This was the one Stephen King himself had cited as one of the most terrifying stories he’d ever read (the other one being Ramsey Campbell’s The Companion, which was already a favourite of mine).

I won’t review all the stories here (I’ll let you discover their magic on your own), but it was when I reached the story Home that I experienced the full impact of Grant’s gift. The prose, as well as the stories themselves, spoke to me somewhere deep down, where my own creativity lived. As I worked my way through the book I realised that this was one of Grant’s trademarks, along with his prose style: lyricism mixed with a pared-down style. The first story, Coin of the Realm, confirmed this – a Twilight Zone style story that’s imbued with a deep sense of melancholy and pathos and realism. I remember reading Stephen King’s introduction to the book and thinking I was in for something special. It’s something that’s left me, that exquisite thrill of discovery. I’ve never felt again the way I did back then about books. The thrill that went through my body: the electricity coursing through my veins.

I think I’d been looking for Tales from the Nightside for quite some time, and I certainly remember the excitement I experienced when I picked up that copy from the shelf. No longer there in reality, it’s a place I return to often in my dreams.

That’s where I bought my first Ramsey Campbell book, my first Dennis Etchison collection, and countless others. There was a scruffy little second-hand book shop on Hylton Road in Sunderland where I used to go it was run by a big bearded guy who always seemed to stock copies of genre fiction that I was unable to find anywhere else. As I’m sure a lot of people did, I used the index pages of that book as a reading list. I think I probably picked it up – as I did with so many books back then – because Stephen King had mentioned it in his book Danse Macabre. This was one of those books that started a little fire in my soul. For me, it was one of those watershed moments, a book that made me sit up and appreciate the craft at a deeper level than I ever had done before, and it remains one of my favourite collections of short fiction.

The first time I read this collection, I was probably in my late teens – certainly no older than twenty-one. If you haven’t read any of his work, I’d suggest this book is the perfect place to start. Grant…Ĭurrently, as background for this piece, I’m re-reading Grant’s classic short story collection Tales from the Nightside. Grant, but let me tell you about the first time I met Charles L.

Charles l grant shadows