A child who can turn your reality into an unspeakable nightmare. A monster from childhood with wire-hangers for hands. A baby blanket that will suck the breath from your lungs. And a tour bus full of elderly visitors in search of a new life—even if it isn’t their own. These are the guests that occupy the mind of author Kealan Patrick Burke. Now, he invites them into yours. Guests is a collection of four novellas by Kealan Patrick Burke, complete with new introductions to each story and illustrations by the author himself. “Jack and Jill” is a harrowing story of childhood trauma and how the scars it leaves behind can manifest into adult-sized nightmares; “Sour Candy” is a twisted and unnerving tale of psychological terror that holds readers as captive as its characters; “Blanky” is an emotionally charged study of loss, grief and rage; and “Guests,” a brand new story exclusive to this collection, is a chilling exploration of what makes a monster, what makes us human, and how the weak will always run rather than face their own reflections. In each of these four novellas, Burke shows us that real horror lies in life’s tragedies. Guests is Kealan Patrick Burke at his most hauntingly lyrical and original, with four fear inducing tales of terror that will leave readers breathless.
Author
Born and raised in a small harbor town in the south of Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke knew from a very early age that he was going to be a horror writer. The combination of an ancient locale, a horror-loving mother, and a family full of storytellers, made it inevitable that he would end up telling stories for a living. Since those formative years, he has written five novels, over a hundred short stories, six collections, and edited four acclaimed anthologies. In 2004, he was honored with the Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Turtle Boy. Kealan has worked as a waiter, a drama teacher, a mapmaker, a security guard, an assembly-line worker at Apple Computers, a salesman (for a day), a bartender, landscape gardener, vocalist in a grunge band, curriculum content editor, fiction editor at Gothic.net, and, most recently, a fraud investigator. When not writing, Kealan designs book covers through his company Elderlemon Design. A movie based on his short story "Peekers" is currently in development as a major motion picture. Represented by Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House Agency.
