Sleeper(s) - Tapa blanda

The sleepy English locality of Middletown is about to get even sleepier, as a strange malady starts to affect the population. It spreads quickly, causing the authorities to quarantine this small city, and seek out the only person who might be able to help: Doctor Andrew Strauss. However, Strauss has a secret, one that has linked him to this place all his life, one that has linked him to a particular person there, though he doesn’t yet know who. But he’s not the only one hiding things – and as he ventures into Middletown to collect samples with an army escort, a mixture of UK and US troops, cracks soon begin to appear in the operation. Especially when his team come up against the most terrifying threat humankind has ever known... From the imagination of the award-winning and bestselling author of Who’s Been...? and RED (optioned for film and turned into an award-winning feature script), this chilling reworking of another well-loved fairy tale reads like a heady mix of The Andromeda Strain, Inception, Outbreak and Quatermass, and is a tale that’s bound to delight genre fans the world over.

Paul Kane is an award-winning writer and editor based in Derbyshire, UK. His short story collections include Alone (In the Dark), Touching the Flame, FunnyBones, Peripheral Visions, Shadow Writer, The Adventures of Dalton Quayle, The Butterfly Man and Other Stories, The Spaces Between and the forthcoming Ghosts. His novellas include Signs of Life, The Lazarus Condition, RED and Pain Cages. He is the author of such novels as Of Darkness and Light, The Gemini Factor and the bestselling Arrowhead trilogy (Arrowhead, Broken Arrow and Arrowland), a post-apocalyptic reworking of the Robin Hood mythology. His latest novels are Lunar (which is set to be turned into a feature film) and the short Y.A. novel The Rainbow Man (as P.B. Kane). He has also written for comics, most notably for the Dead Roots zombie anthology alongside writers such as James Moran (Torchwood) and Jason Arnopp (Dr Who, Friday The 13th). Paul is co-editor of the anthology Hellbound Hearts (Simon & Schuster) – stories based around the Clive Barker mythology that spawned Hellraiser – The Mammoth Book of Body Horror (Constable & Robinson/Running Press), featuring the likes of Stephen King and James Herbert, A Carnivàle of Horror (PS) featuring Ray Bradbury and Joe Hill, and Beyond Rue Morgue from Titan, stories based around Poe’s detective, Dupin. His non-fiction books are The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark, and his genre journalism has appeared in the likes of SFX, Dreamwatch and DeathRay. He has been a Guest at Alt.Fiction five times, a Guest at the first SFX Weekender, at Thought Bubble in 2011, Derbyshire Literary Festival, Edge-Lit and Off the Shelf in 2012, plus Monster Mash and Event Horizon in 2013, as well as being a panellist at FantasyCon and the World Fantasy Convention. His work has been optioned for film and TV, and his zombie story ‘Dead Time’ was turned into an episode of the Lionsgate/NBC TV series Fear Itself, adapted by Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (SAW II-IV). He also scripted The Opportunity, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Wind Chimes (directed by Brad ‘7th Dimension’ Watson and sold to TV) and The Weeping Woman – filmed by award-winning director Mark Steensland and starring Tony-nominated actor Stephen Geoffreys (Fright Night). You can find out more at his website www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Dean Koontz, Robert Kirkman, Charlaine Harris and Guillermo del Toro.