Short Story Collection; released May 7, 2021 from The Seventh Terrace
art by Janice Blaine
Paperback: Bookshop + Barnes & Noble + Indiebound
Winner of the Ladies of Horror Fiction Award for Best Collection 2021
Includes the Bram Stoker Award-nominated novelette “Recitation of the First Feeding”
Love twisted into horrific shapes, nightmares driven by cruel music, and a world where what little light remains fractures the sky into midnight rainbows in eighteen stories tracing the dark veins of queer horror, isolation, and the monstrous feminine.
The universe unwinds to the tune of a malicious ice cream truck jingle in “We All Scream”. “The Law of Conservation of Death” dictates that a ghost pursue his prey across her every reincarnation. Superstitions thrive even in the distant future and across the stars when a colony shuttle mounts a witch trial in “Hairy Jack”. And try to “Forgive the Adoring Beast” as it scavenges a world of dead gods for tokens of bloody affection.
Including two new short stories and a never-before-published novelette, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy digs deep inside us and clings to the beating nightmare heart you always knew was there.
“A voice to be reckoned with” – Tor Nightfire
“A veritable banquet” – Cemetery Gates Media
“Bold, thoughtful, and beautifully written” – The Future Fire
Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy is featured in the New York Public Library’s list of Best Books for Adults 2021 and Tor Nightfire’s The Best Horror Short Story Collections and Anthologies of 2021.
“In Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, Hailey Piper masterfully crafts a resolutely modern gothic, unearthing the rotten, the broken and the strangely beautiful. Piper wields incisive prose with empathy and deep intuition, carefully dissecting the monstrous bodies herein and spilling their stories onto the page. A compelling and essential collection.”
– Laura Mauro, British Fantasy Award-winning author of Sing Your Sadness Deep
“With surgical precision, Hailey Piper’s stories slice through the skin, fat, and muscle of her characters’ lives, all the way down to the living bone and what is written on it. In terms of their prose. their wit, their insight, their compassion, their terror, these are the sharpest of stories. Read them, but be prepared for the cuts.”
– John Langan, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Fisherman and Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies
“Every story has this incredible balance of being dark and scary but also wildly charming! It’s magic …”
– Rachel Harrison, Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Return