Stories from the Plague Years

Author: Marano, Michael
Cover and Interior Art: Gabrielle Faust
Format: Limited Hardcover Edition
Type: Horror Anthology
Page Count: 400pp.
Pub. Date: January 14, 2011
Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications

Stories from the Plague Years is the first fiction collection from award-winning fantasy author Michael Marano.

Nine tales are arranged in a haunting symphony that guides readers through a tour of the darkest landscapes of human existence. Here, fury and hate grow so strong, they cannot be held within one man’s body, and manifest themselves to devastating effect. Cities contain second, unseen cities populated by the vengeful ghosts of those who died too soon. Countries fall to famine and war.

But these are also the tales of love lasting beyond death, love existing beyond all hope, and friendships never forgotten. Included are the widely praised stories “Winter Requiem,” “The Siege,” and the controversial “Burden,” as well as two original novellas.

Marano, acclaimed for his evocative voice, paints lush portraits both terrifying and tender, injecting even the darkest of fantasies with a punk rock sensibility and a touch of the humane. With Stories from the Plague Years, he presents snapshots of a time when our world collided with evil, sickness, and self-destruction and left behind lasting scars on those who dared to survive.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Michael Marano and the Forbidden by John Shirley

Days of Rage

• Displacement (Original)
• Little Round Head
• Changeling

Prayers for Dead Cities

• Siege
• Burden

Two for Marian

• And the Damage Done
• Exit Wound

Winter Tales

• Winter Requiem
• Shibboleth

(Original)

• Afterword and Story Notes