Terry Lamsley's first collection of supernatural fiction, Under the Crust (1994), has been called by Ramsey Campbell 'a major debut in the field'. It was nominated for three World Fantasy Awards, with the title story winning for Best Novella. In 1996 came Conference With the Dead, a second collection of tales which went on to win the International Horror Critics' Guild award for Best Collection. In both books, writes Campbell, 'Lamsley has established himself as an inheritor of all the qualities of classic English supernatural horror'.

In Dark Matters, Terry Lamsley once again demonstrates his mastery of the supernatural form, creating a series of waking nightmares in which something other intrudes into the lives of ordinary people. A father and son spending a day together find a dark underside to a seemingly bucolic village; a new neighbour is not nearly as friendly and harmless as he initially seems; a woman doing volunteer work finds herself caught between her odd partner and their even odder client, both of whom have certain needs which must be met; a pleasant walk through the fields leads to a disturbing discovery; and a quiet caravan holiday awakens something better left alone.

Add to these a family pet undergoing a very strange transformation, an old school friend up to something nasty, a pub visit which goes horribly wrong, a woman who uses some rather unorthodox material in creating her sculptures, two ghosts who need help filling their empty hours, and a seemingly deserted beach which is not, unfortunately, quite as uninhabited as it appears, and you have vintage Terry Lamsley: disturbing, frightening, sometimes blackly humorous, never reassuring. In this world, things are seldom, if ever, as they seem, and those who enter it do so at their own risk.