UNCERTAINTIES: Volume V
edited by Brian J. Showers
Printings: March 2021 (400)
Cover image by Ksenia Korniewska
Style: Dust jacketed hardback
Length: 208 pages
ISBN: 978-1-78380-038-4
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“Surely all this is not without meaning.” — Herman Melville
“Ghost stories,” as Elizabeth Bowen observed, “are not easy to write — least easy now, for they involve more than they did.” But these twelve writers take up the challenge, each in their own way, with expert awareness of the genre’s limitless possibilities.
Uncertainties is an anthology series — featuring authors from Canada, America, the United Kingdom, and the island of Ireland — each exploring the concept of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as “winter’s tales”. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .
Contents
“Foreword”
Brian J. Showers
“Three Sisters Bog”
Eoin Murphy
“First a Bird”
Ramsey Campbell
“To See the Sea”
Sean Hogan
“Everything We Say and All the Things We Do”
Jason E. Rolfe
“Not Even Legend”
Alan Moore
“Skeleton Day”
Aislinn Clarke
“Malady of Laughter”
Inna Effress
“Little Lives”
Deirdre Sullivan
“So Much Potential”
Simon Strantzas
“Away”
Nina Antonia
“Washed in the Blood of the Sun”
John Langan
“Trap”
Carly Holmes
“Contributor Notes”
“Acknowledgments”
Brian J. Showers is originally from Madison, Wisconsin. He has written short stories, articles, and reviews for magazines such as Rue Morgue, Ghosts & Scholars, and Supernatural Tales. His short story collection, The Bleeding Horse, won the Children of the Night Award in 2008. He is also the author of Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin (2006), the co-editor of Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (2011), and the editor of The Green Book. Showers also edited the first two volumes of Uncertainties, and co-edited with Jim Rockhill, the Ghost Story Award-winning anthology Dreams of Shadow and Smoke. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
The Uncertainties Series
Uncertainties: Volume I (2016)
Uncertainties: Volume II (2016)
Uncertainties: Volume III (2018)
Uncertainties: Volume IV (2020)
Uncertainties: Volume V (2021)
Nina Antonia 