The Very Best of Caitln R. Kiernan

(Paperback)

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"Caitln R. Kiernan writes like a Gothic cathedral on fire."
Lost Souls
Caitln R. Kiernan is widely acknowledged as one of horror's finest short story writers. Collected in this volume is her finest work: visceral, devastating, and impossible to resist: A reporter in a toxic relationship is goaded by her girlfriend into visiting art exhibits where people have morphed into terrifying art; A reporter makes a surprising discovery while interviewing an elderly model from a serious of famous mermaid paintings; A moviegoer describes watching a recovered reel of a banned arthouse film-and discovers exactly why it has been banned.

Reviews

Praise for The Very Best of Caitln R. Kiernan

2019 Bram Stoker Award Recommended List

Pure genius . . . an underappreciated master whose vision expresses itself through vast geographic expanses, gender fluidity, geological upheaval, lingering forces of evil, the horror and beauty of the natural world and the mythic architecture of the human mind. Kiernan is transformative. Read her and be changed.
New York Times

[STARRED] "This stellar collection of 20 reprints, drawn solely from Kiernans limited-edition publications, showcases her talent for blurring boundaries and creating distinctive sensory experiences. The Lovecraftian Andromeda Among the Stones is set against a writhing, vast seascape, where a young woman inherits a profound and terrifying family legacy. A journalist reflects on his time with a beautiful suicide cult leader who came dangerously close to calling forth something truly monstrous in the prickly, creeping Houses Under the Sea. The pitch-perfect noir gem The Maltese Unicorn is a kinky, twisted take on Dashiell Hammetts The Maltese Falcon. The Apes Wife, a genre-defying standout, features King Kongs object of affection, Ann Darrow, who, lost in a strange space called All-at-Once Time, is confronted with the many paths she might have taken. In A Season of Broken Dolls, a woman confronts her lovers fascination with stitchwork, an art movement that takes body modification to terrifying new levels, and a young violinist discovers a terrible truth about her sisters disappearance in The Ammonite Violin. With lush prose, Kiernan finds strange beauty in terrible tableaus, never failing to unsettle and inspire awe in equal measure. This versatile retrospective offers something for nearly every fan of the strange and macabre, and cements Kiernans legacy as the reigning queen of dark fantasy."
Publishers Weekly, starred review

[STARRED] Drenched in an ocean setting and an atmosphere of corruption and decay, Kiernan's short fiction, published previously in volumes by several small presses, is collected here for the first time. In Andromeda Among the Stones, Meredith Dandridge has to close the gate her father opened, letting the horrors of World War I into the world. In Houses Under the Sea, a cult leader ushers her followers into the ocean (readers of Kiernan's The Drowning Girl will be familiar with the group), while "The Prayer of Ninety Cats" features a film critic who reviews a disturbing film covering the life of Erzsebet Bthory. In "A Fairy Tale of Wood Street," the narrator's girlfriend stops hiding the cow's tail that she had all along, and an artist enters the land of faeries in "La Peau Verte." The anthology's lack of explanatory prefaces or afterwords is noticeable, but the stories speak for themselves. VERDICT: Bodies, relationships, and the world are all changeable, shifting, and unstable in this collection by a master of dark fiction. Though influenced by Lovecraftian mythos, the work stands on its own and will be essential for Kiernan devotees.
Library Journal, starred review

Like [Stephen] King, Kiernans short fiction covers a broad range of subjects and genres, from science fiction to fantasy to the cosmic horror that shes become so well known for with her novella Agents of Dreamland. Her stories are strange, beautiful, and full of emotion.
Bookriot

Wonderful, strange, horrid, lovely.
Strange Horizons

Caitln Kiernan is a minister of dark magic, and any collection of her work is a must-read.
Chuck Wendig, author of Hyperion and The Shield

Caitln Kiernan is one of the true visionaries and finest stylists in our field, and very possibly the most lyrical. Her tales enrich the imagination, and represent the literature of the dark at its most gorgeous and disturbing. This book is a treasure house of wonders and terrors, and an essential purchase for anyone who cares about the great tradition of weird fiction.
Ramsey Campbell, author of The Parasite and Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach

A collection rather than an anthology, The Very Best of Caitln R Kiernan (Tachyon) hews to one style, uttering its fabulations in one piercingly delicious voice. My personal favorite, The Maltese Unicorn, dishes up a Dashiell Hammett-esque crime narrative in a setting filled with bisexual demons and enchanted dildos. Often decay appears as a near-sentient character in the fictional worlds Kiernan constructs; often wickedness and ineffability and fate acquire a palpable, practically tactile presence in prose both teasing and pleasing. The author flirts with literary pretentions at times, and many of her overtures have been answered (as a glance at her long list of publication credits reveals) by hard-to-locate publications. Let us be grateful that Tachyons Jacob Weisman and Jill Roberts have made appreciation much easier by curating this magnificent selection of Kiernans eerily beautiful oeuvre.
Seattle Review of Books

Kiernans prose is provocative, mysterious, soothing, decadent, flowery without being flowery. Its seeing a master at her best. Its inspiring, mystifying, indescribable. I could try to describe how much I enjoy her prose, but it would only come out wrong. It would be like a child trying to describe the vastness and mystery of the cosmos
Micah Castle, author of The Abyss Beyond the Reflection

The collection is an excellent example of someone capable of consummate worldbuilding within a limited word count, resulting in the feeling of experiencing a bite-sized epic.
Strange Alliances

To enter the world of Caitlin R. Kiernan is to enter a world where dreams become nightmares, nightmares become reality, and transformationhorrible, beautiful, or sometimes bothis a constant . . . as the title suggests, this is a terrific collection from one of the best writers of her generation.
Barnes & Noble Sci Fi/Fantasy Book Blog

Kiernan's stories will submerge you in a strange world filled with the twisted, radical reflections of Giger and Lovecraft, their aesthetic skins stretched over anger, pain, queerness, and courage.
Lara Elena Donnelly, author of the Amberlough Dossier series

Caitln R. Kiernan is one of the most inventive, seductive, and wickedly intelligent writers working today in any genre, and this treasury puts her powers on full display. Her stories are promiscuous vampires, eager to draw their energy from folklore, space opera, crime fiction, weird tales, and the dreams of the silver screen. Whether their tone is streetwise or scholarly, archaic or futuristic, these tales share Kiernan's signature flavor of a last drink on the edge of the abyss. She is Our Lady of Elation and Melancholy. A sinister, spellbinding collection.
Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria and Monster Portraits

Lyrically compelling tales that are nearly impossible to stop reading . . . fans of weird writers like Carmen Maria Machado, Jeff VanderMeer, and China Mieville will be glad to find this volume and thereby discover a writer who inspired them all.
Booklist

To begin a Caitln R. Kiernan story is to enter a world so vividly imagined that it's almost unbearable, on a journey as terrifying as it is irresistible.
Sam J. Miller, author of Blackfish City

5/5 stars. Leav[es] you startled by how skilled one person could be. The stories gave me chills at times, and I was in awe of these strings of words that acted more like spells than stories. Its a collection to be read and savored.
Reviews and Robots

It has made me a fan, and a big one at that. Kiernan is easily one of the best writers of weird fiction working today.
The Horror Fiction Review

"Kiernans style of writing is not very traditional and her use of language is dark, disturbing, and grotesque, while simultaneously drawing you in and holding your attention. The reading equivalent of: I cant look away. . . . I would recommend this collection to you if you enjoy the works of: Shirley Jackson, Victor Lavalle, Nick Mamatas, Angela Carter, David Lynch, H.P. Lovecraft, or Cosmic Horror."
Infinite Text

The stories within this collection are powerful and diverse, each one polished to perfection . . . This is a collection released by a multiple award winner at the top of her game.
High Fever Books

Magnificent nightmares rise out of Kiernans work.
New York Journal of Books

"All I can say is, like all good rollercoasters, it left me dizzy and excited and desperate to go around again."
Nerds of a Feather

These stories will fucking haunt you.
Shon Richards, author of Atlas the Wanderer

Caitln R. Kiernan is producing the very best of contemporary dark and weird fiction.
Paul St. John Mackintosh, author of The Golden Age

I have been saying for years that everyone interested in short fiction should be reading Caitln R. Kiernan. This is the perfect opportunity to be introduced to her range and virtuosity.
SF Revu

A must-read for any fan of dark fantasy and horror.
Bustle

Theres literally nothing out there quite like Kiernans stories, and theyre dazzling.
Pixelated Geek


Praise for Caitln R. Kiernan

Caitln Kiernan is the poet and bard of the wasted and the lost.
Neil Gaiman, author of Norse Mythology

Caitln R. Kiernan is an original.
Clive Barker, author of The Boo

Author Bio

Caitln R. Kiernan was born in Dublin, Ireland, and raised in the southeastern U.S. She is the author of thirteen novels, including The Drowning Girl, winner of the Bram Stoker and the James Tiptree, Jr. awards, as well as more than two hundred and fifty short stories. Kiernan has written graphic novels for both DC/Vertigo and Dark Horse Comics. She has fronted a short-lived goth-rock band, and worked as a vertebrate paleontologist in both Alabama and Colorado; in 1988, she described a new genus and species of ancient marine lizard, the mosasaur Selmasaurus russelli. Kiernan currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner, Kathryn Pollnac, and two very large cats, Selwyn and Lydia.