Gifts for the One Who Comes After — Ann VanderMeer

Winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson AwardHelen Marshall uses the fantastic to pry her way inside her readers' ribcages and break us wide open. --Neil GaimanGhost thumbs. Microscopic dogs. One very sad can of tomato soup . . .Helen Marshall's second collection offers a series of twisted surrealities that explore the legacies we pass on to our children. A son seeks to reconnect with his father through a telescope that sees into the past. A young girl discovers what lies on the other side of her mother's bellybutton. Death's wife prepares for a very special funeral. In Gifts for the One Who Comes After, Marshall delivers seventeen tales of love and loss that cement her as a powerful voice in dark fantasy and the New Weird. Dazzling, disturbing, and deeply moving....in turns chilling, heart-wrenching and uplifting. Marshall has a way with words that makes even the most peculiar seem possible, and the stories here are each so layered with character and meaning, they are like perfect, condensed novels. --Kaaron WarrenGifts For The One Who Comes After should single out Marshall as one of the most accomplished writers of the fantastic being published today. --This Is Horror