Lady Bits (Paperback or Softback)

A troubled mother commits an unspeakable act to banish the demon that lurks in her root cellar. Ghosts from the past won't release their hold on a young woman. A girl in search of a new job as a nanny finds herself in charge of a mysterious package that requires much more care than any child.

Lady Bits collects sixteen tales from Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson award nominated author Kate Jonez that explores the horror nestled in the female heart. Vividly realized protagonists engage with an often-hostile world to deliver justice, lower a vengeance hammer, or to simply revel in evil. Prepare to be unsettled, disturbed, and terrified.

"The female protagonists in Kate Jonez's stories represent an incredible range of occupations and personality types. Here you will encounter housewives and teenagers, con artists, truck drivers, predators, tailors, nannies, college students, desperate mothers, widows, rich socialites, murderers, and scorned lovers. All of them experience a subtle or obvious wrongness in their lives which they struggle to resolve. All are interesting women, evocatively portrayed by an author who has mastered the fine art of character. The richly-detailed narratives range from crime stories to horror to tales which walk that subtle border between psychological anguish and the fantastic. Lady Bits shows off Kate Jonez's impressive range." --Steve Rasnic Tem, author of Everything Is Fine Now, Figures Unseen, and Ubo

"Kate Jonez's masterful fiction is an evocative blend of horror and psychological suspense, whose characters battle monsters born from the darkest recesses of our hearts and minds. The stories in Lady Bits show how rich horror can be when it explores the ghosts that haunt and terrify us the most--ourselves." -- Tim Waggoner, author of They Kill

"Do you think only women bleed? Think again. Try not to cut yourself on this sharp-edged, bloodthirsty collection."--Arinn Dembo, author  of Monsoon and Other Stories

"Kate Jonez is one of the most innovative authors working in contemporary dark fiction today. She is more than horrific, speculative, or transgressive. She takes the heart, uncertainty, and longing that burns within us all and shows us the many ways that these emotions and actions can lead to our transcendence, or our demise. This is a powerful collection of truly original stories." --Richard Thomas, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller nominee

"Kate Jonez is not your typical genre writer. I think she has more than a little in common with Janis Joplin singing the blues. You never just read or listen to either, you experience the story or song. There isn't a typical Kate story, but some share a few characteristics. The main character (narrator) is different, and often knows it, finds herself in an unbearable situation, and deals in more or less special ways. And always there is a literary rather than genre ending. Kate's stories do not just terminate. They have a slingshot effect, the reader realizing the story goes on past the last words. Kate is not just a writer for other writers to read, she is one to emulate. A rare voice."--Gene O'Neiil, The White Plague Chronicles and Entangled Soul (with Chris Marrs)