The Secret Backs of Things

"Christopher Golden is one of the most hard-working, smartest, and most talented writers of his generation, and his books are so good and so involving that they really ought to sell in huge numbers. Everything he writes glows with imagination."
— Peter Straub, author of Pork Pie Hat and The Talisman (with Stephen King)

"These chillingly realized glimpses of the abyss are not for the faint of heart."
— Publishers Weekly

The Secret Backs of Things
by Christopher Golden

Introduction by Tim Lebbon

About the Book:
From the author of Wildwood Road, The Ferryman, and Mind the Gap (with Tim Lebbon), comes Christopher Golden's first-ever collection of short stories.

The Secret Backs of Things takes the readers into a realm rich with legends, folklore and myths, while still finding a place for some modern tales and even a couple Hellboy stories:

A man learns that it would have been better to have not asked a beautiful woman why her body is covered with mysterious tattoos in “The Art of the Deal.”

A young boy accidentally finds out about his secret power when a childhood game goes too far in “Pa-Kow.”

A teenager finally understands why she always felt so alive running barefoot through the woods in “The Mournful Cry of Owls.”

And in the title story, "The Secret Backs of Things," the protagonist discovers that even if your secrets are never told, you can't always keep them from everyone...

In addition to all the new stories in the collection, readers will find a reprint of "The Shell Collector," long out of print and originally published as part of the acclaimed Cemetery Dance Novella Series.

Filled with illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne, The Secret Backs of Things is Christopher Golden at his best. Chilling, harrowing and, at times, more than slightly unsettling, this collection is sure to excite and entertain longtime Golden fans and new readers alike.

"These chillingly realized glimpses of the abyss are not for the faint of heart."
— Publishers Weekly

"Carpet sharks. The Wild Hunt. Human skin framed as a canvas in a painting. Really old Scottish manors with very odd monsters. The Norns. Hellboy. And that's but a sampling of the things that are to be found in this massive collection of short fiction from Christopher Golden, one of the best contemporary writers of both dark fantasy and good old-fashioned horror... He's certainly as good as Stephen King, a rare ability among horror writers these days."
— Cat Eldridge, The Green Man Review

Table of Contents:
Making Myths: An Introduction by Tim Lebbon
The Art of the Deal
Runaway
Wall to Wall
Pyre
The Nuckelavee
The Last Straw
Dead Flies on My Shoulder
One
Venus and Mars
Pa-Kow
Lament for the Gunwitch
The Urge
Burning Questions
The Shell Collector
Facets of Solitaire
The Secret Backs of Things
The Mournful Cry of Owls

Christopher Golden is the award-winning, bestselling author of such novels as Wildwood Road, The Boys are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, Of Saints and Shadows, and the Body of Evidence series of teen thrillers.

Working with actress/writer/director Amber Benson, he co-created and co-wrote Ghosts of Albion, an animated supernatural drama for BBC online, from which they created the book series of the same name.

With Thomas E. Sniegoski, he is the co-author of the dark fantasy series The Menagerie as well as the young readers fantasy series OutCast, which was recently acquired by Universal Pictures.

Golden and Sniegoski also wrote the graphic novel BPRD: Hollow Earth, a spinoff from the fan favorite comic book series Hellboy. Golden authored the original Hellboy novels, The Lost Army and The Bones of Giants, and edited two Hellboy short story anthologies.

Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. He graduated from Tufts University.

There are more than eight million copies of his books in print.

More projects with Cemetery Dance Publications are in the works.

Published in two states:
• Hardcover Limited Edition of 1000 copies signed by the author, bound in full-cloth and Smyth sewn ($40)
• Traycased Lettered Edition of 52 signed and lettered copies bound in leather with a satin ribbon page marker ($175)

Limited Edition is Sold Out / Out of Print!

The deluxe Lettered Edition of this book is currently with our traycase manufacturer who will begin building the traycases as he catches up on the projects we've sent him. We will update this page as the Lettered Edition progresses through production. Thank you for your patience.