Cirrus@Austlit

'“Wherever we walk, Nyarlathotep has walked that path long before we were conceived, and he will walk that same path long after our memories are forgotten and our bodies are nothing more than corrupted dust.” – The Masked Messenger

'Written in 18th Century Morocco by a mysterious woman called Sharinza, The Masked Messenger is the most comprehensive guide to the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos in the continent of Africa. The blasphemous tome contains five hundred fables centered upon the Masked Messenger, a dark and scheming god known in the Lovecraftian circles as Nyarlathotep.

'None of the African or Middle Eastern protagonists who encounter the Messenger achieve satisfactory outcomes to their predicaments. While the Masked Messenger pretends to aid and assist, her only objective is to corrupt, humiliate and finally defile her various narrators. Death and destruction are their only endings.

'The Faceless Watchers collects together the early Cthulhu Mythos fiction of award-winning Australia speculative fiction author, David Conyers — stories tied to the legend of the Masked Messenger. The collection includes “The Swelling”, “A Shared Romance”, “The Faceless Watchers”, “Screaming Crawler”, “Vanishing Curves”, “Solvent Hunger”, “As Above So Below” and “Outside Looking In”.

'To round off this collection, fans of the low-res, high-suspense point-and-click horror adventure The Last Door will find published for the first time in book format, the official prequel story to the game, “The Last Door: The Five Arches”.

'Fans of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game from Chaosium Inc. will also find connections and backstories in these tales to the many gaming books David produced over the years, including Secrets of Kenya, The House of R’lyeh and Devil’s Children.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When anyone can create any technology they require with just a schematic, the threat to civilisation sky-rockets. With security strategies in place, people can rest easy, until those protections are undone. David Conyers’ science fiction follows governmental agent Brian Arctor as he tries to stop a threat from spiralling out of control.'

Source: Magazine blurb.

'“He identified men on the ground, tiny individuals filmed from an airplane high above the fields of Antarctic snow. They were running, fast and away from a threat he could not see. He looked for the pursuer, until he realized his mind wasn’t imaging a hunter much bigger than the men. When he spotted the amorphous shape the size of a mining dump truck, all white and tentacles and eyes and mouths that seemed to shift in and out of a jelly-like consistency, he squirmed. The pulsating shape rolled over one man crushing him without slowing an iota. It was like watching a tsunami engulf unsuspecting bathers on a populated beach.”

'The human race is doomed, and no one knows this better than Army Intelligence Officer, Major Harrison Peel, because he’s witnessed the threats first hand, and the threats are alien horrors.

'Everyday somewhere on the Earth, alien monsters are extracted through wormholes linked to bizarre dimensions and impossible planets. These are threats that cannot be controlled, defeated or understood, but Peel fights on regardless. But what he fears most are the shoggoths, shape-changing, near-indestructible creatures forging a conspiracy that will enslave all humanity.

'In a blend of cosmic horror with weird science fiction and action spy adventure, The Shoggoth Conspiracy recounts the adventures of Harrison Peel, who travels the globe fighting the good fight against alien monsters of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos wherever they appear threatening to destroy humanity.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.