Only the Devil Is Here

"A very promising debut." -Toronto Star

"Subtly upends expectations with a genuinely insightful examination of the essence of good and evil. By the novel's end, Michell delivers an invigorating chase story, a suspenseful horror-action hybrid with memorably warped characters, and terrific B-movie cinematic flair." -Publishers Weekly

"A gripping, cinematic supernatural thriller, shot through with unsettling imagery and startling insights into the nature of good and evil. Suspenseful, scary and unexpectedly moving, it's a wild ride from start to finish." -David Demchuk, Giller Prize-nominated author of The Bone Mother
"With Only the Devil Is Here, Stephen Michell announces himself as a new and powerful presence on the literary horror scene. This is curt, violent, poetic storytelling, a Cormac McCarthyesque journey from darkness into even deeper darkness, suffused from moment one on with gothic nighttime awe and terror yet also shot through with the slimmest threads of hope-intimations of numinosity, if not of salvation. For all you probably won't like where it takes you, it's just so damn hard to turn away." -Gemma Files, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Experimental Film

"An outstanding literary horror debut, the lean, muscular prose of which barely contains the bursting, profoundly human heart of the novel. Only the Devil Is Here is the work of a natural storyteller at the start of what will doubtless be a very long, very promising career." -Michael Rowe, award-winning author of Enter, Night; Wild Fell; and October

"A breathless debut that moves too fast to accommodate bulky backstory. As such, the true nature of the characters, their origins or intentions, are only ever glimpsed. Who's good? Who's evil? Is the division between one and the other really so neat? Michell keeps the details-the idiomatic abode of both God and the Devil-elusive. It's in that murky moral unknown that Only the Devil Is Here thrives." -Bookshelf