Genres: Collections, Horror
Publisher: Word Horde
Publication Year: 2023
Format: Trade Paperback
Length: 256 pp
ASIN: B0C3ZLC7J4
ISBN: 9781956252064
From Lambda Literary Award and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Robert Levy comes a debut collection of twelve tales of horror and desire, love and loss. Look for No One Dies from Love at better independent booksellers everywhere, and most online retailers. Copies with signed bookplates are available direct from Word Horde.
A young boy’s father becomes obsessed with interplanetary visitors; an adolescent’s game reveals devastating possible futures; twin siblings receive a visit from an aunt they don’t remember in the wake of their mother’s disappearance; a grieving widow finds herself drawn into a crypt and the companionship of other mourners left behind; a group of teenage girls at summer camp discover something powerful—and hungry—in the woods; a writer reeling from a splintered relationship attends an infamous theatre devoted to macabre spectacle and fear, discovering forbidden desire and malevolent designs…
From Lambda Literary Award and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Robert Levy (The Glittering World) comes debut collection No One Dies from Love: Dark Tales of Loss and Longing, featuring twelve tales of horror and desire, love and loss, including the critically acclaimed novella “Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol.” Featuring an introduction by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Paul Tremblay.
Cover Design by Matthew Revert
Pub Date: May 30, 2023
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-956252-06-4
Format: eBook
ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-75-8
Table of Contents
Introduction by Paul Tremblay
Little Flea, Little Flea
The Closet Game
The Oestridae
The Cenacle
Ceremonials
Conversion
The Rental Sister
My Heart’s Own Desire
Giallo
DST (Fall Back)
The Vault of the Sky, the Face of the Deep
Anaïs Nin at the Grand Guignol
About the Author
ROBERT LEVY is an author of unsettling books, stories, and plays whose work has been seen Off-Broadway. A Harvard graduate subsequently trained as a forensic psychologist, his work has been called “frank and funny” (Time Magazine), “idiosyncratic and disarming” (The New York Times), “ambitious and clever” (Variety), “intimate and disturbing” (Publishers Weekly) and “bloody brave” (the UK’s SFX Magazine).
His novel The Glittering World was published by Gallery/Simon & Schuster and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award as well as the Shirley Jackson Award, and also won an Earphones Award for exceptional audio from Audiofile Magazine. Shorter work has appeared in places like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nightmare, Black Static, The Dark, Shadows & Tall Trees, The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction, and The Best Horror of the Year, among many others.
Robert is a single dad who lives with his children in Brooklyn near a toxic canal, where he is awaiting his mutant powers to develop any day now. He teaches at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing.
Reviews
“Levy delivers a viscerally unsettling collection of 12 horror shorts rooted as much in human psychology as in the fantastical and speculative. […] Levy’s stories are made all the more powerful by his unwillingness to shy away from the illicit. By embracing the taboo with the tools of horror and speculative fiction, he at once demystifies these subjects while imbuing them with a magic of his own. […] The result is a triumph.” —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
“Robert Levy’s No One Dies From Love may well end up being the book of the year for me. There is a frankness, a boldness, and a compassion in these stories that give real weight to the darkness they hold. It’s easy to caricature human pain and vulnerability in service to a horror story, but Levy writes with honesty and depth, and it makes all the difference. I saw some of my own dark corners reflected back to me in this book, and felt the peace that comes from recognition. And that, to me, is what stories are all about.” —Nathan Ballingrud, author of The Strange and North American Lake Monsters
“Robert Levy’s No One Dies From Love is a masterful collection of dark fiction—a consecrated and intimate ceremony of human loss and longing. With sumptuous prose and a keen understanding of how grief reshapes us, it’s impossible to not be enthralled with Levy’s macabre vision.” —Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since Last We Spoke
“No One Dies From Love is one of the most original collections I have read in recent years. Again and again I found myself stunned by Levy’s stories: their depth and range at making the heart expand to encompass the wonders of the world.” —Morgan Talty, National Bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez
“Shocking, erotic, and horrific. Robert Levy proves that, one way or another, love will be the end of us all.” —Priya Sharma, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Ormeshadow