Thin Places

by Kay Chronister

Overview

Shirley Jackson Award Finalist

2020 Locus Recommended Reading List

"Grim but effervescent." - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"A powerful new voice in horror." Locus Magazine

Kay Chronister's remarkable debut collection of modern horror tales, Thin Places, echoes with the ghosts of Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, while forging its own unique gothic sensibility. Here there be monsters! And witches! These are tales of monstrous mothers and dark desires. Love, grief, death; and the exquisite pain and joy of life. With transcendent prose, Chronister chronicles the lives of powerful women and children; wicked witches and demons. These are the traumatic ghosts we all carry, and Chronister knows what it means to be human and humane. Powerful and hypnotic, these are tales you won't forget, from a vibrant new voice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781988964188
Publisher:	Undertow Publications
Publication date:	04/14/2020
Pages:	206
Sales rank:	820,984
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Kay Chronister lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is completing a PhD in Literature. Her fiction has appeared in venues such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, Black Static, Shadows & Tall Trees, and The Dark. This is her first collection. Find her online at kaychronister.com

Table of Contents

1. Your Clothes a Sepulcher, Your Body a Grave

2. The Women Who Sing for Sklep

3. The Mothers, the Warriors, the Drowned

4. Too Lonely, Too Wild

5. Roiling and Without Form

6. Life Cycles

7. The Fifth Gable

8. White Throat Holler

9. Russula’s Wake

10. The Lights We Carried Home

11. Thin Places

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

02/24/2020

Chronister’s eerie debut collection toggles between reality and mythical, chilling otherworlds. Multifaceted female characters, from the nefarious to the desperate, make up the dark subjects of these horror stories. Themes of infertility, grief, and motherhood pervade “The Fifth Gable,” in which a household of witches craft babies out of inhuman materials only for the children to die at birth. “White Throat Holler” features a precocious and fearless preacher’s daughter who hunts demons to stop them from claiming her town’s mothers and children. In “Russula’s Wake” (not for those who are disturbed by the suggestion of animal cruelty), a young widow tries to save her youngest daughter from sharing the curse of her older children, who must feast on animal flesh in order to continue appearing as normal children. Grim but effervescent, Chronister’s economical prose packs a powerful punch (“ ‘Are you dead?’ Martha laughed, spat out of a bloodied mouth: ‘I wish. I wish I was.’ ”). These modern gothics are as enticing as they are frightening. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Shirley Jackson Award Finalist

2020 Locus Recommended Reading List

"Grim but effervescent." - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"A powerful new voice in horror." Locus Magazine

From the Publisher