Crystal Lake’s first pro-paying anthology, featuring Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, and Ramsey Campbell, take readers on a disturbing journey into the beauty that rests inside the very heart of darkness.
From Bram Stoker Award-nominated publisher, Crystal Lake Publishing, and the editing duo who brought you the best-selling and critically acclaimed small-town Lovecraftian horror anthology Shadows Over Main Street, comes Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories—a disturbing journey into the beauty that rests inside the very heart of darkness.
Awe meets ache.
Terror becomes transcendence.
Regret gives way to rebirth.
Fifteen short stories and one poem span nearly every twisted corner of the horror and dark fiction genres:
A woman experiences an emotional reckoning inside a haunted house.
A father sees his daughter rescued after a cold case is solved, only to learn the tragic limits of his love.
A man awakens a vengeful spirit and learns the terrible price of settling scores.
A boy comes of age into awareness of a secret universe of Lovecraftian scale.
A young woman confronts the deathly price of existence inside a German concentration camp during the Holocaust.
And much, much more…
Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories features the most celebrated voices in dark fiction, as well as a number of exciting new talents:
Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, John F.D. Taff, Lisa Mannetti, Damien Angelica Walters, Josh Malerman, Christopher Coake, Mercedes M. Yardley, Brian Kirk, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Amanda Gowin, Richard Thomas, Maria Alexander and Kevin Lucia.
With a foreword from Cemetery Dance magazine founder Richard Chizmar.
Cover art by Caitlin Hackett
Interior artwork by Luke Spooner
Edited by Doug Murano and D. Alexander Ward
Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories
An anthology of dark fiction that explores the beauty at the very heart of darkness
Stephanie M. Wytovich — “The Morning After Was Filled with Bone”
Brian Kirk — “Picking Splinters from a Sex Slave”
Lisa Mannetti — “Arbeit Macht Frei”
Neil Gaiman — “The Problem of Susan”
Christopher Coake — “Dominion”
Mercedes M. Yardley — “Water Thy Bones”
Paul Tremblay — “A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken”
Damien Angelica Walters — “On the Other Side of the Door, Everything Changes”
Richard Thomas — “Repent”
Clive Barker — “Coming to Grief”
John F.D. Taff — “Cards for His Spokes, Coins for His Fare”
Amanda Gowin — “Cellar’s Dog”
Kevin Lucia — “When We All Meet at the Ofrenda”
Maria Alexander — “Hey, Little Sister”
Josh Malerman — “The One You Live With”
Ramsey Campbell — “The Place of Revelation”
“It’s a book for readers who love language as much as story, who understand that horror can be beautiful, ecstatic and revelatory as well as down-right scary.” – James Everington
“All of the stories in this anthology have a beauty, whether it is in language or tone or in finessing a hard-hitting theme to disarm the reader. It’s worth picking up this collection.” – Eden Royce
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