The Realm of Stephen Mark Rainey

About BALAK...

"Stephen Mark Rainey brings us a Cthulhu Mythos novel that neither gushes with avant-garde blood nor creaks under the rusty chains of homage. Balak strikes me as the best story of its kind since Russell Kirk’s Lord of the Hollow Dark (1979)...Rainey moves his story along with just the right balance of suspense and revelation, and provides a resonant climax."
—Paul Di Filippo, Asimov's Science Fiction

"With some nicely creepy descriptions of non-human entities and torments endured by the protagonists...Balak is an excellent novel — highly recommended to all fans of mythos fiction. This is what all us fans expect of Stephen Mark Rainey, well-known for his many stories in various anthologies."
—Matthew T. Carpenter, Nightscapes

On one level, Balak is a great police procedural/mystery novel, and on another it makes all of the right moves as a great work of supernatural fiction. One of the best and most satisfying reads you could expect. Pick it up and add it to your horror library.
—James Robert Smith, author of The Flock

There's No Time Left for You...

Children around Chicago are being abducted, for purposes that Claire Challis cannot begin to imagine. Two years ago, her own son was abducted, his fate never determined by the police. Now, her search for the truth brings her into contact with a strange cult, whose sinister members single her out as the object of their perverted desires. To her horror, Claire learns that the cult's secrets are far darker and more bizarre than she could ever have imagined, for its roots stem from Biblical times...and its history is one of depravity and violence that spans the ages.

Balak is a novel of grim reality and nightmarish fantasy, intricately woven into the esoteric universe that author Stephen Mark Rainey has perpetuated through his short fiction for over two decades. With gripping prose and superlative imagery, Balak shines as an example of subtle psychological terror combined with striking, graphic horror.

Balak
By Stephen Mark Rainey

Formats:
Trade paperback (Wildside Press,
978-1-58715-263-4), 236 pages, $16.95
Kindle edition (Amazon.com,
B004GNFVWE), $6.99
Audio book (Crossroad Press), $12.99

Paperback release date: Spring 2000
E-book release date: December 2010

Stephen Mark Rainey is author of the novels Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark (with Elizabeth Massie), Balak, The Lebo Coven, Blue Devil Island, and The Nightmare Frontier; the short story collections Fugue Devil & Other Weird Horrors, The Last Trumpet, Legends of the Night, and Other Gods; and over 100 works of short fiction. He achieved questionable infamy and absolutely no fortune as editor of Deathrealm magazine, and has edited the anthologies Deathrealms, Song of Cthulhu, and Evermore (with James Robert Smith).