Dear Sweet Filthy World

By: Caitlín R. Kiernan

Narrated by: Chelsea Stephens, Xe Sands, Paul Woodson, Lisa Flanagan, Natalie Naudus, Neil Hellegers, Lauren Ezzo, Kevin Kenerly, Natasha Soudek

What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s 14th collection of short fiction, comprising 28 uncollected and impossible-to-find stories.

Treading the grim places where desire and destruction, longing and horror intersect, the author rises once again to meet the high expectations she set with such celebrated collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, To Charles Fort, with Love, and the World Fantasy Award-winning The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories.

In these chapters you’ll meet a dragon’s lover, a drowned vampire cursed always to ride the tides, a wardrobe that grants wishes, and a lunatic artist’s marriage of the Black Dahlia and the Beast of Gévaudan. You’ll visit a ruined post-industrial Faerie, travel back to tropical Paleozoic seas and ahead to the far-flung future, and you’ll meet a desperate writer forced to sell her memories for new ideas.

Here are 28 tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant or worse.

The stories in Dear Sweet Filthy World were first published in the subscription-only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlin for her most devoted listeners. This publication marks the first availability to the general public for most of these rare tales.

©2017 Caitlín R. Kiernan (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

Love this, very unique

This is now one of my favorite collections from Kiernan, who's my favorite author. The tales are very well written, interesting, and move fairly quickly. Some of the narrator's have accents that took a bit to acclimate to, but I generally think they fit and enhanced the story.

The content can be disturbing, which comes with the territory. I found it not too extreme. The stories are conveyed sort of mythological, with a reverence that makes these topics more palatable for me, whereas they might not be from a different author.

Dark, haunting, ominously sensual. Grade A Kieran!

If you are not familiar with the Queen of Lovecrafian Horror along with dark fantasy and other horror novels, novellas and short stories-Caitlin R. Kieran, this is an excellent place to start. “Dear Sweet Filthy World” is one of many excellent horror anthologies of short stories and occasional novella Caitlin has had published. I have read them all. Now going back through her epic collection of published literature available with Audible and the accompanying cast of performers telling her darkly twisted tales of horror, the books are now equally as compelling, like reading the stories for the first time caught up in the suspense, mystery, twists to the final reveals all over again. That’s rare! I have listened to well over 1,500 books that I have also read in print that can compare to the enjoyment of Caitlin R Kieran’s collection of premium audiobooks. Truthfully, or putting it another way- like with movies that are based on a novel, very very very seldom does the audiobook come close to conveying the book’s narrative; the author’s interpretation or intention- most importantly the readers enjoyment! The audiobook or movie/TV miniseries does not live up to the book, with audiobooks, the narration can make or break the experience like poorly casted films. Caitlin has been very mindful with casting her readers and every one of them are outstanding storytellers and highly respected sought after readers.

The story narrative is sufficiently outlined by Amazon- I’m not going to rehash that information to “hear myself talk” like I’m Roger Ebert or Opera- waste of your time and what’s more; waste of my time. Five stars across the board- Ski Papa L Bear, So Lake Tahoe Ca.