All the Fabulous Beasts

All the Fabulous Beasts is a collection of some of my short stories. Mike Kelly of  Undertow Publications has done a wonderful job of putting this together. The beautiful artwork is by C7 Shiina (paperback) and Jeffrey Alan Love (hardback). Vince Haig is responsible for the layout.

Awards and nominations: Shirley Jackson Award for Single Author-Collection, British Fantasy Award for Best Collection, Locus Award nominee for Single-Author Collection.

ToC: The Crow Palace / Rag and Bone /  The Anatomist’s Mnemonic / Egg / The Sunflower Seed Man / The Ballad of Boomtown / The Show / Pearls / The Absent Shade / Small Town Stories / Fish Skins / The Rising Tide / The Englishman / The Nature of Bees / A Son of The Sea / Fabulous Beasts

Hardback edition

Paperback edition

Priya Sharma has been writing and publishing short stories for over a
decade, and I’m delighted that she’s finally receiving the recognition her
work deserves. She’s extremely skillful in creating characters with whom
we can empathize-no matter their deeds-leading her readers down
roads of beauty and horror. I especially love her award-winning novelette
‘Fabulous Beasts,’ a perfect piece of storytelling.
-Ellen Datlow, Best Horror of the Year series

The only fault I find with Priya Sharma’s work is that there’s not more of
it! Her stories range in theme and even style, but each is beautifully written.
This debut collection is well worth having.
-Paula Guran, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series

Priya Sharma is a consummate storyteller. She writes from the heart,
with passion, warmth and authority. Her stories, focusing largely on familial
relationships and traditions, brim not only with ideas but with humanity,
and her characters are so vividly and exquisitely wrought that they
seem to live and breathe beyond the confines of the page. Like Stephen
King and Alice Munro, she has the ability to convey so much in prose that
is concise, elegant and unfussy, and as a result her stories offer you the
best of both worlds: they are both instantly accessible and exhilaratingly
profound.
-Mark Morris, Author of The Obsidian Heart Trilogy / Editor of New
Fears

Priya Sharma explores liminality and otherness with skill and verve in
her engaging and haunting stories.
-Alison Moore, Author of the Man Booker-shortlisted The Lighthouse

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Reviews

Sharma’s tales are at their strongest and most poignant when they concern love, be it consuming, denied, or realized late. Their magic is usually one surreal piece fitted tightly into a puzzle of normalcy, that often roars up by the end to reshape everything. Sharma leaves tantalizing clues throughout her stories that make the conclusions surprising yet satisfying. Fantasy fans who want their stories deep and intense will consider this a fabulous debut.  Read full Publishers Weekly review here.

 

Priya Sharma’s stories are indeed fabulous beasts, chimeras composed of the fantastic and deeply human, bound together by sinewy sentences, their strange hearts richly alive. The chorus of their animal mouths announces the arrival of a major voice. John Langan, Locus