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Cover image by Richard Kirk

In Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Ammonite Violin & Others, one of contemporary dark fantasy’s most bewitching and distinctive voices is back with another banquet of the weird and unexpected. In his introduction, Jeff VanderMeer (City of Saints and Madmen, Finch) writes, “Kiernan creates her own light in this remarkable collection, and shines it on dark places. In doing so, she gives us gritty, lyrical, horrible, beautiful truths.”

In The Ammonite Violin & Others, the author rises to meet the high expectations she set with such collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, A is for Alien, and the World Fantasy Award-nominated To Charles Fort, With Love. Within these pages, you’ll discover a dazzling suite of stories situated on the borderlands between the unspeakbale and the erotic, the grotesque and the sublime. Here are stories of dream and metamorphosis, strange lands and beings existing beyond the veil of death and beyond this earth. Here is a selkie who’s lost her sealskin, a woman with a blackhole in her heart, a fairie girl fallen to the Queen of Decay, the descent of a modern-day Orpheus, and a killer who has fashioned the most exquisite musical instrument from the remains of one of his victims. Here are dreams, nightmares, and worse things yet.

The Ammonite Violin & Others is comprised of stories first published in the subscription only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlin for her most devoted readers.

Table of Contents:

Introduction by Jeff VanderMeer
Madonna Littoralis
Orpheus at Mount Pangeum
Bridle
For One Who Has Lost Herself
Ode to Edvard Munch
The Cryomancer’s Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3)
A Child’s Guide to the Hollow Hills
The Ammonite Violin (Murder Ballad No. 4)
The Lovesong of Lady Ratteanrufer
Metamorphosis A
The Sphinx’s Kiss
The Voyuer in the House of Glass
Metamorphosis B
Skin Game
The Hole With a Girl In Its Heart
Outside the Gates of Eden
In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection
Anamnesis, or the Sleepless Nights of Léon Spilliaert
Scene in the Museum (1896)
The Madam of the Narrow Houses

From Booklist:
“Brilliantly crafted, tightly woven, and memorable, the worlds of Kiernan’s imagination are odd places, quite fascinating to poke around in.”

From Publishers Weekly:
“[Kiernan’s stories]…are marked by obsessive, often self-destructive behavior; haunting, generally prophetic dreams; and beautiful prose.”

From Library Journal:
“From a hauntingly gruesome tale of a secret cave near a New England lighthouse (”Madonna Littoralis”) to the bittersweet account a woman born to minister to ghosts (”The Madam of the Narrow Houses”), these 20 stories, written between 2005 and 2007...reveal the author’s remarkable storytelling talent and her ability to conjure nightmarishly beautiful visions.”