The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales—both never-before-published in print—that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul. A brilliant mix of the psychological and supernatural, blending the acute insight of Roberto Bolaño and the eerie imagination of H. P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself. In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South—which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself. Breathtaking and haunting, A Lush and Seething Hell is a terrifying and exhilarating journey into the darkness, an odyssey into the deepest reaches of ourselves that compels us to confront secrets best left hidden.
Author
John Hornor Jacobs, is an award-winning author of genre bending adult and YA fiction and a partner and senior art director at a Little Rock, Arkansas advertising agency, Cranford Co. His first novel, Southern Gods, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Excellence in a First Novel and won the Darrel Award. The Onion AV said of the book, “A sumptuous Southern Gothic thriller steeped in the distinct American mythologies of Cthulhu and the blues . . . Southern Gods beautifully probes the eerie, horror-infested underbelly of the South.”His second novel, This Dark Earth, Brian Keene described as “…quite simply, the best zombie novel I’ve read in years” and was published by Simon & Schuster’s Gallery imprint. Jacobs’s acclaimed series of novels for young adults beginning with The Twelve-Fingered Boy, continuing with The Shibboleth, and ending with The Conformity has been hailed by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing as “amazing” and “mesmerizing.”Jacobs’s first fantasy novel, The Incorruptibles, was nominated for the Morningstar and Gemmell Awards in the UK. Pat Rothfuss has said of this book, “One part ancient Rome, two parts wild west, one part Faust. A pinch of Tolkien, of Lovecraft, of Dante. This is strange alchemy, a recipe I’ve never seen before. I wish more books were as fresh and brave as this.”His fiction has appeared in Playboy Magazine, Cemetery Dance, Apex Magazine and his essay have been featured on CBS Weekly and Huffington Post.Books:Southern Gods – (Night Shade Books, 2011) This Dark Earth – (Simon & Schuster, 2012) The Twelve-Fingered Boy – (Lerner, 2013) The Shibboleth – (Lerner, 2013) The Conformity – (Lerner, 2014) The Incorruptibles – (Hachette/Gollancz, 2014) Foreign Devils – (Hachette/Gollancz, 2015) Infernal Machines – (Hachette/Gollancz, 2017) The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky – (HarperCollins / Harper Voyager, October 2018) A Lush and Seething Hell – (HarperCollins / Harper Voyager, October 2019) Murder Ballads and Other Horrific Tales – (JournalStone, 2020)
