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The Lost District Paperback – January 1, 2006

by Joel Lane (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
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A collection of fantastic and horrific stories that deal thematically address the core relationships of ones life, be they parental, first loves, best friends, or lovers (of both the hetero and homosexual variety). The decaying industrial backdrop of England's midlands provides a working class context that is both uniquely English, but universally accessible.

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Night Shade
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2006
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1597800392
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1597800396
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bleak cityscapes dimmed by urban blight and human despair give rise to unique horrors in this virtuoso book of disturbing, cutting-edge tales from British author Lane (The Earth Wire and Other Stories). Lane's sketches of cast-off teens, cruising gays and drug-dependent loners begin in settings rank with gritty realism—pickup bars, abandoned squats, slush-caked alleyways—but gradually veer into strange and surreal territories. In "The Bootleg Heart," a student aroused by sounds of passion from the room above finds himself titillated even more when he learns their necrophilic origin. "Coming of Age" tells of a father who discovers just how estranged he has become from his missing son when a trail of clues leads him to a ramshackle house of Breughelesque nightmares. In "Among the Dead," the modern workplace is so ghoulishly cold and insensitive that it doesn't seem unusual for the office workers to snack at the local cemetery. Even the stories that are not manifestly macabre show Lane's exceptional skill at conjuring grimness through sharp slashes of poetic prose and imagery. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Lane's fiction is set in the post-Thatcherite English Midlands, rife with unemployment, drinking, drugs, casual violence, and desperate sex. The protagonists are mostly teens, college students, and washed-up or compromised artists and writers who have uncanny experiences to report. In "The Lost District," Simon relates his two grungy, teen couplings with a girl from a terminally down-at-the-heels neighborhood and the hard time he has years later finding the scenes of their passion. The story resembles Lane's corrosively memorable novel, The Blue Mask (2003), in that it's dark and creepy but no more supernatural than, say, The Silence of the Lambs. The other 23 stories are more fantastic. They disclose passages to existential cul-de-sacs that are hard to leave intact and that give hard answers to profound questions, as in "Exposure," where the truth revealed about the afterlife is enough to make atheists despair. This is dark fantasy informed by political anger. In actuality just barely fantastic, it makes China Mieville seem cheery. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Night Shade; 1st edition (January 1, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1597800392
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1597800396
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 8 ratings

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
8 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Mike Ellis
5.0 out of 5 stars A master storyteller!
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2006
I've been reading Joel Lane's work for years in various horror anthologies and magazines, and this collection demonstrates why I never miss a book that he's in. Lane is one of the best, most grueling horror writers out there. Brutal, emotionally honest... sometimes erotic, and not for the weak.

Fans of M. John Harrison, or Ramsey Campbell are sure to love this master of the modern horror. From the Midlands of England to the finer cities of Europe, Lane's vision of urban horror and decay with stay with you for a long time.
5 people found this helpful
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Mike Kazmierczak
4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Bleak and Emotionally Blunt
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2013
Beautifully bleak. That is an excellent way of describing Lane's collection of short stories. They are beautiful to read, extremely poetic in the way that images are quickly and lovingly portrayed. I was continually amazed at how well portrayed the stories were. But at the same time the subject matter is brutal, harsh, emotionally honest and blunt. These are not stories to lightly parse over and continue reading back to back to back. About halfway through the collection, I had to stop and read another book in order to break the grim feelings. I remember when I read Harlan Ellison's DEATHBIRD STORIES the introduction for that collection warned about not reading the book in one continual string. The same thing should be said here. The stories are dark and creepy. For fans though who like facing their own horrors and being honest about what affects them (emotionally and sexually), then this collection is for them. While an occasional story might be missing a plot (at least in my opinion), all of the stories invoke strong images and themes. My favorites are below.

"The Bootleg Heart" - A story summed up by the first line: "My first love was a girl I never actually met."
"The Only Game" - A man's girlfriend dies on him again and again.
"Beyond The River" - A writer takes a reporter into the world of her books.
"Reservoir" - A con visits the victim of his cellmate.
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Jennifer Juday
4.0 out of 5 stars Very Dark & Very Hard to Put Down
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2008
If you have never tried dark fantasy, THE LOST DISTRICT may be a good place to start. I have never been a big fan of dark fantasy, but found Joel's Lane's writing distressingly compelling. Distressing because I really did not want to spend time with these people and in these places.

I have loved some works of urban fantasy (Charles De Lint, Emma Bull), but found this as dark or darker than De Lint at his darkest moments (his works as Samuel Key can be compared).

Despite my dislike of the world Lane creates, I found THE LOST DISTRICT a hard book to put down. It kept me up quite late one night. I would finish one story, glance at the next page, and find myself hooked again, in just a sentence or two, by the next story -- an unusual experience for me in reading short story collections. THE LOST DISTRICT is a grim but well-written, sometimes poetic book. Not for the faint of heart.
3 people found this helpful
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AVLdad
2.0 out of 5 stars disturbing stories
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2007
Joel Lane writes well and his descriptions are good. The stories themselves, however, are disturbing and leave one with unsettling thoughts.
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Top reviews from other countries

Douglas Kemp
4.0 out of 5 stars Grim life in the West Midlands
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2015
Verified Purchase
This is an excellent collection of short stories by an author who died far too young in 2013, aged just 50. Joel Lane’s fiction is a dark urban fantasy-noir, mostly set in the semi-industrial and decaying urban centres of the West Midlands. The characters are usually marginal and solitary, struggling to find a role in the moribund Thatcherite metropolitan environment. They are very often in their 20s, cast adrift or ignored by ineffective and depressed parents, using drink, drugs or sex to avoid reality and find a modicum of meaning in their rather unfocussed lives. They are lonely people, living in an economically deprived area, with few prospects. Most of the stories have already appeared in a variety of publications, though there a number of tales first published in this volume, and some of these are very good. The stories are indeed short, very often only four or five pages in length.
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