Inspired by the drive-in epics of the 1950s, the stories in This Island Earth marry the exuberance of Eisenhower-era sci-fi movies to nuanced examinations of love, family, fear, and loss―without leaving the robots and ray guns behind.
In this contemporary fantasy, the grieving biographer of a Victorian fantasist finds himself slipping inexorably into the supernatural world that consumed his subject.
Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, Dale Bailey mixes the macabre in with his melancholy, crafting stories that linger long after their reading. He sees a dark world that is growing darker, but he carries with him a light that refuses to go out.
This extraordinary collection runs the gamut from fantasy to horror, from science fiction to heartbreaking reality, speaking in voices, old and young, that brilliantly capture the light and the darkness of their ingeniously imagined worlds. Includes the Nebula Award–nominated novelette, “The Resurrection Man’s Legacy.”
A disgruntled grad student finds a way to get rid of his problems in this “creepy, satiric twist on the campus novel” with an “utterly chilling ending” (Publishers Weekly).
A moment of inattention on a winding roadway in the Smoky Mountains leaves a stranger dead and his accidental killers at the mercy of a possible witness. But the hit-and-run is just the beginning of their problems once they use a key found in the victim’s pocket to open a bus locker—and find a videotape that opens an ever-widening doorway into horror.
A chilling twist on the haunted-house story as five strangers resolve to spend two weeks in an abandoned, high-rise urban housing project that even gang lords and crack dealers avoid.
A West Virginia mining town hides a monstrous secret in this modern masterwork of skin-crawling horror. They say you can’t go home again. Sometimes that advice should be heeded.
Dale Bailey traces the haunted house tale from its origins in English gothic fiction to the paperback potboilers of the present, highlighting the unique significance of the house in the domestic, economic, and social ideologies of our nation. The author concludes that the haunted house has become a powerful and profoundly subversive symbol of everything that has gone nightmarishly awry in the American Dream.
DALE BAILEY is the author of nine books, including This Island Earth: 8 Features from the Drive-In, In the Night Wood, The End of the End of Everything, and The Subterranean Season. His story “Death and Suffrage” was adapted for Showtime’s Masters of Horror television series. His short fiction has been frequently re-printed in best-of-the-year anthologies, including The Best Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best Horror of the Year, and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction. He has won the Shirley Jackson Award and the International Horror Guild Award and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy, Nebula, Locus and Bram Stoker awards. Dale lives in North Carolina with his family.