Twelve years ago he had met Fern and the things had arrived, nameless then, crooning and sniggering as they swarmed around her, scrabbling at the catches of what was real.

The walls of our world are thin, and in places they start to break down. A new love affair awakens a host of malignant things on the fringes of a young man's vision. An academic uncovers an ancient song with the power to change reality. A violent computer game turns into an obsession, bleeding into the waking world.

This debut collection from Sam Thompson (Communion Town, longlisted for the Booker Prize) explores the cracks in the fabric of our existence, the hinterlands where the mundane meets the strange. Drawing upon writers like Robert Aickman and Thomas Ligotti, Whirlwind Romance creates a landscape all its own - a place where a single moment can be the catalyst to turn the very nature of reality upside down. Breathtaking, poetic, and yet shot through with an unsettling darkness, it confirms Thompson's place as a major talent.