There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry—and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it. . . .

There is a life lived beneath the water—among rotted buildings and bloated corpses—by those so overburdened by the world's demands that they simply give up and go under. . . .

In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction's most original artists.

In New York''s Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family''s modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness—until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood.

Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police—while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys'' night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement.

Not since Ray Bradbury''s classic Dandelion Wine has a novel so richly evoked the dark magic of small-town boyhood. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a masterful re-creation of a unique time and place, a celebration of youth, and a poignant and disquieting portrait of home and family—all balancing on a razor''s edge separating reality from the unsettlingly remarkable—The Shadow Year is a monumental new work from one of contemporary fiction''s most fearless and inventive artists.

A mysterious and richly evocative novel, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque tells the story of portraitist Piero Piambo, who is offered a commission unlike any other. The client is Mrs. Charbuque, a wealthy and elusive woman who asks Piambo to paint her portrait, though with one bizarre twist: he may question her at length on any topic, but he may not, under any circumstances, see her. So begins an astonishing journey into Mrs. Charbuque''s world and the world of 1893 New York society in this hypnotically compelling literary thriller.

“Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen….A rare and wonderful talent.”—Jonathan Carroll, author of The Wooden Sea

Eclectic is certainly an adjective that can be used to describe the work of the phenomenal Jeffrey Ford—along with imaginative, provocative, mesmerizing, and brilliant. His powerful dark fantasy, The Physiognomy, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; his novel, The Girl in the Glass, won the Edgar® Award, mystery and crime fiction’s most prestigious prize. Crackpot Palace is Ford’s fourth superb collection of short fiction, and in it, his prodigious talent shines as brightly as ever. Here are twenty tales both strange and wonderful, filled with mad scientists, vampires, lost souls, and Native American secrets, from an author who has been glowingly compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr (The Alienist).

Author of the fantastic and the bizarre, Jeffrey Ford’s work has won awards and acclaim across the globe for his stories of humor, horror, and unconventional beauty. “Powerful and disturbing in the best possible way” (Gawker) and “Intensely engaging” (Publishers Weekly), Ford crosses speculative genres with literary ideals, which has earned him the World Fantasy Award (seven times), the Shirley Jackson Award (four times), the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and France’s vaunted Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.

Dark Moon Books and editor Eric J. Guignard bring you this introduction to his work, the fourth in a series of primers exploring modern masters of literary dark short fiction. Herein is a chance to discover—or learn more of—the extraordinary voice of Jeffrey Ford, as beautifully illustrated by artist Michelle Prebich.

Included within these pages are:

• Six short stories, one written exclusively for this book• Author interview• Complete bibliography• Academic commentary by Michael Arnzen, PhD (former humanities chair and professor of the year, Seton Hill University)• … and more!

Enter this doorway to the vast and fantastic: Get to know Jeffrey Ford.

Table of Contents includes:

• Introduction by Eric J. Guignard• About Jeffrey Ford• A Natural History of Autumn (fiction)• A Natural History of Autumn: A Commentary• Malthusian’s Zombie (fiction)• Malthusian’s Zombie: A Commentary• Boatman’s Holiday (fiction)• Boatman’s Holiday: A Commentary• The Night Whiskey (fiction)• The Night Whiskey: A Commentary• A Night in the Tropics (fiction)• A Night in the Tropics: A Commentary• Incorruptible (fiction)• Incorruptible: A Commentary• Why Jeffrey Ford Matters by Michael Arnzen, PhD• In Conversation with Jeffrey Ford• Scratching the Surface: An Essay by Jeffrey Ford• A Bibliography of English Language Fiction for Jeffrey Ford

Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #3 is a curated selection of novellas by editor Ellen DatlowThis collection includes:The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValleThe Twilight Pariah by Jeffrey FordMapping the Interior by Stephen Graham JonesGods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson A cosmic horror is rising in Red Hook, and Black Tom must either stop it or help it grow in Victor LaValle’s award-winning The Ballad of Black Tom.Three friends go looking for treasure and find horror in Jeffrey Ford''s The Twilight Pariah. ("Poignant and punchy." —New York Times). Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones brings readers a spine-tingling Native American horror novella Mapping the Interior. Experience award-winning author Kelly Robson’s Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky, a far-reaching, mind-bending science fiction adventure that uses time travel to merge climate fiction with historical fantasy.At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

There are worse things than a local gangster’s cronies lurking in New Jersey’s wetlands...At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"A Terror", by Jeffrey Ford, is a dark fantasy/horror novelette about a strange encounter Miss Emily Dickinson has one early September morning, and the consequences for her and others."Ford captures the rhythms and attitudes of [Emily Dickinson''s] Victorian times in a manner that is simultaneously vintage and eternal."--LocusAt the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The story of a secret, privately funded, late 60''s space mission as told by the science fiction writer who was aboard.At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Thyme Fiend by Jeffrey Ford is a dark fantasy novelette about a young man who can only prevent seeing visions by eating or smoking thyme. When he finds the skeleton of a missing man the skeleton begins to haunt him. What does it want?"Surely ''The Thyme Fiend'' will enter the annals of essential, classic ghost stories. Rich with the hot, dusty evocations of a simpler, yet no less demanding era—small-town USA circa 1915, quasi-Bradburian."--LocusAt the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry—and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it. . . .

There is a life lived beneath the water—among rotted buildings and bloated corpses—by those so overburdened by the world's demands that they simply give up and go under. . . .

In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction's most original artists.

In New York''s Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family''s modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness—until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood.

Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police—while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys'' night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement.

Not since Ray Bradbury''s classic Dandelion Wine has a novel so richly evoked the dark magic of small-town boyhood. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a masterful re-creation of a unique time and place, a celebration of youth, and a poignant and disquieting portrait of home and family—all balancing on a razor''s edge separating reality from the unsettlingly remarkable—The Shadow Year is a monumental new work from one of contemporary fiction''s most fearless and inventive artists.

A mysterious and richly evocative novel, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque tells the story of portraitist Piero Piambo, who is offered a commission unlike any other. The client is Mrs. Charbuque, a wealthy and elusive woman who asks Piambo to paint her portrait, though with one bizarre twist: he may question her at length on any topic, but he may not, under any circumstances, see her. So begins an astonishing journey into Mrs. Charbuque''s world and the world of 1893 New York society in this hypnotically compelling literary thriller.

“Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen….A rare and wonderful talent.”—Jonathan Carroll, author of The Wooden Sea

Eclectic is certainly an adjective that can be used to describe the work of the phenomenal Jeffrey Ford—along with imaginative, provocative, mesmerizing, and brilliant. His powerful dark fantasy, The Physiognomy, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; his novel, The Girl in the Glass, won the Edgar® Award, mystery and crime fiction’s most prestigious prize. Crackpot Palace is Ford’s fourth superb collection of short fiction, and in it, his prodigious talent shines as brightly as ever. Here are twenty tales both strange and wonderful, filled with mad scientists, vampires, lost souls, and Native American secrets, from an author who has been glowingly compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr (The Alienist).

Author of the fantastic and the bizarre, Jeffrey Ford’s work has won awards and acclaim across the globe for his stories of humor, horror, and unconventional beauty. “Powerful and disturbing in the best possible way” (Gawker) and “Intensely engaging” (Publishers Weekly), Ford crosses speculative genres with literary ideals, which has earned him the World Fantasy Award (seven times), the Shirley Jackson Award (four times), the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and France’s vaunted Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.

Dark Moon Books and editor Eric J. Guignard bring you this introduction to his work, the fourth in a series of primers exploring modern masters of literary dark short fiction. Herein is a chance to discover—or learn more of—the extraordinary voice of Jeffrey Ford, as beautifully illustrated by artist Michelle Prebich.

Included within these pages are:

• Six short stories, one written exclusively for this book• Author interview• Complete bibliography• Academic commentary by Michael Arnzen, PhD (former humanities chair and professor of the year, Seton Hill University)• … and more!

Enter this doorway to the vast and fantastic: Get to know Jeffrey Ford.

Table of Contents includes:

• Introduction by Eric J. Guignard• About Jeffrey Ford• A Natural History of Autumn (fiction)• A Natural History of Autumn: A Commentary• Malthusian’s Zombie (fiction)• Malthusian’s Zombie: A Commentary• Boatman’s Holiday (fiction)• Boatman’s Holiday: A Commentary• The Night Whiskey (fiction)• The Night Whiskey: A Commentary• A Night in the Tropics (fiction)• A Night in the Tropics: A Commentary• Incorruptible (fiction)• Incorruptible: A Commentary• Why Jeffrey Ford Matters by Michael Arnzen, PhD• In Conversation with Jeffrey Ford• Scratching the Surface: An Essay by Jeffrey Ford• A Bibliography of English Language Fiction for Jeffrey Ford

Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #3 is a curated selection of novellas by editor Ellen DatlowThis collection includes:The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValleThe Twilight Pariah by Jeffrey FordMapping the Interior by Stephen Graham JonesGods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson A cosmic horror is rising in Red Hook, and Black Tom must either stop it or help it grow in Victor LaValle’s award-winning The Ballad of Black Tom.Three friends go looking for treasure and find horror in Jeffrey Ford''s The Twilight Pariah. ("Poignant and punchy." —New York Times). Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones brings readers a spine-tingling Native American horror novella Mapping the Interior. Experience award-winning author Kelly Robson’s Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky, a far-reaching, mind-bending science fiction adventure that uses time travel to merge climate fiction with historical fantasy.At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

There are worse things than a local gangster’s cronies lurking in New Jersey’s wetlands...At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"A Terror", by Jeffrey Ford, is a dark fantasy/horror novelette about a strange encounter Miss Emily Dickinson has one early September morning, and the consequences for her and others."Ford captures the rhythms and attitudes of [Emily Dickinson''s] Victorian times in a manner that is simultaneously vintage and eternal."--LocusAt the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The story of a secret, privately funded, late 60''s space mission as told by the science fiction writer who was aboard.At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Thyme Fiend by Jeffrey Ford is a dark fantasy novelette about a young man who can only prevent seeing visions by eating or smoking thyme. When he finds the skeleton of a missing man the skeleton begins to haunt him. What does it want?"Surely ''The Thyme Fiend'' will enter the annals of essential, classic ghost stories. Rich with the hot, dusty evocations of a simpler, yet no less demanding era—small-town USA circa 1915, quasi-Bradburian."--LocusAt the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.