Thin Places

Stories

A finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, Thin Places is a gothic and atmospheric collection from the national bestselling author of The Bog Wife. This beautiful reissue includes four additional stories.

A not-quite-human proprietor menaces guests at a hotel on the edge of a swamp. A composer visits a remote Slavic village where villagers perform soundless songs that accompany violent sacrifices. Four reclusive women conjure children out of unconventional materials in an unnerving mansion. The arrival of a lighthouse-keeper's daughter portends disaster for an insular island community with bizarre traditions.

With transcendent prose that celebrates her hypnotic and humane vision of the strange and supernatural, Kay Chronister weaves a dark tapestry of love, grief, death, and the exquisite pain and joy of life on the periphery of the familiar. The fifteen stories collected here chronicle the lives of powerful women and children, wicked witches and demons, cursed artists and overlooked communities. Thin Places is a perfect companion to Chronister's national bestselling novel The Bog Wife and ideally suited for readers of Shirley Jackson and Carmen Maria Machado.

©2020, 2025 by Kay Chronister. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.