10/31/2024
Happy Halloween! I've got three, no four, no FIVE recommendations on this grand holiday:
1) GLASS STORIES by Ivy Grimes (Grimscribe Press). A short debut collection of connected stories--some of the most bizarre, absurd, and funny you're ever likely to read. Grimes is an original and quite a new talent, though you wouldn't know it reading her exceptional work. GLASS STORIES is widely available now, everywhere books are sold.
2) SPIRITUS EX MACHINA by LC von Hessen (Grimscribe Press). This is another debut collection (a meaty one) by an incredibly original, newer author of the weird--also one of the very best in the field, in fact, as luminaries like Michael Cisco (who writes the Intro) will attest. These are wickedly funny, subversive, strange forays into von Hessen's twisted imagination, and the style of their prose is out of this world. Limited hardcovers (sold out) are printing and shipping from the distributor as I type. Trade paper and eBook drop November 20th.
3) THE STAY-AWAKE MEN audiobook by Matthew M. Bartlett, available widely. Read by me. Bartlett is one of my favorite authors, full stop. Nobody like him. These stories were a joy to read aloud and lend themselves to being heard as well as read on the page. Gritty, grimy, wildly original, and gloriously funny.
4) THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE: A CONTRIVANCE OF HORROR by Thomas Ligotti, read to you by me, care of Penguin Random House Audio (the second Ligotti book of theirs I've narrated). As pseudo-Ligotti character Rust Cohle observed, this is indeed "heavy s**t." It's also an extraordinary masterpiece--quite likely the best thing this living legend will ever write. It's dark and heady as it gets, but it's also deeply and paradoxically humane and almost continuously hilarious. Reading it from the inside out was inexpressibly awesome, and I loved and was honored to do it. Hearing it is electric and totally a different experience from reading it on the page. This audiobook is widely available
5) NOCTUARY & THE SPECTRAL LINK also by Thomas Ligotti, narrated by me for the always amazing Chiroptera Press. This pairs Ligotti's most underrated collection with perhaps his least read, smaller (and most recent) collection. Both books contain some of Ligotti's very best fiction to date, which is saying something. NOCTUARY itself is perhaps thematically more intertwined piece by piece than any other collection he's published--even GRIMSCRIBE. This one is also widely available.
If you've gotten down this far, thanks for reading this. Hope you have a memorable, creepy, fun night!
