David Lapham, writer and illustrator of the acclaimed crime comic-book series Stray Bullets, comes to Vertigo with SILVERFISH, an original, black and white hardcover graphic novel of stark crime noir and intense, gritty realism.

What starts as a childish bid for her father's affections turns into nail-biting suspense when a young girl called Mia searches her new stepmother's purse, only to find a secret stash of money, a bloody knife and a mysterious address book.

Enter the world of Silverfish, where a young man attempts to discover his identity amidst a world of increasing isolation and horror. His basement room is full of wires, rats, and silverfish. He doesn't know his name or where he came from, only that he is the caretaker in a house of drugs, sex, and mindless violence.

The Caretaker finds himself in the middle of a horrible, slithering conspiracy that threatens all of humanity. He finds that he is its unwitting accomplice. Without it, he would not have a home.

He enters a romance with Olwyn, a young woman ravaged by drugs and the menace of LaMore, the man who runs the house and supplies her drugs. Suddenly, she makes things less clear, a choice must be made. They will soon uncover a terrible secret which threatens all of humanity.

With taut language and gritty description, readers will be wrapped tight by the tentacles in the story. This novella was inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, and Edgar Allen Poe. If you are a fan of Chuck Palahniuk, this is a good choice for you. This is literary fiction with an edge, language that'll bite you back.

What people are saying:

"Hobie Anthony has created a very damaged protagonist and placed him in a horrific world, under the control of one of the most heinous villains I have ever seen in an M-Brane story." Christopher Fletcher, M-Brane SF


"Like the best transgressive fiction, Silverfish is unsettling, broadcasting a razor pitch frequency that made me want to both put it down and turn the page. Haunting stuff."
David Scott Hay, author of FOUNTAIN (or Art Has a Right to Children

If you enjoy creative writing, fiction at its finest, thoughtful and resonating language (I would love to hear this read aloud! - it has a beautiful rhythm), I highly recommend. It is not for lightweights, but rather for readers who enjoy contemplating life, love, opportunity, individual thought, and so much more...*wow* Cayden Keyes Cavanaugh

Enter the world of Silverfish, where a young man attempts to discover his identity amidst a world of increasing isolation and horror. His basement room is full of wires, rats, and silverfish. He doesn't know his name or where he came from, only that he is the caretaker in a house of drugs, sex, and mindless violence.

The Caretaker finds himself in the middle of a horrible, slithering conspiracy that threatens all of humanity. He finds that he is its unwitting accomplice. Without it, he would not have a home.

He enters a romance with Olwyn, a young woman ravaged by drugs and the menace of LaMore, the man who runs the house and supplies her drugs. Suddenly, she makes things less clear, a choice must be made. They will soon uncover a terrible secret which threatens all of humanity.

With taut language and gritty description, readers will be wrapped tight by the tentacles in the story. This novella was inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, and Edgar Allen Poe. If you are a fan of Chuck Palahniuk, this is a good choice for you. This is literary fiction with an edge, language that'll bite you back.

What people are saying:

"Hobie Anthony has created a very damaged protagonist and placed him in a horrific world, under the control of one of the most heinous villains I have ever seen in an M-Brane story." Christopher Fletcher, M-Brane SF


"Like the best transgressive fiction, Silverfish is unsettling, broadcasting a razor pitch frequency that made me want to both put it down and turn the page. Haunting stuff."
David Scott Hay, author of FOUNTAIN (or Art Has a Right to Children

If you enjoy creative writing, fiction at its finest, thoughtful and resonating language (I would love to hear this read aloud! - it has a beautiful rhythm), I highly recommend. It is not for lightweights, but rather for readers who enjoy contemplating life, love, opportunity, individual thought, and so much more...*wow* Cayden Keyes Cavanaugh

This is a book to cherish for a very long time, for its descriptions and evocations as well as for what it tells us about the ebb and flow of human expectation. Amit Chaudhuri A retired schoolteacher in present-day Calcutta is caught in the labyrinth of rusty bureaucracy and political crime under a communist government. Across a vast ocean of time, a widow leads a life of stark suffering in a wealthy feudal household in nineteenth-century, British-ruled Bengal, at a time when widow-burning has gone out of practice but widow remarriage is far from coming into vogue. As their stories begin to connect, they weave a larger narrative of historical forgetting, of voices that have been pushed out of the nations memory. And what we are left with is the intriguing tale of two cities: the same geographical space separated by decades of experience and neglect.

First Kind. Witness. The disc.
Second Kind. Feel the burn.
Third Kind. They will take you.
Fourth Kind?
In the year of our Lord. We are not alone.
They have always been.
And everything is about to change in the twinkling of an eye.

Both frightening and fantastic. Think Close Encounters with an edge taking the alien abduction to the next level. Long over due. Brilliant!

First Kind. Witness. The disc.
Second Kind. Feel the burn.
Third Kind. They will take you.
Fourth Kind?
In the year of our Lord. We are not alone.
They have always been.
And everything is about to change in the twinkling of an eye.

Both frightening and fantastic. Think Close Encounters with an edge taking the alien abduction to the next level. Long over due. Brilliant!