Greener Pastures - Softcover

Wehunt, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937009548 ISBN 13: 9781937009540

Publisher: Apex Book Company, 2017

Synopsis

In his striking debut collection, Greener Pastures, Michael Wehunt shows why he is a powerful new voice in horror and weird fiction.

From the round-robin, found-footage nightmare of “October Film Haunt: Under the House” to the jazz-soaked “The Devil Under the Maison Blue,” selected for both The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and Year’s Best Weird Fiction, these beautifully crafted, emotionally resonant stories speak of the unknown encroaching upon the familiar, the inscrutable power of grief and desire, and the thinness between all our layers. Where nature rubs against small towns, in mountains and woods and bedrooms, here is strangeness seen through a poet’s eye.

They say there are always greener pastures. These stories consider the cost of that promise.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Wehunt grew up in North Georgia, close enough to the Appalachians to feel them but not quite easily see them. There were woods, and woodsmoke, and warmth. He did not make it far when he left, falling sixty miles south to the lost city of Atlanta, where there are fewer woods but still many trees. He lives with his partner and his dog and too many books, among which Robert Aickman fidgets next to Flannery O’Connor on his favorite bookshelf.

His fiction has appeared in various places, such as The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu. This is his first collection.

Review:

"[An] utterly fantastic, seriously disquieting debut... Wehunt proves again and again his ability to imbue old-soul fables of the horrific and fantastical with a fresh, idiosyncratic spirit. Not a single paint-by-numbers effort mars these eleven stories--and Wehunt is, somewhat paradoxically, an erudite, cultured guide for a scenic tour of primal fears, metaphysical passions, and otherworldly improbabilities come to life."
 
--Fangoria
 
"From the moment you start reading the lead in story, 'Beside Me Singing in the Wilderness', you'll realize that you're holding something special in your hands. His prose is lyrical and moving, yet concise and to the point with not a word wasted on unnecessary exposition. Greener Pastures is a beautiful work and an amazing debut collection from a new author with all the tools he needs to tell a story and a great knowledge of their use."

--This Is Horror
 
"Eleven of the most haunting stories you're likely to read this year. A highly impressive debut collection; chock-full of imaginative plots, flesh and blood characters, and universal themes, all delivered through prose so lyrical it practically sings."

--Cemetery Dance

"Michael Wehunt's Greener Pastures is a wonderful collection of quietly creepy tales that are mature and smart enough to let their effects linger. An impressive debut. Just stay away from that house where your favorite weird horror movie was filmed, okay?"

--Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock

"With Greener Pastures, Michael Wehunt creates visions of creeping dread and transfiguration that lift a trope-heavy genre into the realm of existential poetry. There are things in here I've never seen before, some of which I devoutly hope to never see again. The stories thus collected trace a journey through the heartland of an America that's unfamiliar yet primordially recognizable, stripped down to its red-soaked roots and bones--the squirming heartstrings of a nation founded by heretics and outlaws, in all its irreligious ecstasy. Occasional spasms of regret and terror aside, you'd kick yourself for not coming along."

--Gemma Files, author of Experimental Film

"Moving through landscapes rendered with a poet's precision, the characters in Michael Wehunt's compelling stories confront deep mysteries of the self and the world. In the process of plumbing the unremembered and the unknown, Wehunt's characters undergo transformations catastrophic and sublime, occasioned and spurred by their growing contact with the hidden portions of themselves and their surroundings. Wehunt skillfully invokes the history of horror fiction and film even as he is at work crafting the genre's future, in one of the more remarkable debuts in recent memory."

--John Langan, author of Sefira and Other Betrayals

"Weird, emotionally complex, Kafkaesque, dread-filled: I might apply all these terms and more to Michael Wehunt's collection Greener Pastures. It's one of the finest debuts I've read in years. Wehunt understands that true strangeness comes out of the personal, and that true horror is what happens during the complex interactions between real human beings. Greener Pastures is outstanding work."

--Steve Rasnic Tem, award-winning author of Deadfall Hotel and Blood Kin

"As though sprung from the forehead of Zeus, Michael Wehunt has come abruptly onto the scene with the seasoned maturity of a veteran. His stories are lighted way-stations in the dark and unnavigable territory between the beautiful and the horrific. If he's this good now, I can't wait to see what he has in store for us in the future."

--Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters

About this edition

• Publisher: Apex Book Company
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1937009548
• ISBN 13: 9781937009540
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 214