Among the Lilies

by Daniel Mills

Overview

A collection of 12 grotesqueries inspired by the natural and psychological landscapes of New England and by the ghosts that walk the places in-between.

The long-awaited new collection of short stories from Daniel Mills, whose literary antecedents include Poe, Hawthorne, Vernon Lee, and John Darnielle. A visionary and poetic stylist. Contains the long out-of-print novella "The Account of David Stonehouse, Exile," and two new stories written expressly for this collection.

"Daniel Mills is a master of telling tales. . . ."
―The New York Journal of Books

"Daniel Mills is a writer to watch"
- Black Static Magazine

"Mills has a poetic and visionary style of his own, capable of uncovering the beauty in horror and the horror in beauty."
- Reggie Oliver, Author of The Sea of Blood

A pleasure to read, Daniel Mills's fiction would draw approving nods from any of the austere presences in whose literary footsteps he is following."
- John Langan, Author of The Fisherman

"If you like your horror well written, haunting and resonant, look no further: Daniel Mills is your Man!"
- Rue Morgue Magazine

"Daniel Mills is a modern master of the unspoken, a classical horror miniaturist whose writing references the bleak and existentially dread-full gothic Americana of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Best read out loud around a failing fire on a darksome plain, as night sets in."
- Gemma Files, Shirley Jackson award-winning author of Experimental Film

Product Details

BN ID:	2940164930653
Publisher:	Undertow Publications
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	954,143
File size:	537 KB

About the Author

Daniel Mills is the author of Revenants and Moriah and the creator of historical crime podcast These Dark Mountains. His nonfiction has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

08/02/2021

Mills (Moriah) delivers an impressive debut collection of 12 weird tales anchored by the novella “The Account of David Stonehouse, Exile,” whose unspecified time and setting—is it postapocalyptic or otherworldly?—contributes to the sense of strangeness of its narrator’s experiences. A similar calculated vagueness colors a number of the other stories, including “Below the Falls,” presented as a diary whose missing pages encourage the reader to fill in the gaps of its apparently supernatural events, and “A Sleeping Life” (a nod to the eerie expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) whose staccato of short sections represent the disjointed impressions of its somnambulist narrator. Mills grounds his stories in considerable realistic detail, lending even the more surreal moments both gravity and tangibility. His work is sure to find a readership among fans of macabre and outré fiction. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"An impressive collection of 12 weird tales ... sure to find a readership among fans of macabre and outré fiction."

-Publishers Weekly

"Compellingly paced tales quickly close in on readers, as Mills keeps them dangling over a

precipice where pure terror waits below ... Fans of Alma Katsu and Andy Davidson will find a lot to like here."

-Booklist

"12 quietly bold tales that force readers to assemble tantalizing clues left in the wake of unspeakable crimes and loss."

- The Toronto Star

"What a fine collection of stories! Fine and strange and challenging, filled with an unearthly light, like something written half by H.P. Lovecraft and half by Robert Frost. The best possible kind of crazy-ass rural prophecy."

- Pinckney Benedict, Author of Miracle Boy and Other Stories

"Oh wow! I adore Among the Lilies. Daniel Mills' ghost stories are told with remarkable delicacy and luminous prose. But don't be fooled. They will haunt you, they will grab you by the throat and hold on tight. I'm still shivering. What a delight."

- Miciah Bay Gault, author of Goodnight Stranger

"Daniel Mills' Among the Lilies is a gorgeous collection of wistful and haunting stories, testimonies of longing and sorrow that linger long after they've left the room. They're so lovely, in fact, that you don't see the great dark truth lurking just behind the words until it's too late, until it's staring right into your soul."

- Nadia Bulkin, author of She Said Destroy

"The tales in Among the Lilies are smooth as silk, cool as glass, and dark as a mournful shadow. Daniel Mills writes with an assured hand about themes of supernatural strangeness and sadness, and in prose so understatedly elegant, it's like a balm for the mind. He also displays a sensitive insight into the numinous realm where longing and terror meet spirit and psyche. I almost feel that a new label should be invented to apply to Mills' work: the melancholy weird. I came away from this book feeling darkly dazzled and deeply moved in equal measure."

- Matt Cardin, author of To Rouse Leviathan

"Generally set in the distant past, the stories in Daniel Mills' remarkable Among the Lilies hence have a classical feel, but without ever seeming like pastiches of the work of past masters. At the same time, in the pursuit of his obsessions, Mills' stories are unlike most of the weird fiction and horror one encounters today. These are histories within histories, sediment layers of grief and madness, filled with fossilized ghosts. Herein are recurring themes of religious mania, the mournful fusion of beauty and decay, feverish childhoods and their haunted aftermaths, self-destruction and living death. Daniel Mills' work is very much his own, and as such stands out as something to be relished."

- Jeffrey Thomas, author of Punktown

"Deft and unsettling, Daniel Mills' Among the Lilies is a haunting enhancement of modern horror fiction - an electrically delicate collection of specters."

- Clint Smith, author of The Skeleton Melodies

From the Publisher