A Whisper of Blood: Stories of Vampirism

This “toothy follow-up to Datlow’s first-rate Blood Is Not Enough” offers “admirably inventive variations on vampirism” (Kirkus Reviews).   Featuring stories by Jonathan Carroll, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Robert Silverberg, A Whisper of Blood is a “consistently engrossing anthology” from award-winning editor Ellen Datlow (Publishers Weekly). Continuing to expand the boundaries of the concept of vampirism—as she did in her first collection, Blood Is Not Enough—Datlow has assembled eighteen fascinating stories that range from tales of literal vampires to what she calls “metaphorical bloodsuckers,” who can drain another’s life force without ever sinking their teeth into necks.   In “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” by Suzy McKee Charnas, an elderly Jewish woman who’s taken her own life has second thoughts and makes a deal to become a vampire to stay immortal, the only condition being she has to drink blood by request only. An amnesiac operative tries to sort out if a secret government agency is trying to help him regain his memory or is wiping it clean in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Kafkaesque “Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?” And in Jonathan Carroll’s “The Moose Church,” a tourist in Sardinia is literally scarred by asking questions of death in his dreams . . .   A Whisper of Blood includes contributions by Suzy McKee Charnas, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert Silverberg, Kathe Koja, Elizabeth Massie, Barry N. Malzberg, Rick Wilber, Jonathan Carroll, Thomas Ligotti, Melissa Mia Hall, David J. Schow, Jack Womack, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Thomas Tessier, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, K. W. Jeter, Pat Cadigan, and Robert Holdstock and Garry Kilworth.

Publishers Weekly

“Ranging from the grotesque to the pleasantly lurid, these tales are of unvaryingly high quality. Readers looking for shock and horror will be gratified; those who want fangs in the neck, however, must settle for tongue in cheek.”

Kirkus Reviews

“The current roster of writers . . . rivals its predecessor, with some of the brighter literary lights in the horror/sf field on hand.”

About the Author

Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York.

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