A vision of New York which has extraordinary scope, stretching back into history and ahead to post-9/11 By the acclaimed author of Asylum, Spider and Port Mungo

'As sharp and haunting as a daguerreotype ... McGrath's prose is clean, lucid and utterly transfixing' Sunday Times 'The best of McGrath's menace is vividly present ... McGrath remains one of the most interesting, and possibly the most consistently original of his generation of British writers' Irish Times 'Like a latter-day Edgar Allan Poe, McGrath probes the insanity and violence lurking beneath the skin of daily life' Financial Times 'There ought to be a word for that style of literary composition that is both charming and dark; McGrath has mastered it, and his collection brings out the same qualities in New York' Daily Telegraph

Patrick McGrath is the author of a short story collection, Blood and Water and Other Tales, and six novels: The Grotesque, Spider, Dr Haggard's Disease, Asylum, Martha Peake and most recently Port Mungo, which was published by Bloomsbury. He lives in London and New York. Spider was made into a film in 2002 by acclaimed director David Cronenberg.