A young bride and her future mother-in-law risk everything to escape it. A repentant father summons help from a pot of tar to ensure it. A starving woman learns from howling winds and a whispering host, just how fulfilling it can finally be.

Can it be love?

Bram Stoker Award-winning author David Nickle takes multiple stabs at the question in his first collection of short fiction, Monstrous Affections. Three stories are published here for the first time. Others have appeared in places like Cemetery Dance, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and the Northern Frights series.

Monstrous Affections also features an introduction by award-winning editor, author and journalist Michael Rowe.

"Bleak, stark and creepy, Stoker-winner Nickle's first collection will delight the literary horror reader... This ambitious collection firmly establishes Nickle as a writer to watch."
-Publisher's Weekly (starred)

"...a perverted version of Alice Munro country... The stories work so well in part because of Nickle's facility with the language of the place he's created."
-Quill and Quire (starred)

"David Nickle writes 'em damned weird and damned good and damned dark. He is bourbon-rough, poetic and vivid."
-Cory Doctorow