Mythic Delirium Books is proud at last to announce our next release, A Sinister Quartet, scheduled to drop June 9, 2020. It’s the biggest book we’ve ever put together, gathering four stories that, combined, amount to more than 150,000 words of wondrously weird dark fantasy and horror. These eerie stories go long.

The book begins with an original short novel from C. S. E. Cooney, author of the World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories, also available from Mythic Delirium Books. Cooney’s “The Twice-Drowned Saint,” an epic tale set in a surreal and dangerous land of airplanes, angels and ice walls, stands alone but has connections to her tales “Godmother Lizard” and “Life on the Sun” (the latter reprinted in Bone Swans.)

The surreal and dangerous ambience continues with poet and editor Jessica P. Wick’s debut novella “An Unkindness,” a dark fantasy that pits familial bonds against ancient power and cruel sorcery.

The going gets darker yet with fantasy novelist Amanda J. McGee’s debut novella “Viridian,” an classic grim fable updated and transformed into a modern tale of creeping Gothic horror.

This quartet closes with “The Comforter” by Mike Allen, a standalone novella of terror and transmutation that continues the narrative of his Nebula Award-nominated short story “The Button Bin” and its novella-length sequel “The Quiltmaker.” The patchwork binds beyond those sources, with ties to the stories “Gutter” and “The Hitchhiker’s Tale” in Allen’s Shirley Jackson Award-nominated collection Unseaming, and to his story “Nolens Volens” in the Broken Eye Books anthology Nowhereville.

In case you want to know even more, here’s the cover art and the official back cover and press release copy:

Cover art by Jason Wren. Cover design by Brett Massé.

Behind the walls of an invulnerable city ruled by angels, old movies provide balm for the soul and a plan to escape risks grisly retribution. A princess discovers a passage to a nightmarish world of deception and blood-sealed enchantment. A woman who has lost everything meets a man of great wealth and ominous secrets. In a town haunted by tragedy, malevolent supernatural entities converge, and the conflict that ensues unleashes chaos.

A Sinister Quartet gathers original long-form wonders and horrors composed in unusual keys, with a short novel by World Fantasy Award winner C. S. E. Cooney and a new novella from two-time World Fantasy Award finalist Mike Allen joined by debut novellas from rising talents Amanda J. McGee and Jessica P. Wick. All four offer immersions into strange, beautiful and frightening milieus.

About the authors

World Fantasy Award-winning writer C. S. E. Cooney is the author of Desdemona and the Deep, and Bone Swans: Stories. She has narrated over a hundred audiobooks—including her own—and has produced three albums as the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine. Her poetry collection How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes includes “The Sea-King’s Second Bride,” which won the Rhysling Award for best long-form verse in speculative poetry. Her short stories and poems can be found in numerous anthologies and magazines: most recently Jonathan Strahan’s Book of Dragons, and Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatters and March Hares: All New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Learn more online at csecooney.com.

Jessica P. Wick is a writer and freelance editor living in Rhode Island. She enjoys rambling through graveyards and writing by candlelight. She will take her shoes off to walk through some truly freezing surf. You can follow her at instagram: foamlyre, twitter: lunelyre, or jessicapwick.com.

Amanda J. McGee is a mapmaker by day and a writer by night. She has degrees from Hollins University and Virginia Tech, where she studied languages, politics, and infrastructure. She is the author of the epic fantasy series The Creation Saga, one half of the podcast Pop Fizz!, and blogs weekly on books, movies, anime, and writing advice. When not writing, she can be found in the garden. She lives in Southwest Virginia with the love of her life, two fluffy cats, and a plethora of plants. You can find out more on her website at amandajmcgee.com.

Nebula, Shirley Jackson and two-time World Fantasy award finalist Mike Allen wears many hats. His short stories have been gathered in three collections: Unseaming, The Spider Tapestries and the forthcoming Aftermath of an Industrial Accident. He’s won the Rhysling Award for poetry three times, and his most recent collection of verse, Hungry Constellations, was a Suzette Haden Elgin Award nominee. For more than a decade he’s worked as the arts and culture columnist for the daily newspaper in Roanoke, Va., where he and his wife Anita live with a cat so full of trouble she’s named Pandora. You can follow Mike’s exploits as a writer at descentintolight.com, as an editor at mythicdelirium.com, and all at once on Twitter at @mythicdelirium.

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