Product Description

An elderly widow finds the Holy Grail beneath an old fur coat. A stray cat fights and refights a terrible nightly battle to protect his unwary adoptive family from unimaginable evil. A young couple receives a wedding gift that reveals a chilling alternative history of their marriage. These tales and much more await in this extraordinary book, revealing one of our most gifted storytellers at the height of his powers.

Includes extra material exclusive to Headline Review's edition

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4605 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Best known for his Sandman graphic novels about Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, Neil Gaiman has also written the standalone books Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), Never Where from his BBC TV series revealing a fantastic realm under London, and Star Dust, a poignant fairy tale. His shorter fantasies are regularly picked for Year's Best collections. Smoke and Mirrors assembles 36 of his favourite stories, prose poems, and verse pieces. Among the imaginative inventions here are a murder mystery set among angels in heaven; the discovery of the Holy Grail at Oxfam; warped retellings of fairy tales and folklore, including a Snow White that's black beyond belief; several clever variations on vampirism; a firm of contract killers with a very remarkable discount scheme; homages to Michael Moorcock and H.P. Lovecraft (one splendidly funny) that avoid mere pastiche; an SF world of rapid and reversible sex changes; Beowulf retold as a Baywatch episode; a tasty amalgamation of computers and black magic; a new final book of the Bible; and the grim wedding present that's simply a manuscript telling a bleakly different story of the recipients' unfolding marriage. SF/fantasy professionals themselves envy Gaiman's perpetual flow of new ideas and ability to put a fresh spin on old ones. Smoke and Mirrors is a dazzlingly varied and rewarding collection. --David Langford

Time Out
‘Funny, scary and perverse by turns... A class act and a rich and interesting read’

Stephen King
‘Gaiman is, simply put, a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to have him’

Customer Reviews

Treasure Trove!
Neil Gaiman is a master story teller, IMHO, and this selection of short stories by him is the perfect showcase for his talents. An incredible assortment of tales awaits the reader in this marvelous book - an old lady that finds the Holy Grail in an Oxfam shop for 30p - a little boy that meets a troll - the shortest but most haunting Xmas story I've ever read - the Jack-in-the-box that no-one played with......oh, so many and all are pure genius. My personal favourite is the very last in the book, which is a re-telling of Snow White and because of N G's version I will never think of her in the same light again. I feel that several of these stories have the potential of becoming full length novels one day - I'll just have to wait and see. One warning, if you haven't read any of Gaiman's work before you will soon become addicted after reading this book.

Unsettling but enjoyable
This is a collection of some of Neil Gaiman's short works. You could say there were poems and stories in the book, but saying there is prose, a rondel, long verse, short verse and some peculiar mixtures of obscure types of writing would be a better description.

A few of the stories are the conventional type but many of them are not. Most of the stories have a fairly dark subject matter - indeed some of them are truly horrible - but all are marvellously written, and most extremely original.

There's also a long introduction to the book with a small commentary on each piece plus an extra bonus story.

This isn't a book I'd buy as a present for someone unless I knew their tastes extremely well. It's not the type of book that everyone would enjoy - there are sexual stories, there are dark deeds and just the layouts of some of the pieces make them more different than some people would feel happy with - but I thought it was brilliant. Not every piece will hit the mark, but it's not the type of fluffy read you'll wonder why you bothered with. It's full of stories that stay with you for a long time.

One of the finest Modern Storytellers.
There is something so absolutely compelling about everything that Neil Gaiman seems to write. I don't know quite how he does it, but I always find myself picking up one of his books and being drawn into regardless of my own freewill or choice. Here in this collection of Short stories stands a fine example of something that many writers these days do not always succeed in - Gaiman shows us how a story should be told. These tales may be short but each of them is complete in their own way, and even at their darkest they can be amusing, and totally engrossing.

I would recomend to anybody with a few hours to kill that picking up this volume would be a couple of hours very well spent. Right from his introduction Gaiman makes the reader feel a part of these little worlds he's created and somehow you just have to read them all. If you haven't discovered this guy yet - it's about time you did.