The Ammonite Violin & Others

Dust jacket and endpaper illustrations by Richard Kirk.

World Fantasy Award nominee 2011.

In Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Ammonite Violin & Others, one of contemporary dark fantasy’s most bewitching and distinctive voices is back with another banquet of the weird and unexpected. In his introduction, Jeff VanderMeer (City of Saints and Madmen, Finch) writes, “Kiernan creates her own light in this remarkable collection, and shines it on dark places. In doing so, she gives us gritty, lyrical, horrible, beautiful truths.”

In The Ammonite Violin & Others, the author rises to meet the high expectations she set with such collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, A is for Alien, and the World Fantasy Award-nominated To Charles Fort, With Love. Within these pages, you’ll discover a dazzling suite of stories situated on the borderlands between the unspeakbale and the erotic, the grotesque and the sublime. Here are stories of dream and metamorphosis, strange lands and beings existing beyond the veil of death and beyond this earth. Here is a selkie who’s lost her sealskin, a woman with a blackhole in her heart, a fairie girl fallen to the Queen of Decay, the descent of a modern-day Orpheus, and a killer who has fashioned the most exquisite musical instrument from the remains of one of his victims. Here are dreams, nightmares, and worse things yet.

The Ammonite Violin & Others is comprised of stories first published in the subscription only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlin for her most devoted readers. This publication marks the stories' first availability to the general public. The trade edition will contain twenty of these ultra-rare tales, while the limited edition will contain everything in the trade edition, be bound in leather, and include a brand new story published as an accompanying chapbook.

Contents:

• Introduction by Jeff VanderMeer
• Madonna Littoralis
• Orpheus at Mount Pangeum
• Bridle
• For One Who Has Lost Herself
• Ode to Edvard Munch
• The Cryomancer’s Daughter (Murder Ballad No. 3)
• A Child’s Guide to the Hollow Hills
• The Ammonite Violin (Murder Ballad No. 4)
• The Lovesong of Lady Ratteanrufer
• Metamorphosis A
• The Sphinx’s Kiss
• The Voyuer in the House of Glass
• Metamorphosis B
• Skin Game
• The Hole With a Girl In Its Heart
• Outside the Gates of Eden
• In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection
• Anamnesis, or the Sleepless Nights of Léon Spilliaert
• Scene in the Museum (1896)
• The Madam of the Narrow Houses