from Tom Piccirilli

Five tales of the macabre collected for the first time, including the title story and its sequel, "Recovery."

Welcome to a building in the heart of New York City, where disenfranchised artists come to be among their own kind. A place of beauty, madness, and sin where Paynes, the writer who created The Works, returns to fulfill his wrath on those who cost him everything he ever cared about... and who now loves nothing except his new, savage form of art.

In the novella "Recovery," a recently released convict returns to the place where he lost his sister, searching for the men who taught him to survive in a cell, even while destroying his life. Among the aesthetic and the profane he finds that the only path to revenge and recovery lies in traveling deeper into a different kind of imprisonment. Until he either kills Paynes or becomes a part of him... Inside The Works.

from Gerard Daniel Houarner

As shamans chant, Max, the master assassin now stricken by a mysterious illness, wonders if he will live or die. Healers from around the world cannot touch the disease that has crippled him. The twins, his lovers, cannot help him. Shadow men, wrapped in cloaks of technology, pause in their games to see if their most formidable piece will be removed from the board.

But before his fate is decided, Max will discover his capacity for pain, life, guilt. Death will blossom in pleasure, lives will be sacrificed for debts of honor and friendship. And Max will struggle in the absence of God's grace and punishment to find truth and its consequences in the heart of destruction.