Kissing Carrion, Gemma Files
Kissing Carrion, Gemma Files
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Kissing Carrion

Author: Gemma Files

Narrator: Natasha Soudek, Meghan Kelly, Andrew Eiden, Xe Sands, Paul Woodson, Neil Hellegers, Chelsea Stephens

Unabridged: 9 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/08/2022


Synopsis

The first horror story collection from the author of Experimental Film, “one of the most powerful and unique voices in weird fiction today” (Paul Tremblay, award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts)These seventeen tales take listeners into the uniquely twisted mind of “one of Canada’s most promising new horror writers” (Publishers Weekly). From a live necrophilia show starring reanimated corpses to a confrontation between a security guard and inhuman squatters, from who can be found at an all-night laundromat to what lies in wait at the bottom of the sea, from undead addictions to all-consuming obsessions, Kissing Carrion is “a journey through some of the most beautifully rendered visions of darkness and death to be published this past year” (SF Reader).

About Gemma Files

Gemma Files, a former film critic, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher, has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work; two chapbooks of speculative poetry; the “weird western” Hexslinger series; a story-cycle; and the standalone novel Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst Award for Best Adult Novel.

About Natasha Soudek

If you've watched TV at all in the past ten years, you've definitely seen her face and heard her voice countless times in any number of wildly successful national, global, and Super Bowl commercials, as well as playing the first blond Vulcan in Star Trek history. The daughter of two English professors, Natasha Soudek was raised in the South, speaks native German, lived in Berlin and Vienna, and finally settled in the Lower East Side of New York City as a teenager. After honing her stage presence by studying acting and playing hundreds of sold-out live music shows (singing and playing bass), she moved to LA to record with Channel/DreamWorks and act on TV. Favored on KCRW, Chris Douridas compared her voice and songwriting to the Beatles' Let it Be in meaning and soulfulness . . . qualities that translate especially well into her career as an audiobook narrator. Her voice is as distinct and memorable as the range of characters she's played on-screen, which gives listeners an immediate familiarity to connect to, along with a warmth and intimacy that spans and uplifts any genre.

About Meghan Kelly

After ten years of being on the "other side of the business" as a franchised talent agent, Meghan Kelly decided to pursue her own performance aspirations. She now works full-time as a narrator, voice-over artist, and singer. Meghan, a proud member of SAG/AFTRA, is a versatile actress who draws from a huge emotional pool to bring a variety of characters to life in the 300-plus titles she has narrated. She specializes in bringing the emotional truth to every story. Meghan's sound: She can be warm and friendly, young and sassy, flighty and ditsy, mature and professional, and of course sultry and sexy! She is very good with taking direction and doing a read several different ways.

About Andrew Eiden

Andrew Eiden is an actor and winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award for narration. He has been acting since the age of four, working at regional theaters, in national commercials, and on numerous television shows.

About Xe Sands

Xe Sands has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance, and visual art, including recordings of the Nightwalkers series from Jaquelyn Frank. She has received several honors, including AudioFile Earphones Awards and a coveted Audie Award, and she was named Favorite Debut Romance Narrator of 2011 in the Romance Audiobooks poll.

About Paul Woodson

Paul Woodson has won SOVAS & Earphones awards, and has recorded close to 350 audiobooks in many different genres—including romance, fiction, history, biography, and mystery—in American and British accents—and received his BFA in acting at Boston University. In his theater days, he worked in many NYC shows, toured the USA and Europe, and starred in NYC as Vincent van Gogh in the sung-through, OOBR Award–winning musical Vincent. He enjoys backpacking the Appalachian Trail and visiting national parks in his spare time. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA.

About Neil Hellegers

Neil Hellegers grew up in New Jersey and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BA in theater arts and a minor in psychology before getting an MFA in acting from the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. He moved to New York City in 2003 and, since then, has made a career of theatrical performance, percussion, theater education, and audiobook narration. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

About Chelsea Stephens

Chelsea Stephens is an experienced voice actor with a talent for mystery, sci-fi, and YA novels. She won an AudioFile Earphones Award for her narration of Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter. She has a longtime love and appreciation for the performing arts, with experience in onstage acting, singing, and voice-over. Her love for reading books and the pursuit of the story led her to narration. She enjoys unfolding characters and bringing listeners into new worlds.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tom on September 13, 2020

Plague Review 21: Kissing Carrion by Gemma Files The 1990s. The decade the horror boom died. The Splatterpunks have disbanded, the skeleton covers have disappeared, and King and Co. are writing (ahem) "thrillers" to satiate the horror-weary masses. Enter the Dell Abyss authors, a group of word slin......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on August 06, 2007

Amazing, visually stunning and horrifyingly perverse. Pretty much perfect.......more

Goodreads review by Kate on May 21, 2012

Another interesting mix of stories that did nothing for me and stories I absolutely adored. Extra star for the title story which is the first thing in ages to have genuinely disturbed me to the point that I was reading it through fingers splayed over my face in horror.......more

Goodreads review by Sheila on April 11, 2024

4 stars--I really liked it. The title of this collection is literal--there's a lot of necrophilia, monsters (and human monsters), debauchery, transgressions, etc.. But the stories sing despite (because of?) their depravity. My favorites of the collection: Kissing Carrion: The revenge of an abused corp......more

Goodreads review by clumsyplankton on September 21, 2023

A diverse mix of stories. Some were a bit hit and miss for me but the vast majority were a good read......more


Quotes

“The recent republication of Gemma Files’s first two collections of short fiction, Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, was a reminder of how long and how well she has been writing.” Locus, praise for the author