OTHER FANTASY BOOKS

 Tim Lees’s fiction has been compared to that of Michael Moorcock, Ray Bradbury, Franz Kafka, Ted Chiang and Mervyn Peake. In this, his latest collection, you’ll meet a couple of artistically-inclined hit-men (“Scenes from Country Life”), a woman caught up in an interdimensional war, whose friends are far worse than her enemies (“Love and War”); you’ll visit a Heavenly realm invaded by monsters (“Gumps”), and witness a terrifying ritual which nonetheless sustains the peace and stability of the world – and causes hell when it’s disrupted (“The Shuttered Child”). From familiar city streets to strange, inhuman landscapes, from the fields of England to the unknown cities of America, these are stories which push the boundaries of genre and show human life adapting to the weird, the alien – and the outright terrifying. 

 All Ray wanted was a nice, safe office job...  Instead, he’s working on the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital, out of his depth and very, very nervous. For those who work there, a locked ward is like a pressure cooker, and close teamwork hides a wealth of old alliances, resentments and affairs. It’s a work hard, play hard culture, and it can take a heavy toll... The world of mental health care is a hidden one. Unless you’ve experienced it first hand – either as staff or patient – you’re unlikely to know what it’s really like.  The Other Country lays it bare as never before. 

A memoir by Tim Lees