The Hollow Places: A Novel by T. Kingfisher (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncles house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel from the author of the "innovative, unexpected, and absolutely chilling" (Mira Grant, Nebula Award-winning author) The Twisted Ones. Pray they are hungry. Kara finds the words in the mysterious bunker that shes discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncles house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring this peculiar area--only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts...and the more one fears them, the stronger they become. With her distinctive "delightfully fresh and subversive" (SF Bluestocking) prose and the strange, sinister wonder found in Guillermo del Toros Pans Labyrinth, The Hollow Places is another compelling and white-knuckled horror novel that you wont be able to put down. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography T. Kingfisher, also known as Ursula Vernon, is the author and illustrator of many projects, including the webcomic "Digger," which won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story and the Mythopoeic Award. Her novelette "The Tomato Thief" won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, and her short story "Jackalope Wives" won the Nebula Award for Best Story. She is also the author of the bestselling Dragonbreath, and the Hamster Princess series of books for children. Find her online at RedWombatStudio.com. Review "Can horror even be this rollicking, this fun, while still delivering on the creepiness, the dread, the ick? In Kingfishers hands, it can." --Stephen Graham Jones, acclaimed author of The Only Good Indians"Kingfisher imagines the horrors lying between worlds in this chilling supernatural thriller...Kingfisher has crafted a truly terrifying monster with minimal descriptions that leave the readers imagination to run wild. With well-timed humor and perfect scares, this one is a keeper for horror fans." --Publishers Weekly"There are no cheap scares here...entirely of the authors wonderfully twisted and endlessly fertile imagination....The perfect tale for fans of horror with heart." --Kirkus Reviews Review Quote "Kingfisher imagines the horrors lying between worlds in this chilling supernatural thriller...Kingfisher has crafted a truly terrifying monster with minimal descriptions that leave the readers imagination to run wild. With well-timed humor and perfect scares, this one is a keeper for horror fans." -- Publishers Weekly Excerpt from Book Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1 Nobody ever believes me when I tell them my uncle Earl owns a museum. They start to come around when I explain that its a little tiny museum in a storefront in Hog Chapel, North Carolina, although theres so much stuff jumbled together that it looks bigger than it is. Then I tell them the name and they stop believing me again. It makes for a good icebreaker at parties, anyway. My uncle runs the Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy. Most of it is complete junk, of course. There are things in the cases that undoubtedly have (MADE IN CHINA stamped on the underside. I threw out the shrunken heads when I was fifteen and found identical ones for sale at the Halloween store. But the wall of Thimbles of the World is real or, at least, contains real thimbles, and all the Barong masks are really from Bali, and if the Clovis points were chipped out in the seventies instead of thousands of years ago, they were at least still made by a human with a rock. The jar of MYSTERY PODS?! on the counter are the cones from a Banksia plant, but theyre a mystery to most people, so I guess that counts. And the taxidermy is real, insomuch as it is genuine taxidermy. That part of the museum has eleven stuffed deer heads, six stuffed boar heads, one giraffe skull, forty-six stuffed birds of various species, three stuffed albino raccoons, a Genuine Feejee Mermaid--which I keep trying to get him to rename because I think its probably racist, or at least he could put a sign up explaining the context--two jackalopes, an entire case of dried scorpions, a moth-eaten grizzly bear, five stuffed prairie dogs, two fur-bearing trout, one truly amazing Amazonian river otter, and a pickled cobra in a bottle. Theres a lot of other stuff, too. Thats just the ones on the first floor. Im leaving out the things in boxes, and some things are hard to count. How do I classify the statue of St. Francis of Assisi with the carefully stuffed and mounted sparrows perched on his arms? And Im not really sure whether the scene of tiny taxidermy mice in armor riding cane toads counts as one thing or as six mice and two toads. Theyre in the case with the armadillo purse (and do I count that as clothing or as taxidermy?) and a mug that may have been used by Elvis Presley. The mug has an American flag on it. Uncle Earl put an album sleeve behind it and a large sign proclaiming that Elvis came to the Lord before he died. Im not sure if thats true, but Uncle Earl firmly believes that every celebrity he likes came to the Lord before they died. I think this is so that he can picture them partying with angels instead of being hellbound. Uncle Earl believes strongly in Jesus, Moses, the healing power of crystals, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, that aliens landed at Roswell but the government is suppressing it, secret histories, faith-healing, snake-handling, that there is an invention that will replace gasoline but the oil companies are suppressing it, chemtrails, demon-possession, the astonishing powers of Vicks VapoRub, and that theres proof that aliens contacted the Mayans and the Aztecs and probably the Egyptians, but the scientists are suppressing it. He believes in Skunk Ape, Chupacabras, and he positively adores Mothman. He is not Catholic, but he believes in the miracle of Fatima, visions of Mary appearing on toast, and he is nearly positive that the end times are upon us, but seems to be okay with this, provided it does not interfere with museum hours. Uncle Earl also likes nearly everyone hes ever met, even the ones who believe in none of these things. If you made a Venn diagram of the saved and the damned, the damned would all be outside Uncle Earls personal circle. He doesnt like to think of people he knows being in hell. I tried pointing out once that the nice tourist couple hed just talked to for forty-five minutes were Muslim. He said that was fine. "Theres a lot of Muslims in the world, Carrot." (My name is Kara, but hes called me Carrot since I was two years old.) "God wouldnt send all those good people to hell." "A lot of people would disagree with you." "Thats fine, too." Its hard to argue with Uncle Earl. He can believe in too many things at the same time, without any apparent contradiction. "Dr. Williams at the coffee shop says the earth is billions of years old." "Could be," said Uncle Earl. "Could be. Creation took seven days, but I dont know how long a day is for God." "But youve got a sign in the case with the prairie dogs that says the earth is four thousand years old." "Its a quote from the Reverend James Smiley. Its attributed down at the bottom. If its wrong, its on him. Im not here to judge. The visitors can decide for themselves what they want to believe." "What if they decide wrong, though?" "God forgives a lot," said Uncle Earl. "He has to. We all do a lot that needs forgiving." I gave up. When I was a kid, my classmates asked if I thought the museum was creepy. Some of the taxidermy was old and kind of battered, and you turn around the wrong corner and thered be glass eyes staring at you. One of the albino raccoons had a particularly unpleasant grin. But, no, I never found it creepy. I grew up in it. I was sitting behind the counter taking peoples donations when I was so young that I needed to sit on a phone book to reach the cash register. (Years later I realized that I could probably have won instant fame from my classmates if Id made up a story about the museum being haunted by the ghosts of the stuffed animals, but it didnt occur to me at the time. Oh, well. Opportunities lost.) The sign out front of the Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy mostly has small print, but the word WONDERS is large, so most people call it the Wonder Museum. There are a lot of jokes--"I wonder what Earl was thinking," "I wonder where he gets this stuff." They stopped being funny a long time ago, but we all smile politely anyway, in case the person saying it has money. To answer the second question, Uncle Earl gets the stuff at flea markets or estate sales or on the internet or he makes them himself. He dabbled in taxidermy for a long time and he has lots of friends on the internet. People like Uncle Earl. To answer the first question, I dont always know what hes thinking either. There was a time, when I was sixteen and working at the Wonder Museum for a summer job, that I tried to argue with him. I was angry at everything because this is the natural state of sixteen-year-olds. "You believe in evolution," I told him. "You just dont know it." "Well, I dont know about that." He pushed his glasses up on his nose. "Doesnt seem right, us coming from monkeys." "Look, you believe that babies take after their parents, right?" "Of course. Thats just genetics, Carrot. For example, your momma always liked to argue, and look at you now." I favored this with a snort and plunged onward. "And you believe in survival of the fittest, right? That fast antelope live long enough to have babies and slow antelope get eaten?" "Sure, Carrot." "Thats evolution, right there. That. Those two things together." Uncle Earl shook his head sadly. "Doesnt seem right," he repeated, "us coming from monkeys." I threw my hands in the air and stomped into the back to rearrange the armored mice. A few weeks later, shortly before I was done with summer break, he informed me that he had come around on evolution. "What?" "Thinking you must have been right, Carrot." He nodded. "Seems like we must have evolved." He waved a finger at me. "Only thing that explains Bigfoot, isnt it?" I stared at him. I did not even know where to begin. "Yep," he said, taking my silence for agreement. "Bigfoots the missing link, all right, so you figure we gotta have a chain in order to have a link missing. Im gonna update the sign in the prairie dog case." He smiled at me beatifically and I went and got him the sign from the prairie dog case so that he could remove the words of the Reverend Smiley. Even at sixteen, I was learning that you had to pick your battles. Eighteen years to the day after Uncle Earl accepted Bigfoot into his life, my marriage ended. It would be a better story if I had walked in to find my husband, Mark, in bed with my best friend and dramatically told him to never darken my door again. But it was just two people who got married too early and had a long, slow slide into comfortable misery. I cant even say that it was my idea. It simply hadnt occurred to me that I could leave him or that he could leave me, and it was rather surprising to find out how wrong I was. I felt a lot of panic because I had no idea how I was going to support myself--he had the better job, with health insurance--but the rest of the emotional stuff got a lot easier. He offered me the house, which I couldnt have afforded to keep. I declined. Which is how I found myself, at thirty-four, staring down the barrel of moving back in with my parents. I love my mother. I cannot live with her. We are too much alike. If you have ever seen those photos of two deer who get their antlers locked together during a fight, dragging each other around until they both starve to death, you have a pretty good idea of how my mother and I get along. Details ISBN1534451129 Author T. Kingfisher Short Title The Hollow Places Pages 352 Language English Year 2020 ISBN-10 1534451129 ISBN-13 9781534451124 Format Paperback Publication Date 2020-10-06 Subtitle A Novel DEWEY 813.6 Audience General UK Release Date 2020-10-06 Publisher Gallery Books Imprint Gallery Books We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:129882082;

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