Shadowland by Peter Straub Centipede Press. Signed/Numbered.

“In Straub’s Shadowland, the nightmare is the gift that keeps giving, along with his relentless drive to keep pulling the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. It’s the coalescence of all his experience that brings us the total package: a story built on the backs of, as he put it, “…beginnings, middles, and ends, complete with hesitations, digressions, puzzles, and climaxes.” Realizing his bedtime “fairy tales” could be cobbled together into something magical was liberating for Straub; and doing so produced one of the most unique among horror’s great epics.
But Shadowland is no mere patchwork of twisted children’s tales masquerading as cheap thriller. It’s a beatifically designed and well-executed Russian tea doll in narrative longform: simplistic in its functionality but ornate in its details. And it’s only once you’ve unhatched each and every story that you’ll discover the mystery behind Straub’s grand illusion.