Stake: Three Stories From Punktown

Chapbook Collection by Jeffrey Thomas #4

by Jeffrey Thomas

Three stories of shapeshifting private eye Jeremy Stake, in the mean streets of Punktown.

IN HIS SIGHTS – Newly returned to the far future city known as Punktown, after having served in the Blue War, Jeremy Stake is haunted by the face of the last enemy he killed...because with his mutant ability to alter his appearance, against his will that face has replaced his own. Unfortunately, another traumatized Blue War veteran mistakes Stake for the enemy itself.

THE SEEDS OF CORRUPTION – Years later and now a private investigator, Jeremy Stake is hired by a secretive group of insect-like aliens who seek to stop an obsessed human cultist from unleashing the a god-like entity that could threaten every colonist in Punktown.

A MOSAIC – The mysterious alien race called the Egatym has a to gift each and every citizen of the monstrous colony-city Punktown with an equally mysterious gift, promising that once that is done they will make their appearance in Punktown. These gifts affect their recipients in a variety of ways...including mutant private eye Jeremy Stake.

From Jeffrey Thomas, author of Punktown.

122 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 17, 2023

About the author

Jeffrey Thomas is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed setting Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices from Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, Red Cells, and The New God. Thomas’s other short story collections include The Unnamed Country, Gods of a Nameless Country, The Endless Fall, Haunted Worlds, Worship the Night, Thirteen Specimens, Nocturnal Emissions, Doomsdays, Terror Incognita, Unholy Dimensions, AAAIIIEEE!!!, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, Carrion Men, Voices from Hades, The Return of Enoch Coffin, and Entering Gosston. His other novels include The American, Boneland, Subject 11, Letters From Hades, The Fall of Hades, The Exploded Soul, The Nought, Thought Forms, Beyond the Door, Lost in Darkness, and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers.

His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.

Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.