Feature Fiction || Grotesque Monster Stories by Lee Murray

Three-time Bram Stoker Award® nominee Lee Murray delivers her debut collection, and it is monstrous. Inspired by the mythology of Europe, China, and her beloved Aotearoa-New Zealand, Murray twists and subverts ancient themes, stitching new creatures from blood and bone, hiding them in soft forest mists and dark subterranean prisons. 

In this volume, construction workers uncover a hidden tunnel, soldiers wander, lost after a skirmish, and a dead girl yearns for company. Featuring eleven uncanny tales of automatons, zombies, golems, and dragons, and including the Taine McKenna adventure Into the Clouded Sky, Grotesque: Monster Stories breathes new life into the monster genre.

 

PRAISE FOR GROTESQUE: MONSTER STORIES

“With Grotesque: Monster Stories, Lee Murray proves she is a first-rate talent! These stories are fascinating, unexpected, and scary as hell!” — Jonathan Maberry, New York Times Bestselling Author of RAGE and V-WARS

“Keep calm and buckle up! From traveling to the dark side of exotic locales to visiting those familiar places you only thought you knew; author Lee Murray flexes her talent and range in this debut collection.” — Rena Mason, award winning author of The Evolutionist and East End Girls.

“Murray’s tales run the gamut of the horror spectrum, from horrifying to terrifying to heartbreaking. There is a story for everyone in this wonderful collection.” — Tom Deady, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Haven.

“It has been said creating is a path of immortality; Murray’s engaging tales bring us into the dream time of imagination, mixing her unique dark stories and the Māori culture to create a collection existing outside of time, taking us with it.” — Linda D. Addison, award-winning author and HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.

   

Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning writer and editor of science fiction, fantasy, and horror (Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows) and a three-time Bram Stoker Award® nominee. Her works include the Taine McKenna military thrillers, and supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra, co-written with Dan Rabarts, as well as several books for children. She is proud to have edited fifteen speculative works, including award-winning titles Baby Teeth: Bite-Sized Tales of Terror and At the Edge (with Dan Rabarts), Te Kōrero Ahi Kā (with Grace Bridges and Aaron Compton) and Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror. In 2020, she became a Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors in their Waitangi Day Honours. Lee lives in the sunny Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand ‒ over the hill from Hobbiton ‒ where she conjures stories from her office overlooking a cow paddock.

Read more at www.leemurray.info. She tweets @leemurraywriter

Things in the Well http://www.thingsinthewell.com/

Reader group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MonsterReaders/