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In ghastly harmony with the nightmarish visions of the award-winning writer's novels, these stories blend a lifelong appreciation of horror culture with the grotesque fascinations and childlike terrors that are the author's own.
The Nameless Dark debuts a major new voice in contemporary weird fiction. Within these minutes, you'll find whispers of the familiar ghosts of the classic pulps - Lovecraft, Bradbury, Smith - blended with Grau's uniquely macabre, witty storytelling, securing his place at the table amid this current Renaissance of literary horror.
Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic. Melding supernatural horror with hardboiled noir, espionage, and a scientific backbone, Barron's stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.
Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams? If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story.
In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story.
Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism, named the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine, heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett's work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both.
In ghastly harmony with the nightmarish visions of the award-winning writer's novels, these stories blend a lifelong appreciation of horror culture with the grotesque fascinations and childlike terrors that are the author's own.
The Nameless Dark debuts a major new voice in contemporary weird fiction. Within these minutes, you'll find whispers of the familiar ghosts of the classic pulps - Lovecraft, Bradbury, Smith - blended with Grau's uniquely macabre, witty storytelling, securing his place at the table amid this current Renaissance of literary horror.
Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic. Melding supernatural horror with hardboiled noir, espionage, and a scientific backbone, Barron's stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.
Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams? If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story.
In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story.
Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism, named the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine, heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett's work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both.
Among the greats of 20th-century horror and fantasy, few names stand above Richard Matheson. Though known by many for novels like I Am Legend and his 16 Twilight Zone episodes, Matheson truly shines in his chilling, masterful short stories. Since his first story appeared in 1950, virtually every major writer of science fiction and fantasy has fallen under his influence, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Joe Hill, as well as filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and J. J. Abrams.
For more than three decades, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror fans crave. Now, with the ninth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night.
The title story of this collection - a devilishly ironic riff on H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Probiscus" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.
Tananarive Due, author of The Living Blood won the American Book Award and is praised as Stephen King's equal by Publishers Weekly. In The Good House, Due sets a story of ancient powers and modern retribution in a small Pacific Northwest town. When a young woman returns to her grandmother's empty mansion, she is pitted against demonic forces that have poisoned her family for generations.
Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip - a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfre. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There’s Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there’s Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there - which makes Scoutmaster Tim’s job a little easier.
Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone - or something - is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow an experimental route West, or just bad luck - the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest adventures in history.
From electrifying horror author Nick Cutter comes a haunting new novel, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Stephen King's It, in which a trio of mismatched mercenaries is hired by a young woman for a deceptively simple task: check in on her nephew, who may have been taken against his will to a remote New Mexico backwoods settlement called Little Heaven. Shortly after they arrive, things begin to turn ominous.
Hasty for the Dark is the second short story collection from the award-winning and widely appreciated British writer of horror fiction, Adam L. G. Nevill. The author's best horror stories from 2009 to 2015 are collected here for the first time.
Daniel Martin has never forgotten his childhood encounters with Frank Watkins, the man who built his family a summer home out of cardboard and plywood. Frank's gaze was oddly confusing, as if he was attempting to discern the proper way to behave because he didn't know how to respond in a human manner. Since Frank obviously wasn't an alien, young Daniel thought maybe the man was crazy. In the end, Daniel would learn the terrifying truth about Frank Watkins. And as an adult, Daniel is about to discover there are more of them out there.
A strange plague called the "Gets" is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget - small things at first, like where they left their keys... then the not-so-small things like how to drive, or the letters of the alphabet. Then their bodies forget how to function involuntarily - and there is no cure. But now, far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, deep in the Marianas Trench, an heretofore unknown substance hailed as "ambrosia" has been discovered - a universal healer, from initial reports.
Four seekers have come to the ugly, abandoned old mansion: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of the psychic phenomenon called haunting; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a lonely, homeless girl well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the adventurous future heir of Hill House.
When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic, rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Yet despite Ludlow's tranquility, there's an undercurrent of danger that lingers...like the graveyard in the woods near the Creeds' home, where generations of children have buried their beloved pets.
In this striking and bleak, yet luminous debut collection, Nathan Ballingrud, winner of the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award, uses the trappings of the Gothic and the uncanny to investigate a distinctly American landscape: The loneliest and darkest corners of contemporary life.
Ballingrud’s stories are love stories. They’re also monster stories. Sometimes the monsters collected here are vampires or werewolves. Sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, brothers, or ex-wives, and sometimes they wear the faces we see in our mirrors. The people in these stories - ex-cons, single parents, unemployed laborers, kids seduced by extremism - are stranded by life, driven to desperate acts by love and a longing for connection. Sometimes they’re ruined; sometimes redeemed. They are always recognizably, wonderfully, and terrifyingly human. Even at their most monstrous.
What did you love best about North American Lake Monsters?
If you’ve not read (or listened to) the fiction of Nathen Ballingrud, then you are missing one of the most exciting up-and-coming voices in horror and dark fiction. The range of Ballingrud’s style and interests are on display in this collection of his short works, and every one of the carefully selected stories here is thought-provoking, enigmatic and beautifully tragic. While all of the stories have elements of horror, the supernatural, or some uncanny elements, they are all character-driven, deeply humanistic, and populated with very believable and flawed people. This is not a hackneyed collection of genre pot-boilers; pretty much every story here would hold up perfectly if the supernatural elements were removed, but the fact that there are monsters, angels (maybe), demons, and other kinds of weirdness elevates each work into a kind of dreamy otherworld that oddly makes all the human emotion even more real. Many of these stories (like the Shirley Jackson Award-winning “The Monsters of Haven”) deal with thwarted masculinity, when male protagonist find themselves powerless in the face of the inexplicable. A few of the stories are set in New Orleans (where Ballingrud lived for several years), and in these tales the city itself becomes a major character, but Ballingrud avoids falling back on cliches and instead paints a picture of the city that is as nuanced and conflicted as any of his other characters. To top it all off, Travis Young provides an excellent narration; with a reedy Southern lilt that really sounds at home coming from Ballingrud’s characters. If you love dark tales populated by very real and sympathetic (though not always easy or like or heroic) characters, you owe it to yourself to get this collection.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The protagonist of "The Way Station" some on of my favorites, his loss and hopelessness were beautifully captured in the central metaphor of the story, I found myself rooting for him to find something to hold on to.
What about Travis Young’s performance did you like?
He did a great job, and he has the perfect voice for this these stories
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
Peel back the surface and see the world as you always feared it to be...
Any additional comments?
Get this collection and hear an exciting new voice in horror; it will renew your faith in the potential for dark fiction to tell meaningful stories
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I begin listen around 11:30 and finished the third tory by about 2:00 a.m. The writing is great; the narration is great. (Nathan has a thing for all kinds of light, stars, luminosity, as you will see). But, man, these are characters in pain. I love the stories, but they're painful, and I don't expect to listen to three in a row again.
This book of short stories to me is something special. I really enjoy the literary style of the author, his descriptions and metaphots are stirring. A lot of people will say all the stories ended just as they got interesting, but I think it's an achievement that I want a novel for each of them, yet I'm also satisfied in the mystery of what comes next. I think he really captures humanities many responses to horror, especially masculinity since they're all mostly from a male perspective.
I rated the performance poorly, but that's yet again Audibles producers or engineers fault. The bayou drawl of the narrator fits most every story and the matter of fact delivery reminds you of getting an interesting story from a stranger in some bar. There are just a bunch of weird redone lines insterted 10dbs louder and with more bass. It's jarring and takes you out of the story. I can't imagine what they had to redo was any worse than the awful solution they came up with. Audible really needs to step up their game.
very dark. the author
knows human hardship first hand. however endings to anticlimactic for me.
Not overtly hack and slash genre stuff but a deeper, more relatable set of dark, haunting stories. So, so solid. Listened to this collection a few times now which is something I don't recall doing very often and think I'll keep coming back to it. Just great. The audio performance fits well too. Just a solid piece of work all around. The only complaint is there isn't more stories. Mr Ballingrud has a new fan here.
it was a hard book to get through. The stories seemed good well written and all that but every story has a poor ending. It was not at all what i expected.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you try another book from Nathan Ballingrud and/or Travis Young?
Yes for the narrator; No for the author.
Would you ever listen to anything by Nathan Ballingrud again?
No.
Any additional comments?
I enjoyed the second story. However, the rest were just dreadful.
0 of 4 people found this review helpful