Still So Strange

SHORTLISTED FOR A 2019 WORLD FANTASY AWARD!MONSTROUS BARGAINS AND BALLADSDrawing heavily on Lovecraftiana and myth, these are tales of devil’s bargains, love songs to monsters, and the people―human and otherwise―who inhabit liminal spaces. Ghosts, gods, and ghouls make their way as best they can, one step sideways from the mortals around them. Many are connected; some are puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. Spanning a decade of writing, Still So Strange is Amanda Downum's first collection of short fiction, and includes stories originally released in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, as well as original, unpublished work.

Elizabeth Bear, author of Karen Memory and Shoggoths in Bloom, and winner of the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Awards

“Ethereal, atmospheric, and mysterious.”

Liz Bourke, reviewer for Tor.com and Locus Magazine

“Amanda Downum’s work is always atmospheric and full of character. These stories range from the melancholic to the downright chilling, and deftly evoke both the truly strange and the very human. I enjoyed them.”

Gemma Files, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Experimental Film

“Amanda Downum’s prose is intoxicating, sensual, layered―both addictive and poisonous, a shot of absinthe with an opium smoke chaser. The stories in Still So Strange run the full pleasure/pain gamut of the dark fantastic, offering a bastard cornucopia of gods, monsters and monster-gods, gorgeous terrors etched in salt and blood and gold. It’s Clive Barker crossed with Tanith Lee set to a Siouxsie and the Banshees beat, and I loved every second of it.”

Bracken MacLeod, author of Come to Dust and 13 Views of the Suicide Woods

“Amanda Downum’s prose is the undertow, gently pulling, promising beautifully cold oblivion in smothering darkness. She makes me shiver and want to lean back and let that pull whisk me away to unimagined places. Downum’s not just one of my favorite writers, she’s one of the very best dark fantastical writers working today.”

About the Author

Amanda Downum is an author of fantasy and horror based out of Austin, Texas. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, Dreams from the Witch House, Strange Horizons, and more. Her novels include Dreams of Shreds and Tatters (Solaris) and The Necromancer Chronicles (The Drowning City, The Bone Palace, and Kingdom of Dust) from Orbit.

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