{"id":30026,"date":"2026-05-27T16:30:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T15:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=30026"},"modified":"2026-05-27T14:40:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T13:40:32","slug":"steal-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2026\/05\/27\/steal-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Steal Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stealme.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Coming soon from Absinthe Books, the novella imprint of PS Publishing, is Steal Me<\/em><\/a> by Helen Grant, a book for which I created the wraparound cover art:<\/p>\n

Rowan Byrne hasn\u2019t stolen anything for ages\u2014not since she started to straighten her life out after a personal tragedy. But the volume she\u2019s just picked up in the new bookshop in town seems to want her to steal it. The text is very persuasive. There\u2019s a book for everyone in Legends\u2014a book that will encourage their worst impulses. Steal. Fear. Burn. Kill. It\u2019s not long before Rowan\u2019s small town, isolated from the outside world, is descending into mayhem. Assailed by her own demons, Rowan could try to cut and run. Or she could make a stand, and try to save the community she loves…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"stealme2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This was a good book to work on. I’d not worked for PS for a while, and very much enjoyed Helen’s collection of stories for Swan River Press, Atmospheric Disturbances<\/em>, whose cover and boards I also designed. “Legends”, the mysterious shop with the darkened windows, is staffed by a pair of elderly women who seem vaguely unreal\u2014pleasant and helpful but not quite human, and with an undefined aura of menace. By coincidence, the previous book I worked on for PS Publishing was a fully illustrated edition of Needful Things<\/em><\/a> by Stephen King, a much longer novel about a mysterious shop in a small town whose sinister\/unreal proprietor and wares cause mayhem among the populace. Helen says she wasn’t imitating the King novel, and the similarities are superficial in any case. I feel she did more with the concept, and with greater economy, than the world’s most popular horror novelist (and I say this after the world’s most popular horror novelist sent his compliments for my work on his book); but then I’ve never been keen on the tendency favoured by King and others to fill out hundreds of pages with background detail and character biographies at the expense of the horror. In the past I’ve thrown the occasional barb at Mies van der Rohe’s overused quote, but sometimes less really does mean more.<\/p>\n

Steal Me<\/em> will be published in June. Don’t steal it.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Atmospheric Disturbances<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Needful Thing<\/a>
\n\u2022 All the Things<\/a>
\n\u2022 Needful Things<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming soon from Absinthe Books, the novella imprint of PS Publishing, is Steal Me by Helen Grant, a book for which I created the wraparound cover art: Rowan Byrne hasn\u2019t stolen anything for ages\u2014not since she started to straighten her life out after a personal tragedy. But the volume she\u2019s just picked up in the … Continue reading “Steal Me”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Steal Me","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,42,22,23],"tags":[14599,6692,10258,668],"class_list":["post-30026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-horror","category-work","tag-absinthe-books","tag-helen-grant","tag-ps-publishing","tag-stephen-king"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-7Oi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30027,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30026\/revisions\/30027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}