Book picks similar to
The Keyhole Opera by Bruce Holland Rogers
short-stories
fiction
4-stars
anthology
The Grimscribe's Puppets
Joseph S. Pulver Sr.Nicole Cushing - 2013
In The Grimscribe’s Puppets, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., has commissioned both new and established talents in the world of weird fiction and horror to contribute all new tales that pay hoame to Ligotti and celebrate his eerie and essential nightmares. Poppy Z. Brite once asked, “Are you out here, Thomas Ligotti?” This anthology proves not only is he alive and well, but his extraordinary illuminations have proven to be visionary and fertile source of inspiration for some of today’s most accomplished authors.List of tales: Livia Llewellyn “Furnace” [5,800]Daniel Mills “The Lord Came at Twilight” [3,950]Michael Cisco “The Secrets of the Universe” [3,360]Kaaron Warren “The Human Moth” [2,700]Joel Lane “Basement Angels” [2,697]Darrell Schweitzer “No Signal” [1,735]Robin Spriggs “THE XENAMBULIST: A Fable in Four Acts” [3,369]Nicole Cushing “The Company Town” [1,700]Cody Goodfellow “The Man Who Escaped This Story” [8,490]Michael Kelly “Pieces of Blackness” [3,750]Eddie M. Angerhuber “The Blue Star” [2,970]Jon Padgett “20 SIMPLE STEPS TO VENTRILOQUISM” [4,490]Mike Griffin “Diamond Dust” [4,900]Richard Gavin “After the Final” [3,100]Scott Nicolay “Eyes Exchange Bank” [9,050]Simon Strantzas “BY INVISIBLE HANDS” [6,200]Paul Tremblay “Where We Will All Be” [4,900]Ally Bird “Gailestis” [4,019]Jeff Thomas “The Prosthesis” [4,835]John Langan “Into the Darkness, Fearlessly” [10,499]Gemma Files “OUBLIETTE” [8,424]
The Curse of the Appropriate Man
Lynn Freed - 2004
In spare, elegant prose, Freed delivers surprise after surprise as she shakes the truth from life. Whether it's her portrayal of a mother mired in senile dementia in "Ma," a young girl experiencing her first sexual encounter with an itinerant knife-sharpener in "Under the House," or a young woman incapable of loving conventionally in "An Error of Desire," Freed portrays the absurdity, the delusions, the dramas, and the dignity of her characters' lives. These masterful stories reinforce her reputation as one of our most fearless and sophisticated explorers of sexual and filial love.
Night Of The Cooters
Howard Waldrop - 1990
Contents:Night of the Cooters (1987)French Scenes (1988)The Passing of the Western (1989)The Adventure of the Grinder's Whistle (1977)Thirty Minutes over Broadway! (1987)Hoover's Men (1988)Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance? (1988)Wild, Wild Horses (1988)Fin de Cyclé (1990)
Diamond Eyes
A.A. Bell - 2010
a great new series by a talented authorMira Chambers has an unusual gift for solving mysteries ... Blind, institutionalised and frustrated by her loss of independence, Mira has been driven to the brink of insanity by medications that make her life unbearable. When she astounds two medical scientists by 'seeing' the impossible, they begin an exploration of Mira's strange perspectives. together with Bennet Chiron, an enigmatic ex-con, Mira becomes entangled in a dangerous adventure of self-discovery that leads them to a killer - and exposed to a manipulative sociopath whose own unique talent is more than a match for Mira's. Layers of secrets are about to be peeled away ... and no one will be safe from what is revealed.
Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces
Angela Carter - 1974
In this collection of nine short stories, Carter pinpoints the symbolism of city streets and weaves allegories around forests and jungles of strange and erotic landscapes of the imagination.
The Second Book of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard - 1976
Talman, September 1931"Sword Woman" "Which Will Scarcely Be Understood" (poem) "The Striking of the Gong" "The Song of Horsa's Galley" (poem) "The Good Knight" "A Word From the Outer Dark" (poem) "Black Canaan" "The Song of a Mad Minstrel" (poem) "Kelly the Conjure Man""Surrender" (poem) "The Footfalls Within" "Knife-River Prodigal" "Musings" (poem) "Life" (2, "They bruised my soul . . .") (poem) "The House of Suspicion""Rueben's Brethren" (poem) "Two Against Tyre""The Guise of Youth" (poem) "For the Love of Barbara Allen""Guns of Khartum" "Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die" (poem)
Fracture Me
Tahereh Mafi - 2013
He's reeling from his breakup with Juliette, scared for his best friend's life, and as concerned as ever for his brother James's safety. And just as Adam begins to wonder if this life is really for him, the alarms sound. It's time for war.On the battlefield, it seems like the odds are in their favor—but taking down Warner, Adam's newly discovered half brother, won't be that easy. The Reestablishment can't tolerate a rebellion, and they'll do anything to crush the resistance... including killing everyone Adam has ever cared about.Fracture Me sets the stage for Ignite Me, the explosive finale in Tahereh Mafi's epic dystopian series. Set during and soon after the final moments of Unravel Me, Fracture Me is told from Adam's perspective.
The Unfinished World and Other Stories
Amber Sparks - 2016
In “The Cemetery for Lost Faces,” two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, “The Unfinished World,” unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family. Sparks’s stories—populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors—form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Mythical, bizarre, and deeply moving, The Unfinished World and Other Stories heralds the arrival of a major writer and illuminates the search for a brief encounter with the extraordinary.
Last Christmas
Heide Goody - 2018
A short story in the Oddjobs universe that tries to answer the age-old question: what Christmas present do you get for the demon who has everything?
Oblivion: Stories
David Foster Wallace - 2004
These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity by delineating the office politics surrounding a magazine profile of an artist who produces miniature sculptures in an anatomically inconceivable way ("The Suffering Channel"). Or capture the ache of love's breakdown in the painfully polite apologies of a man who believes his wife is hallucinating the sound of his snoring ("Oblivion"). Each of these stories is a complete world, as fully imagined as most entire novels, at once preposterously surreal and painfully immediate. Oblivion is an arresting and hilarious creation from a writer "whose best work challenges and reinvents the art of fiction" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).Mister squishy --The soul is not a smithy --Incarnations of burned children --Another pioneer --Good old neon --Philosophy and the mirror of nature --Oblivion --The suffering channel
ProtoStar
Braxton A. Cosby - 2011
Following the recommendations of his council, King Gregorio Derry reluctantly agrees to send his only son William on a mission to restore honor to his family name. William seeks to complete his assignment, the elimination of a Star-child named Sydney on planet Earth, but when the assassination is delayed he begins to realize an emotional connection with his target. With conspiracy threatening his home planet, and a hidden menace on Earth seeking to secure a vested interest, William finds himself torn between irrevocable duty and sacrificing everything he stands for to defend Sydney. As William and Sydney struggle to overcome their impossible circumstances, they start to wonder if the connection of two Star-Crossed lovers will be enough to save them from certain doom.
Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories
John KlimaPaolo Bacigalupi - 2007
We asked twenty-one of today’s most talented and inventive writers to go even further and pen an original tale inspired by one of dozens of obscure and fascinating championship words. The result is Logorrhea–a veritable dictionary of the weird, the fantastic, the haunting, and the indefinable that will have you spellbound from the very first page. There’s only one word for such an irresistible anthology: Logorrhea
Some Possible Solutions
Helen Phillips - 2016
In dystopias that are exaggerated versions of the world in which we live, these characters strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, with themselves, and with their place in the natural world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the shape of a man, a rowdy, moody crew of college students who resolve the energy crisis, and orphaned twin sisters who work as futuristic strippers--and we see that no one is quite who they appear.
Tricknomancy
Michael A. Stackpole - 2010
This collection includes If Vanity Doesn't Kill Me and The Devil Within which have not been previously released or collected with these other stories. Tricknomancy tells the story of Patrick Molloy, a magick-using ex-cop who was busted off the force on trumped up bribery charges. He works as a bouncer in a Gentlemen's Club, Club Flesh, where all the women use magick to conjure dollars out of the patrons' pockets. His only true friend is the coroner; his family hates him with a passion, and the cop who busted him off the force is just itching to find a way to send him to jail. Trick Molloy's world is one in which magick-users are feared and hated. Televangelists make bank on casting them as the devil's tools. Gangsters often use magick more readily than guns. Respectable magickers use their skills for seduction, robbery and murder. No one in power really cares about what befalls the criminal class, which Trick Molloy as the one man smart enough to discover the truth, and tough enough to administer justice.
Scorch Atlas
Blake Butler - 2009
Entire neighborhoods drown in mud, glass rains from the sky, birds speak gibberish, and parents of young children disappear. Millions starve while others grow coats of mold. But a few are able to survive and find a light in the aftermath, illuminating what we’ve become. In "The Disappeared", a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. A boy swells to fill his parents’ ransacked attic in "The Ruined Child". Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler’s full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William H. Gass, yet imbued with Butler's own vision of the apocalyptic and bizarre.