An artist is summoned to paint the portrait of sinister Mr. Finster in a decaying mansion . . . A suburban couple is vexed by the inveterate lawn-mowing of a ghost . . . In ice-bound Vermont, one farmer's crop is suspiciously bountiful . . . A miniature nymph is found swimming in an office water cooler . . . These are the bizarre conceptions of Jonathan Thomas, a powerful new writer of weird, horrific, and supernatural fiction who introduces himself to the reading public with this rich and varied short story collection. Thomas is, however, a practiced hand at terror-weaving, and his work spans the spectrum from comic fantasy to psychological suspense to science fiction. Unifying all his tales is a prose style of singular fluency and grace, enlivened by keen observation and mordant satire. "Jonathan Thomas has an enviably impressive range-from the gentle to the gruesome, from science fiction through fantasy to the spectral and horrific-but his wit is reliable, and so is the clarity of his eye, and the precision of his prose. He's an asset to all his fields."-Ramsey Campbell. "Thomas's dynamism in plot-weaving and his pungently satirical prose testify to a prodigious fund of creativity and a fine eye for observing the little absurdities of life in the twenty-first century."-From S. T. Joshi's Foreword.