Celestial Inventories

Among the transforming events in these twenty-two genre-bending stories: an office worker and his wife fade into a literal invisibility; a photographer discovers the unexpected in the faces of dead children; a girl moves onto a strange street when she fails to return from trick-or-treating; an artist devotes his career to contracting diseases; a plague of head explosions becomes a new form of terrorism; a couple's aging dismantles reality; and a seemingly pointless life finds final expression in bits of folded paper. Steve Rasnic Tem's other works include Deadfall Hotel, Onion Songs, Ugly Behavior, and The Man on the Ceiling. Celestial Inventories may be the World Fantasy Award-winning author's finest collection to date. Stories included in this collection: The World Recalled The Disease Artist Halloween Street When We Moved On The Woodcarver’s Son Invisible Head Explosions Chain Reaction The Secret Flesh Origami Bird In These Final Days of Sales Little Poucet The Bereavement Photographer Firestorm The Mouse’s Bedtime Story Last Dragon The Monster in the Field The High Chair Dinosaur Giant Killers The Company You Keep Celestial Inventory

Andrew Wilmot, author of The Death Scene Artist

“Celestial Inventories is an impressive, confident collection.”

The Guardian

“Rasnic Tem is admired in the field of horror and weird fiction."

This is Horror

“Steve Rasnic Tem is the kind of writer other writers want to be.”

The Signal Horizon

“Tem’s observations and renderings of the human condition feel timeless, with their keen insight coaxed through surreal horror.”

About the Author

STEVE RASNIC TEM was born in Lee County, Virginia in the heart of Appalachia. He currently lives in Centennial, Colorado with his wife, the writer Melanie Tem. His novels include Excavation, The Book of Days, the recent Deadfall Hotel and, co-written with wife Melanie Tem, Daughters and The Man On the Ceiling. He is the author of over 350 published short stories, and is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. He was also a finalist for the Philip K. Dick, Shirley Jackson, and Theodore Sturgeon awards. His other story collections include City Fishing, The Far Side of the Lake, In Concert (collaborations with Melanie Tem), Ugly Behavior, and Onion Songs.

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