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Laird Barron

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All: Stories Paperback – July 1, 2014

by Laird Barron (Author), Norman Partridge (Introduction)

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Winner., Bram Stoker Award, Best Fiction; Nominated, World Fantasy Award, Best Collection. "One of my favorite writers, period.... Like crack to my brain."—Nic Pizzolatto, creator of HBO's True Detective

Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic. Melding supernatural horror with hard-boiled noir, espionage, and a scientific backbone, Barron’s stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous year’s best anthologies. His work has been nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.

Barron returns with his third collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. Collecting interlinking tales of sublime cosmic horror, including “Blackwood’s Baby,” “The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven,” and the World Fantasy Award–nominated “Hand of Glory,” The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All delivers enough spine-chilling horror to satisfy even the most jaded reader.

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Night Shade
Publication date

July 1, 2014
Dimensions

6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
ISBN-13

978-1597805537
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Editorial Reviews

Review

WINNER OF THE BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR BEST FICTION COLLECTION
NOMINATED FOR THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST COLLECTION

"One of my favorite writers, period. ... one of the most unique and accomplished prose talents now working in America. He writes dangerous stories, in something I've described as like a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and James Dickey ... Very much like crack to my brain."
—Nic Pizzolatto, creator of HBO's True Detective

“If you think there aren’t any new Richard Mathesons or Harlan Ellisons out there, you need to read Laird Barron.”
—Stewart O’Nan, bestselling author of Wish You Were Here and Last Night at the Lobster

“Relentlessly readable, highly atmospheric, sharply and often arrestingly written—Barron’s prose style resembles, by turns, a high-flown Jim Thompson mixed with a pulp Barry Hannah.”
—Slate

“I’ve come to Laird Barron relatively late, but I’m adding him to my pantheon of greats (and I don’t use that word lightly).”
—Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual

"The scariest writer on the planet has to be Laird Barron."
—Paul Goat Allen, The Barnes & Noble Book Blog

"Laird Barron has, in a remarkably short period of time, emerged as one of the leading writers of contemporary weird fiction."
—S. T. Joshi

"You could say these stories are what happens when Jack London and Zane Grey go drinking with William Hope Hodgson and Algernon Blackwood. But what they really are is Laird Barron, and they are terrifying and awe-inspiring. If you haven’t yet tried his work, this is a great place to start."
—Brian Keene, author of The Rising

About the Author

Laird Barron is the author of the novel The Croning and three collections of short fiction: The Imago Sequence, Occultation, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in the wilds of upstate New York.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Night Shade (July 1, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1597805537
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #293,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #419 in Science Fiction Short Stories
- #468 in Horror Anthologies (Books)
- #780 in Fantasy Anthologies

Customer Reviews:
349 ratings

About the author

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Laird Barron

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Laird Barron is an expat Alaskan. Currently, Barron lives in the Rondout Valley and is at work on tales about the evil that men do.

(photo courtesy Ardi Alspach)

Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		18%
3 star		9%
2 star		3%
1 star		4%

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Mindy Pfeiffer

Just buy this. You can borrow mine if need be but read it.

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2017

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Whether you call it weird fiction, cosmic horror, or just horror, this book can't be defined by such a simple description. He has a really weird way of getting under the skin and sticking around. I've closed a lot of books and moved on to not think of them again but none of Laird's books allow that. I don't know if this is the best book to start with in his collection, but I know this is one of my favorite books as it opened up a new world that I wasn't really aware of. I have always liked purchasing books on amazon for the suggestions offered. This book popped up and I don't know what it was that made me click buy now. It not only opened my eyes to Barron's work (and Old Leech) but then the search for the rest of the anthologies that he has written for. That led me to John Langan, Phillip Fracassi, Nathan Ballingrud, Jon Padgett, etc. Basically, thanks to Laird Barron, I learned of the wonderful world of weird fiction. PS. Stay away from Black Ram Lodge. And anywhere you see the sign of Old Leech.

18 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

This awaits you, and it's beautifully written

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2020

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4.5/5

LAIRD. BARRON.

Not sure if this was due to the caffeine-fueled coffee trip that accompanied me on my respite of reading or that I have been in the mood for some Lovecraftian horror of late (despite the real world being seemingly more horrifying currently) but this was a cracking read!

A short story collection with call backs or threads embedded in most of the stories, this was one of the few novels that had me creeped out; not because I'm Billy Bad Butt but because I think it is extremely hard to create horror in prose form.

While not all horrifying, although always entertaining, I found myself devouring pages and scratching my head to link connections and timelines within Barron's own 'Lovecraftian mythos. He's a heck of a writer: great action when doled out, snappy pace and dialog, liquid prose, great atmosphere, and a penchant for genuinely funny moments that break the fourth wall if you know to look for them.

True detective S1 drew inspiration from Barron's work (among others) and you can tell! Quite the range is had here and I'm struggling to prevent diving further into his bibliography in lieu of other reads I have planned. Superb!

6 people found this helpful

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S L Koch

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits You In This Book

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2019

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What more can you say of the critically acclaimed? These are all great winners and I suggest you pick this up. These tales do have bits of violence and gore, especially in the more hardboiled two-fisted tales. Yet the overwhelming theme comes in a constant uneasiness, a creeping horror, as if the very world itself has turned against us. There's a slow cooker to these tales, and it will crawl beneath your skin.

My favorite highlights from this: Jaws of Saturn with its cosmic implications, the almost comical but startling tiny sci-fi epic Vastation which presses the boundaries of narrative, the haunted Men From Porlock and its old country aesthetic, and More Dark which joins a long line of nihilistic horror stories about creepy puppets.

I heartily recommend all that comes from feeding this into your head, and the dark specters that shall haunt you.

7 people found this helpful

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Mike_Duke

A Deeper, unsettling horror

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2019

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I thoroughly loved this collection of stories. They were all quite good and many were phenomenal. Barron has a way of slowly working his way under your skin and into your perception of reality, unsettling your assumptions concerning the nature of the universe, what evil things lurk in the shadows, in between our world and others, and how weak and vulnerable we are in their presence. I particularly loved Blackwood's Baby, Siphon, The Men of Porlock, Jaws of Saturn and More Dark.

Also, I listened to the audible version and must say Ray Porter did an outstanding job. His female voices were a little hit and miss, but other than that he was spot on. I particularly loved his voice in Jaws of Saturn and More Dark when he is speaking as the "bad guys" in those stories. Super creepy!!! Loved it!

If you haven't read Laird Barron, i implore you to do so.

6 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Unusual & Creative

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2020

Verified Purchase

I had never heard of this author, Laird Barron, but liked that his work sounded literary & accomplished so gave this collection of short stories a try. Overall, I liked them, although some of the last in the book were a little too much of the "cosmic horror" type, with overly long descriptions of existential horror and bizarre scenes that really just bored me. But several of the stories are quite good, with unusual characters and plot twists.
My favorite story in this book is titled "Syphon". That story was very clever and surprised me, which was fun. None of these stories really scared me, but the author does have a creative mind and created some good stories here. By the end of the book I saw recurring themes and elements. Most of them take place in Washington state or other northwest regions of the US.
Several of the stories include conflicts featuring these character types: gangsters/hit-men, hilly-billy ruffians, wealthy evil geniuses, and practitioners of black magic. My favorite of those stories is set in 1925, and ends with a paragraph that was so good I had to read it aloud to my husband. This author can write very well, but I do wish many of his sentences had been edited for better flow (sometimes he creates run-on sentences that could easily have been rephrase for a clearer reading experience). If you like the unusual, give this collection a try.

One person found this helpful

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Morgan104

MASTERFUL USE OF LANGUAGE

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2020

Verified Purchase

1/14/2020: I read Laird Barron's collection of stories in "The Imago Sequence" and did not care for that book, but I decided to give this author another try, so I bought "The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All," and I'm glad I did so. While I did not connect with all the stories in "Beautiful Thing," some of the stories – Hand of Glory, in particular – were real page turners. It's really a pleasure to read work written by an author with such a superb vocabulary and wonderful command of the English language. The dialogue in Hand of Glory gave that story a "noir" feel, reminding me of old films from the 1940s or characters in Mickey Spillane books. I very much enjoyed this book.

3 people found this helpful

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Phil Devereaux

Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 10, 2014

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Another fantastic collection of stories from Laird Barron,every bit as good(if not slightly superior the The Imago Sequence),Barron continues to improve and build on his own personal Mythos.Although you dont have to have read The Croning to appreciate this book,I have found that both works are enhanced by the experience.

3 people found this helpful

Cairobill

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 18, 2014

Verified Purchase

Laird Barron's universe is perfectly realised, unremittingly grim and hugely addictive.These books are superficially short story compilations but are fundamentally glimpses of the same hidden world experienced through the eyes of those who rub up against it. Excellent!

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 6, 2016

Verified Purchase

Not the best written stories, but still manage to convey a sense of dread. Wish the prose were better.

Arno Gündisch

Grauen mit Stil

Reviewed in Germany on May 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

Ausgedehnte Splatterorgien sucht man bei Laird Barron vergebens, dafür schleicht sich das Grauen auf leisen Sohlen an und überfällt den Leser aus dem Hinterhalt. Die Hauptcharaktere seiner Stories sind oftmals gescheiterte Existenzen am Rande der Gesellschaft, mit einer besonderen Beziehung zur Gewalt: Glücksritter, Großwildjäger, Bodyguards oder Geldeintreiber. Obwohl sie das Leben nur von seiner rauhen Seite kennen, werden sie früher oder später mit einem Grauen konfrontiert, das weit über den Tod hinausreicht. "Blackwoods Baby" kehrt z.B. die Rolle des Jägers und des gejagten Wildes um, die Jagdgesellschaft aus "The Men from Porlock" begegnet einer Macht, die viel älter ist als die Wildnis, und selbst eine sterile Geschäftswelt kann ihre dunklen Seiten haben ("The Siphon").
Es gibt auch Ausnahmen von der Regel: in "The Carrion Gods in their Heaven" geht eine Frau eine unheilige Allianz ein, um ihrem gewalttätigen Ehemann zu entkommen, und "The Redfield Girls" kann als Warnung vor zu viel Neugier verstanden werden, die manchen Charakteren zum Verhängnis wird.
Die besten Stories sind jedoch "Hand of Glory" und das post-apokalyptische "Vastation". Wem stilvoller Horror zusagt, ist bei Laird Barron gut aufgehoben!

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Evan Tavares

the latter of which was less connected to his over-arching mythos but worked wonderfully as a surprisingly sensitive bit of supernatural drama

Reviewed in Canada on June 26, 2017

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Laird Barron's third collection is arguably his strongest after his first. The stories here seem to link up even more so than in his others, and his particularly pulpy blend of horror, crime and even western tropes at times is stronger than ever. Highlights include The Men from Porlock, Hand of Glory and Redfield Girls, the latter of which was less connected to his over-arching mythos but worked wonderfully as a surprisingly sensitive bit of supernatural drama.

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