The Shadow Booth

The Shadow Booth is moving, so we're clearing out the warehouse! Until Sunday, 24 November you can buy any two paperbacks for £10, or three for £15 . That includes our latest release, Volume 4 - so this is the best deal you're going to see! All four volumes are published as 200-page mass market paperbacks, in beautiful matching editions. Buy 2 for £10 here Buy 3 for £15 here In case you've forgotten, we've had stories featured in THE BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, BEST BRITISH HORROR and THE YEAR'S BEST WEIRD FICTION. Here are the amazing lineups for all four volumes: Volume 1 contains stories by: Gary Budden, Daniel Carpenter, Malcolm Devlin, Stephen Hargadon, David Hartley, Richard V. Hirst, Timothy J. Jarvis, Alison Moore, Annie Neugebauer, Sarah Read, Joseph Sale, Richard Thomas, Paul Tremblay. Volume 2 contains stories by: Chikodili Emelumadu, Dan Grace, Kirsty Logan, Johnny Mains, Ralph Robert Moore, Mark Morris, Gareth E. Rees, Giovanna Repetto, G

Drifting dust and orange daylight: Writing 'Hardrada' by Ashley Stokes ('Hardrada' appears in The Shadow Booth: Vol. 4 , available here .) ‘From the trig point on Ditching Heights, the town was a grey eye open in yellow fields. Beyond its outer suburbs, across the barren countryside, the ancient outlines had again risen. Sunken rooms, burial chambers, mineshafts and underground galleries, long-gone walls and fortifications stood out like the letters of a lost alphabet. The tombs at Rixall glowed under the dead grass near the abandoned railway station. It was here that we’d seen Carter Thatch hazed in drifting dust and orange daylight.’ So begins 'Hardrada', a story of things that flicker in and out of life as hot summer weather drags on and intensifies. Restless England, hazy and baked mad, writhes with ghosts and re-enactments. Men assembled at a trig point agree to share their intelligence with George Nunes, landlord of The Swan with Two Necks and sm

Some thoughts on 'Terminal Teatime' (from The Shadow Booth: Vol. 4) by Anna Vaught ('Terminal Teatime' appears in The Shadow Booth: Vol. 4 , available here .) ‘Oh sweetheart. You don’t need decorum; you’ll be wanting dirt under your fingernails. Because in dirt and tree root integuments under fingernails and just a whiff of fetid stuff, now that is a better place to look. Yes. Dirt is more beautiful than decorum.’ Ah this strange little story. A lot of weird stuff happens, doesn’t it? Here, in this strange little story about a hungry swamp, but also in our daily lives. It’s all about noticing. People. All our rich peculiarity. Landscape - for it seems to me that landscape has immense mood and character; natural landscape I mean. This is something I am writing about in a new book of magical realism (gone weirder). And, as a kid, I used to find this of intense comfort because my immediate family was so radically dysfunctional but no one else knew. Or saw. Or

We're thrilled to announce that The Shadow Booth: Vol. 4 will be published on 24 October 2019, with a launch event (exact details to be confirmed) at FantasyCon in Glasgow. Once again, we'll be publishing as an ebook and a mass-market paperback (which should match your copies of Vols. 1, 2 & 3 perfectly on the shelf...) Pre-orders are open now through our online store. If you've enjoyed Vols. 1-3 (or are just a fan of strange, eerie short stories), please take a moment to pre-order your copy . That way you can be one of the first to sample its strange delights, and help make sure that The Shadow Booth keeps going through Vol. 5 and beyond. We've also dropped the price of Vols. 1 & 2 through until October, so if you've fallen behind now is the perfect time to catch up! Vols. 1 & 2 are only £6.99 in paperback until 24 October , and all three volumes to date are only £2.99 as ebooks. It's the perfect time to catch up on all those stories you m

PLEASE NOTE: The Shadow Booth is now closed to fiction submissions. Please keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages for details of the next submissions period. You know how we like to keep you on your toes? Well... The Shadow Booth is now OPEN for fiction submissions until the end of April! Here are some basic guidelines: We are a bi-annual journal of weird and eerie fiction. Do not send us your Western romance (in space). Do not send us your drug addiction memoir. Do not send us your shopping list (unless you're buying some really weird things). Weird. Eerie. Fiction. Please. If you want an idea of what we mean by weird and eerie, then read one of our previous volumes. This is the best way to find out what we like! All ebooks are under £5, and like all independent publications, we need your support to keep going. Paperbacks are under £9, and our latest, Vol. 3, has just been published. ( Paperbacks, ebooks and subscriptions are available here . Okay, ran

PLEASE NOTE THE NEW VENUE FOR THIS EVENT - MORE DETAILS BELOW. The Shadow Booth returns to London for the launch of Volume 3! We'll be celebrating the launch of The Shadow Booth: Vol. 3 on Thursday 11 April, with an evening of readings, conversation, and maybe a drink or two! This is a FREE event, but space is limited so please RSVP at the end of this page to let us know that you're coming . Reading on the night will be: ROBERT SHEARMAN - author of five short story collections, which between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers Prize, and three British Fantasy Awards. But he is probably best known for his work on Doctor Who, bringing back the Daleks for the BAFTA-winning first series in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award. His story 'I Say (I Say, I Say)' appears in Vol. 3. TIM MAJOR - whose novel about spontaneous clones, Snakeskins, will be published by Titan Books in spring 2019. Tim’s short stories

We're thrilled to announce that The Shadow Booth: Vol. 3 will be launched this April. Once again, we'll be publishing as an ebook and a mass-market paperback (which should match your copies of Vols. 1 & 2 perfectly on the shelf...) This time we won't be crowdfunding the project, but will be taking pre-orders through our website . If you've enjoyed Vol. 1 & 2 (or are just a fan of strange, eerie short stories), then please take a moment to pre-order your copy. That way you can be one of the first to sample its strange delights... But we haven't told you the most exciting part! The lineup is now finalised for Vol. 3, and the Table of Contents reads as follows: Cousin Grace by Jill Hand   Demolition by Nick Adams   I Say (I Say, I Say) by Robert Shearman   Meat by Judy Birkbeck   Hermit Island’s Hermit by Armel Dagorn   The Cherry Cactus of Corsica by Verity Holloway   The School Project by Richard V. Hirst   I Have a Secret by Raquel Cast

We're pleased to announce that The Shadow Booth is open to fiction submissions from women writers only from 1–15 January 2019. This includes any transgender writers who identify as women, but we'd be grateful if male writers would refrain from submitting during this period. There will be another open submission period in the spring, which we will be announcing shortly. For full details, please see the guidelines here . We are not considering reprints at this point, but simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you inform us as soon as your story is accepted elsewhere. Best of luck!

On 19 October, The Shadow Booth made a rare appearance in the physical realm. Manifesting at FantasyCon 2018 - the convention of the British Fantasy Society - rumours abounded of its presence in and around the city of Chester. What happened that day may or may not have looked something like this... Before he even stepped off the train, Phil was dreading the weekend. There was a reason why he'd spent the last ten years avoiding Sandra, Curtis, Ranesh and the others, and with each mile that the train had trundled out of London that reason had become starker and starker. Brushing crumbs from his belly, Phil reached up to gather his bag and his jacket from the parcel shelf. He was a mess, and he knew it. While the others had become fitter, happier - richer - as the years passed, he had grown fat and confused. He felt something had passed him by, but he couldn't say exactly what. Stepping out onto the platform at Chester, he wrinkled his nose. What was that? Cowshit? He

Last year we ran a ' Top 5 Weird Horror Books ' list for Halloween, and it was so popular that we thought we'd do it again. After all, who really wants to read yet another list of Stephen King books this All Hallows Eve? As before, we're celebrating the weird and the unusual for our list. We've asked some of the contributors to The Shadow Booth: Vol. 2 to recommend something strange, unsettling, and not widely read for Halloween. This is what crawled out of the swamp... The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan Recommended by Aliya Whiteley A monster has been created. In the basement of his huge house atop a network of ice caves, Professor Hawkline made something unspeakable from a mysterious bottle of Chemicals, and then he vanished. His daughters have enlisted the help of two guns-for-hire to explore the caves and kill the monster, and nothing I’ve just told you is exactly accurate about that situation. This sounds like horror in a Western setting, which i