Caitlin R. Kiernan - The Drowning Girl

Praise for Caitln R. Kiernan

Ms. Kiernan is a cartographer of lost worlds and constantly writes about thresholdsthose harsh spaces in between two realities that she relishesbeing crossed, if not transgressed.

The New York Times

T HE D ROWNING G IRL

With The Drowning Girl, Caitln R. Kiernan moves firmly into the new vanguard, still being formed, of our best and most artful authors of the gothic and fantasticthose capable of writing fiction of deep moral and artistic seriousness. This subtle, dark, in-folded novel, through which flickers a weird, insistent genius, is like nothing Ive ever read before. The Drowning Girl is a stunning work of literature, and if I may be so blunt, Caitln R. Kiernans masterpiece.

Peter Straub

In this novel, Caitln R. Kiernan turns the ghost story inside out and transforms it. This is a story about how stories are told, about what they reveal and what they hide, but is no less intense or suspenseful because of that. Its a tale of real and unreal hauntings that quickly takes you down deep and only slowly brings you up for air.

Brian Evanson, author of Last Days

The Drowning Girl features all those elements of Caitln R. Kiernans writing that readers have come to expecta prose style of wondrous luminosity, an atmosphere of languorous melancholy, and an inexplicable mixture of aching beauty and clutching terror. It is a ghost story, but also a book about the writing of ghost stories. It is about falling in love, falling out of love, and wondering whether madness is a gift or a curse. It is one of those very few novels that one wishes would never end.

S. T. Joshi, author of I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft

This is a masterpiece. It deserves to be read in and out of genre for a long, long time.

Elizabeth Bear, author of Grail

Kiernan pins out the traditional memoir on her worktable and metamorphoses it into something wholly different and achingly familiar, more alien, more difficult, more beautiful, and more true.

Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Caitln R. Kiernan is a master of dark fantasy and this may be her finest work. Incisive, beautiful, and as perfectly crafted as a puzzle box, The Drowning Girl took my breath away.

Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author of Red Glove

A beautifully written, startlingly original novel that rings the changes upon classics by the likes of Shirley Jackson, H. P. Lovecraft, and Peter Straub, The Drowning Girl brings Caitln R. Kiernan to the front ranks of contemporary dark fiction. Chilling and unforgettable, with a narrator whose voice will linger in your head long after midnight.

Elizabeth Hand, author of Illyria

The Drowning Girl is a brilliant work. I am in awe of Caitln R. Kiernan and her ability to craft sentences with a spiderwebs elegance. By the end of this novel, you will question the boundaries between dream and reality, the ghostly and the corporeal, madness and sanity.

Benjamin Percy

If Shirley Jackson had ever discovered postmodernism, the result might be a little like Caitln R. Kiernans tour de force of a novel. Dense, allusive, eerie, funny, and frightening, The Drowning Girl takes readers into a hallucinatory thicket of desire and mysteriesguided by the voice of one India Morgan Phelps, one of the most compelling unreliable narrators Ive encountered in quite some time. A wild, strange ride awaits those who open this book.

Dan Chaon

T HE R ED T REE

NOMINATED FOR THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD
NOMINATED FOR THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD

You may find your mind returning frequently to this tale, attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable, and you may find yourself, like me, bowing to Kiernans artistry and her ability to create Mystery. This is her most personal, ambitious, and accomplished work yet.

Locus

Kiernans chiller provides a strange and vastly compelling tale on a New England haunting, and captures its spirit unnervingly well. Kiernans still-developing talent makes this gloriously atmospheric tale a fabulous piece of work.

Booklist

Dark fantasy specialist Kiernan delivers a creepy and engaging tale.Horror fans will recognize the familiar Lovecraftian gothic horror elementsindeed, Lovecraft, Poe, and other writers are explicitly referenced in the textbut Kiernans prose is thoroughly moderna multileveled novel that will appeal to fans of classic and modern horror.

Kirkus Reviews

D AUGHTER OF H OUNDS

A thrilling page-turner that also features the depth, complexity, and unflinching willingness to contemplate the dark that weve come to expect from her books.

Locus

A hell-raising dark fantasy replete with ghouls, changelings, and eerie intimations of a macabre otherworld.The complex plot springs abundant surpriseson its juggernaut roll to a memorable finalean effective mix of atmosphere and action.

Publishers Weekly

M URDER OF A NGELS

In Murder of Angels, the darkness is poetic, the fantasy is gritty, and the real-world sections are rooted in deep and true emotions. Lyrical and earthy, Murder of Angels is that rare book that gets everything right.

Charles de Lint

[Kiernans] punk-rock prose, and the brutally realistic portrayal of addiction and mental illness, makes Angels fly.

Entertainment Weekly (A-)

L OW R ED M OON

Low Red Moon fully unleashes the hounds of horror, and the read is eerie and breathtaking.

Irish Literary Review

T HRESHOLD

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL
HORROR GUILD AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

Threshold is a bonfire proclaiming Caitln R. Kiernans elevated position in the annals of contemporary literature. It is an exceptional novel you mustnt miss. Highly recommended.

Cemetery Dance

S ILK

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL HORROR
GUILD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

FINALIST FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD
FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL

NOMINATED FOR THE BRITISH FANTASY AWARD

A remarkable noveldeeply, wonderfully, magnificently nasty.

Neil Gaiman

A daring vision and an extraordinary achievement.

Clive Barker

NOVELS BY CAITLN R. KIERNAN

Silk

Threshold

Low Red Moon

Murder of Angels

Daughter of Hounds

The Red Tree

The Drowning Girl: A Memoir

A Memoir

CAITLN R. KIERNAN

A ROC BOOK

ROC

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