The Sign in the Moonlight

Written by David Tallerman and Illustrated by Duncan Kay, The Sign in the Moonlight Includes the original novelette, The War of the Rats, and 13 other haunting tales.

A doomed mountaineering expedition attempts the slopes of Kanchenjunga, following in the footsteps of notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. A young soldier witnesses omens of another, vaster conflict in the ravaged trenches of the Somme. Two children find their innocence tested and their friendship contorted by the ancient barrow upon the hill. A ghost who can't remember ekes out an interminable existence amidst the ashes of events that can never be forgotten.

Contained within these pages are weird tales in the spirit of Lovecraft, Machen, Doyle and Wells, but shot through with a modern sensibility and a questioning of the old values. Here dwell ghosts and monsters, madmen and contortionists, lost souls and misunderstood geniuses. Collected for the first time are stories diverse and strange, spanning nearly a decade in the career of author David Tallerman (Giant Thief, Patchwerk) and including the never before seen novelette The War of the Rats.

Biography -- David Tallerman is the author of the Tor.com novella Patchwerk and the comic fantasy novels Giant Thief, Crown Thief and Prince Thief, as well as the graphic novel Endangered Weapon B: Mechanimal Science and the Tor.com novella Patchwerk. David's short science fiction, fantasy and horror has appeared in over seventy markets, including Digital Fiction Publishing, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.