The story picks up five years after the mutual massacre of humans and vampires that concluded Good Girls and develops along converging plot lines driven by three primary characters: Emilia, a Mississippi librarian taken as cross-country hostage by a bandaged blood-drinker whom she dubs “the Invisible Man” Sophie, a vampire who miraculously survived her earlier near-fatal mauling and Jess, matriarch of a stockade on San Juan Island that is home to her “family” of survivors and a beacon to vengeful vampires. Introducing this collection, celebrated British horror writer Ramsey Campbell writes of Glen Hirshberg, 'I'll stake my reputation that history will hail him as a crucial contributor to the field.' Richly atmospheric, soulful, and scary, these stories will linger with readers long after they have finished reading.It’s quite a feat to write a vampire novel without ever once invoking the V-word, but Hirshberg does so with consummate skill in this wrenching third Motherless Children horror novel. And in Shipwreck Beach, a guilty and tormented young man and his favorite cousin confront their demons in the treacherous surf off the Hawaiian island of Lanai. Struwwelpeter introduces us to a brilliant, treacherous adolescent whose violent tendencies and reckless mischief reach a sinister pinnacle as Halloween descends on a rundown, Pacific Northwest fishing village. Dark's Carnival, a lonely college professor is lured to a mysterious haunted house steeped in the folklore of grisly badlands justice.

Dancing Men depicts one of the creepiest rites of passage in recent memory when a boy visits his reclusive and possibly deranged grandfather in the New Mexico desert. The title story finds a husband struggling with the grief and confusion of losing two unborn children by forming an odd bond with the infant spectrals that visit him in the night. Together, they represent a refreshingly human take on the age-old literary tradition of the ghost story.

At once thrilling and moving, these four novellas and one story about people and the memories – and monsters – that haunt them cast a mesmerizing spell. In this deeply unsettling collection, Glen Hirshberg's remarkable ability to evoke the quiet terrors of everyday living renders the supernatural eerily natural.

Nothing to Devour by Glen Hirshberg