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Cheer the Sick
“The dissection of the unexplained, I believe, is the scientist’s anchor. Like inclement weather, the inexplicable may take many forms, and what may begin as a spatter of rain is liable to become a typhoon in an instant. In climates such as these we must hold fast, with all the cool-headed dignity we can muster.
"Nevertheless, I am resolved to burn these pages.”
A bedridden camgirl possesses a divine gift; a Victorian warship is haunted by a ghost who knows too much; a miraculous drug is extracted from a captured satyr; a soldier would rather face monsters than her past.
From the author of Pseudotooth and The Others of Edenwell, sixteen unsettling tales of the sickly, the desperate, and the doomed.
What ails you?
"Nevertheless, I am resolved to burn these pages.”
A bedridden camgirl possesses a divine gift; a Victorian warship is haunted by a ghost who knows too much; a miraculous drug is extracted from a captured satyr; a soldier would rather face monsters than her past.
From the author of Pseudotooth and The Others of Edenwell, sixteen unsettling tales of the sickly, the desperate, and the doomed.
What ails you?
- GenresShort StoriesHistorical
192 pages, Paperback
Published October 31, 2024
About the author
Verity Holloway
26 books81 followersThe short version…
Art, history, folklore, and bad medicine. I wrote Pseudotooth, Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs and The Mighty Healer. I have Marfan syndrome, but my symmetry is still fearful.
And the long…
Born in Gibraltar in 1986, I grew up following my Navy family around the world. Always on the move, dealing with the effects of my connective tissue disorder, Marfan syndrome, I found friendly territory in fantasy, history, and Fortean oddities.
In 2007, I graduated from Cambridge’s Anglia Ruskin University with a First Class BA in Literature and Creative Writing. I went on to earn a Distinction Masters in Literature with special focus on Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The House of Life.
My short stories and poems have been variously published. My story Cremating Imelda was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and in 2012 I published my first chapbook, Contraindications. My ‘delightfully weird’ novella, Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs, was released in 2015, and in October 2016 Pen & Sword will publish my first non-fiction book, The Mighty Healer: Thomas Holloway’s Patent Medicine Empire, a biography of my Victorian cousin who made his fortune with questionable remedies. Unsung Stories published my novel Pseudotooth in March 2017.
Find me at verityholloway.com.
Art, history, folklore, and bad medicine. I wrote Pseudotooth, Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs and The Mighty Healer. I have Marfan syndrome, but my symmetry is still fearful.
And the long…
Born in Gibraltar in 1986, I grew up following my Navy family around the world. Always on the move, dealing with the effects of my connective tissue disorder, Marfan syndrome, I found friendly territory in fantasy, history, and Fortean oddities.
In 2007, I graduated from Cambridge’s Anglia Ruskin University with a First Class BA in Literature and Creative Writing. I went on to earn a Distinction Masters in Literature with special focus on Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The House of Life.
My short stories and poems have been variously published. My story Cremating Imelda was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and in 2012 I published my first chapbook, Contraindications. My ‘delightfully weird’ novella, Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs, was released in 2015, and in October 2016 Pen & Sword will publish my first non-fiction book, The Mighty Healer: Thomas Holloway’s Patent Medicine Empire, a biography of my Victorian cousin who made his fortune with questionable remedies. Unsung Stories published my novel Pseudotooth in March 2017.
Find me at verityholloway.com.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
December 1, 2024
A collection of sixteen short stories. This is very good. In these stories Holloway explores sickness, health, disability, mortality, mental health, power and control, dystopia, hauntings and much more. There stories are unsettling, subversive, weird and there are often unspoken undercurrents. Appropriately it was published on Halloween.
I found the stories really interesting. Cremating Imelda (yes literally) is a take on obesity, there is humour and it is really quite unusual.
The Forlorn Hope is an alternative history set in the Napoleonic Wars, but it is women who do the fighting, not the men. A Little Star is set in an opium den where a customer’s reality becomes muddled. Don’t you know Mrs Kelly, one of my favourites has a couple of very effective twists in it; set during the First World War it charts a young man’s debut as a drag artist. Something Borrowed follows a man whose father has died and left the family house to a military organisation rather than his son. There is a touch of faery about it, but the Bronski Beat poster really gives it away. Bernie is something of modern folk tale, which focusses on mental health. Bernie stands at the same bus stop in Cambridge all day and people make assumptions, but he is not what he seems. A modern myth. The Subtle Feast is gothic and historical with added Highwaymen, press gangs and the recklessness of youth which may not end well, but a turn in the story makes for a powerful ending: sad, odd and mystical.
There’s much more, but this is good.
I found the stories really interesting. Cremating Imelda (yes literally) is a take on obesity, there is humour and it is really quite unusual.
The Forlorn Hope is an alternative history set in the Napoleonic Wars, but it is women who do the fighting, not the men. A Little Star is set in an opium den where a customer’s reality becomes muddled. Don’t you know Mrs Kelly, one of my favourites has a couple of very effective twists in it; set during the First World War it charts a young man’s debut as a drag artist. Something Borrowed follows a man whose father has died and left the family house to a military organisation rather than his son. There is a touch of faery about it, but the Bronski Beat poster really gives it away. Bernie is something of modern folk tale, which focusses on mental health. Bernie stands at the same bus stop in Cambridge all day and people make assumptions, but he is not what he seems. A modern myth. The Subtle Feast is gothic and historical with added Highwaymen, press gangs and the recklessness of youth which may not end well, but a turn in the story makes for a powerful ending: sad, odd and mystical.
There’s much more, but this is good.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review