No One Dies from Love: Dark Tales of Loss and Longing

by Robert Levy, Paul Tremblay (Introduction)

Overview

"Levy delivers a viscerally unsettling collection of 12 horror shorts rooted as much in human psychology as in the fantastical and speculative. [...] Levy's stories are made all the more powerful by his unwillingness to shy away from the illicit. By embracing the taboo with the tools of horror and speculative fiction, he at once demystifies these subjects while imbuing them with a magic of his own. [...] The result is a triumph." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

A young boy's father becomes obsessed with interplanetary visitors; an adolescent's game reveals devastating possible futures; twin siblings receive a visit from an aunt they don't remember in the wake of their mother's disappearance; a grieving widow finds herself drawn into a crypt and the companionship of other mourners left behind; a group of teenage girls at summer camp discover something powerful-and hungry-in the woods; a writer reeling from a splintered relationship attends an infamous theatre devoted to macabre spectacle and fear, discovering forbidden desire and malevolent designs...

From Lambda Literary Award and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Robert Levy (The Glittering World) comes debut collection No One Dies from Love: Dark Tales of Loss and Longing, featuring twelve tales of horror and desire, love and loss, including the critically acclaimed novella "Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol." Featuring an introduction by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Paul Tremblay.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781956252064
Publisher:	Word Horde
Publication date:	05/30/2023
Pages:	258
Sales rank:	529,634
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Robert Levy is an author of unsettling books, stories, and plays whose work has been seen Off-Broadway. A Harvard graduate subsequently trained as a forensic psychologist, his work has been called "frank and funny" (Time Magazine), "idiosyncratic and disarming" (The New York Times), "ambitious and clever" (Variety), "intimate and disturbing" (Publishers Weekly) and "bloody brave" (the UK's SFX Magazine). His novel The Glittering World was published by Gallery/Simon & Schuster and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award as well as the Shirley Jackson Award, and also won an Earphones Award for exceptional audio from Audiofile Magazine. Shorter work has appeared in places like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nightmare, Black Static, The Dark, Shadows & Tall Trees, The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction, and The Best Horror of the Year, among many others. Robert is a single dad who lives with his children in Brooklyn near a toxic canal, where he is awaiting his mutant powers to develop any day now. He teaches at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/10/2023

Levy (The Glittering World) delivers a viscerally unsettling collection of 12 horror shorts rooted as much in human psychology as in the fantastical and speculative. The stories all start from an exploration of lost love, but blossom in myriad gruesome and strange directions: in “Conversion,” for instance, a gay boy sent to conversion therapy becomes a serial killer, to the mixed horror and delight of his perverted therapist. “My Heart’s Own Desire” follows a young man whose attempts to escape the influence of a powerful wizard (and the wizard’s hyper potent drugs) lead him to realize his love for his brother. Levy’s stories are made all the more powerful by his unwillingness to shy away from the illicit. By embracing the taboo with the tools of horror and speculative fiction, he at once demystifies these subjects while imbuing them with a magic of his own. “Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol,” the masterful novella that ends the collection, exemplifies this through its transformation of real historical personages—Anaïs Nin and Paula Maxa—into characters caught up at once in their feelings for each other and a relationship with the devil. The result is a triumph of aberration and whimsy. (June)

Publishers Weekly