North American Lake Monsters

Nathan Ballingrud's award winning debut collection is a cornerstone of contemporaryhorror fiction that dismantles the boundaries around genre fiction. Shattering andluminous, North American Lake Monsters explores the darker parts of the humanpsyche to reveal monsters, real and imagined, external and internal. They are usand we are them. What is revealed in these stories is a working class portrait of21st century American life that is as cruel as it is fragile and as precarious as it istenacious. These are love stories and monster stories. Monsters who wear the faces of parents,lovers, or ourselves. The people in these stories are driven to extremes by love andby desperation. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are facedwith the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to escape.