Legends of the Night

By Stephen Mark Rainey

At the heart of all legends lies a sense of wonder. The perception of awe-inspiring power. The recognition of something larger than life.

Legends of the Night spawns new myths, dreams, fables, and nightmares; all larger than life, all brimming with the power that can only be found in the merging of the legendary with the contemporary. From the frigid skies above the war-torn Europe of 1918, to shadow-haunted catacombs of futuristic Los Angeles… from the exotic, tropical jungles of the south Pacific in 1942, to medieval Scottish moors ruled by the fighting machines of H. G. Wells’s dreaded Martian invaders…author Stephen Mark Rainey presents a collection of tales that both embrace the power of ancient myth and celebrate the intensity of today’s most vivid storytelling.

Contents

  • Before the Red Star Falls
  • Stalker of the Wild Wind
  • Gunhand
  • Somewhere, My Love
  • Orchestra Petey in La-La Land
  • Now I Lay Me Down to Dream
  • Silhouette
  • The Forgiven
  • Bloodlight
  • Angels of the Mist
  • Vita Terra
  • The Children of Burma

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Legends of the Night

“Before the Red Star Falls”

“Before the Red Star Falls” is a prequel to H. G. Wells’s novel, War of the Worlds, set in medieval Scotland. In the heat of battle, English and Scottish knights find themselves facing a vanguard of Martian invaders, forcing them to cast aside their own differences and pool their resources against an enemy whose technology is so advanced—so baffling—that it appears to the knights as Satanic magic. Check out “Before the Red Star Falls,” for free, here.

Praise for Legends of the Night

“Afficionados of the weird, fantastic, and horrible have come to expect well-crafted, disturbing tales from Stephen Mark Rainey, and the stories in Legends of the Night will surely not disappoint his fans. Deliciously spooky stuff!”
— Caitlin R. Kiernan, author of Silk and Threshold

“Stephen Mark Rainey’s works are of the most disturbing and lasting kind. He takes us by the hand, leads us into a world that looks familiar, then rips open the seams around us and reveals the hideous possibilities that lie just a hair’s breadth away. He gives us the lurking darkness, the scrabbling monsters that haunt our midnight, waking hours. Rainey is a nightmare-weaver.”
— Elizabeth Massie, Bram Stoker award-winning author of Sineater, Welcome Back to the Night, and Wire Mesh Mothers

“Stephen Mark Rainey has one of those slow voices that slides up from deep inside and lulls his readers into a false sense of security, just before coiling his words around them and stealing their breath. The spirit of H. P. Lovecraft lives on as dark shapes take form in the shadows of our minds and the question resurfaces — what is real, and what lies beyond?”
— David Niall Wilson, Author of This is My Blood, Star Trek Voyager: Chrysalis, and Except You Go Through Shadow

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