The Puppet King And Other Atonements

“Bleak, melancholy, and intelligent like the best by Thomas Ligotti and Jon Padgett, these tales unmistakably come from a deep, personal place and will best resonate with searchers after metaphysical horrors.” —Dejan Ognjanović, RUE MORGUE The Puppet King and Other Atonements conjures a horrific universe of puppets, labyrinths, and liminal spaces. Over the span of fourteen Borgesian terrors, Justin A. Burnett inhabits the strange borderlands between intimacy and isolation, fiction and philosophy, reality and nightmare. Sprouting from the blackened landscape of weird writers such as Thomas Ligotti, Jon Padgett, and Brian Evenson, this collection is a bleak, unflinching gaze into the vertiginous depths of the nonhuman. “A collection brimming with sublime torments. Burnett masterfully grasps the transcendent grotesque, weaving tales charged with cosmic danger. A refreshing and powerful new voice in contemporary dread.” —Rebecca Gransden, author of SEA OF GLASS “Burnett takes you through a journey of contrasts. At once delicate and painfully intimate, yet vast, reverberant and strange, The Puppet King and Other Atonements draws the reader deep into the primordial to the very edge of the stars. Highly recommended.” —Emma J. Gibbon, author of DARK BLOOD COMES FROM THE FEET

The city of Bleiberg is humming with unrest. The public's discontent with Leopold the puppet King is further fueled by traitors and self interested courtiers and the vengeful Duchess of Auersperg is orchestrating a war against the King. A chance meeting brings young handsome American diplomat Maurice Carewe, face to face with his friend, English millionaire Lord John Fitzgerald. While Maurice fights for the love of beautiful Princess Alexia, Lord Fitzgerald surrenders to the captivating Madame Sylvia Amerbach. Caught up in a tangled web of intrigue, cunnings and veiled allurements, each man's love, honor and friendship is put to the ultimate test.

In the present... A young woman explores the mysteries of death through the paintings of an engimatic artist. A young couple discovers a restless antique doll in a cemetery. The charred bodies of homeless men appear in the snowy alleys of Boston. A strange mural with an appetite for bones haunts a deserted house. In the past... A woman roams the slums of London hoping to be Jack the Ripper's next victim. Night after night a man dreams of his lonely lover and trip to a strange museum. Following a tragic accident, a widow orders the construction of a secret chamber with walls thick enough to muffle screams. In a strange city, long ago... Women are blinded at birth; this has been the law for over 500 years. Now they can see, and they are coming back from the grave to take their revenge. A cryptographer struggles to solve the mystery that may save the living from the dead.

The city of Bleiberg is humming with unrest. The public's discontent with Leopold the puppet King is further fueled by traitors and self interested courtiers and the vengeful Duchess of Auersperg is orchestrating a war against the King. A chance meeting brings young handsome American diplomat Maurice Carewe, face to face with his friend, English millionaire Lord John Fitzgerald. While Maurice fights for the love of beautiful Princess Alexia, Lord Fitzgerald surrenders to the captivating Madame Sylvia Amerbach. Caught up in a tangled web of intrigue, cunnings and veiled allurements, each man's love, honor and friendship is put to the ultimate test.

The city of Bleiberg is humming with unrest. The public's discontent with Leopold the puppet King is further fueled by traitors and self interested courtiers and the vengeful Duchess of Auersperg is orchestrating a war against the King. A chance meeting brings young handsome American diplomat Maurice Carewe, face to face with his friend, English millionaire Lord John Fitzgerald. While Maurice fights for the love of beautiful Princess Alexia, Lord Fitzgerald surrenders to the captivating Madame Sylvia Amerbach. Caught up in a tangled web of intrigue, cunnings and veiled allurements, each man's love, honor and friendship is put to the ultimate test.

Wilderness Patrol fficer Pamela Tate, scouting in the mountains of Washington, sees and touches a ground squirrel in the dusty path, blood trickling from its mouth. Forty-eight hours later she lies dead at her campsite, covered in mysterious welts and bruises. Across the lake, a boisterous camping party falls silent as they watch each other sicken and die in agony. A killer is loose. It has a foreign name. Yersinia Pestis. Plague. An unknowing nation harbors the deadly evil in its midst. While a few embattled survivors race to save the country, perhaps the world, the grim invader hides in a mother’s sigh, a child’s laugh, a lover’s whisper. Nothing can stop the death ride of . . . The Fourth Horseman.