Barnacle Bill the Spacer: And Other Stories — (1973) Publisher: There are science fiction stories alongside short thrillers and a psychological horror story; something for everyone. This anthology of short stories includes the Nebula Award-winning “Barnacle Bill The Spacer”, “A Little Night Music”, “The Beast of the Heartland”, “All the Perfume in Araby”, “Human History”, “The Sun Spider” and “Sports in America”, many of which were previously only published in magazines.

Green Eyes — (1984) Publisher: Life the second time around is short, strange and terrifying to the awakened. One “zombie”, victim of a bizarre scientific obsession, breaks away, leaving a trail of muder and miracle as he flees the Project and the horror his “life” has become.

Kalimantan — (1990) Publisher: Barnett, a dealer in jewels, sits down at a table in his store in Banjormasim, Borneo, and invites the reader to hear a first-person adventure set in his country’s mysterious interior. An untrustworthy white man named Mackinnon comes across a witch doctor’s drug that gives access to a parallel world–at the cost of native lives. One of the victims is a local witch whose spirit moves to the other world and sets in motion the events that will restore a balance. Its echoes of Conrad notwithstanding, Shepard’s ( Green Eyes ) story resembles more than anything else the recitation of a dream in which logic is completely discarded and the motivation of the characters remains undeveloped. Atmospheric in setting, intriguing in its premise and somewhat suspenseful, Shepard’s tale falls off at the end and fails its characters, none of whom–not even those who die–change or grow during the course of the story.

The Ends of the Earth: Fourteen Stories — (1991) Publisher: Fourteen stories deal with an accidental killing, the Vietnam War, a monstrous transformation, visible sins, dream worlds, addicts, and voodoo. The second collection of Lucius Shepard’s short stories. Includes “The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter.”

The Golden — (1993) Publisher: Deviating from traditional tales that feature lonely vampires who prowl through human society in search of victims or solace, this account of vampires flourishing in their own “inhuman society” takes place in the year 1860, when their centuries-long breeding experiments have finally produced “The Golden,” a mortal whose blood is perfect and powerful. Mobilized by the news of this discovery, aristocratic vampire clans arrive at the looming Castle Banat, where they plan to partake of the sublime blood. To their shock, the guests find that The Golden, a young girl, has been brutally murdered and her blood already drained. The story also follows the Inspector Michael Beheim — a recent vampire — assigned to track down the killer. Recounted in full 19th-century literary style with gothic elements and foreshadowing, the inspector navigates his way through the vampire world and the crime therein.

A Handbook of American Prayer — (1999) Publisher: A man walks into a bar. A dispute ensues, and the bartender kills him. He’s sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. In prison, the convict, Wardlin Stuart, writes prayers addressed to no god in particular. Inexplicably, his prayers — whether it’s a request for a girlfriend or a special favor for a fellow inmate — are answered, be it in days or weeks. When his collection of supplications, A Handbook of American Prayer, is published by a New York press, Stuart emerges a celebrity author. Settling into a new life in Arizona, he encounters a fundamentalist minister. The two are destined for a confrontation. In the interim, it seems that the god to whom Stuart has been praying has manifested himself on the earth. In this short novel about America’s conflicting love triangle — celebrity, spirituality, and money — Shepard negotiates the thin line between the real and the surreal, expounding upon violence and redemption along the way. This story of an unlikely American messiah shows why The Wall Street Journal has compared Shepard, an award-winning author, to Graham Greene, Robert Stone, and Ward Just.

Beast of the Heartland — (1999) Publisher: The fiction of Lucius Shepard has more to do with Joseph Conrad than Isaac Asimov. Fascinated by deception and decay, and generally labeled a cyberpunk writer, his work transcends the limits of genre fiction. Beast of the Heartland contains seven tales that explore the darkside where science fiction meets horror. Headed by the award-winning “Barnacle Bill the Spacer,” a story of high-space mutiny, the book includes “A Little Night Music,” a gothic tale of insanity; “All the Perfumes of Araby,” where an adventurer in the Middle East links up with an ancient entity; “Human History,” a postapocalyptic chiller; “Sports in America,” a noir tale in the Chandler tradition; “The Sun Spider,” a mini space opera; and the title story — an ingenious picture of a battered boxer on the decline.

Colonel Rutherford’s Colt — (2002) Publisher: The itinerant gun show draws together many subcultures from the margins of society: survivalists, Aryan brotherhoods, and the team of Rita Whitelaw and Jimmy Roy Guy, dealers in collectible arms. Rita has made Jimmy an exception to her general disdain for whites — “not your typical Caucasian,” as she describes him — for Jimmy’s got a storytelling ability that borders on mystic vision. When Jimmy makes an agreement with the widow of Aryan martyr Bob Champion to broker her husband’s infamous Colt .45, he and Rita run afoul of “the Major,” Champion’s spiritual successor. However, they’re not intimidated by the Major’s veiled threats. The gun has launched a story, and when Jimmy begins a story, one way or another, he’s bound to see it through. (For mature readers.)

Louisiana Breakdown — (2003) Publisher: Welcome to Grail, Louisiana — next to nothing and just beyond reality — where hoodoo meets Jesus, and townsfolk pray to both. This dark fantasy delves into the psychological and motivational depths of Grail and its residents. Miss Sedele mixes up green cocktails called ‘cryptoverdes’ at Le Bon Chance. Vida Dumars, owner of the Moonlight Diner, peers into the deepest realms of her customers’ hearts as though they were picture windows. Town spirit Good Gray Man has promised good fortune to the town as long as it hangs onto tradition. A quirky, fantastical town’s heart and soul are slowly, often painfully revealed in this dark and captivating novella.

Floater  — (2003) Publisher: Detective William Dempsey of the New York Police Department is having a bad time of it. Having endured — along with his brothers in blue, Manny Pinero and Evan Haley — a months-long homicide trial for the inadvertant (or was it?) shooting of Haitian immigrant, Israel Lara, he’s been abandoned by his fiancee, deemed unfit for duty, and is sinking into an oblivion of vodka and pills. Then there’s that little problem with his eye. A floater, his optometrist says. Nothing to worry about. Microscopic bits of protein adrift in the humor that cast shadows on the retina. But Dempsey’s worried. For one thing, instead of dispersing, the floater continues to grow, occluding his vision and causing disturbing hallucinations. For another, his partner, Pinero, is behaving strangely and there’s the suggestion that the floater may not be a harmless opthamological incident but an emblem that signals a peculiar form of vengeance and the imminence of a voodoo god. As he tries to determine what is happening, Dempsey’s investigation leads him from rave culture to santeria ceremonies in storefront temples and, ultimately, to a circumstance that may have cosmic implications and a truth that lies hidden in the deepest sub-basements of his own mind.

Viator — (2004) Publisher: Quartered aboard the freighter, Viator, run aground twenty years before on a remote section of the Alaskan coast, the four men hired to determine the ship’s worth at salvage have begun to exhibit a variety of eccentric behaviors. They’ve become obsessed with Viator to the point that the world beyond seems of consequence only as it relates to the ship. When their putative leader, Thomas Willander, is afflicted by a series of disturbing dreams, he concludes that something on board may be responsible for their erraticism. He seeks the help of a woman in the nearby village of Kaliaska and together they initiate an investigation into the history of Viator, hoping to learn, among other things, why the ship was run aground and who was the mysterious man who hired the four. But their efforts may be too late. The men, whose eccentrities are now verging on the insane, show no sign of intending to abandon their new home, compelled by Viator’s eerie allure. To make matters worse, winter will soon be setting in, ominous incidences of sound and light are issuing from the forest surrounding the ship, and Willander’s dreams may be coming true…

Two Trains Running — (2004) Publisher: This collection of fact and fiction was inspired by the time science fiction writer Lucius Shepard spent with Missoula Mike, Madcat, and other members of a controversial brotherhood known as the Freight Train Riders of America. Shepard rode the rails throughout the western half of the United States with the disenfranchised, the homeless, the punks, the gangs, and the joy riders for the magazine article ‘The FTRA Story’. That original article is presented here, along with two new hobo novellas, ‘Over Yonder’ and ‘Jailbait’. In ‘Over Yonder’, alcoholic Billy Long Gone finds himself on an unusual train. As Billy travels his health improves and his thinking clears, and he arrives in Yonder – an unlikely paradise where a few hundred hobos live in apparent peace and tranquillity. But every paradise has its price, and in Yonder, peace and tranquillity breed complacency and startling deaths. ‘Jailbait’ is a hardcore tale of deception, lust, revenge, and murder in the seedy underbelly of rail yards and train hopping. Madcat, who functions best in a whiskey-induced haze, must decide between solitude and companionship when he meets up with Grace, an underaged runaway. Grace, in turn, seeks the security of an older man and the life about which only young girls can dream.

Trujillo — (2004) Publisher: In the town of Trujillo, in Honduras, on the edge of the Mosquito Coast, Dr. Arturo Ochoa, a semi-retired psychiatrist, has a single patient: a troubled young man named Thomas Stearns, the son of a wealthy Atlanta family. Stearns has been found adrift on the Carribean in a vessel owned by two Nicaraguans, both of whom are missing; he has been alone for eighteen days and has little memory of that time. Suspected of murder, Stearns is unconcerned. He knows his family will buy off the police. But he is reluctant to leave Trujillo, having developed an odd affinity for the town. As therapy progresses, he tells of a mysterious stone figure regurgitated by, improbably, a whirlpool, and Dr. Ochoa, drawn into his pathology, begins to doubt not only Stearns’ sanity, but his own.

Eternity: And Other Stories — (2005) Publisher: Here are seven stories from a master of the art. Viktor Chemayev is the Philip Marlowe of Russian detectives, a sad-eyed, heavy drinking romantic who refuses to stay beat. In the title novella of this extraordinary collection, he goes head-to-head with an Irish assassin in the depths of a Moscow nightclub in an attempt to win back his true love, who has been sold to the Beelzebub-like king of the Moscow underworld… Lucius Shepard is known for his dark, unpredictable vision, and in this assemblage of some of his best writing he takes us from Moscow to Africa; from the mountains of Iraq, where Specialist Charlie N. Wilson encounters a very different sort of enemy, to Central America, where a bloody-handed colonel meets his doom via lizards. In these seven tales Shepard’s imagination spans the globe and, like an American Gabriel Garcia Marquez, refuses to be restricted by mere reality.

Softspoken — (2007) Publisher: A chilling and mysterious voice becomes audible to Sanie shortly after she and her husband Jackson move into the decaying antebellum mansion that is the Bullard ancestral home in rural South Carolina. At first, she wonders if the voice might be a prank played by Jackson’s peyote-popping brother Will or his equally off-kilter sister Louise. But soon Sanie discovers that the ghostly voice is merely a single piece in the decadent, baroque puzzle that comprises the Bullard family history rank with sensuality, violence, repression and madness.

Dagger Key: And Other Stories — (2007) Publisher: Lucius Shepard is a grand master of dark fantasy, famed for his baroque yet utterly contemporary visions of existential subversion and hallucinatory collapse. In Dagger Key, his fifth major story collection, Shepard confronts hard bitten loners and self-deceiving operators with the shadowy emptiness within themselves and the insinuating darkness without, to ends sardonic and terrifying.

Vacancy & Ariel — (2009) Publisher: For many of us, the Ace Double Novels of the ’50s and ’60s have long been a source both of pleasure and nostalgia. This new double volume from Subterranean Press stands squarely in that distinguished tradition, offering a pair of colorful, fast-paced novellas from one of the finest writers currently working in any genre: Lucius Shepard. In Vacancy, a washed-up actor, a mysterious motel, and a Malaysian “woman of power” form the central elements in a riveting account of a rootless man forced to confront the impossible — but very real — demons of his past. This is Shepard at his harrowing, hallucinatory best. Ariel brilliantly transmutes some traditional SF concepts — alien incursions, the mysteries of quantum physics — into an astonishing, often moving reflection on love and obsession, memory and identity, and the archetypal conflict that stands at the heart of an infinite multitude of worlds.

Five Autobiographies and a Fiction — (2013) Publisher: Five Autobiographies and a Fiction, the long-awaited new collection from master storyteller Lucius Shepard, is a significant publishing event, a volume equal in every way to such earlier Shepard classics as The Jaguar Hunter and The Dragon Griaule. Its six long stories offer narrative pleasures as diverse and profound as anything to be found in modern imaginative fiction. ‘Ditch Witch,’ set in rural Oregon, concerns a young man on the run in a stolen car, a hitchhiker who may or may not have witch-like powers, and the bizarre inhabitants of the seemingly innocuous Elfland Motel. ‘The Flock’ is a tale of high school football and small town malaise set against an impossible intrusion from the natural world. A washed-up actor and a Malaysian ‘woman of power’ stand at the center of ‘Vacancy,’ the account of a man forced to confront the very real demons of his past. ‘Dog-eared Paperback of My Life’ follows a writer (Thomas Cradle) on his erotically charged journey down the Mekong River, a journey enveloped in a maze of multiple, interpenetrating realities. ‘Halloween Town’ tells the story of a small, extremely strange town and one of its denizens, Clyde Ormoloo, a man who sees too deeply into the ‘terrible incoherence’ of human affairs. The final story, ‘Rose Street Attractors,’ takes us into 19th century London and the heart of the steampunk era in the richly atmospheric tale of a most unusual haunting. Rounding out this generous volume is an Introduction in which Shepard offers a startlingly frank assessment of his own troubled adolescence, identifying the ‘alternate versions’ of himself that appear in these pages and illuminating those points at which fiction and ‘near-autobiography’ converge. Lyrical, brutal, and always powerfully composed, Five Autobiographies and a Fiction is something special. Each of these six novellas speaks in its own distinctive voice. Each one takes us into the heart of a thoroughly imagined world. Only Lucius Shepard could have created those worlds. Only Lucius Shepard could have given us this book.

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