Grinning Cracks

Thirty-five short works filled with the upsetting and uncanny, from the author of the urban fantasy Sam Brody series (Alliteration Ink) and the horror novella We Shadows Have Offended (Etopia Press). This newly revised and updated second edition includes eight pieces not found in the first release, featuring the never before published stories "The Apple Box," "Colleagues," and the poems "Floater" and "Il Necromantiosmo." Taylor reimagines both classic, familiar fairytales and superstitions ("Abaddon," "The Apple Box," "Rabbit Rabbit," "Trichotomy") and a sequence of Breton folk stories ("The Ankou," "Bugul Noz," "Dahut and the Destruction of Ys," "Gradlon," "Iannic-ann- d," "The Korrigan," "Les Lavandi res," "The Lovers," "The Morgen," and "Yan-Gant-Y-Tan"). She experiments with surrealist science fiction ("Alter Ego," "Arcus Senilis," "Encounter," "Eden") as well as gruesome body horror ("Ornithology," "Pseudanor"), crime noir (the multi-chapter "Christmas Wrapping"), and a literary fiction cycle based on the concept of the four humors of Hipprocratic medicine ("Choleric," "Melancholic," "Phlegmatic," and "Sanguine"). Every story deals with the gray zone between wonder and disaster and people on the fringe of society, magic, or their own damaged psyches.