Ida Börjel - At once practical handbook, philosoph.Thomas McGonigle - a rollicking pub-crawl through.Sophia Roosth reveals how synthetic biologists ma.Giorgio De Maria - a cult novel, an unholy masterw.Mallory Whitten - In these poems & stories-pleasan.Mitch Sisskind opens the door to a world of anothe.Klein and Margo Bistis - Carrie’s archiv. Christopher Kang - These 880 stories taken togethe.This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of.' -Dejan Ognjanovic There's no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here:only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. 'Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. In a year of exceptional weird fiction, this is a mattock-handle-wrapped-in-barbed-wire heavy hitter.' - Laird Barron

Some of Padgett's lines raised the hair on my neck. ' The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Sure, going in, I was already afraid of ventriloquist dummies, but now I'm deathly afraid of Jon Padgett.' The interconnected short stories are ghastly,clever, dryly witty, but also genuinely and bone-rattlingly creepy and disturbing. 'Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism is a horror revelation. An aspiring ventriloquist spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. A commuter's worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign. A stuttering librarian holds the key to a mill town's unspeakable secrets. A dummy reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps. A lucid dreamer is haunted by an impossible house. A bullied child seeks vengeance within a bed's hollow box spring. With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett's work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both. Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism, named the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine, heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. Jon Padgett, The Secret of Ventriloquism, Dunhams Manor Press, 2016.

The secret of ventriloquism