Read 2020 - 38 - For Those Who Dream Monsters by Anna Taborska

She stood in the mist and at the bottom of the old woman's field

looking at me with eyes of death and sorrow.

For Those Who Dream Monsters, a collection of stories by Anna Taborska, is wonderfully illustrated by Reggie Oliver, who also provides the introduction to the collection. There's fantastic cover art by Steve Upham, This copy of For Those Who Dream Monsters is signed by all three to my Bestwick.

The collection opens with the brutal Schrodinger's Human. A blood-thirsty tale of an unusual serial killer. If you didn't already mistrust cats, you will by the end of the story.

In the much lauded Little Pig a prospective fiancee meets his girlfriend's grandmother at the airport, but this story heads back in time to a place of wolves and hunger and sacrifice. Cut! is a humorous account of a psychopath on a film set.

There's A Tale of Two Sisters, which is a fairy tale in two parts. The ghostly and desperately sad The Girl in the Blue Coat. Underbelly hurt. A reluctant deal to take away the pain of cancer. A story of how, extreme pain and suffering can change who you are fundamentally.

Taborska's knives are sharp and she doesn't flinch when making the deepest cuts. A devastatingly brutal collection.

The Mute Swan

I am delighted to announce that my story The Mute Swan set in my lovely town of Wallasey and New Brighton will appear in Paul Finch's Terror Tales series, Terror Tales of Northwest England.

The anthology (available to pre-order from Amazon) due out on October 1st features stories by Simon Bestwick, Stephen Gallagher, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Finch, Anna Taborska, Simon Kurt Unsworth and John Travis, amongst others.

Here is an extract from my story:

Carys screamed.

Feathers rained from the costume, carpeting the floor with swan. Carys tore at the dress, at the bodice too tight for her expanding frame. The tips of the feathers pricked her arms, as if inking a message on skin, transforming it. Scream hitched against her throat. She coughed blood onto the bones of the dress. If she snapped the bodice, it would cover her front, her burgeoning chest, but little else. She stretched her neck. The scream would not stop.