Occultation and Other Stories
Starred Review. Writing with a poet's eye for detail and a folklorist's understanding of mythos, Barron lives up to his reputation for elegant, subtle, and nightmare-inducing tales with a Lovecraftian edge in his second short story collection (after 2007'sThe Imago Sequence and Other Stories), which includes six reprints and three original stories. In The Lagerstätte, a woman who cannot come to terms with her husband's loss clings to an occult artifact said to reunite lovers whom death has separated. A guerrilla art exhibit turns murderous in the taut and bloody Strappado. A mysterious guidebook leads four men on a terrifying camping trip in Mysterium Tremendum. Heartbreaking, hilarious, sophisticated, and gory, these stories will thrill, trouble, and haunt Barron's fans and have newcomers scrambling to search for his other work.(June)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.