***Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in the Anthology category***
Want to see something weird?
Embrace the odd? Satisfy your curiosity? Surrender to wonder?
From Crystal Lake Publishing and the Bram Stoker Award-winning co-editor of the smash hit Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories comes Behold! Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders.

Sixteen stories and two poems take you into the spaces between the ordinary—and the imaginations of some of today's masters of dark and thrilling fiction.

• A travel writer learns the terrible secrets at a hotel that's not at all as it seems.
• A disfigured woman and her daughter explore methods of weaponizing beauty.
• An amateur beekeeper acquires an object that shows her the true
  danger of the hive-mind.
• Drifters ride the rails seeking something wondrous that could change their fates forever.
• A strange creature that holds our very existence in its hands shapes the lives of two lovers to touching and devastating effect.
• A young man helps his grandfather—and something much more monstrous—atone for bargains made during wartime.
• And much, much more…

Featuring Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Lisa Morton, Brian Kirk, Hal Bodner, Stephanie M. Wytovich, John Langan, Erinn L. Kemper, John F.D. Taff, Patrick Freivald, Lucy A. Snyder, Brian Hodge, Kristi DeMeester, Christopher Coake, Sarah Read and Richard Thomas. Foreword by Josh Malerman. Illustrations by Luke Spooner. Cover art by John Coulthart. Brought to you by Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor Doug Murano and Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

Interview with the editor:

What kinds of short stories will readers find in this anthology?

Doug Murano: I wanted this book to encompass a lot of the things I love about weird fiction, fantasy and horror—as well as give a tip of my cap to some of the things I loved growing up. So, it’s not exclusively a horror anthology, though you’ll find there’s plenty of darkness and dread throughout the book.

It was important to me that the stories throughout the anthology embraced and celebrated the odd—so you're not going to find stories of big-top exploitation or carnival freak shows here. The closest, perhaps, you'll find to this angle is in Lisa Morton's story—but that piece turns the freak-show trope on its head and aspires to something much more daring, interesting, and, ultimately, haunting.

Some tonal touch-points for much of the book are actually Jim Henson's work — like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal — particularly in the Undefinable Wonders section. I also drew tonal influences from Guillermo del Toro’s filmography, especially his Spanish-language films like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. As in those films, there’s terror and darkness here, but there’s beauty, wonder, and magic, as well. In other words, the book is willfully bizarre, wide-ranging, and beautifully strange.

Exposed Nerves continues the explorations into dark poetry by Stoker Award winner and Shirley Jackson Award nominee Lucy A. Snyder, pairing the author’s sly wordplay and imagery with grim introspection. By turns challenging, wryly amusing and gut-wrenching, Snyder’s work plumbs bittersweet catharsis and maps a survivor’s path through dangerous worlds, both the real and the horrifically imagined.

“Exposed Nerves vibrates with energy and rewards with clarity of vision.”
—Mary Turzillo, Stoker-nominated and Elgin Award-winning poet

Praise for Lucy A. Snyder’s Stoker-winning poetry collection Chimeric Machines:

“(This) may be the best collection of poetry I’ve read in years… There is not one poem in Chimeric Machines that doesn’t fit in place like a delicately carved piece of a complex and consuming puzzle. …There is no other writer working today quite like Lucy A. Snyder.” —Hellnotes

“What Snyder accomplishes in less than eighty pages is an emotional scoring that few can approach. …This is (real life), given breath and teeth, stood out in front of the world in all its beautiful grime. Her work is emotional, powerful, and will shake a person’s foundations … I applaud this collection.” —Scott A. Johnson, author of City of Demon

“Snyder is a massively talented writer—the sort who knows how to make you take a gulp when you hit the ending of a story or poem—and this poetry collection made me gulp with awe on virtually every page.” —Michael A. Arnzen, author of Proverbs for Monsters

“Her poetry is powerful, honest, playful … this is not the first time she has walked dangerous, uncertain roads with her work and I hope it will not be the last.” —Horror News

Halloween is the most wonderful part of the year for many of us. For dedicated fans, the season begins when the leaves start turning autumn colors and doesn't finish until Hallowtide ends in November. With it comes a whole lot of fun: scary movies and stories, haunted houses, seasonal sweets, spooky decorations, costume parties, and of course trick or treat. But Halloween is also a deeply spiritual time for some; it's an opportunity to remember and honor loved ones who have passed on.

Master storyteller Lucy A. Snyder has filled her cauldron with everything that Halloween means to her and distilled it into a spell-binding volume of stories. Within these pages you'll find thrills and chills, hilarity and horrors, the sweet and the naughty.

One of the best things about Halloween is you don't have to be yourself. So go ahead and try on a new mask or two ... you may discover hidden talents as a witch, a pirate, a space voyager, a zombie fighter, or even an elf. This is the perfect collection to celebrate the season of the dead or to summon those heady autumn vibes whenever you like. You may even find a couple of tales that evoke a certain winter holiday that keeps trying to crowd in on the fun.

In the worlds within this book, every day is Halloween!