Tales of Pain and Wonder

International Horror Guild Award: Best Collection nominee.

This collection of twenty-two short stories by the author of Daughter of Hounds and Alabaster, originally published in 2000, firmly established Caitlín R. Kiernan as one of the preeminent voices in dark fantasy today. Through a cycle of interconnected narratives, Kiernan unflinchingly explores a surreal world where the fantastic and the mundane are never separated by more than the insubstantial thickness of a shadow. From the murderous backstreets of New Orleans to an abandoned shipyard of the Hudson River, from sun-weary Los Angeles to a maze of dank and forgotten tunnels beneath Manhattan, these stories present a landscape at once alien and undeniably familiar.

Including such acclaimed tales as "Estate" (selected for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror), "Postcards from the King of Tides" (selected for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror), "In the Water Works" (the basis of Kiernan's award-winning second novel, Threshold), and "Tears Seven Times Salt" (to be reprinted in The Century's Best Horror), Tales of Pain and Wonder is destined to stand as a modern classic of weird and supernatural fiction. This edition includes a new, previously unpublished story, as well as an introduction by Douglas E. Winter and an afterword by Peter Straub.

Contents:

• Introduction: Pain, Wonder, and Caitlín R. Kiernan (Douglas E. Winter)
• Anamorphosis
• To This Water (Johnstown, Pennsylvania 1889)
• Bela's Plot
• Tears Seven Times Salt
• Superheroes
• Glass Coffin
• Breakfast in the House of the Rising Sun
• Estate
• The Last Child or Lir
• A Story for Edward Gorey
• Paedomorphosis
• Salammbô
• Postcards from the King of Tides
• Rats Live on No Evil Star
• Salmagundi
• In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)
• The Long Hall on the Top Floor
• San Andreas
• Angels You Can See Through
• Lafayette
• ...Between the Gargoyle Trees
• Epilogue: Zelda Fitzgerald in Ballet Attire
• Afterword (Peter Straub)