The End of the End of Everything: Stories

by Dale Bailey

Shirley Jackson Award "The stories in this collection range from unsettling to downright chilling, but are uniformly intelligent . . . and memorable." —Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times–bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
This collection of nine stories, suffused with apocalyptic anxiety and stubborn hope, comes from an author widely acclaimed for his mix of the fantastic, the menacing, and the melancholy—and includes, among other tales, "The End of the World As We Know It," a Nebula and International Horror Guild Award finalist; "The End of the End of Everything," a Shirley Jackson Award winner; and "The Bluehole," a Bram Stoker Award finalist.
"Nine gorgeously-written and closely-observed tales of ordinary people trying to hold it together when everything is falling apart. . . . I can't think of a more accomplished master of the fantastic short form. Prepare to hunt feral Girl Scouts! Pack your bags for a dinosaur safari! Invite friends to your end of the world party! Dale Bailey is the poet of the apocalypse; his stories are guaranteed to haunt you." —James Patrick Kelly, Nebula Award–winning author of The First Law of Thermodynamics
"There's a wonderful clarity in the writing, a strong emotional center in each piece, fully realized characters, and as dark as these pieces get, and they get dark, Bailey, unlike a lot of his contemporaries, never forgets the humor, which makes the darkness more profound. Nine stories that will stay with you long after the reading is done." —Jeffrey Ford, World Fantasy Award–winning author of Big Dark Hole

277 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 11, 2025

About the author

Dale was born in West Virginia in 1968, and grew up in a town called Princeton, just north of the Virginia line. His stories have appeared in lots of places—The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Sci-Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, and various anthologies. Several of them have been nominated for awards, and “Death and Suffrage,” later filmed as part of Showtime’s television anthology series Masters of Horror, won the International Horror Guild Award.

In 2003, Golden Gryphon Press collected his stories as The Resurrection Man’s Legacy and Other Stories. Two novels, The Fallen and House of Bones, came out from Signet books around the same time. A third novel—Sleeping Policemen, written with with his friend Jack Slay, Jr.—came out in 2006. He has also written a study of haunted-house fiction called American Nightmares.

He lives in North Carolina with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

[Laureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written, the stories seemed like they were novels. Great characters and story development. There were some I liked more than others, like in any collection. There is not one that I thought was terrible. I enjoyed the writing style, kind of like scary prose. I recommend reading these dark short stories.