A Superior Spectre

Meyer, Angela

Literature & Fiction

Bolinda Audio

Jeff is dying. Haunted by memories and grappling with the shame of his desires, he runs away to remote Scotland with a piece of experimental tech that allows him to enter the mind of someone in the past. Instructed to only use it three times, Jeff – self-indulgent, isolated and deteriorating – ignores this advice.
In the late 1860s, Leonora lives a contented life in the Scottish Highlands, surrounded by nature, her hands and mind kept busy. Contemplating her future and the social conventions that bind her, a secret romantic friendship with the local laird is interrupted when her father sends her to stay with her aunt in Edinburgh – an intimidating, sooty city; the place where her mother perished.
But Leonora’s ability to embrace her new life is shadowed by a dark presence that begins to lurk behind her eyes, and strange visions that bear no resemblance to anything she has ever seen or known…
A Superior Spectre is a highly accomplished debut novel about our capacity for curiosity, and our dangerous entitlement to it, and reminds us the scariest ghosts aren’t those that go bump in the night, but those that are born and create a place for themselves in the human soul.

In this anthology, our editor, Angela Meyer, pays tribute to the undeniable cultural influence that American TV programs such as Twilight Zone and Outer Limits have had on our lives "down under." "These TV dramas," Meyer says, "were often metaphors for equality, justice, the nuclear threat and more. Though they were just as often pure, spooky fun." Meyer has selected short stories and microfiction which range from the fantastical and macabre to the absurd. In Paddy O'Reilly's Reality TV, a guest is confronted with her husband's infidelity in front of a live audience, and Ali Alizedah's Truth and Reconciliation satirizes American celebrity television. Chris Flynn's Sealer's Cove has a nudist caught in a time slip. Carmel Bird evokes Edgar Allan Poe when over-sized hares incite the good folk of rural Victoria to commit criminal acts, and in Sticks and Stones, Ryan O'Neill has an academic attacked by a demonic alphabet. Contributors include established and emerging writers such as Marion Halligan and Krissy Kneen, as well as new talents.

The Great Unknown

Contemporary

Spineless Wonders

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Meyer, Angela. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Meyer, Angela

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Meyer, Angela. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Superior Spectre

A Superior Spectre

The Great Unknown