Tim Powers

Stand-alone novels:

The Drawing of the Dark — (1979) Publisher: What does the famous Herzwesten beer have to do with saving the entire western world from the invading Turkish armies? Brian Duffy, aging soldier of fortune, is the only man who can rescue the world from evil — if only he can figure out why the beer was so important to a mysterious old man called the Fisher King, and why his dreams are plagued with images of a sword and an arm rising from a lake...

The Anubis Gates — (1983) Publisher: The Anibus Gate is the classic time travel novel that took the fantasy world by storm. Only the dazzling imagination of Tim Powers could have created such as adventure... A best-selling novel by a two-time winner of the Philip K. Dick Award combines action and adventure with the surreal and bizarre.

Dinner at Deviant's Palace — (1985) Dinner at Deviant's Palace is set in a post apocalyptic LA. This is the story of one Gregorio Rivas and his quest to rescue his first love from the clutches of the sinister and highly dangerous religious cult of Norton Jaybush. As with so many Powers heroes, the road to Rivas's goal is paved with dangers both spiritual and physical and he comes through the journey both less and more of the man he was.

On Stranger Tides — (1987) Publisher: The basis for the new Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides film starring Johnny Depp, On Stranger Tides is Tim Powers's great Disneyland ride through pirates, puppeteers, treasure, and thrill-a-minute action that carries on from the start as it follows the exploits of John 'Jack Shandy' Chandagnac, who travels to the new world after the death of his puppeteer father to confront his uncle, who has apparently made off with the family fortune. During the voyage, he befriends Beth Hurwood and her father Benjamin Hurwood, an Oxford professor. Before they arrive at their destination, their ship is waylaid by Blackbeard and his band of pirates. With the help of the professor and his assistant, the captain is killed and Chandagnac is pressed into piracy and sorcery as Blackbeard searches for the Fountain of Lost Youth. Chandagnac, newly dubbed 'Jack Shandy,' must stop the evil plot and save Beth Hurwood

The Stress of Her Regard — (1989) Publisher: When Michael Crawford discovers his bride brutally murdered in their wedding bed, he is forced to flee not only to prove his innocence, but to avoid the deadly embrace of a vampire who has claimed him as her true bridegroom. Joining forces with Byron, Keats, and Shelley in a desperate journey that crisscrosses Europe, Crawford desperately seeks hisfreedom from this vengeful lover who haunts his dreams and will not rest until she destroys all that he cherishes. Told in the guise of a secret history, this long-awaited tale of passion and terror is finally back in print after more than 20 years.

The Stress of Her Regard

I thought I was sick unto death of vampire novels until I read this one. The Stress of Her Regard reminds me of Anne Rice at her best, some years ago, except with more action and less description of the carpeting.

The story centers around the nephelim, Lilith's brood. Seductive, serpentine, and deadly, they are succubi and vampires, draining blood and vitality from their hosts even as they inspire them to creativity. One of these beings attaches itself to Byron and Shelley's circle of expatriate poets, and the drama begins.

We see this through the eyes of gynecologist Michael Crawford, who gets drunk and puts his wedding ring on a statue's hand at the bachelor party — and finds his wife murdered the morning after the wedding, in a scene reminiscent, probably intentionally, of Dr. Frankenstein's wedding night. Suspected of the murder, he flees to the Continent, where he becomes Byron's personal doctor. Traveling with the controversial lord, he will become entangled with poets, wannabe poets, fetishists who want to be vampire victims, and the mentally ill sister of his dead wife, who wants to see him dead. Along the way, he learns more about the creature to whom he is "married," and tries to break his ties to it, as mysterious deaths begin to occur.

This is a creepy and atmospheric novel that I could not put down. I read at night until I couldn't stay awake any longer, then got up and read in the morning. This is an enthralling novel of ancient evil, troubled love, birth, and death, which will stay with you. —Kelly Lasiter

Declare — (2000) Publisher: As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare. From the corridors of Whitehall to the Arabian desert, from post-war Berlin to the streets of Cold War Moscow, Hale's desperate quest draws him into international politics and gritty espionage tradecraft — and inexorably drives Hale, the fiery and beautiful Communist agent Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga, and Kim Philby, mysterious traitor to the British cause, to a deadly confrontation on the high glaciers of Mount Ararat, in the very shadow of the fabulous and perilous Ark.

Three Days to Never — (2006) Publisher: Albert Einstein's groundbreaking scientific discoveries made possible the creation of the most terrible weapon the world had ever known. But he made another discovery that he chose to reveal to no one — to keep from human hands a power that dwarfed the atomic bomb.When twelve-year-old Daphne Marrity takes a videotape labeled Pee-wee's Big Adventure from her recently deceased grandmother's house, neither she nor her college-professor father, Frank, realize what they now have in their possession. In an instant they are thrust into the center of a world-altering conspiracy, drawing the dangerous attentions of both the Israeli Secret Service and an ancient European cabal of occultists. Now father and daughter have three days to learn the rules of a terrifying magical chess game in order to escape a fate more profound than death — because the Marritys hold the key to the ultimate destruction of not only what's to come... but what already has been.

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories — (2011) Publisher: In his first new collection since 2005, the master of the secret history delves into the mysteries of souls, whether they are sacrificed on the pinnacle of Mount Parnassus or lodged in a television cable box. Containing two new stories and Powers's short fiction that was only previously available in limited editions, the cornerstone of the collection is a postscript to his harrowing novel of the haunting of the Romantic poets, The Stress of Her Regard. After Byron and Shelley break free of the succubus that claimed them, their associate, Trelawny, forges an alliance with Greek rebels to reestablish the deadly connection between man and the nephilim. Meanwhile, in a Kabbalistic story of transformation, the executor of an old friend's will is duped into housing his soul, but for the grace of the family cat. A rare book collector replaces pennies stolen from Jean Harlow's square in the Hollywood Walk of Fame — and discovers a literary mystery with supernatural consequences. In a tale of time travel between 2015 1975, a tragedy sparked by an angel falling onto a pizza shop is reenacted — and the event is barely, but fatally, altered.

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories

Tim Powers does not often write short fiction, but when he does, he comes up with doozies. The Bible Repairman and Other Stories contains a mere six stories, but each one is so well-crafted that it will stick in your brain, giving you odd jabs now and then, twisting a thought or causing goosebumps.

“The Bible Repairman” is about Torrez, a man who makes his living “fixing” Bibles: carefully “scorch[ing] out the verses the customers found intolerable, with a wood-burning stylus.” Particularly popular passages for excision include Jesus’s condemnation of remarriage after divorce and Jesus’s promise of Hell to stingy people. He also does custom repairs to cars, such as installing a “pain button” that the owner can push when the car refuses to start — foolishness, but it indulges his customers’ anthropomorphization of their automobiles — but also performing legitimate repairs, such as removing a babbling ghost from a car’s stereo system. He does not, however, retrieve stolen or kidnapped ghosts any longer, for fear of losing his mind. But one day a man comes to his door asking him to ransom his daughter — and he means a living daughter, not a ghost. In payment, he brings Torrez’s own daughter’s ghost, kidnapped years ago. You cannot adequately imagine how the story goes from there; you must read it. It is one of the more peculiar and wonderful stories I’ve read in recent years.

Tim Powers’s affinity with ghosts extends to “A Soul in a Bottle.” In this story, George Sydney meets a woman as he reaches down to place three pennies beside Jean Harlow’s square at the Chinese Theater. She becomes entangled with his discovery of a rare book of poetry — rare because one of the poems appears to be signed by the poet. And even rarer, on closer inspection, because a familiar poem seems to have an unfamiliar last stanza. The book leads him, ultimately, to the poet’s sister, and things become considerably more morally complicated from that point. Between ghosts and alternate worlds, the story comes out to be more melancholy than it seems going in. And Powers isn’t a half-bad poet, either.

In “Parallel Lines,” on June 21, 1975, something strange happened to Hollis and everyone else in the restaurant where he was working. It’s been 31 years since “the night God vomited on Firehouse Pizza,” as one character puts it, a night of which Hollis has no recollection past about 8:00 p.m. It was Hollis’s last real job, but it didn’t last past that night; and now it has been intruding on his dreams, so much so that he’s returned to the place on this fateful night. Strangely, a number of other people who were in the restaurant that night in 1975 have also returned on this night, along with a couple of strange looking fellows. It seems they’re from the future, and they’re trying to figure out why no one can time travel to that night, in violation of all the laws of nature. Things get even odder from there, in typical Powers fashion.

Powers returns to ghosts in “Parallel Lines.” Caroleen finds her right hand haunted by her dead sister, BeeVee. BeeVee was not a nice person, and Caroleen suffered for it. BeeVee seems to regret her treatment of her sister in life, but even more, she regrets that she is dead. And she wants to come back.

Jack Ranald has committed suicide, and his old friend, Arthur Kohler, a rare book dealer, is the executor for his estate in “A Journey of Only Two Paces.” Ranald’s widow, Elizabeth St. Campion Halloway, hijacks him one afternoon after a lunch ostensibly intended merely for the delivery of some cash from the estate. Soon the two are in the hills above the Silver Lake Reservoir in Southern California, looking for an apartment building Ranald had owned that seems too hidden to really function as such. Why has Campion brought him here? And how is it that she knows so much about him, from what kind of car he drives to the most valuable book in his stock? The brilliant sun of Southern California has never seemed so menacing as in this tale.

The final story in this volume, “A Time to Cast Away Stones,” is set in the same universe as Powers’s brilliant novel The Stress of Her Regard. This story is about Edward John Trelawny in the years between that novel and Powers’s new novel, Hide Me Among the Graves. For those who know these novels, no more need be said except that this long piece about most unusual vampires is required reading for anyone who loves Powers’s works. It is dark and frightening and altogether wonderful.

This slim volume is a must for anyone who admires Tim Powers and his unique voice. I know of no other author in the science fiction, fantasy and horror community who can write a ghost story with the Powers panache. The first five of these stories are accessible to anyone coming to Powers for the first time; the last is best read by those already familiar with Powers’s work with Shelley and Byron. All the stories have poetry to them, some literally. The world changes shape when you read Powers, and that’s a good thing. —Terry Weyna

Hide Me Among the Graves — (2012) Publisher: London, winter of 1862, Adelaide McKee, a former prostitute, arrives on the doorstep of veterinarian John Crawford, a man she met once seven years earlier. Their brief meeting produced a child who, until now, had been presumed dead. McKee has learned that the girl lives — but that her life and soul are in mortal peril from a vampiric ghost. But this is no ordinary spirit; the bloodthirsty wraith is none other than John Polidori, the onetime physician to the mad, bad, and dangerous Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both McKee and Crawford have mysterious histories with creatures like Polidori, and their child is a prize the malevolent spirit covets dearly. Polidori is also the late uncle and supernatural muse to the poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When she was just fourteen years old, Christina unwittingly brought Polidori's curse upon her family. But the curse bestowed unexpected blessings as well, inspiring Christina's poetry and Gabriel's paintings. But when Polidori resurrects Dante's dead wife — turning her into a horrifying vampire — and threatens other family members, Christina and Dante agree that they must destroy their monstrous uncle and break the spell, even if it means the end of their creative powers. Determined to save their daughter, McKee and Crawford join forces with the Rossettis, and soon these wildly mismatched allies are plunged into a supernatural London underworld whose existence goes beyond their wildest imaginings. Ultimately, each of these disparate individuals — the sensitive poet, the tortured painter, the straitlaced animal doctor, the reformed prostitute, and even their Artful Dodger–like young daughter — must choose between the banality and constraints of human life and the unholy immortality that Polidori offers. Sweeping from the mansions of London's high society to its grimy slums, the elegant salons of the West End to the pre-Roman catacombs beneath St. Paul's Cathedral, Hide Me Among the Graves blends the historical and the supernatural in a dazzling, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride — a modern horror story with a Victorian twist.

Hide Me Among the Graves

Tim Powers’s The Stress of Her Regard was one of my favorite random used-bookstore discoveries. After reading it ten years ago, I talked it up to all my friends. It was out of print at the time, so I constantly lent out my own copy until the time I didn’t get it back. When I got wind of Hide Me Among the Graves, a sequel of sorts, I was thrilled and hoped it would be one of my favorite books of the year. So how does it stack up? Well, to be honest, I didn’t like Hide Me Among the Graves quite as much as I did The Stress of Her Regard. I’m not sure if it’s Powers’s style that’s changed or if it’s me, but more on that later.

In The Stress of Her Regard, a group of characters (including several prominent poets and some invented characters) are terrorized by the nephilim. The setup is similar this time around, but a generation later: the central characters include the artistic Rossetti family and their friends, and veterinarian John Crawford, son of Michael Crawford from the first book. The four Rossetti siblings have essentially inherited the family vampire, who takes the form of their uncle, John Polidori. John Crawford’s parents passed on a lot of lore on fighting the creatures, and Crawford finds himself putting it to use when Adelaide McKee, a former prostitute with whom he once spent a fateful night, comes back into his life with a shattering piece of information. The fictional characters and the famous ones must work together to free all of them from the attentions of the nephilim.

The first thing I appreciated about Hide Me Among the Graves was simply seeing Powers’s nephilim again. The nephilim concept has become hugely overdone in the intervening years, and watered down in the process. Powers’s original take on that mythology was refreshing then and it’s even more refreshing now. In his universe, nephilim are fundamentally inhuman creatures; they are life forms based on silicon rather than carbon, and they are vampiric, seductive, and violently possessive of those humans they consider “theirs.”

The slotting of the nephilim mythos into the real history is brilliantly done. It makes such perfect sense out of weird things that really happened, that it almost makes you wonder whether it could have been possible. Powers even incorporates Queen Boadicea in a really clever way. The quirks of London are worked into the mythos as well; one great example is how the “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clemens” rhyme is associated with occult lore in the novel. And the imagery is vivid and superbly written, immersing the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells of the city.

I mentioned above that I’m not sure whether it’s Powers who’s changed, or if it’s just me. I’d probably have to embark on a reread of The Stress of Her Regard to be sure. In my early twenties I had much more patience for books that were intensely atmospheric, but slow. For much of the middle stretch of Hide Me Among the Graves, it feels slow, and too long, and bogged down in its details. This is especially true when the poets are at center stage; at times these characters seem to be going in circles. It fits the real facts of their troubled lives, it works as a metaphor for artistic madness or for addiction, and it illustrates the dangers of the nephilim, but it can still be frustrating for a reader. I found that my interest flagged when the poets came to the fore and perked back up whenever Crawford had the point of view.

Hide Me Among the Graves picks up momentum again in the later stretches, probably in large part because the plight of Crawford and McKee becomes more prominent, and these two are characters that readers will connect and sympathize with. We learn what the vampires’ ultimate plan is, and it’s one with horrifying ramifications for these two (and for another character who’d be spoilery to mention). The course of their unusual relationship tugs at the emotions as well, as does a beautiful scene — somehow sad and eerie and uplifting all at once — that will touch the heart of any pet lover who has lost some of these dear companions. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Edward Trelawny, a septuagenarian author who is utterly badass here, and who speaks almost all of the few humorous lines in Hide Me Among the Graves.

While Hide Me Among the Graves doesn’t quite live up to the (admittedly stratospheric) hopes I had for it, I’d recommend it for anyone who is interested in “secret history” fantasy or Victorian London or the Pre-Raphaelite poets and artists. It sags some in the middle, but Powers’s clever mingling of real history with secret supernatural goings-on makes it well worth reading.
—Kelly Lasiter