The 2024 Secret Life of Insects and Other Stories by Bernardo Esquinca NEUF

In The Secret Life of Insects, a forensic entomologist tries to solve the murder of his wife, who impossibly seems to have been killed in a forest at the same time she was asleep in bed with him. The husband in The Dream of the Fishermans Wife becomes concerned by his wifes strange behavior, which includes sleepwalking, muttering strange phrases, and a bizarre erotic fascination with octopi. In Come to Me, a woman visits a witch doctor who promises to forge an unbreakable bond between her and the man of her dreams, but things go horribly awry after the man dies. And in the novella Demoness, four high school friends reunite at a class reunion twenty years later and must face the long-buried truth of a demonic experience from their youth.

Bernardo Esquincas haunting tale Senor Ligotti represented Mexico in the acclaimed The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories and was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Now Valancourt Books is proud to present this collection of fourteen of his best stories, which also features a foreword by award-winning author Mariana Enriquez and stunning full-page illustrations by Spanish artist Luis Perez Ochando.

Very deft, smart stories that manage to do more in ten pages what most novels struggle to accomplish in thirty times that. Esquinca is a writer to watch.

Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World