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You live in a world darkened by the threat of global terrorism, where the very worst of human nature can be seen in the faces of young and old alike.
You walk the streets and sense their fear. They are not just afraid of you; they are afraid of everything. The married couple whose relationship is falling apart. The next-door neighbour who furtively stares across the fence. The street children you once used to know.
This is the dawning of a new dark age. An apocalyptic vision of life in the 21st Century, when only the horror of what you’ve become remains.
You are touched by it, and you are transformed.
Your journey has already begun.
YOU ARE THE FLY — tales of redemption & distress: 16 subversive stories that illuminate the human condition and escort you to the very brink of the unknown.
Only those of you who endure shall be redeemed.
Includes the stories "The Other Son", "You Are the Fly", "What Dread Hand"*, "Shortly Comes the Harvest", "Hollow Heart", "Old Dull Eyes", "In Fetu", "A Frailty of Moths", "And So Departs"*, "Earth Mother Grotesque", "Gouranga"*, "They’re Here" "All He Wrote"*, "The Marriage Feast Begun", "The Constant Eye", and "The Skin I’m In" (*written with Andrew Jury).
With an introduction by Greg F. Gifune, and an afterword by Andrew Jury.
 Reviews:
…such a peerless collection… Cooper not just eschews the dynamics of modern horror, but also the classics of the genre…
I did not find a single dud tale in the book… “In Fetu”… is a downright disturbing tale… An absolute classic.
Cooper (and Jury)’s tales… take you to places… grounded in the reality of the modern world and the madness that surrounds it.
Thoroughly recommended and well-worth reading.
— Christopher Teague; Whispers of Wickedness
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You Are the Fly is nothing but eclectic. Stories of madness (“Old Dull Eyes”) and grief (“And So Departs”) share pages with the haunting (“What Dread Hand” which includes one of the scariest scenes I’ve read in a long time), the disturbing (“In Fetu”) and the absolutely bizarre (the cryptic “A Frailty of Moths”, a surreal tale which you’ll have to read more than once and will leave you thinking for hours to come).
This is not a traditional collection. The stories in this book are unique in their essence and that is thanks to Cooper’s style. Recommended for anyone who wants to try something different.
— Cesar Puch; Horror World
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[You Are The Fly] comes with the subtitle “Tales of Redemption & Distress”, but madness and metamorphosis might be more appropriate terms. In tone he reminds me of [Edgar Allan] Poe, has the same obsessive quality and attention to minutiæ, with the ghost of Roderick Usher breathing down the reader’s neck…
[Stephen] King’s back catalogue
is touched on in several of these stories, as with “In Fetu” which reprises a core concept of The Dark Half… but Cooper gives it
an interesting twist and produces something sharper and
more poignant than the King novel…
…comparisons with King are apposite… but Cooper owns the material.
…a collection by a young writer with a gift for portraying off the wall mental states, making us believe in them and care for the people involved…
— Peter Tennant; Black Static magazine
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From the opening… the reader knows that they are in strange territory…
Cooper’s stories tread ground rarely ventured into successfully by his peers… [which] will appeal to both the hard-core horror buff [and] also to the literate…
There are moments amid all the fist-in-mouth horror of unexpected pathos and sheer beauty.
Read it; you won’t forget some of the images easily.
— © Colin Harvey; Suite101.com
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