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This'll Make Things a Little Easier
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Expected 1 Jan 26Attila Veres' debut collection, The Black Maybe, was hailed as one of the best horror debuts in years and was named Rue Morgue's best collection of 2022 as well as being a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. Critics likened it to debut collections by writers like Clive Barker and Thomas Ligotti in terms of its sheer originality of style and vision. Now Veres is back with a follow-up collection of unforgettable cosmic horror.
In the opening story, 'a pit full of teeth', an aspiring Hungarian horror writer gets the exciting news that one of his stories will be translated into the obscure language of a reclusive tribe that almost no one knows anything about. But when his copy of the translation arrives, he discovers that it doesn't match what he wrote: instead, the text contains a much more horrific narrative that seems to be playing out in reality. In 'The Designated Contact Individual', a traveling representative for a soft drink company finds his sales territory expanding when he is sent to an alternate reality where they have their own nightmarish use for his cola. 'Damage d10+7' tells of a group of gamers who commit a terrible outrage in the fantasy world of their game and which has a deadly ripple effect in their real lives. The narrator in 'The Summer I Chose to Die' has decided that life is no longer worth living, but his worldview is shaken up when a murderous army of fish-people begins to rise from the oceans. And in the title story, money literally does grow on trees when the Hungarian government tries to alleviate poverty by supplying families with a strange new plant species, but their newfound financial gain will come at a terrible cost.
Like the stories in his first collection, the tales in This'll Make Things a Little Easier are blood-chillingly frightening, often darkly humorous, and always dazzlingly brilliant. Readers who were left wanting more when they finished reading The Black Maybe won't want to miss this new volume.
In the opening story, 'a pit full of teeth', an aspiring Hungarian horror writer gets the exciting news that one of his stories will be translated into the obscure language of a reclusive tribe that almost no one knows anything about. But when his copy of the translation arrives, he discovers that it doesn't match what he wrote: instead, the text contains a much more horrific narrative that seems to be playing out in reality. In 'The Designated Contact Individual', a traveling representative for a soft drink company finds his sales territory expanding when he is sent to an alternate reality where they have their own nightmarish use for his cola. 'Damage d10+7' tells of a group of gamers who commit a terrible outrage in the fantasy world of their game and which has a deadly ripple effect in their real lives. The narrator in 'The Summer I Chose to Die' has decided that life is no longer worth living, but his worldview is shaken up when a murderous army of fish-people begins to rise from the oceans. And in the title story, money literally does grow on trees when the Hungarian government tries to alleviate poverty by supplying families with a strange new plant species, but their newfound financial gain will come at a terrible cost.
Like the stories in his first collection, the tales in This'll Make Things a Little Easier are blood-chillingly frightening, often darkly humorous, and always dazzlingly brilliant. Readers who were left wanting more when they finished reading The Black Maybe won't want to miss this new volume.
220 pages, Paperback
Expected publication January 1, 2026
37 people want to read
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