The Bewdley Mayhem

Together for the first time, the complete Bewdley trilogy will alter your imagination as it details the strange, dark happenings in a rural Ontario town. The Hellmouths of Bewdley is a series of 16 stories hiding in a novel about a small town in Ontario’s cottage country. Navigating through drunk and dead men, prisons and suicides and mad doctors, these short stories act as a halfway house for literary delinquents. Pontypool Changes Everything is the terrifying story of a devastating virus. Caught through conversation, once it has you, it leads you into another world where the undead chase you down the streets of the smallest towns and largest cities. In Caesarea, everybody’s embarrassed and nobody is mentioning the mess. Caesarea, you see, is the town that can’t get to sleep at night. Only Burgess demands answers to the really big question: Who’s been sleeping in your bed? With a preface by Jonathan Ball. Praise for Tony Burgess “These stories are universally dark and not for the timid or prudish. A subtle horror invades the fine writing; intimate biological details of violent death are revealed in a manner that suggests Stephen King having a confidential chat with Hieronymus Bosch in the north woods. What Burgess reveals is that the dark edges of humanity we stereotypically equate with the urban are present and even more threatening in areas with no 911 service.” —Quill & Quire on The Hellmouths of Bewdley “Pontypool Changes Everything may be one of the most genuinely horrifying horror novels—as opposed to simply discomforting, sickening or terrifying, although it is all of these as well—that I have ever read.” —Horrorscope

Three celebrated books - all of which harbour a twisted ambition to physically alter your imagination - together for the first time. The Hellmouths of Bewdley is a series of 16 stories hiding in a novel about a small town in Ontario's cottage country. Pontypool Changes Everything is the terrifying story of a devastating virus. In Caesarea, everybody's embarrassed and nobody is mentioning the mess. Caesarea, you see, is the town that can't get to sleep at night. The Bewdley Mayhem combines these three classic horror tales, each of which has its own twisted humour.

A compelling, terrifying story of a devastating virus. You catch it in conversation, and once it has you, it leads you into another world where the undead chase you down the streets

In Earworm and Event Eldritch Priest questions the nature of the imagination in contemporary culture through the phenomenon of the earworm: those reveries that hijack our attention, the shivers that run down our spines, and the songs that stick in our heads. Through a series of meditations on music, animal mentality, abstraction, and metaphor, Priest uses the earworm and the states of daydreaming, mind-wandering, and delusion it can produce to outline how music is something that is felt as thought rather than listened to. Priest presents Earworm and Event as a tête-bêche—two books bound together with each end meeting in the middle. Where Earworm theorizes the entanglement of thought and feeling, Event performs it. Throughout, Priest conceptualizes the earworm as an event that offers insight into not only the way human brains process musical experiences, but how abstractions and the imagination play key roles in the composition and expression of our contemporary social environments and more-than-human milieus. Unconventional and ambitious, Earworm and Event offers new ways to interrogate the convergence of thought, sound, and affect.

Ashley Reeves is a young journalist at freak-of-nature magazine Missing Link. His future's bright, even if he does spend most of his time investigating hoaxes. When he receives a letter promising him a once-in-a-lifetime story, he jumps at the opportunity. The only thing is, his life is exactly what it might cost him. The letter is from Reginald Mather, a man who at first seems no more than an eccentric collector of insects, happy to live in isolation on a remote island. But when Ashley finds himself stranded with Mather and unearths the horrific truth behind the collector's past, he is thrown headlong into a macabre nightmare that quickly spirals out of control. Ashley's life is in danger. . . . And Mather is not the only enemy. . . . Gruesome, compelling, and terrifying, The Hand of the Devil will make you never want to leave the house without bug spray again.

The third and final installment of the trilogy, this novel reveals the what happens in a town that can't get to sleep at night, where everybody's embarrassed but nobody is mentioning the mess. The book asks questions the town doesn't want answered, such as Who's been sleeping in your bed? You're safe when you lock your front door, right? Not in this town, the story reveals.

The Last Word is a snapshot of the next generation of Canadian poets, the poets who will be taught in schoolsNvoices reflecting the '90s and a new type of writing sensibility. The anthology brings together 51 poets from across Canada, reaching into different regional, ethnic, sexual and social groups. This varied and volatile collection pushes the notion of an anthology to its limits, like a startling Polaroid. Proceeds from the sale of The Last Word will go to Frontier College, in support of literacy, programs across the country.