Scar City
Joel Lane

‘One of the best British post-war writers of horror and the weird.’
– Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual

Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK’s foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, a frank explorer of sexuality and the transgressive aspects of human nature. With a tight focus on the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham, he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction.

Scar City is one of the final collections put together before his death in 2013 – with his home city of Birmingham as their nucleus, these are intense, haunting and often painful stories from a master of the short form.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS ROYLE

Praise for Joel Lane and Scar City

‘A poet of misfits, outsiders and the forsaken, his empathy for their suffering ever poignant. A cartographer of Birmingham and the Black Country as necropolis and weird edgeland. A chronicler of subcultures and the urban esoteric. An intelligent radical and one of the best British post-war writers of horror and the weird. I would go to considerable lengths to acquire his books when he was alive, but, at last, his new and future readership won't have to. Joel Lane will endure for as long as there is interest in visionary writers of quality.’
– Adam Nevill, Author of The Ritual.

'A master of urban noir whose stories also have a brittle poetry and a deep humanity. We may find ourselves among wastelands of disused factories, derelict houses and shuttered shops, but we also encounter there an uncanny beauty.'
– Wormwoodiana

‘An explosive mix of urban horror… able to create unforgettable pictures of human life with its frailties and its hopeless need to find a meaning for our existence.’
– Hellnotes

‘Scar City is a pitch-black collection of tales, some supernatural horror, some psychological horror, and some that could more appropriately be labelled as transgressive fiction. Lane maintains a uniform dark, oppressive quality to his writing as he hops through genres.’
– British Fantasy Society

‘This book is a reminder of how much the horror genre lost when Joel Lane passed away, but at the same time a celebration of his life and work. Flesh withers and dies, but the words and the memories remain.’
– The Late Review

‘Lane’s stories are inexorably wound through with the hopelessness and bitterness of the urban English, the artists struggling to find the niche they fear doesn’t exist, the lost lovers, the workmen long come to terms with the idea that there is nothing more to life than this.’
– The Future Fire

About the Author

Joel Lane was the author of two novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask; several short story collections, The Earth Wire, The Lost District, The Terrible Changes, Do Not Pass Go, Where Furnaces Burn, The Anniversary of Never and Scar City; a novella, The Witnesses Are Gone; and four volumes of poetry, The Edge of the Screen, Trouble in the Heartland, The Autumn Myth and Instinct. He edited three anthologies of short stories, Birmingham Noir (with Steve Bishop), Beneath the Ground and Never Again (with Allyson Bird). He won an Eric Gregory Award, two British Fantasy Awards and a World Fantasy Award. Born in Exeter in 1963, he lived most of his life in Birmingham, where he died in 2013.

Paperback ISBN: 9781910312612

Ebook ISBN: 9781910312629

Publication date: October 2020

Formats: Paperback / eBook