2020 Shirley Jackson Award finalist, Best Story Collection
2020 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best Story Collection

“From heartbreaking character studies to exercises in Grand Guignol excess, from scalpel-sharp poetry to sledgehammers of blood-soaked prose, Mike Allen displays not only his own considerable range, but the range of the horror genre as well. Aftermath of an Industrial Accident will surprise and delight you at every turn.”
—Nathan Ballingrud, author of Monsterland

“Allen overflows the tank with nightmare fuel . . . Readers will be impressed by the variety, intensity, and skilled craftsmanship Allen brings to this collection. These horror shorts are sure to linger in the dark corners of readers’ minds.”
— Publishers Weekly, starred review

“An incredible read. This collection of horror and dark fantasy poetry and short fiction needs to be on the shelf of any horror reader.”
—Cemetery Dance

“Allen weds the brute visceral punch of early Clive Barker with the demented whimsy of darker Neil Gaiman.”
—Craig Laurance Gidney, author of A Spectral Hue

In these twenty-three stories and poems, two-time World Fantasy Award nominee Mike Allen spins twisted narratives, some wound through the fabric of our world, some set in imagined pasts or futures, all plumbing the depths of human darkness. “The consistency, here, is simply excellence,” writes Bram Stoker Award finalist and Punktown creator Jeffrey Thomas in his introduction. “You are holding in your hands an overflowing cornucopia of monstrous goodness.”

"Mike Allen may be the premier poet of this era of weird horror and surrealist fantasy. His work is completely fearless. He takes no genre boundaries as sacred."
—The Plutonian

"Finely finished tours de force of the storyteller’s art—and representative examples of the state of the modern weird/dark/speculative art . . . This has got to be a shortlist candidate for many Best Collection awards for 2020."
—Ginger Nuts of Horror

"Each tale in Aftermath of an Industrial Accident packs a punch that will keep you willingly pinned to the wall."
—Christina Sng, author of A Collection of Nightmares

"Allen demonstrates again and again his masterful ability to infuse cosmic, existential terror into the most intimate, and mundane aspects of our lives, while never failing to point out the self-made horror already there: from his introductory piece that credits Poe as a conjurer of inescapable, psychic horror and a muse-sinister for Allen, to the title stor

2020 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best Anthology

Contains “The Twice-Drowned Saint” by C.S.E. Cooney, 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best First Novel

“With fiction from C.S.E Cooney, Jessica P. Wick, Amanda J. McGee, and Mike Allen, Mythic Delirium’s excellent new anthology, A Sinister Quartet, provides further evidence that long-form genre fiction is not just alive and well but thriving.”
—Locus, Ian Mond

“Mythic Delirium is one of the smaller presses which sustains our field . . . This is lovely and fascinating . . . Really fine work.”
—Locus, Rich Horton

“Easily one of the best things I’ve read this year . . . ‘The Twice Drowned Saint’ alone is worth five times the cost of the collection.”
—The Little Red Reviewer