Stephen Michell is a Canadian writer based in Southern Ontario. He has published short fiction in various magazines and journals, and his short story “As Worlds Collide” was featured on the podcast LeVar Burton Reads. Only the Devil Is Here is his debut novel. Find out more about Michell on Goodreads and at stephenmichell.com.
“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
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