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In the Night Wood

World Fantasy Award Finalist, Novel

Shirley Jackson Award Finalist, Novel

Locus Award Finalist, Horror Novel

Manly Wade Wellman Award Finalist

Locus Recommended Reading List

Bailey’s eerie prose centers readers firmly and successfully in his seductive and frightening night wood. – Publisher’s Weekly

Bailey’s novel is both a resonant tale of literary obsession and a story of old myths rising violently to the surface of an otherwise rational world. And it largely succeeds at both: its central characters are well-drawn, and its more uncanny aspects never overwhelm the emotional connections Bailey has established throughout the book. – Tor.com

In the Night Wood is an affecting, weighty, and haunting book about the shackles of grief. – Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World

Luminously written, literate, absorbing, transporting, and all-around excellent. I couldn’t put it down. – Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club

Featuring some of the ambiance of Robert Holdstock’s pagan fantasies, a bit of the flavor of Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time, and simpatico resonance with the similarly understated and involving fantasies of Graham Joyce, Bailey’s book proves that the shelves of libraries are truly congruent with the hidden chambers of the human heart. – Asimov’s Science Fiction

A modern gothic horror done right. – Kirkus Reviews

In the Night Wood is ultimately a satisfying retelling of horror’s foundational text: the haunted house story. – The Toronto Star

… The novel is a beautifully crafted tale of love, loss, and redemption. – Geeks of Doom

A compelling and atmospheric Gothic thriller, In the Night Wood reveals the chilling power of myth and memory. – Fantastic Fiction

And this is the emotional tension of In the Night Wood: the trouble of living inside the eternal recurrence, paralyzed with self-loathing and regret. If you fall far short of loving your fate, can you at least come to accept it? It’s a good question, perennial in Western philosophy, and an apt theme to weave into the heightened emotional drama of gothic storytelling. – Pop Matters

Beautiful, heartbreaking, and inspiring. Once again, Dale Bailey proves he’s among the best writers we have. – Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters

In the Night Wood is a terrific thriller, with literary heft besides. – Lewis Shiner, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Glimpses

Dale Bailey manages to bring all the mythic tropes to fresh life with his evocative prose, psychological insight, and a powerful narrative of growing menace that defies you to put it down before the end. – Lisa Tuttle, author of Lost Futures and The Silver Bough

Elegantly written, In the Night Wood paints a moody portrait of a marriage threatened by betrayal and loss… By the time you realize where the story is going, he’s already hooked you: you couldn’t escape even if you wanted to. – Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses

Hauntingly written and compellingly structured, Dale Bailey’s novel pulls you irresistibly along to an ending of hard-won understanding and uneasy release. –  Michael Bishop, Nebula-winning author of Other Arms Reach Out to Me 

In the Night Wood is a wonder: literary, intriguingly supernatural, and all too human. – Molly Tanzer, author of Creatures of Will and Temper and Vermilion

A heady combination of natural and supernatural influences… create resonance and urgency in a story about the complex workings of the human heart. – S. P. Miskowski, author of I Wish I Was Like You

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The End of the End of Everything:  Stories

Throughout all these fictions, however varied their subject matter or atmosphere, Bailey exhibits his compassion for and comprehension of his characters, his inerrant sense of choosing just the right words, and his determination to make all the matter of fantastika over afresh. Such a book makes one hope that our genre still has a future. – Locus

Every story . . . is a leap off the cliff. Bailey chooses his cliffs with care, reimagining standard science fiction, fantasy, and horror themes with marvelous physicality, quiet compassion for his characters, and language whose sharpness we barely feel till we look to see blood flowing from the cut. – The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

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The Subterranean Season

Bailey takes on every aspect of campus life with razor-sharp glee, especially the all-too-common elevation of sports over academics, and the unforgiving hierarchy of academia. Alex’s metamorphosis, from basically decent to completely unhinged, is both terrifying and fascinating, and the utterly chilling ending is nothing less than fitting. – Publisher’s Weekly

If tension and existential dread are your thing, you’ll feel The Subterranean Season cut through you like a rusty meat cleaver. – Dead End Follies