Charlie Parker returns in the chilling new thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of THE LOVERS. The border between Maine and Canada is porous. Anything can be smuggled across it: drugs, cash, weapons, people. Now a group of disenchanted former soldiers has begun its own smuggling operation, and what is being moved is infinitely stranger and more terrifying than anyone can imagine. Anyone, that is, except private detective Charlie Parker, who has his own intimate knowledge of the darkness in men's hearts. But the soldiers' actions have attracted the attention of the reclusive Herod, a man with a taste for the strange. And where Herod goes, so too does the shadowy figure that he calls the Captain. To defeat them, Parker must form an uneasy alliance with a man he fears more than any other, the killer known as the Collector...

Samuel Johnson — with a little help from his dachshund Boswell and a very unlucky demon named Nurd — has sent the demons back to Hell. But the diabolical Mrs Abernathy is not one to take defeat lying down. When she reopens the portal and sucks Samuel and Boswell down into the underworld, she brings an ice-cream van full of dwarfs as well. And two policemen. Can this eccentric gang defeat the forces of Evil? And is there life after Hell for Nurd?

When Charlie Parker was still a boy, his father, a NYPD cop, killed a young couple, a boy and a girl barely older than his son, then took his own life. There was no explanation for his actions. Stripped of his private investigator's license, and watched by the police, Parker is working in a Portland bar, holding down a job and staying out of trouble. But in the background, he is working on his most personal case yet, an investigation into his own origins and the circumstances surrounding the death of his father, Will. It is an investigation that will reveal a life haunted by lies, by his mother's loss and his father's betrayal, by secrets kept and loyalties compromised. And by two figures in the shadows, a man and a woman, with only one purpose: to bring an end to Charlie Parker's existence...

«John Connolly, bestselling author of seven brilliantly scary mystery novels, now turns his pen to the short story to give us a volume of chilling tales of the supernatural. In this macabre collection, echoing masters of the genre from M R James to Stephen King, Connolly delves into our darkest fears – lost lovers, missing children, subterranean creatures and predatory demons. Framing the collection are two substantial novellas – «The Cancer Cowboy Rides» charts the fatal progress of a modern-day grim reaper, while «The Reflecting Eye» is a haunted house tale with a twist and marks the return of private detective Charlie Parker, the troubled hero of Connolly's crime novels. This edition contains two additional stories – «The Cycle» and «Mr Gray's Folly» – not previously included. «Nocturnes» is a masterly volume to be read with the lights on — menace has never been so seductive...»

«Connolly tells a raw, gripping tale in his latest «New York Times» bestseller. In 1693, the people of a small Maine island were slaughtered. Since the massacre, the island has enjoyed 300 years of peace — until now.»