Things That Never Happened, by Scott Edelman (ebook)

"Edelman's subtle surrealism and simple prose will keep readers engrossed." — Publishers Weekly

Things That Never Happened
by Scott Edelman

Also available as an eBook!

About the Book:
Eight-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated writer Scott Edelman's stories have been called “utterly uncompromising,” “smooth and inviting, colorful and vivid,” and “horror writing at its best”—and after reading his new collection Things That Never Happened, you'll come away agreeing his fiction is “captivating, alarming, astonishing.”

Stories in this collection include:
• "A Judgment Call for Judgment Day” — Journey back to a World War II battlefield where an angel and demon debate the worth of a soldier’s soul
• “Survival of the Fittest” — Travel to the Galapagos Islands with a haunted man who tries to exorcise his past
• “It’s Only a Story" — Celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein in a tale that gives a Stranger Things vibe to that long-ago night when Mary Shelley birthed The Creature
• And many more!

Gathering 13 of Edelman's eeriest tales from a 40-year career, Things That Never Happened truly—as has been said of his writing—“autopsies the mess of the beating human heart.”

Edelman (Tell Me Like You Done Before) delivers a well-constructed collection of 13 realistic tales laced with modest but expertly deployed speculative elements. It's this slight touch of the unusual that gives Edelman's work its charm, as in the collection's standouts: “The Hunger of Empty Vessels,” about a man contending with the dissolution of his family while being stalked by a mysterious stranger, and “The Scariest Story I Know,” the haunting tale of a father telling his son a bedtime story after the death of the boy’s mother in an accident. Recurring themes include deteriorating marriages; abusive, dying, and unfit mothers; and characters with Alzheimer’s disease. Though Edelman's examinations of these heavy topics occasionally tends toward the sentimental and overwrought, when he gets them right his talent is undeniable, as in the powerful “That Perilous Stuff,” about a woman who returns home to care for her hoarder mother at the urging of her enabling brother. Edelman's subtle surrealism and simple prose will keep readers engrossed.
— Publishers Weekly

Scott Edelman has published nearly 100 short stories in magazines such as Analog, The Twilight Zone, Postscripts, Absolute Magnitude, Science Fiction Review and Fantasy Book, and in anthologies such as You, Human, The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Crossroads, MetaHorror, Once Upon a Galaxy, Moon Shots, Mars Probes, Forbidden Planets. His poetry has appeared in Asimov’s, Amazing, Dreams and Nightmares, and others. His most recent short story collection is Tell Me What You Done Before (and Other Stories Written on the Shoulders of Giants), published November 2018 by Lethe Press. What Will Come After, a collection of his zombie fiction, and What We Still Talk About, a collection of his science fiction stories, were both published in 2010. He has been a Stoker Award finalist eight times, in the categories of both Short Story and Long Fiction. Additionally, What Will Come After was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award.

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