This volume commemorates Nicholas Kaufmann's twenty-five years as a writer of weird fiction, which began with the story "La B?te Est Morte" (2000). In this diverse volume of his recent tales we find narratives such as "The Fire and the Stag" and "The Fifth Horseman," which suggest that the universe is under the control of a malevolent deity. "The Rest Is Noise" hints at the weird power of music, while "Lucienne" fuses crime and the supernatural in its tribute to Edgar Allan Poe. "Every Path Taken" draws upon H. P. Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness" in broaching the possibility of brains kept alive outside the body.

In "Whatever Happened to Solstice Young" we are introduced to a fetching young woman possibly endowed with supernatural powers; "Companion" tells of a man haunted by the ghost of his own father. And in a concluding novella of great power and richness, "General Slocum's Gold" again melds hard-boiled crime with a grisly horror from the past. Throughout, Kaufmann's supple prose and sensitivity to the nuances of character are shiningly evident.

Nicholas Kaufmann is the author of the novel In the Shadow of the Axe (2016) and the story collections Walk in Shadows (2003) and Still Life (2018). He has also written a series of supernatural novels about Dr. Laura Powell (The Hungry Earth, The Stone Serpent, and The Mind Worms [2021-24]).