Thanks to everyone who brought, read and reviewed the book!
Book Birthday: Nowhereville, ed by Scott Gable and C. Dombrowski (Broken Eye Books)
Happy Book Birthday to Nowhereville: Weird is Other People. Gable and Dombrowski have amassed a whole lot of talent for this anthology of contemporary Weird Fiction.
From the back cover copy: Nowhereville: Weird Is Other People is an anthology of urban weird fiction. These are stories of the city, of people interacting with the complexities that are other people. These 19 short stories explore the genre of weird fiction, tales not quite fantasy and not quite science fiction, tales blurring the lines between genres. These are the strange stories of the strange decisions we make and the strange ways the city affects us.
Authors include: Nuzo Onoh, Maura McHugh, P. Djèlí Clark, Evan J. Peterson, S.P. Miskowski, Lynda E. Rucker, Tariro Ndoro, D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Mike Allen, Jeffrey Thomas, Erica L. Satifka, Kathe Koja, Leah Bobet, Ramsey Campbell, Wole Talabi, Stephen Graham Jones, R.B. Lemberg, Cody Goodfellow
It’s also been getting some stellar reviews!
“Taken together, these stories create an uncanny, unpredictable hall of mirrors. These wonderfully strange takes on modern living are sure to resonate with fans of speculative fiction.” (STARRED review from Publishers Weekly, and a PW Book of the Week)
“Readers will be enchanted by this collection and eagerly anticipate what the next entry will bring. The stories here are disconcerting, ambiguous, and sometimes confusing—but always intriguing and genre-bending, digging into the ways we connect to those around us.” (Booklist)
“What’s more, they complement one another in a way that’s rare even for collections by single authors, much less an anthology delivering 19 disparate voices. Indeed, the effect of this collection is not so much that of a set of loosely comparable episodes but of a kaleidoscope: variegated and multifaceted yet all of a piece. Remarkably powerful urban tales, each one brilliantly in harmony with the others.” (STARRED review from Kirkus)
My piece, called “Underglaze,” takes its inspiration from the Flow Blue plates my late aunt Evelyn collected.
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BOOK RADAR: European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss
European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, the second novel in the Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series, was released this week.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Theodora Goss about the first novel in the series last year for the Washington Independent Review of Books. (You can read it here). I’m looking forward to reading this sequel. The first one was a rollicking mixture of mystery, adventure, and meta-textual feminist fun.
From the back cover copy:
In the sequel to the critically acclaimed The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Mary Jekyll and the rest of the daughters of literature’s mad scientists embark on a madcap adventure across Europe to rescue another monstrous girl and stop the Alchemical Society’s nefarious plans once and for all.
Mary Jekyll’s life has been peaceful since she helped Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson solve the Whitechapel Murders. Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein, and Mary’s sister Diana Hyde have settled into the Jekyll household in London, and although they sometimes quarrel, the members of the Athena Club get along as well as any five young women with very different personalities. At least they can always rely on Mrs. Poole.
But when Mary receives a telegram that Lucinda Van Helsing has been kidnapped, the Athena Club must travel to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to rescue yet another young woman who has been subjected to horrific experimentation. Where is Lucinda, and what has Professor Van Helsing been doing to his daughter? Can Mary, Diana, Beatrice, and Justine reach her in time?
Racing against the clock to save Lucinda from certain doom, the Athena Club embarks on a madcap journey across Europe. From Paris to Vienna to Budapest, Mary and her friends must make new allies, face old enemies, and finally confront the fearsome, secretive Alchemical Society. It’s time for these monstrous gentlewomen to overcome the past and create their own destinies.
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The eBook of THE NECTAR OF NIGHTMARES is now available for download
BOOK RADAR: “Cry Your Way Home” by Damien Angelica Walters
Colleague and semi-local-to-me author Damien Angelica Walters has a new collection out. Some of the pieces I have read before they were collected in CRY YOUR WAY HOME (Apex Book Company). Walters’ delicate prose style belies the disturbing darkness at the center of her fiction.
From the back cover copy:
Sometimes things are not what they appear to be. DNA doesn’t define us, gravity doesn’t hold us, a home doesn’t mean we belong. From circus tents to space stations, Damien Angelica Walters creates stories that are both achingly familiar and chillingly surreal. Within her second short story collection, she questions who the real monsters are, rips families apart and stiches them back together, and turns a cell phone into the sharpest of weapons.
Cry Your Way Home brings together seventeen stories that delve deep into human sorrow and loss, weaving pain, fear, and ultimately resilience into beautiful tales that are sure to haunt you long after you finish the collection.
Includes the Bram Stoker Award-nominated story “The Floating Girls: A Documentary”
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BOOK RADAR: “Until the Last Dog Dies” by Robert Guffey
I meet Robert Guffey over 20 years ago at the Clarion West Workshop in Seattle. His fiction is…. Take a little Pynchon, a pinch of Vonnegut, add a dash or two of Hunter S. Thompson, filter it through the aesthetic of surrealist painter Dali…and you have a Guffey story. Guffey was Bizarro before Bizarro was a thing.
His new absurdist novel, UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES is out today. He probably wrote by hand, in his impeccable script.
From the cover copy:
A young stand-up comedian must adapt to an apocalyptic virus affecting people’s sense of humor in this darkly satirical debut novel.
What happens when all humor is wiped off the face of the Earth?
Around the world, an unusual viral plague is striking the population. The virus attacks only one particular section of the brain. It isn’t fatal, but it results in the victim’s sense of humor being obliterated. No one is immune.
Elliot Greeley, a young stand-up comedian starving his way through alternative comedy clubs in Los Angeles, isn’t even certain the virus is real at first. But as the pandemic begins to eat away at the very heart of civilization itself, the virus affects Elliot and his close knit group of comedian friends in increasingly personal ways. What would you consider the end of the world?
Until the Last Dog Dies is a sharp, cutting satire, both a clever twist on apocalyptic fiction and a poignant look at the things that make us human.
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BOOK RADAR: “Creatures of Will & Temper” by Molly Tanzer
Molly Tanzer’s new novel Creatures of Will & Temper (John Joseph Adams Books) is out this week. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Tanzer at the World Horror Convention a couple of years ago. I dipped into the book — it’s written with lush, decadent prose that recalls my muse, the late Tanith Lee.
From the Back Copy:
Victorian London is a place of fluid social roles, vibrant arts culture, fin-de-siècle wonders … and dangerous underground diabolic cults. Fencer Evadne Gray cares for none of the former and knows nothing of the latter when she’s sent to London to chaperone her younger sister Dorina, an aspiring art critic.
At loose ends after Dorina becomes enamored with their uncle’s friend, Lady Henrietta “Henry” Wotton, a local aristocrat and aesthete, Evadne enrolls in a fencing school. There she meets George Cantrell, the kind of experienced fencing master she’s always dreamed of studying under. But soon, George shows her something more than fancy footwork—he reveals to Evadne a secret, hidden world of devilish demons and their obedient servants. George has dedicated himself to eradicating demon and diabolist alike, and now he needs Evadne’s help. But as she learns more, Evadne begins to believe that Lady Henry might actually be a diabolist … and even worse, she suspects Dorina might have become one too.
Combining swordplay, the supernatural, and Victorian high society, Creatures of Will and Temper reveals a familiar but strange London in a riff on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray that readers won’t soon forget.
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Book Radar: “Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction,” ed. Bogi Takács
Editor Bogi Takács and Lethe Press have assembled another critically lauded anthology of speculative fiction that centers transgender characters. It features stories from some of my favorite authors (and colleagues), as well as newer voices.
BACK COVER COPY:
As with the first volume of Transcendent, Lethe Press has worked with a wonderful editor to select the best work of genderqueer stories of the fantastical, stranger, horrific, and weird published the prior year. Featuring stories by Merc Rustad, Jeanne Thornton, Brit Mandelo, and others, this anthology offers time-honored tropes of the genre–from genetic manipulation to zombies, portal fantasy to haunts–but told from a perspective that breaks the rigidity of gender and sexuality.
Table of Contents:
“Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy” by Charlie Jane Anders
“Skerry-Bride” by Sonya Taaffe
“Transitions” by Gwen Benaway
“This is Not a Wardrobe Door” by A. Merc Rustad
“Three Points Masculine” by An Owomoyela
“The L7 Gene” by Jeanne Thornton
“Rhizomatic Diplomacy” by Vajra Chandrasekera
“The Pigeon Summer” by Brit Mandelo
“The Road, and the Valley, and the Beasts” by Keffy R. M. Kehrli
“About a Woman and a Kid” by M Eighteen Téllez
“Sky and Dew” by Holly Heisey
“The Nothing Spots Where Nobody Wants to Stay” by Julian K. Jarboe
“Lisa’s Story: Zombie Apocalypse” by Gillian Ybabez
“Happy REGARDS” by RoAnna Sylver
“The Way You Say Good-Night” by Toby MacNutt
“Her Sacred Spirit Soars” by S. Qiouyi Lu
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Book Radar: The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
I’m in the middle of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s mannerpunk novel in preparation for an author interview. The Beautiful Ones (St. Martin’s Press), released this week, is quite different from Moreno-Garcia’s contemporary work. I’d describe it as Vanity Fair with telekinesis. Manipulation is the major theme: of objects, and of feelings. The imaginary country the author conjures has elements of the Belle Epoque-era France; you can see the ormolu clocks, rococo architecture and hear the frou-frou rustle of silk. It’s billed as “romantic” but a Machiavellian undercurrent of social climbing runs through the novel. Plus, kudos for the allusion to a Prince song.
BACK COVER COPY:
Antonina Beaulieu is in the glittering city of Loisail for her first Grand Season, where she will attend balls and mingle among high society in hopes of landing a suitable husband. But Antonina is telekinetic, and strange events in her past have made her the subject of malicious gossip and hardly a sought-after bride. Now, under the tutelage of her cousin’s wife, she is finally ready to shed the past and learn the proper ways of society.
But Antonina, who prefers her family’s country home to the glamorous ballrooms of the wealthy, finds it increasingly difficult to conform to society’s ideals for women, especially when she falls under the spell of the dazzling telekinetic performer Hector Auvray. As their romance blossoms, and he teaches her how to hone and control her telekinetic gift, she can’t help but feel a marriage proposal is imminent. Little does Antonina know that Hector and those closest to her are hiding a devastating secret that will crush her world and force her to confront who she really is and what she’s willing to sacrifice.
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BOOK RADAR: “Strange Is The Night” by S.P. Miskowski
Critically acclaimed weird/horror S.P. Miskowski has a new collection out from Journalstone, called Strange Is the Night. Miskowski has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award many times.
BACK COVER COPY:
Over cocktails an executive describes to a friend the disturbing history of a strangely potent guardian angel. A young mom tries to perfect and prolong her daughter’s childhood with obsessive parenting. A critic’s petty denouncement of an ingénue’s performance leads to a theatrical night of reckoning. A cult member makes nice for a parole board hearing years after committing an infamous crime.
A multiple Shirley Jackson Award nominee, S.P. Miskowski serves up an uncompromising collection of thirteen modern tales of desire and self-destruction. Strange is the Night offers further proof that Miskowski is—as Black Static book reviewer Peter Tennant notes—“one of the most interesting and original writers to emerge in recent years.”
Craig Laurance Gidney 
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