Lynda E. Rucker

"Have I not always loved terrible things?" - "The Seventh Wave"A student's research into an obscure pulp writer takes on increasingly sinister tones; three friends reunite to fight an evil they thought they'd escaped decades earlier; a woman in a seemingly perfect marriage finds herself haunted by the mysterious absences in her memories of their life together.In her third collection, Lynda E. Rucker reminds us that mystery lurks even in the most banal settings-a British holiday park, a Moldovan tower block, a stretch of industrial wasteland-but as these ten stories reveal, there can also remain a dreadful beauty amidst the horror.

"Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?" - Shirley JacksonA woman returns home to revisit an encounter with the numinous; couples take up residence in houses full of sinister secrets; a man fleeing a failed marriage discovers something ancient and unknowable in rural Ireland . . .In her introduction, Lisa Tuttle observes that "certain places are doomed, dangerous in some inexplicable, metaphysical way", and the characters in these stories all seem drawn in their own ways to just such places, whether trying to return home or endeavouring to get as far from life as possible. These nine stories by Shirley Jackson Award winner Lynda E. Rucker tell tales of those lost and searching, often for something they cannot name, and encountering along the way the uncanny embedded in the everyday world.

Often the most powerful and moving stories are generated by writers who return time and again to a particular idea, theme, or image. Obsession in a writer's imagination can lead to accomplishment or to self-destruction. Consider Poe and his pale, dead bride; his fascination with confinement and mortality; his illness and premature death. Or Flannery O'Connor's far less soul-crushing fondness for peacocks. Some writers pay a high price for their obsessions, while others maintain a crucial distance. Whichever the case, obsessions can produce compelling fiction. Little Visible Delight is an anthology of original stories in which eleven authors of dark fiction explore some their most intimate, writerly obsessions.