Nathan Ballingrud

Hugo Award winning editor and horror legend Ellen Datlow presents this chilling horror anthology of 19 original short stories from a world-class line-up of the masters of horror, delving into the histories and traditions of the spookiest season of the year. Featuring stories by Josh Malerman, Stephen Graham Jones, Garth Nix and many more. Halloween, Samhain, Día de los Muertos—festivals across the world where we can commune with those we have lost, when spirits can cross over, and when the boundary between the living and the dead is far, far too thin. A young boy encounters a woman with an ancient and terrifying link to the holiday, a group of college students attend a Halloween party to die for, and a troubled girl exploits a local urban legend to try and turn her life around. From America to New Zealand via the rural Romanian wilderness, this anthology explores our worldwide obsession with the spookiest season of the year, when the veil is lifted and the spirits come alive. Featuring 19 original stories from bestselling and award-winning masters of the genre, and from Hugo, World Fantasy, Locus, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson award-winning editor and horror legend Ellen Datlow, this anthology invites you to carve a pumpkin, light the lanterns and welcome in trick or treaters from across the world. With stories by: Josh Malerman Lee Murray Rich Larson Clay McLeod Chapman Livia Llewellyn Michael Marshall Smith Stephen Graham Jones Linda D. Addison Christopher Golden Alma Katsu Brian Evenson Siobhan Carroll Ch?k?d?l? Emel?mad? Theresa DeLucci Garth Nix Jeffrey Ford Richard Kadrey Nathan Ballingrud John Langan

Lovecraftian horror meets the wildly inventive mind of Shirley Jackson award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud, in this cosmic horror sequel to Crypt of the Moon Spider, perfect for fans of T. KingfisherThere are two halves of Charlie Duchamp. One is a brain in a jar, stranded on Jupiter's jungle moon, Io, who just wants to go home. The other is hanging on the wall of Barrowfield Home on Earth's own moon, host to the eggs of the Moon Spider and filled with a murderous rage. On Io, deep in the flooded remains of a crashed cathedral ship, lives a giant centipede called The Bishop, who has taken control of the drowned astronauts inside. Both Charlies converge here, stalking each other in the haunted ruins, while a new Moon Spider prepares to hatch.

The sequel to Crypt of the Moon Spider, Cathedral of the Drowned is a dripping, squirming, scuttling tale of altered bodies and minds. There are two halves of Charlie Duchamp. One is a brain in a jar, stranded on Jupiter's jungle moon, Io, who just wants to go home. The other is hanging on the wall of Barrowfield Home on Earth's own moon, host to the eggs of the Moon Spider and filled with a murderous rage. On Io, deep in the flooded remains of a crashed cathedral ship, lives a giant centipede called The Bishop, who has taken control of the drowned astronauts inside. Both Charlies converge here, stalking each other in the haunted ruins, while a new Moon Spider prepares to hatch.

A young woman, committed to an asylum, undergoes a bizarre treatment that unlocks a vast well of power in this cosmic horror novella, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher. Veronica Brinkley has been committed to The Barrowfield Home, run by Dr. Cull, to treat her depression. The institution is built on the crypt of a giant Lunar Spider, tended to by a monastic group of worshippers called the Alabaster Scholars. Dr. Cull is using the lunar silk from the dead spider to "repair" people's brains. As Veronica's memories are tampered with, she finds a surprising reserve of power within herself, upending everyone else's plans for her and stepping into a grand new role she had never imagined for herself.

In New Orleans a rare bookdealer is forced to track down an infernal atlas dragged from hell itself and now stashed in the swamps of the bayou. A dive bartender picks up a phone left behind after a brawl and is pulled into a waking nightmare. On a sea voyage, a decadent group of diabolists are intent on an audience with the Devil himself. Across six tales The Atlas of Hell takes us to the fringe of sanity, the limit of infernal ambition, and the very border of our reality. Nathan Ballingrud has earned a reputation as one of the leading voices in contemporary horror fiction and in The Atlas of Hell he shows us the deepest and darkest recesses of his imagination. Ballingrud probes the wounds that are the human condition and peels back the skin to reveal the monstrous and miraculous beneath. From the author of North American Lake Monsters, this is a collection for readers unafraid to gaze into the abyss and meet the eyes of what stares back.

A young woman, committed to an asylum, undergoes a bizarre treatment that unlocks a vast well of power in this cosmic horror novella, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher. Veronica Brinkley has been committed to The Barrowfield Home, run by Dr. Cull, to treat her depression. The institution is built on the crypt of a giant Lunar Spider, tended to by a monastic group of worshippers called the Alabaster Scholars. Dr. Cull is using the lunar silk from the dead spider to "repair" people's brains. As Veronica's memories are tampered with, she finds a surprising reserve of power within herself, upending everyone else's plans for her and stepping into a grand new role she had never imagined for herself.

A Locus Award Finalist "Stretches the boundaries of the genre." --The New York Times 1931, New Galveston, Mars: Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp sets off through the wastelands of the Strange to find Silas Mundt's gang who have stolen her mother's voice, destroyed her father, and left her solely with a need for vengeance in this "page-turner" (Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author of Black Sun) from Nathan Ballingrud. Since Anabelle's mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father's diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher, as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked. At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and the harsher realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit, Ballingrud's "brilliant" (Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World) novel is haunting in its evocation of Annabelle's quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars. Nathan Ballingrud's stories have been adapted into the film Wounds and the Hulu series Monsterland, The Strange is his first novel.

Ray Bradbury meets The Martian in this chilling page-turning tale of Mars' first colony, fallen to madness after all contact with Earth ceased, perfect for fans of Jeff VanderMeer.

1931, New Galveston, Mars: Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp sets off through the wastelands of the Strange to find Silas Mundt's gang who have stolen her mother's voice, destroyed her father, and left her solely with a need for vengeance. Since Anabelle's mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father's diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked. At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and the harder realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit, Ballingrud's novel is haunting in its evocation of Anabelle's quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars. Nathan Ballingrud's stories have been adapted into the film Wounds and the Hulu series Monsterland, The Strange is his first novel.

A Locus Award Finalist 1931, New Galveston, Mars: Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp sets off through the wastelands of the Strange to find Silas Mundt's gang who have stolen her mother's voice, destroyed her father, and left her solely with a need for vengeance. Since Anabelle's mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father's diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked. At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and the harder realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit, Ballingrud's novel is haunting in its evocation of Anabelle's quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars. Nathan Ballingrud's stories have been adapted into the film Wounds and the Hulu series Monsterland, The Strange is his first novel.

Previously published as North American Lake Monsters. Monsterland is a new anthology TV series from Hulu based on Nathan Ballingrud’s striking, bleak, and luminous debut collection, starring Kaitlyn Dever, Kelly Marie Tran, Jonathan Tucker, and Taylor Schilling, and more. Ballingrud’s Shirley Jackson Award winning collection of gothic and uncanny stories investigates the loneliest and darkest corners of contemporary American 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, ex-wives—or 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, terrifyingly human, even at their most monstrous.

"Stretch es] the boundaries of the genre... It's horrifying, but there's beauty." --The New York Times "One of the field's most accomplished short story writers." --The Washington Post A gripping collection of six stories of terror--including the novella "The Visible Filth," the basis for the upcoming major motion picture--by Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Nathan Ballingrud, hailed as a major new voice by Jeff VanderMeer, Paul Tremblay, and Carmen Maria Machado--"one of the most heavyweight horror authors out there" (The Verge). In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his "piercing and merciless" (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives--both real and imagined: "What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition" (Los Angeles Review of Books). Now, in Wounds, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of six stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in "The Visible Filth" to the search for the map of hell in "The Butcher's Table," Ballingrud's beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.

Red Room Press is extremely proud to present its third annual anthology featuring this year's hardcore corps of authors with the best extreme horror fiction of 2017 that breaks boundaries and trashes taboos. It was a killer year for horror fiction of the harder kind. Authors, editors and publishers presented readers with some startling works of horrific imagination, stories graphic in the extreme yet with subtleties suggesting larger meanings, tales that explore humanity by plumbing depths of soulless inhumanity and, in some cases, outright depravity. The stories here represent the best of them, disturbing tales that dig deep and take you into the dark heart of horror itself, unrelenting and unapologetic. "So Sings The Siren" by Annie Neugebauer takes us onto a Dark Fantasy stage for a one-night-only performance of mythological torture. Then Ryan Harding's "Junk" gets right to the hardcore stuff with the ultimate dick-pic horror tale. Robert Levy's "The Cenacle" is a literary cemetery feast you may have a hard time stomaching (Tums won't save you). Nathan Ballingrud's "The Maw" treads surefootedly on Sci-Fi ground, right up to the edge of the Maw itself in a tale of stunning originality. Luciano Marano made his first pro sell when he sold "Burnt" to DOA III, certainly one of the year's best anthologies, and the tale has it own fiery fetishistic twist. "The Better Part of Drowning" by Octavia Cade treads waters of both science fiction and fantasy but it's pure horror at its biting depths. Tim Waggoner's "Til Death" is Lovecraftian Post-Apocalypse horror at its absolute best. "Letter From Hell" comes with that special delivery you only get from Matt Shaw. Dani Brown gets down and very dirty in her "Theatrum Mortuum," which may be the most extreme thing you read all year. Glenn Gray's "Break" is a hard-to-take anatomy lesson given to a man weary of doing hard time. In "Bernadette" Ramiro Perez de Pereda gets medieval in his tale of a djinn summoned by a desperate priest. Brian Hodge takes you on a trip to Mexico you will never forget in "West of Matamoros, North of Hell." This story is a masterpiece of suspense, a grueling experience that may well leave you exhausted by the end. You might even feel like a vacation afterward, but we're betting it won't be to Matamoros. Bracken MacLeod's "Reprising Her Role" takes us behind the scenes of a porno snuff film for a gut-wrenching reprisal and unexpected bonus footage. A real-life death threat inspired Doug Ford's "The Watcher" and we think it shows. "Scratching From The Outer Darkness" showcases Tim Curran's descriptive prowess and gives you a tale of hardcore Cthulhu Mythos. Brace yourself when Adam Howe's "Foreign Bodies" takes you deep into the bowels of a nasty abyss-which might make a good echo chamber for the laughter Adam's patented black humor is likely to elicit. Sean Patrick Hazlett introduces us to "Adramelech," an ancient demon with a taste for broiled children. Daniel Marc Chant's "ULTRA" jacks into a popular VR game called Slut Slayer. But what if it's more than a game? Nathan Robinson takes us into the trees with a group of militant environmentalists who will discover a tree hugger of the deadly sort, entirely alien to their experience. Scott Smith (A Simple Plan and The Ruins) wraps up this year's fat package of the hard stuff in a big bloody bow with "The Dogs." The canines in this tale are not Man's Best Friend variety, nor are they Woman's Besties, as you will see. Thanks for coming along into this year's heart of hardcore darkness. We hope to see you on the other side.

Nathan Ballingrud's Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible. These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape. Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story "The Monsters of Heaven" won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.