Insomnia Christmas Selection Box

One piece of art from every book currently in production.

Just like a real selection box some are crunchy, some are chewy and some have unexpectedly soft centres.

No, they don't. I made that last bit up. They're all hiding razor blades or traces of ground glass and some are even laced with poison.

If you've been keeping an eye on new signings you'll notice there are a few things we have announced that are not on here. That's because in most cases we sign the script first and then look for the right artist. Sometimes we already know who that is, sometimes we need to find someone new.

The Absence
Story and Art: Martin Stiff

1945, southern England. A chruch is destroyed in a terrifying thunderstorm. Perched on a column of tock the small chapel collapses into the sea, taking Father Jonathan with it. The bridge between the church and its village is also destroyed, leaving the ruin entirely unreachable.

A year later following the end of WWII, the horribly disfigured Marwood Clay returns home, haunted by flashbacks or hallucinations of a strange operating theatre.

His arrival brings back terrible, long buried memories for the the other villagers.

Meanwhile the engimatic, world weary mathematician Robert Temple, a man with the curious talent of predicting the future with startling accuracy, moves to the area and begins building a house ona hill overlooking the village.

Then people start to vanish.

Average Joe
Writer: Thomas Romeo, Pencils: Kelvin Chan, Colours: Melanie Cook

What if Death wasn’t this cold, machine like work horse but just a normal guy? How would he deal with probably the most important job there is? How would he struggle to hang on to what he thinks is right? How could he maintain his relationships and remain human?

As if it’s not enough to wake up not just dead, but Death, Joe finds himself at the heart of the politics of the apocalypse. Before this everything was going to plan.

The other Horsemen are not pleased

Babble Writer:
Writer:Lee Robson, Artist: Bryan Coyle

Carrie Hartnoll is a working class English girl stuck in a life going nowhere fast, but after a chance meeting with her old university professor she heads to America to start a new job as part of his research team.

The team works to resurrect the mythical language of Babel – a language, Curtis theorises, that can be understood by any human being – and use it as the basis for the world’s first universal translator.

In this tale of dead languages and deadly secrets it’s not what you say, but how you say it, that counts.

Butterflies and Moths
Writer: Corey Brotherson, Artist: Jennie Gyllblad

Butterflies and Moths is about a young woman attempting to come to terms with a terrible affliction and her past, and in finding a kindred spirit discovers – through blood and betrayal – that death is a natural part of life.

A prequel, “Fragile” to which can be seen in Layer Zero:Choices

Crowley: Wandering The Waste
Writer: Martin Hayes, Artist: Roy Huteson
Vigil Book

Aleister Crowley was a man out of time, born too soon to a world that was not ready for him. Raised among the conservative Plymouth Brethren, he soon shook off their grim shawl of enforced piety and embarked upon a life of sexual adventurism, drug experimentation, and a serious and lifelong study of the occult.

Corvus
Writer: Richmond Clements, Artist: Kev Levell

30 AD.

Battle lines scar a rain soaked island at the edge of the world.

Proud, doomed and unafraid before his rag tag band of defenders the British Warlord screams his defiance; challenges the might of the Roman War Machine; calls the champion to single combat. The Champion, Gladius, who men say is unbeatable, who cannot be cut by a blade, who destroys this barbarian rebel as easily as he has so many others.

The people look in vain for a hero, for The Corvus, chosen by the gods.

The Corvus, they say, will rid the island of the hated invaders, will have the strength of one hundred men, will be able to fly.

The Corvus is prophesied, is expected...

...is a fifteen year old girl - and she is all that stands between her people and the crushing power of Rome.

Damaged Goods
Writer: Richard McAuliffe, Artist: Mark Chilcott

Open up this collection of Damaged Goods and gaze into your deepest fears and darkest nightmares.

Read this squirming mass of short dark tales at your own risk. You may never feel clean again.

Dream Solver
Writer:Luke Foster, Artist Chris Wildgoose

When 22 year old picture researcher Ione-Rose Young has a disturbing, recurring dream about seeing her own death, she doesn’t know whether to dismiss it as just another weird dream, or worry that it’s about to come true. Unable to shake the dream from her mind, she sets out to decipher its meaning.

Death Hunter: Dead Man’s Gold
Writer: James Johnson, Artist:Leonardo M Giron

Profit is a haven of fortune that bears more resemblance to a ‘Western Utopia’ than any familiar backwater town. It has been built from the pockets of one man – a man whose past is about to return and fulfil a forgotten curse.

Welcome to the dead west, where greed and corruption shows its true origins.

The Empyre
Writer:Stephen Aryan

On his first day in office, the Prime Minister meets a member of his Cabinet he didn’t elect – Alistair Donovan, the Secretary of State for Nocturnal Affairs.

Donovan runs a secret government department that has existed for over a hundred years. In extreme circumstances, when a swift resolution is needed, the Prime Minister calls on Donovan and his team of hand-picked specialists.


The Empyre mixes fast-paced action with politics and drama, charting how the UK starts to become a world leader in a secret technology, and the effects it has on international politics.

Fallen Heroes
Writer: Martin Conaghan, Artist: Stephen Penfold
original novel by Barry Nugent

A stalker of demons and legends, a pair of master criminals, a teenager on the brink of madness and a man forever cursed with the desire for vengeance. They are all pawns in a plan set in motion over nine centuries before their birth. Pursued across the globe by enemies both human and supernatural they must overcome their mistrust of each other and uncover the truth before it destroys them all.

Frank Sartre
Writer: James Peaty, Artist: James Reekie

A mysterious killer is on the loose in the surreal city of COSMOPOLIS and only one man can stop him! But as panic spreads, that man — part-time nightclub singer, sometime private eye and full time philosopher, FRANK SARTRE — has other things on his mind:


Fallen Heroes pits an unlikely group of heroes and anti heroes against an evil which has existed since the first crusade. If they can keep from killing each other long enough they might just be able to stop the world from plunging into a new dark age.

The Indifference Engine
Writer: Cy Dethan, Pencils: Robert Carey, Colours: Mel Cook

Responding to a strangely specific job advertisement, a distinctly ordinary twenty-something suburban slacker finds himself in the middle of an inter-dimensional task force staffed entirely by superhuman alternate versions of himself.

Struggling to fit in, he uncovers a conspiracy that strikes at the very heart of the organisation – a conspiracy that only he can stop.

Kronos City
Writer: Andrew Croskery, Pencils:: Alex Willmore,
Colours: Lauren Anne Sharp, letters by Jim Campbell

In Kronos City it’s not water running through the canals – it’s time. It’s possible to submerge your head to see visions of the past and future, although it’s risky. If you know how you can even manipulate future events, not just watch them unfold. Some say you can even change not only time, but fate.

Finnegan Vedant, being an enterprising individual, sees here a business opportunity like no other, but when a mysterious client puts him on a case with bizarre consequences, he’s forced to face harsh truths about himself and the world around him. The game he’s playing is for much higher stakes than it at first appeared.

Oz: The Fall of the Scarecrow King
Writer: Peter Forbes, Artist Barry McGowan

40 years on and something has gone terribly wrong in the Land of Oz. The magic is out of balance. An odd contraption appears in the sky above Area 52, deep in the featureless Kansas Prairie. They have come for Dorothy. She is the only one who can put things right.

But time passes differently in Oz and Dorothy is an old lady now and no longer the ruby-slippered girl they remember.

Quarantine
Writer: Michael Moreci, Pencils by Monty Borror, colours: Lauren Anne Sharp
Covers by Keith Burns

Quarantine follows a group of survivors trapped in a small town in the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan shortly after a biological plague is released into the water supply. This plague turns a person into a homicidal war machine, which forces the borders to close, leaving our band of survivors to fight for their lives.

The Ragged Man
Writer: Cy Dethan, Pencils: Neil Van Antwerpen, Colours: Peter-David Douglas

Alone and despised, the Ragged Man drags himself through life with the weight of murdered billions on his shoulders. Hated by the world and everything in it, his body is a prison to a race of monsters. With every skin cell he sheds, with every drop of blood, a tiny piece of their reality escapes into ours, and a tiny piece of our world dies.

Who do you think you are?

The Reckoning Writer:
Jimmy Pearson, Artist: Patrick Walsh

A nightmarish beast of Lovecraftian proportians goes head to head with a US Navy Destroyer just off the antartic coast. Isolated and cut off from command, the USS Reckoning and its impressive arsenal are all that stands between an unsuspecting humanity and an interdimension monstrosity habouring apocalyptic intent!

Sidhe
Writer: Rachel Robbins, Artist: Kev Crossley

According to Gaelic mythology, five spectres of darkness descended from the ancient fairy race Tuatha De’Dannan: the Bean Sídhe, each bound to one of five powerful families. Once upon a time the Sídhe’s hair-raising screams foretold and warned of impending death. But times have changed, and the Sídhe have returned with a more sinister mission, now their piercing screeches claim the lives of the ailing and infected—before the diseased hosts have become terminal. Every prophecy has a loophole.

Snow: A Reflection on Desire and Depravity
Writer: Richard McAuliffe, Artist by Valia Kapadi

“…a daughter of the coven will be her undoing.” they said.

Once upon a time there was a land bound by winter, a land where bloodstains of the deepest scarlet and ravens’ feathers, of the blackest ebony, are fallen on snow of the purest white. Oh, you think you’ve heard this story before, somewhere? So how come the mirrors in the castle are refusing reflections? What is that howling noise out there in the darkness? Who has commanded the release of the Seven? And why is the Queen so disturbed?

Snow is a dark and witty exploration of decadence challenged by duty. Building on a subversive deconstruction of classic themes, it’s a sensuous and disturbing story that rips the meat from the bones of what you know, right down to the last bloody scraps.

Six Months
Writer: Jim O’Hara, Artist: Gary Crutchley

An uneasy exploration of what happens when, perhaps too late, you discover the answers to what it is that gives your life meaning, the relationship between law and society, and what it means when you longer need to hide anything from yourself or others.

Unbelievable
Story and art by Simon Wyatt
Foreword by Nick Redfern, author of There’s Something In The Woods

The remote mining village of Bryn Boncath has its share of stories, of local legends, of half believed histories. It is a close knit community, with closely guarded secrets. Strands of Welsh legend, modern murder mystery woven with horror and a dash of crytozoology ask “What if seeing isn’t always believing, but believing will allow you to see?”

Urban Legends
Writer: Steven Stone, Artist: James Daniels

A collection of short stories all based on the urban legends that everyone swears happened to a friend of a friend. The book’s 15 stories range from the comical to the terrifying and all of them leave you with the uneasy feeling that it could happen to you. But they’re only stories right? Right?

And on that note, I'm gone!