Poes Children, Peter Straub
Poes Children, Peter Straub
3 Rating(s)
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Poe's Children
The New Horror: An Anthology

Author: Peter Straub

Narrator: Various

Unabridged: 43 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/14/2008

Categories: Fiction, Horror


Synopsis

From the incomparable master of horror and suspense comes an electrifying collection of contemporary literary horror, with stories from twenty-five writers representing today’s most talented voices in the genre.

Horror writing is usually associated with formulaic gore, but New Wave horror writers have more in common with the wildly inventive, evocative spookiness of Edgar Allan Poe than with the sometimes-predictable hallmarks of their peers. Showcasing this cutting-edge talent, Poe’s Children now brings the best of the genre’s stories to a wider audience. Each previously published story has been selected by Peter Straub to represent what he thinks is the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades.

Selections range from the early Stephen King psychological thriller “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,” in which an editor confronts an author’s belief that his typewriter is inhabited by supernatural creatures, to “The Man on the Ceiling,” Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem’s award-winning surreal tale of night terrors, woven with daylight fears that haunt a family. Other selections include National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon’s “The Bees”; Peter Straub’s “Little Red’s Tango,” the legend of a music aficionado whose past is as mysterious as the ghostly visitors to his Manhattan apartment; Elizabeth Hand’s visionary and shocking “Cleopatra Brimstone”; Thomas Ligotti’s brilliant, mind-stretching “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”; and “Body,” Brian Evenson’s disturbing twist on correctional facilities.

Crossing boundaries and packed with imaginative chills, Poe’s Children bears all the telltale signs of fearless, addictive fiction.

About The Author

PETER STRAUB is the author of seventeen novels, including Ghost Story and Koko, as well as two collaborations with Stephen King. Winner of eight Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, two World Fantasy Awards, and both a Lifetime Achievement Award and election as a Grand Master from the Horror Writers Association, he lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nandakishore on February 04, 2017

Peter Straub is out to prove a point: horror fiction can be literary. It is not necessarily hack. Edgar Allan Poe wrote macabre fiction (and poetry), and he is considered one of America's classic authors - so why not these new purveyors of nightmares? Well, I agree. For example, nobody in their right......more

Goodreads review by Erika on June 10, 2014

Overall: 3 stars The Bees: 4 stars Cleopatra Brimstone: 4 stars The Man on the Ceiling: 3 stars. The writing of this piece is intentionally obscure, and it can be kind of annoying… but overall, a beautifully written story with a deeper meaning lurking beneath the heavy-handed writing. The Great God Pan:......more

Goodreads review by Joe on January 01, 2021

The cover of Poe's Children features creepy, dismembered dolls, though none of the short stories contained within feature dolls of any kind. The illustration is a joke explained by the editor in the introduction as a play on audience expectation. Dismembered dolls are the sort of thing people expect......more

Goodreads review by Scott on June 17, 2024

The horror genre doesn't often get a lot of respect or recognition, and probably for good reason. There are, admittedly, a lot of piss-poor writers working in the genre, and the genre does tend to follow very demographically-biased trends. There are, however, a lot of really great writers working in......more

Goodreads review by Zach on March 12, 2013

In which Peter Straub sets out to broaden the umbrella of “horror” beyond the stereotypical blood-and-guts sensationalism typically associated with it. He succeeds at this so well that I had a hard time figuring out exactly what made some of these stories fit into the genre at all. Dan Chaon - “The B......more


Quotes

A Washington Post Best Book of the Year

“Revelatory. . . . A remarkably consistent, frequently unsettling book.” —The Washington Post

“Straub is uniquely qualified to hold forth on what makes a good horror story. . . . [He] collects the best scary short stories out there.” —Time