Revised and expanded, the startling debut of Simon Strantzas resurfaces with fourteen tales of dark gods and monsters of the flesh, emissaries from a world beneath our own, a world from where nightmares are born. Here, a man searches for truth in a universe that has forsaken him and pays the price for that knowledge, and a woman without hope travels northward to find the place where her life fell to pieces and discovers of what she is truly made. They say no man is an island, no matter how much he wishes to be, but then what is that ship that sails toward him, and what pray tell is lashed to its bow? These are tales that infect our dreams, tales of things that live beyond our understanding and watch us with malignant indifference. They are tales of grief, of loneliness, of guilt. Tales of the liminal places that separate our world from that other world, the world to which our souls are merely a gateway. Come inside and witness what resides in us all, deep down beneath the surface.
"One of the most important debut short story collections in the genre."
— Stephen Jones
"Simon Strantzas is a star ascendant upon the firmament of Canadian dark fiction. Brooding and macabre, Beneath the Surface makes for a fine introduction to his eerie precincts."
— Laird Barron
"Strantzas = Atmosphere, Atmosphere, Atmosphere! !! + The seasoned subtlety of a literary master and a rich, evocative imagination—a very dark one. Along with Laird Barron and a handful of others, Simon Strantzas does not show you the gate to this new Golden Age of weird fiction that is upon us, but leads you through it. What you encounter on the other side will leave its mark on you. I dare you to look BENEATH THE SURFACE!"
— Joseph S Pulver, Sr
"[These] are expressions of the ineffable, decadent visions in which the grotesque is the point ... I think Beneath the Surface is Simon's crowning achievement ..."
— Richard Gavin
"[These tales] are dripping with atmosphere — bleak, gloomy, hopeless, depressing atmosphere, in a wintry or rainy environment that will make you feel its chill in your bones, and deeper."
— Jeffery Thomas
Foreword by Matt CardinA Shadow in God's Eye
It Runs Beneath the Surface
The Constant Encroaching of a Tumultuous Sea
A Thing of Love
Off the Hook
More To Learn
Behind Glass
In the Air
You Are Here
The Autumnal City
The Wound So Deep
Thoughtless
Leather, Dark and Cold
Drowned Deep Inside of Me
Afterword: Excerpts from a Writer's Journal