Monstrous Affections

David Nickle writes 'em damned weird and damned good and damned dark. He is bourbon-rough, poetic and vivid. Don't miss this one.
–Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother Bleak, stark and creepy, Stoker-winner Nickle's first collection will delight the literary horror reader . . . 13 terrifying tales of rural settings, complex and reticent characters and unexpected twists that question the fundamentals of reality. All are delivered with a certain grace, creating a sparse yet poetic tour of the horrors that exist just out of sight . . . This ambitious collection firmly establishes Nickle as a writer to watch.
–Publishers Weekly (starred review) A perverted version of Alice Munro country . . . These stories work so well in part because of Nickle's facility with the language of the place he's created.
–Quill & Quire (starred review) (L)ike the cover, the stories inside are not what they seem. But also, like the cover, the stories inside are brilliant . . . You'd think that you were reading a book full of what you had always expected a horror story to be, but Nickle takes a left turn and blindsides you with tales that are not of the norm, but are all the more horrific because of surprise twists, darkness and raw emotion.
–January Magazine's Best Books of 2009 (T)he truly breathtaking feature of the book is the author's marvelously assured hand as a writer and the deft precision with which he manages to give life to that dark world that often seems to lie just out of our view at any given moment . . . The seemingly humble conceits behind these stories mask some truly inspired flashes of weirdness and a theme of families and what ultimately holds them together, which runs through the 14 stories in the book . . . (A)n absolutely brilliant collection and easily one of the most satisfying books of the past few years and marking David Nickle as one the most talented writers to emerge from Canada in the last 10 years.
–Monster Chris, Killer Works