Jesse Bullington

Hegel and Manfried Grossbart may not consider themselves bad men - but death still stalks them through the dark woods of medieval Europe. The year is 1364, and the brothers Grossbart have embarked on a naïve quest for fortune. Descended from a long line of graverobbers, they are determined to follow their family's footsteps to the fabled crypts of Gyptland. To get there, they will have to brave dangerous and unknown lands and keep company with all manner of desperate travelers-merchants, priests, and scoundrels alike. For theirs is a world both familiar and distant; a world of living saints and livelier demons, of monsters and madmen. The Brothers Grossbart are about to discover that all legends have their truths, and worse fates than death await those who would take the red road of villainy.

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

As the witch-pyres of the Spanish Inquisition blanket Renaissance Europe in a moral haze, a young African slave finds herself the unwilling apprentice of an ancient necromancer. Unfortunately, quitting his company proves even more hazardous than remaining his pupil when she is afflicted with a terrible curse. Yet salvation may lie in a mysterious tome her tutor has hidden somewhere on the war-torn continent. She sets out on a seemingly impossible journey to find the book, never suspecting her fate is tied to three strangers: the artist Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, the alchemist Dr. Paracelsus, and a gun-slinging Dutch mercenary. As Manuel paints her macabre story on canvas, plank, and church wall, the young apprentice becomes increasingly aware that death might be the least of her concerns.

The Enterprise of Death

On a stormy night in 1421, the North Sea delivers a devastating blow to Holland: the Saint Elizabeth Flood, a deluge of biblical proportions that drowns hundreds of towns, thousands of people, and forever alters the geography of the Low Countries. Where the factions of the noble Hooks and the merchant Cods waged a literal class war but weeks before, there is now only a nigh-endless expanse of grey water, a desolate inland sea with moldering church spires jutting up like sunken tombstones. For a land already beleaguered by generations of civil war, a worse disaster could scarce be imagined. Yet even disaster can be profitable, for the right sort of individual, and into this flooded realm sail three conspirators: a deranged thug at the edge of madness, a ruthless conman on the cusp of fortune, and a half-feral girl balanced between them. With The Folly of the World, Jesse Bullington has woven an extraordinary new tale of the depraved and the desperate.

The Folly of the World

Four Seasons in The Floating World

Folly of the World

Ramsey Campbell

Beth K. Lewis

The Gothic is the most enduring literary tradition in history, but in recent years friendly ghosts and vegetarian vampires threaten its foundations. The New Gothic is a collection of short stories which revisits the core archetypes of the Gothic—the meandering, secret-filled building; the stranger seeking answers; the black-hearted tyrant—and reminds us not to embrace but to fear the darkness. A dozen tales of terror fill this anthology, including work by Jesse Bullington, SJ Chambers, Richard Dansky, and an original, never-before-seen story from the godfather of modern horror, Ramsey Campbell, among many more.

The New Gothic

Molly Tanzer

What hope has a humble adventurer when faced with a fight against Cthulhu himself? No matter; the true swordsperson cares only for the bite of steel against flesh, whether that flesh be eldritch or more conventional. From the hottest voices in Lovecraftiana comes a collection that will take readers on a journey from ancient Rome to feudal Japan and from Dreamlands to lands that do not have names in any of the tongues of men. Glory awaits! The contributors include: Natania Barron, Eneasz Brodski, Nathan Carson, Michael Cisco, Andrew S. Fuller, A. Scott Glancy, Orrin Grey, Jason Heller, Jonathan L. Howard, John Hornor Jacobs, John Langan, L. Lark, Remy Nakamura, Carlos Orsi, M. K. Sauer, Ben Stewart, E. Catherine Tobler, Jeremiah Tolbert, Laurie Tom, Carrie Vaughn, Wendy N. Wagner, Caleb Wilson

Swords V. Cthulhu

Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart

Jason Miller

Dean Swinford

Mathias Jansson

Sean Moreland

Nathan Meyer

Ben Gwin

Dustin LaValley

Stephen Jansen

Kriscinda Everitt

T. Tranchell

Mary Goff

Michael Riser

Harvey Bainbridge

Despumation champions fiction that explores the diverse themes metal music customarily addresses using language to evoke the feeling of listening to the music. This issue includes stories inspired by Dio, Voivod, Megadeth, Judas Priest, Meshuggah, and Candlemass, plus stories and poems inspired by the metal scene, metal sounds, and metal concepts.

Despumation

Even disaster can yield riches for the right sort of criminal... The great flood killed thousands overnight - turning the towns between the warring cities of Dordrecht and Geertruidenburg into a desolate inland sea. Into this ruined land sail three uneasy conspirators: a ruthless conman, a thug at the edge of madness and a half-feral girl who swims like a fish. Working together they could find fortune beyond reckoning beneath the waves, but the lost souls below will not give up their treasures so easily. And even if these three can survive the dark waters, that's no guarantee they will survive each other.

Jesse Bullington

Books

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