Thin Places - by Kay Chronister (Paperback)

About the Book

"A not-quite-human proprietor menaces guests at a hotel on the edge of a swamp. A composer visits a remote Slavic village where villagers perform soundless songs that accompany violent sacrifices. Four reclusive women conjour children out of unconventional materials in an unnerving mansion. The arrival of a lighthouse-keeper's daughter portends disaster for an insular island community with bizarre traditions. With transcendent prose that celebrates her hypnotic and humane vision of the strange and supernatural, Kay Chronister weaves a dark tapestry of love, grief, death, and the exquisite pain and joy of life on the periphery of the familiar. The fifteen stories collected here, chronicle the lives of powerful women and children, wicked witches and demons, cursed artists and overlooked communities"--

Book Synopsis

A finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, Thin Places is a gothic and atmospheric collection from the national bestselling author of The Bog Wife. This beautiful reissue includes four additional stories.

A not-quite-human proprietor menaces guests at a hotel on the edge of a swamp. A composer visits a remote Slavic village where villagers perform soundless songs that accompany violent sacrifices. Four reclusive women conjour children out of unconventional materials in an unnerving mansion. The arrival of a lighthouse-keeper's daughter portends disaster for an insular island community with bizarre traditions.

With transcendent prose that celebrates her hypnotic and humane vision of the strange and supernatural, Kay Chronister weaves a dark tapestry of love, grief, death, and the exquisite pain and joy of life on the periphery of the familiar. The fifteen stories collected here, chronicle the lives of powerful women and children, wicked witches and demons, cursed artists and overlooked communities. Thin Places is a perfect companion to Chronister's national bestselling novel The Bog Wife and ideally suited for readers of Shirley Jackson and Carmen Maria Machado.

Review Quotes

A Shirley Jackson Award Finalist
Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year

"Thin Places is the ideal book to kick off your Halloween season. In this reissue from Shirley Jackson Award-finalist and bestselling author of The Bog Wife, this sinisterly serene collection will lure you in with its beautiful prose and trap you in a world of the supernatural. From a haunted hotel at the edge of a swamp to a coming apocalypse for an insular island community, Kay Chronister's stories consistently strike at the heart of the emotional truths of love and death while also sending us into a world tilted into deep surrealness. This is a magical collection you don't want to miss." --Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

"Grim but effervescent." --Publishers Weekly

"A powerful new voice in horror." --Locus Magazine

"Chronister's writing is beautiful, and her supernatural and atmospheric stories about lighthouse keepers, composers in remote villages, and swamp hoteliers have a little bit of Ghibli whimsy in places. But there is a clinging dread and mystery in these stories that will stay with you." --James Folta, Literary Hub

About the Author

KAY CHRONISTER is the author of The Bog Wife and Desert Creatures. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Dark, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. She lives outside of Philadelphia.