Books

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See the Publishers Weekly Steve Rasnic Tem page at Steve Tem at PW

See also the Steve Rasnic Tem author page on Amazon.

WHICH COLLECTION SHOULD I BUY?

Note: most of these are also available from B&N, Smashwords, and other online retailers.

“Where can I get your latest collection?” My newest horror collection Everyday Horrors is available online from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Thanatrauma: Stories is available from Amazon and other online retailers in various formats: https://www.valancourtbooks.com/thanatrauma-2021.html?fbclid=IwAR3ecNJT72sgMN8qw_1xKVEeIFJzd0pZs6qfRSUkCh0RUduBAvv2AXZa5xU. The Night Doctor & Other Tales is available in paperback or as an ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VK895WB

“Where can I read your Appalachian fiction?” Scarecrows: Appalachian Tales collects the best of my Appalachian stories in a variety of genres. Available in ebook or paperback. https://www.amazon.com/Scarecrows-Appalachian-Steve-Rasnic-Tem/dp/1637891717/

“I’ve read none/very little of your fiction. Where’s a good place to start?” Figures Unseen: Selected Stories from Valancourt Books features 2-3 stories selected from each of my collections. This is the book I point to when folks ask me what I do. http://www.valancourtbooks.com/figures-unseen-2018.html

“Where can I get a lot of your horror fiction at a bargain price?” Out of the Dark: A Storybook of Horrors. 73 stories organized thematically. https://www.amazon.com/Out-Dark-Steve-Rasnic-Tem-ebook/dp/B07B2R7S35/

“I prefer the experimental, the bizarre, and the absurd.” For those readers I have Onion Songs. “a perfect balance between the bizarre and the straight-forward” PW starred review. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WQJXF2K/

“I prefer fantasy fiction, stories which aren’t that scary.” The Harvest Child & Other Fantasies collects the best of my fantasy fiction. https://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Child-Other-Fantasies/dp/1949914577/

“Do you have a YA collection for my teen/preteen?” The stories in Everything Is Fine Now are suitable for people of all ages.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZRQSWL9

“What about science fiction?” My science fiction collection is Twember. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GHTL1LK/

“What about your collaborations with Melanie Tem?” Those are collected in In Concert: Tales of the Fantastic. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007OZU95U/

“I prefer ‘slipstream’ fiction.” My book Celestial Inventories focuses on that sub-genre. https://www.amazon.com/Celestial-Inventories-Steve-Rasnic-Tem-ebook/dp/B082LQ6Q2J/

“Is there a collection of your early work?” My collections City Fishing and Absent Company collect the best of my earlier stories. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007S6SHMM/ and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MRPKTAM/

“I love traditional ghost stories.” I do too! My collection Here with the Shadows from Swan River honors that tradition. http://www.swanriverpress.ie/shadows.html.

Or go here for the ebook: https://www.amazon.com/Here-Shadows-Steve-Rasnic-Tem-ebook/dp/B081GD9916/

“What about noir/crime fiction?” Rough Justice: Tales of  Crimes & Deception collects almost all my noir/crime fiction. https://www.amazon.com/Rough-Justice-Tales-Crime-Deception/dp/1637891687/

Fans of my short fiction may also like my The Book of Days, a kind of literary sampler quilt consisting of a short story told each day by a man trying to talk himself back to sanity. https://www.amazon.com/Book-Days-Steve-Rasnic-Tem-ebook/dp/B0042RV8LW/

THANATRAUMA: Stories

“All my life I’ve dreamed of the dead.”

Thanatrauma: the dread of it erodes you, the shadows waiting at the end, the impending conclusion, the troubling dream from which you will not wake.

These 21 stories – four published here for the first time – explore some of our fundamental fears: death, loss, grief, and aging. In “Reflections in Black,” a man takes a phantasmagoric Halloween journey in search of a former love. In “The Parts Man,” a man enters a desperate contract with a sinister entity in a long, vintage automobile. The darkly beautiful “The Dead Outside My Door” is a haunting post-apocalyptic tale unlike any you’ve ever read. Other offerings include “Whatever You Want,” in which a Christmas wish has terrible consequences; “Torn,” a bizarre vision of a highly personalized hell; and “The Way Station,” a tribute to the legendary Stefan Grabinski. Also featured is a special bonus, “August Freeze,” from the lost, undistributed Winter 1985 issue of Weird Tales.

https://www.valancourtbooks.com/thanatrauma-2021.html

THE NIGHT DOCTOR

And Other Tales

THE NIGHT DOCTOR AND OTHER TALES recently went out of print in hardcover from Centipede Press. But you can now get new paperback and ebook editions through Amazon. 25 stories including 2 originals. Purchase here: https://www.amazon.com/Night-Doctor-Other-Tales/dp/1637897871/

Also available from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1137613

The Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-doctor-and-other-tales-steve-rasnic-tem/1141224558?ean=2940160858890

And Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-night-doctor-and-other-tales

You can view a YouTube video of Steve reading the title story here.

Publishers Weekly starred review: “’Sometimes it takes all our effort to keep the anxiety of simply being human at bay’ … Tem treads a fine line between the weird and the horrific in these stories, and they are memorable for their subtle power and insidious eeriness. This haunting collection is the perfect Halloween accompaniment.”

John Boden at Ginger Nuts of Horror: “Every story in this collection is marvelous. All of them emotionally heavy and steeped in themes of loss, regret, grief (triple helpings on that one) and despair. All painted in lush realistically thick strokes and colors. All of them masterpieces.”

Char’s Horror Corner: “yet another excellent collection from the outstanding literary mind of Steve Rasnic Tem. Let him invite you – entice you, even -but don’t expect to get too comfortable settling in, because the specialty here is exactly the opposite: UNSETTLING! My highest recommendation-especially to fans of the weird tales!”

THE HARVEST CHILD AND OTHER FANTASIES

THE HARVEST CHILD And Other Fantasies is a massive collection of the wide range of Steve Rasnic Tem’s fantasy tales. These 39 stories include sword & sorcery sagas, chronicles of fairies, elves, witches, wizards, magical creatures, Robin Hood, funny fantasy, and a smattering of science fantasy, as well as some uncollected dark fantasy tales which emphasize the fantasy over the horror. None have appeared in his previous collections. These fictions originally appeared in both major markets and hard-to-find small magazines. Just a sampling of sources: After Hours, Paradox, Asimov’s, Dragon Magazine, Elsewhere, Infinite Loop, New Frontiers, Jabberwocky, Chrysalis, Grue, Mythellany, Fantasy Book, Extro, Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Order the paperback from Amazon.

Order the ebook from Amazon.

Order from Smashwords.

Order from Barnes and Noble.

THE MASK SHOP OF DOCTOR BLAACK

“A light, enjoyable horror story, with just the right amount of creepiness for younger readers.” — Kirkus Reviews

Now available for pre-order! The new middle-grade novel about Halloween from Steve Rasnic Tem.

Fall is Laura’s favorite time of year, but this autumn, things are different. She’s a teenager now, and the season brings new changes and challenges. Laura’s decided she’s too old for trick-or-treating and wants a more grown-up Halloween experience with her friends. Unfortunately for Laura, her parents tell her she has to take her little brother, Trevor, out trick-or-treating first. When they go shopping for Halloween costumes, they stumble upon a very strange shop and its even stranger proprietor. When Trevor tries on the wrong mask, the consequences are exciting…and dangerous.

Written by Bram Stoker-, International Horror Guild-, World Fantasy-, British Fantasy Award-winner, Steve Rasnic Tem

Available in hardback, paperback and eBook.

Order from Hex Publishers.

FIGURES UNSEEN

“An incredible collection.” – Toronto Star

In the worlds of Steve Rasnic Tem, a father takes his son “fishing” in the deepest part of downtown, flayed rabbits visit a suburban back yard, a man is haunted by a surrealistic nightmare of crutches, a father is unable to rescue his son from a nightmare of trees, a bereaved man transforms memories of his wife into performance art, great moving cliffs of detritus randomly prowl the world, a seemingly pointless life finds final expression in bits of folded paper, a nuclear holocaust brings about a new mythology, an isolated man discovers he’s part of a terrifying community, a photographer discovers the unexpected in the faces of dead children, and a couple’s aging dismantles reality.

Winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards, Tem has earned a reputation as one of the finest and most original short fiction writers of our time, blending elements of horror, dark fantasy, science fiction, and surreal nightmare into a genre uniquely his own. This new volume collects for the first time 35 of Tem’s best tales, selected by the author, and includes an introduction by Simon Strantzas.

“It’s a masterful collection. Story after story grabs you from the first sentence or image, shoehorns you effortlessly into familiar places you’ve never been, allows you into another life as it’s coming apart or, perhaps, just coming to rest. These are sensuous tales, with gorgeously worked language and cadences. They breathe. Their hearts beat soundly beneath your own…The stories of Figures Unseen shimmer with beauty, with felt reality, and with the mysteries forever at the heart of all our lives.” – James Sallis, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

“Simply Outstanding!” – Char’s Horror Corner

“Tem’s work in mixing genres has been textbook ‘weird fiction’ since before the term gained popularity. It would be foolish to miss this volume.” – Simon Strantzas

“Figures Unseen: Selected Stories, the latest collection by Steve Rasnic Tem, is a master-class in weird fiction.” – Nerdgoblin

“Tem’s observations and renderings of the human condition feel timeless, with their keen insight coaxed through surreal horror.”— Carson Winter, Signal Horizon

“His work …. will haunt your imagination and your heart in equal measure, and it both expands and defines the genre.”—Adam Mills, The Weird Fiction Review

Available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and Audible audiobook.

Purchase it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

  EVERYTHING IS FINE NOW

In this all ages collection award-winning horror author Steve Rasnic Tem showcases a variety of ghosts and other creatures aiming to keep you up all night with the lights on. Read about the two best friends chased by a strangely familiar figure. Or the teenager who woke up one morning with fur sprouting from every nook and cranny on his body. Or the fellow from a poor family who has to take care of both his little sister and his crazy mom whose magical powers only make things worse. Or an old man who finally tells his grandson the terrible thing that makes their crops grow. Or the mechanic who keeps his cars running on oil, gasoline, blood, and broken bones. The stories in Everything Is Fine Now range from subtle supernatural tales to the legends you might hear sitting by a campfire.

“Some sheer literary classics in this book.” – Des Lewis Reviews

Order from Amazon.

UBO

Daniel is trapped in Ubo. He has no idea how long he has been imprisoned there by the roaches. Every resident has a similar memory of the journey to Ubo: a dream of dry, chitinous wings crossing the moon, the gigantic insects dropping swiftly over the houses of the neighborhood, passing through walls and windows as if by magic, or science. The creatures, like a deck of baroquely ornamented cards, fanning themselves from one hidden world into the next. And now each day they force Daniel to play a different figure from humanity’s violent history, from a frenzied Jack the Ripper to a stumbling and confused Stalin to a self-proclaimed god executing survivors atop the ruins of the world. The scenarios mutate day after day in this camp somewhere beyond the rules of time. As skies burn and prisoners go mad, identities dissolve as the experiments evolve, and no one can foretell their mysterious end.

“Steve Rasnic Tem’s UBO is unlike any of the other novels in this group, a nightmarish fantasy in which the protagonist is abducted from his bed by monstrous insects and brought to a world where he is forced to inhabit the consciousnesses of history’s great villains. An exploration of the problem of (human) evil, Tem’s narrative cuts to the bone with the brute efficiency of a meat cleaver; it’s a reminder of his continuing ambition as a writer, decades into a career whose achievement is already considerable.” – John Langan in Locus

Locus essay “The Long Gestation Period of Ubo”: http://locusmag.com/2017/01/steve-rasnic-tem-guest-post-the-long-gestation-period-of-ubo/

Purchase it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble …

Or on the Simon & Schuster catalog page, which also allows you to order directly from Books-A-Million and Indiebound.

BLOOD KIN

Winner of the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Novel

Steve Rasnic Tem’s Blood Kin is pure Southern Gothic with a sharp left turn into horror. The influences streaming through this hybrid include William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, Cormac McCarthy, Fred Chappell, Manley Wade Wellman, and the mountains and hollows of the author’s southern Appalachian childhood. Alternating between the 1930s and the present day, this dark vision of ghosts, witchcraft, secret powers, snake-handling, kudzu, Melungeons, and the Great Depression is told from the dual points of view of Michael Gibson and his grandmother Sadie. Michael has retreated from the world to the quiet Appalachian home of his mysterious mixed race forebears to take care of his grandmother–old and sickly but with an important story to tell about growing up poor while bedeviled by a snake-handling uncle and empathic powers she but barely understands. In a field not far from the family home lies an iron-bound crate buried under kudzu vine. Michael understands that hidden inside that crate is something which will cause the deaths of everyone he knows if he does not understand her story well enough.

“With one story taking the strain whenever the other encounters an obstacle, this two-headed snake of a tale is superbly structured and gracefully paced, whilst the plot proves almost unstoppable. If Justified followed the fortunes of a little girl and a perverted preacher rather than Raylan Givens and his brother from another mother… if it turned on real human horror rather than revolvers at dawn… well. Said show might not make for the closest of touchstones, no, but it and Blood Kin share a gen-you-wine Southern fried flavour, not to mention a knack with characters and narrative, both of which Tem imbues with depth and tremendous texture.

It’s a bloody good book, to be sure, but be warned: Blood Kin is brutal and gruesome too.” — Niall Alexander at Tor.com

“The word ‘master’ is absurdly overused in book reviews, but in this case it’s entirely appropriate. Steve Rasnic Tem is the kind of writer other writers want to be, and Blood Kin is a masterful example of his craft. ” — Gary McMahon at This Is Horror.com

“Blood Kin is the horror of 2014 as far as I’m concerned.” — Mass Movement Magazine

Order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Indie Bound.

DEADFALL HOTEL

Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury and combining the atmosphere of Edward Gorey with the phantasmagoric richness of setting found in Mervyn Peake, Deadfall Hotel guides you through a season spent in the ultimate haunted hotel. Christopher Fowler calls it “eerie, disturbing and yet strangely touching.” Told through the story of a widower who takes the job of manager at a remote hotel where the guests are not quite like you and me, accompanied by his daughter and the ghost of his wife, Deadfall Hotel chronicles what happens when nightmares seek a place of sanctuary, where werewolves and vampires, cults and creatures which cannot be named take their holiday. A product of over twenty years of work, this literary exploration of the roots of horror in the collective unconscious may be the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy award-winning author’s finest creation to date

The Deadfall Hotel is where our nightmares go, it’s where the dead pause to rest between worlds, and it’s where Richard Carter and his daughter Serena go to rediscover life–if the things at the hotel don’t kill them first.

Think of it as the vacation resort of the collective unconscious.

With the powerful prose that has earned him awards and accolades, Steve Rasnic Tem explores the roots of fear and society’s fascination with things horrific, using the many-layered metaphor of the Deadfall Hotel. Drawing inspiration from literary touchstones John Gardner and Peter Straub, Tem elegantly delves into the dark corners of the human spirit. There he finds not only our fears, but ultimately our hopes.

Order from Amazon.

“…just when you think you’ve found the lay of the land in this most rich and fertile of imaginative plains, and you’re thrown a twist or turn, or simple line of speech masquerading as so much more. Just when you think you’ve nailed a certain style or emotion in the text and again it buckles and surprises.”- Spooky Reads

“Deadfall Hotel is everything a horror novel should be. Steve Rasnic Tem is at the height of his powers with this effort. If you’re a fan of horror, the weird, or just plain old great storytelling, give Deadfall Hotel a read. You won’t regret it.” FEARnet

“This is no ordinary novel. It is not a comfortable read and it is incredibly surreal. However, it is a book that must be read.” Terror Tree

“A dark and moving story of love, loss and change, with a posse of horror kittens thrown into the mix.” The Guardian

“Steve Rasnic Tem has created a strange and wonderful world, filled with the curious and the marvelous…as much a place of joy as it is of sorrow, something [he] captures brilliantly in this extraordinary novel.” — Maureen Kincaid Speller in zone-sf.com

IN THE LOVECRAFT MUSEUM

Years ago Jamie’s young son disappeared while they were vacationing in England. Now Jamie’s mysterious British pen pal (and founder of the British Lovecraft Appreciation Society) has invited him across the ocean to visit a fabulous museum devoted to H. P. Lovecraft recently erected in the countryside outside London. But from the moment the plane touches down he finds himself in a country transformed in ways both subtle and profound. And could that young man glimpsed in the distance, apprehended in fragments and hints, possibly be his long lost child?

Finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award.

Order from Amazon.

HERE WITH THE SHADOWS

These stories by award-winning author Steve Rasnic Tem drag from the darkness ghosts that haunt us all. Between these covers lurk the spectres of grief, loss, and loneliness: a man discovers he is far from alone in his empty home, a forlorn wife is gifted with an unusual child, a contractor contemplates the sad message left by a grieving father, a blind woman discovers a spiritual manifestation at the edge of a forest, a spectral presence appears in a lonesome Colorado wheat field . . . Here with the Shadows is a volume of supernatural impressions and quiet vacancies, and in each story Tem reminds us that sometimes only a whisper separates us from the eternal.

“Taken together, these stories demonstrate why a neglected, uncommercial literary discipline is important. As many have observed, all novels are flawed to some extent, but it is possible to produce a perfect short story. Some of those perfect stories are here.” – The Supernatural Tales Blog

Order from Swan River Press.

TWEMBER

Steve’s first all science fiction short story collection, Twember is volume 7 in the NewCon Press Imaginings series. 11 stories including 2 originals. Editions include a signed limited hardcover and a Kindle ebook.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction
2. A Letter from the Emperor
3. Twember
4. The Day Before the Day Before
5. Pathetic Fallacy
6. Forward
7. Visitors
8. Cubs
9. Forty-three Thousand Sunsets
10. Ephemera
11. At Play In The Fields
12. The Long Afternoon of the Human Race

Order the hardover from NewCon Press or the Kindle version from Amazon US or Amazon UK.

Exploring Dark Short Fiction #1: A Primer to Steve Rasnic Tem

Eric Guignard, editor

For over four decades, Steve Rasnic Tem has been an acclaimed author of horror, weird, and sentimental fiction. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as “A perfect balance between the bizarre and the straight-forward” and Library Journal as “One of the most distinctive voices in imaginative literature,” Steve Rasnic Tem has been read and cherished the world over for his affecting, genre-crossing tales. Dark Moon Books and editor Eric J. Guignard bring you this introduction to his work, the first in a series of primers exploring modern masters of literary dark short fiction. Herein is a chance to discover—or learn more of—the rich voice of Steve Rasnic Tem, as beautifully illustrated by artist Michelle Prebich. Included within these pages are: • Six short stories, one written exclusively for this book • Author interview • Complete bibliography • Academic commentary by Michael Arnzen, PhD (former humanities chair and professor of the year, Seton Hill University) … and more!

Order from Amazon.