Search Worlds Without End

1932: Fortune and celebrity are years behind Butch Cardinal. Once a world-class wrestler, Cardinal now serves as hired muscle for a second-rate Chicago mobster. While collecting a parcel from a gangland lowlife, Cardinal witnesses the man's murder. Though wounded, he escapes the killers and flees into the night carrying the package. In it is a necklace with a metal pendant. Bent and scratched, the thing looks like a piece of junk, but the trinket is the reason a man died. It's the reason a lot of people will die. Finding shelter with another shamed wrestler in New Orleans, Cardinal embarks on search for answers that will reveal a world of metallic charms and weapons, all forged with unimaginable powers. Alone and outgunned, Cardinal must stand against the Chicago mobs, a brilliant and insane hitman, the police, and a mysterious order intent on retrieving their relic.

Lee Thomas's newest short story collection offers twelve tales of suspense and horror. A boy is horrified to discover what his older brother is doing in their father's work shed; a Victorian dandy and his dog must save the world from terrible creatures from another dimension; an old man can whisper a word that sets his victims on the path to madness; suburbia is threatened when a zealous neighbor opens the gates of Hell.

A madman. A secret, generations old. Another missing boy. They called the sadistic killer The River Rat, and he'd struck again. In a desperate search for his neighbour's son, Ted Lewis came face to face with the killer and survived, but his life was irrevocably altered. The residents of Marchand, Louisiana believed they were safe.

The murderer had been captured and was behind bars. But the nightmare wasn't over yet. Because on that summer night, something passed between the two men. Memories of brutality and phantoms of countless victims torment Ted. His normal life is shattered, and he struggles to fight a growing presence that threatens to leave his soul stained forever.

Kenneth Nicholson returns to New Orleans when a late-night call from his ex-wife breaks the tragic news that their son, Bobby, is in a coma, after being bludgeoned by an unknown assailant. As he waits for encouraging medical news, Nicholson gets visions that suggest the possible return of an old evil that was responsible for several gory deaths at a gay lounge popularly referred to as Wonderland. The operator of that club, Nicholson's lover Travis Brugier, was believed dead, but Nicholson begins to wonder if his spirit has resurfaced, possibly in the form of Bobby's attractive girlfriend, Vicki Bach.

Set during the height of World War II, The German examines the effect a series of ritualistic murders has on a small, Texas community. A killer preys on the young men of Barnard, Texas, leaving cryptic notes written in German. As the panic builds all eyes turn toward a quiet man with secrets of his own, who is trying to escape a violent past.

Ernst Lang fled Germany in 1934. Once a brute, a soldier, a leader of the Nazi party, he has renounced aggression and embraces a peaceful obscurity. But Lang is haunted by an impossible past. He remembers his own execution and the extremes of sex and violence that led to it. He remembers the men he led into battle, the men he seduced, and the men who betrayed him. But are these the memories of a man given a second life, or the delusions of a lunatic?