(preorder—to be published in June/July)
Dust jacket illustration by Alex Kuno.
Interior Illustrations by Loredana Fulgori.
Published by Chiroptera Press.
In these ten stories, Crisp takes us from the spectral purlieus of the ghost of a suicide, searching in vain for a mortal confidante on a hilltop over a provincial town (‘Troubled Joe’), to the future melancholy of a world in the early stages of human immortality, where a holographic environment is taking over the natural and man-made world (‘Karakasa’), to the despairing confession of a photographer who tries to capture the spirit of a secluded village, only to understand too late that the spirit is a mutating and contagious plague of fear (‘Ynys-y-Plag’), and on through a variety of intimately portrayed settings, both familiar and fantastical, to a final cri de coeur with the novelette ‘Suicide Watch’, in which, against the background of the doomed, anxiety-drenched present age, one suicidal loser attempts to save another.
Bookended by tales of suicide, Crisp’s fourth collection of shorter fiction expands on his previous work, such as the cornerstone collection of twenty-first century weird, Morbid Tales, to go both wider and deeper. Varying his stylistic palette to include the dream-like science fiction of ‘Karakasa’, the twisted naturalism of ‘Asking For It’ and the sentimental whimsicality of ‘Italiannetto’, Crisp simultaneously intensifies the confessional tone of many of his earlier tales, here present throughout, and with ‘Ynys-y-Plag’ brings us perhaps his most chilling depiction of supernatural evil.
A shapeshifting collection, by turns humorous and bleak, otherworldly and mundane, All God’s Angels, Beware! will appeal to all those readers who are as eager to explore the obscurer recesses of the imagination as they are to fathom the darker depths of the human heart. If H.P. Lovecraft, Mishima Yukio and Philip Larkin put their heads together to create a new genre, the result might be something like this.
Quentin S. Crisp was born in the seventies in North Devon, U.K. He studied Japanese at Durham University, graduating in the year 2000. After graduation he taught English in Taiwan and studied the works of Higuchi Ichiyo at Kyoto University’s Faculty of Letters. His first collection of fiction, The Nightmare Exhibition, was published in 2001, by BJM Press, his second collection, Morbid Tales (Tartarus Press), following in 2004. Since then, he has had work released through a number of publishers, including the novella Shrike (PS Publishing), which was shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award in 2009, and the 2019 novel Graves (Snuggly Books), a Gothic tour through modern death anxiety. He currently resides on the outskirts of London and works as a freelance writer and editor.
Standard Edition Specs:
- 6"x 9"
- 366 pages
- Smyth-sewn binding with head and tail bands
- Tipped in signature page signed by the author
- Clothbound with cover and spine stamping
- Offset printed on acid-free archival paper
- Printed in Lithuania and bound in USA
Slipcased Edition Specs:
- 6"x 9"
- 366 pages
- Smyth-sewn binding with head and tail bands
- Tipped in signature page signed by the author
- Clothbound with cover and spine stamping
- Alternative cloth color to the standard edition
- Hand marbled end papers
- Green edge staining
- Custom slipcase stamped on 3 sides
- Offset printed on acid-free archival paper
- Printed in Lithuania and bound in USA
- authors_list:
- Quentin S. Crisp
- artists_list:
- Alex Kuno
- book_length:
- 366 pages
- badge:
- preorder
