Cataneo pulls you in close, whispering song in your ear, twirling you round one story to the next in an embrace as tight as her prose. “Elegantly composed, Speaking to Skull Kings and Other Stories is a literary dance. Cataneo has filtered the classics through her own sensibilities to create vivid stories of ghosts and other lost souls.” - Lucy A. Fans of modern dark fairy tales of the sort that Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link write will enjoy this, as will readers of classic weird fiction who prefer the work of Robert Chambers and Charlotte Perkins Gilman over that of Lovecraft. “This fine collection fits into the weird places in my skull and the dark places in my heart. This is unique fantasy, fresh, gripping and brilliantly realized.” - Jack Ketchum, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Girl Next Door and The Box You’ll want to stop and savor each and every one.
Yet every fine-cut gem of a story presented here is firmly grounded in the human experience, in tenderness and yearning, in humor and heartache.
“Very rarely will you meet an imagination as potent and far-reaching as Emily Cataneo’s. They unfold in settings rendered both beautiful and sinister: a wintry post-Revolution Russia, a gossipy New England town, a lonely bathhouse where robots go to die.Īs the characters in these tales live out their lives, from childhood to death and beyond, they search for meaning, connection, and safety, struggling to transcend their circumstances and ultimately grappling with the question: how far will they go to escape? These stories, many of which have appeared on year’s best longlists, span the gamut from soft science fiction to noir, to high fantasy and everything in between. Cataneo’s debut fiction collection is rife with the decayed grandeur of old Europe, girls who love and loathe ghosts, and magic that comes with a price. A magician struggles to find a cure for the plague descending on her city before it’s too late.Įmily B. Two children venture into the treacherous forest to find their missing bird-guardian. Three sisters live by a strict etiquette book in an abandoned house, until one of them starts to question why. This is unique fantasy, fresh, gripping and brilliantly realized.” - Jack KetchumĪ ballet dancer can’t escape an unwanted suitor-even after death. “You’ll want to stop and savor each and every one. SPEAKING TO SKULL KINGS AND OTHER STORIES
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