Devon.

Born in Manchester in 1971, Alison Moore lives next but one to a sheep field in a village on the Leicestershire-Nottinghamshire border, with her husband Dan and son Arthur. She is a member of Nottingham Writers’ Studio and an honorary lecturer in the School of English at Nottingham University. In 2012 her novel The Lighthouse, the unsettling tale of a middle-aged man who embarks on a contemplative German walking holiday after the break-up of his marriage – only to find himself more alienated than ever, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.

Kirsty Logan is a professional daydreamer. She is the author of two novels, The Gloaming and The Gracekeepers, and two story collections, A Portable Shelter and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales. Her fifth book, Things We Say in the Dark, will be published on Halloween 2019. Kirsty lives in Glasgow with her wife and their rescue dog. She has tattooed toes.

Gareth E. Rees is a writer of fiction and non fiction. His books include: Terminal Zones (Influx Press 2022), Unofficial Britain (Elliott & Thompson, 2020), Car Park Life (Influx Press 2019), The Stone Tide (Influx Press, 2018) and Marshland (Influx Press, 2013). His forthcoming book 'Sunken Lands: a Journey Through Lost Kingdoms and Flooded Worlds' will be published by Elliott & Thompson in March 2024. ‘What he seeks out is the magical in the mundane, the bizarre happenings in plain sight’
- Deborah Moggach, The Times