The Printer's Devil

by Chico Kidd

Sometimes the evil that magicians do lives after them, lying in wait for the unwary. Sometimes curiosity does something far more perilous than simply put your life in danger.And sometimes more than just lessons can be gained from history. The Printer's Devil is a mix of magic, bellringing,music and the great tradition of the master of ghost stories,M.R. James, and placed in Locus magazine's Best First Novel poll. Praise for The Printer's "Kidd makes the first fantasy novel about bellringing a most engaging one.The Printer's Devil conducts itself masterfully, and readers with an ear for music will be singing its praises." John S.Hall, Starlog "Bellringing buffs should get a kick out of The Printer's Devil, which centers on bellringers of the past and present, and a demon raised by a printer's journeyman turned sorcerer. Kidd does a good job of evoking the feel of Cromwell's England, while bringing an interestingly different magic to life in this engaging first novel." Carolyn Cushman, Locus "If there's a single word that describes The Printer's Devil, it's distinctive', no small achievement in genre fantasy. This affectionate tale of supernatural suspense twines ghostly and diabolic forces with a love of art and scholarship to produce one of the most readable such yarns in quite some time." Dragon

Genres: Fantasy, Horror

228 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1995

About the author

Chico Kidd has been writing professionally since 1979. Since 2000 she has been busy with the Da Silva Tales, an ongoing sequence of novels and stories featuring “one of the genre’s most interesting and genuinely original new characters” according to Stephen Jones in Horror in 2001. The 2002 editions of his influential anthologies, Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13 and Dark Terrors 6, feature three of the stories between them. Others have appeared in Supernatural Tales, the Ash-Tree anthology Acquainted with the Night (2004), and in three self-published chapbooks. The first novel, Demon Weather, is due out from Booktrope.
Previously, her ghost stories have been published in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and continental Europe. Most first saw the light of day in small press (Ghosts & Scholars, Dark Dreams, Peeping Tom, Enigmatic Tales, five self-published chapbooks, and others), many immediately snapped up for reprinting in mass-market anthologies. Almost all were collected together in hardback in Summoning Knells (Ash-Tree Press 2000). The Ghost Story Society’s verdict: “powerful… consummate craftsmanship”. Her first novel, The Printer’s Devil, came out from Baen Books (New York) in 1996. It came 12th in Locus magazine’s poll of Best First Novels of the year and gained some brilliant reviews and was reprinted last year by Booktrope with a cover by Chico. Chico also writes in collaboration with Australian author Rick Kennett about William Hope Hodgson’s occult detective Carnacki and their first hardback collection, No 472 Cheyne Walk, was published in 2002 by Ash-Tree.