Upon hearing of his estranged father's death, Tommy Shea returns to the funeral home that drove his family apart. Tommy must learn to balance his newly inherited responsibilities, assistant, and whimsical mentor while preserving family traditions and secrets. The book is filled with memories of locked doors, ancient relics, mysterious magical awakenings, and unconventional funeral home practices. Its a haunting tale of family, secrets, and the darkness lurking beneath.

"Readers who know Lovecraft's legacy mostly through turgid and tentacled Cthulhu Mythos pastiches will find this book a treasure trove of literary terrors." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)Here are nineteen Lovecraftian stories—both new and rediscovered—that take their cues from the mythos of the iconic horror writer. Today's masters of supernatural thrills celebrate H. P. Lovecraft's oeuvre with tales of weird fiction and cosmic horror, collected by H...

By dint of a mispronounced spell, Cugel the Clever finds himself once again unceremoniously dumped by a winged demon onto the bleak far northern shores of the Sea of Cutz — the location of a fierce battle aeons past between the archmagician Simbilis and the hordes of the subworlds league. Vowing to exact comprehensive revenge from Iucounu, the Laughing Magician, Cugel sets forth on the long journey back to Almery.Expecting potent magical gifts in recompense, Cugel swears fealty to ...

It endeavors to answer the ever-looming question of isthere a God and if so, who is he and what is he. The nextpart of the book deals with how it affects me and then howI affect and react with other persons on this planet.

Books and films have skewered Hollywood's excesses, but none has ever portrayed one man's crazy vision of the future of big action/adventure films as Michael Shea's The Extra does. As over-the-top as Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles, as savagely dark as Robert Altman's The Player, and more violent than Rollerball, this is the story of the ultimate, so-insane-it-could-only-happen-in-Hollywood formula for success, a brave new way to bring the ultimate in excit...

Working with babies and children is most successful when therapists have a complete understanding and overview of all appropriate treatment options, and the effects of early influences on child health and development. This book shows therapists how to consider these factors in order to work more effectively within their individual areas of expertise.Contributors from a wide range of disciplines, including Ann Diamond Weinstein, Michael Shea, Carolyn Goh, Graham Kennedy, Matthew App...

The influence of the preconception and prenatal period on child development and parent-child relationships.This book presents recent knowledge, research, and theory about the earliest developmental period—from conception to birth—which holds even greater consequences for the health and development of the human organism than was previously understood. Theory and research in multiple disciplines provide the foundation for the exploration of how experiences during con...

For decades, scholars have assumed that the genius of John Henry Newman remained underappreciated among his Roman Catholic contemporaries. In order to find the true impact of his work, one must therefore look to the century following his death. Newman's Early Roman Catholic Legacy, 1845-1854 unpicks this claim. Examining a host of overlooked evidence from England and the European continent, C. Michael Shea considers letters, records of conversations, and obscure and unpublished th...

Less than a hundred years in the future, pollution, economic disaster, and the rapacious greed of the corporate oligarchy has brought America to its knees and created dystopian urban nightmares, of which L.A. may be the worst.Curtis, Japh, and Jool are film extras, who—with the help of a couple of very gutsy women—survived being anonymous players in a "live-action" film in which getting killed on-screen meant getting killed for real. Surviving the shoot made them rich enough to esc...

With characters, mythology, and a world that deepens across three trilogies, Young Yaga and the Thrice-Nine Kingdoms is written for readers who cherish classic, long-arc fantasy._______________________________________They will call her a monster-the truth of who she was, erased from memory.But before the demon-Witch of legend-before the crone of fire and bone-there was a young woman who never asked to become a savior.The year is 650 AD, and Yaga Luc...

The Extra is set in a future California where members of a desperate populace sign contracts to participate in reality death films, knowing that less than twenty percent of them will survive. It’s a view of the future—and Hollywood—as delightfully cynical as Kurt Vonnegut, with sympathetic characters, Hollywood executive sleazeballs, and much more.

A fast-paced, cinematically explosive dystopian thriller by the author of The ExtraLess than a hundred years in the future, pollution, economic disaster, and the rapacious greed of the corporate oligarchy have brought America to its knees and created dystopian urban nightmares, of which Los Angeles may be the worst.Curtis, Japh, and Jool are film extras, who—with the help of a couple of very gutsy women—survived being anonymous players in a "live-action" film in wh...