Dark North - Glen Hirshberg, Peter Atkins, and S.L. Coney

Location: Village Books and Paper Dreams

Address: 1200 11th Street, Bellingham, WA 98225

Date: 26 Apr

Kick off Dirty Dan Murder Mystery Weekend with a truly horrifying set of stories.

Deep in the City of Subdued Excitement (and newly crowned Least Sunny Spot in the U.S.), under cover of the mist blowing in off the bay and out of the old-growth forests, something is stirring. Village Books, in collaboration with Shirley Jackson Award-winning Bellingham author Glen Hirshberg, presents Dark North, a new semi-annual reading series showcasing some of the best in contemporary speculative fiction. Expect low light, good company, and tales suffused with dread worth treasuring and sharing. Debut show April 27th. Second, all-different 2024 performance this October. Full details to follow...

Glen Hirshberg's novels include The Snowman's Children, Infinity Dreams, The Book of Bunk, and the Motherless Children trilogy. He is also the author of six widely praised story collections, the most recent of which is Tell Me When I Disappear. His fiction has earned him three International Horror Guild Awards (including two for Outstanding Collection), five World Fantasy Award finalist nominations, and the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Bellingham with his family and cats.

From the Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Infinity Dreams, an elegiac new collection of tales about what we're losing. And what that will cost. And what might be circling back for us.

"Hirshberg is an amazing writer...grandly sweeping, capable of tremendous reach, and open to all aspects of human experience."—Peter Straub

Peter Atkins is the author of the novels MORNINGSTAR, BIG THUNDER, and MOONTOWN and the screenplays HELLRAISER II, HELLRAISER III, HELLRAISER IV, and WISHMASTER. His short fiction has appeared in several award-winning anthologies and has been selected eight times for one or more of the various "Year's Best" books. His newest book is the story collection ALL OUR HEARTS ARE GHOSTS. His previous collection, RUMORS OF THE MARVELOUS, was a finalist for the British Fantasy Award. He can be found on Facebook under his own name and on Twitter and Instagram as @limeybastard55.

From award-nominated and critically-acclaimed author Peter Atkins comes a new collection of exquisitely rendered nightmares. What is that unearthly howling coming from a small suburban house in Liverpool? Why is the headless corpse in a Manhattan penthouse sitting so calmly with its legs crossed? What's with that unusual trinket a high-schooler bought on a whim, and why is an agent of a covert government department so interested? The answers to these and other unsettling questions await you within the pages of the extraordinary ALL OUR HEARTS ARE GHOSTS.

"One of the smartest, sharpest writers around"—Neil Gaiman

S. L. Coney is the author of Wild Spaces, an Esquire Best of Horror 2023 pick and 2024 Philip K. Dick Award nominee. Their short stories have appeared in St. Louis Noir and Gamut Magazine and their story "Abandoned Places" was selected for 2017's Best American Mystery Stories. They still hold seashells to their ears to hear the ocean speak to them, and are still deeply disappointed that their fins never grew in.

An eleven-year-old boy lives an idyllic childhood exploring the remote coastal plains and wetlands of South Carolina alongside his parents and his dog Teach. But when the boy's eerie and estranged grandfather shows up one day with no warning, cracks begin to form as hidden secrets resurface that his parents refuse to explain. The longer his grandfather outstays his welcome and the greater the tension between the adults grows, the more the boy feels something within him changing ―physically―into something his grandfather welcomes and his mother fears. Something abyssal. Something monstrous.

"Without question, one of the most beautifully written books I've read this year."―The Wall Street Journal