Simon Kurt Unsworth is the author of two novels, The Devil's Detective and The Devil's Evidence, and three collections of stories, Strange Gateways, Quiet Houses and Lost Places. He was born in Manchester in 1972 and has not yet given searching for evidence that the world was awash with mysterious signs and portents that day, but now lives in Cumbria where it has rained almost every day since his arrival, and somewhere in the midst of the mud and the damp and the sheep he writes whatever comes into his head.