In the shadows of war and history, the mirror between man and monster breaks ...
From the haunted hills of Roman Britain to the sewers of occupied Warsaw ... in the bloodied streets of Revolutionary Paris, and the anarchy of World War II Shanghai ... out of the wilds of America, India, Africa and Europe ... down the long savage darkness of the centuries, monsters have fed upon us. They are shapeshifters, vampires, sorcerers and spirits—things named only in myth, and things for which we have no name. They are our demons, our reflections, our desires and our nightmares. And all too often, they are ... only human.
In this second collection from Gemma Files—featuring the award-winning ‘The Emperor’s Old Bones’ (winner of the 1999 International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Fiction), and five never-before-published stories—we tour the overlooked intersections between wilderness and civilization where secret dances of fear and pain are performed and hunters and hunted change roles.
Gemma Files, a former film critic, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher, has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work; two chapbooks of speculative poetry; the “weird western” Hexslinger Series; a story-cycle; and the standalone novel Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst Award for Best Adult Novel. Files also has several story collections and a collection of poetry forthcoming.
Heath Miller is a voice talent and Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator.
Rasha Zamamiri is an actress, a singer, and a voiceover artist who was born in the Middle East and raised all over the world. She has a vast knowledge of cultures, customs, and religions, which have helped her character portrayals on stage, on TV, and in the booth. She was also the first Muslim featured in a national commercial wearing the hijab, which was televised during the Super Bowl, Olympics, and multiple national events.
Fluent in Hindi, Urdu, and English, Deepti Gupta has an international career spread across India, Singapore, Pakistan, and the United States. As a narrator she brings an open and curious perspective to the author's work. Her natural global/international accent makes her a great choice for an author who is writing to appeal to a global readership/listenership. As an actress she has earned praise from the New York Times for her performance in the feature film Walkaway, and also stars in Record/Play (a sci-fi love story) which was an official selection at Sundance 2013. She earned her MFA in acting from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in theater studies from the National University of Singapore, and BA in English literature from Delhi University. Besides working as an actress and voice talent, she also works as a consultant with corporate firms and businesses to help expand and deepen their diversity and inclusion strategies.
Alana Kerr Collins is a Meisner-trained actress, a classically trained soprano, and a Sesame Workshop trained puppeteer who received her bachelor's degree in drama and English from Trinity College in Dublin. The recipient of an Audie Award for her work on Angela Hunt’s Risen, she has recorded over fifty audiobook titles. Born and raised in Belfast, Ireland, she currently resides in Los Angeles.
Anne Flosnik is an accomplished British actress with stage, TV, commercial, voiceover, and audiobook experience. She has narrated over 300 audiobook titles in a wide range of genres and has received several awards and distinctions, including an American Library Association Special Services for Children Award, multiple Earphone Awards, and multiple Audie nominations.
A two-time AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, raised in the U.K. with American parents, Joel Froomkin provides a flawless blend between authentic American and British sounds. He is a specialist in dialects-having taught accents at NYU and coached Broadway stars and celebrities at major regional theaters and national tours. Classically trained with an MFA in theater from USC, he has over 130 full-length audiobooks to his credit and over 5,000 five-star reviews on Audible. He has recorded for Tantor, Hachette, Punch Audio, Bee Audio, and Audible Studios. His recording of Ruthless People hit #1 on the Audible romance bestseller list, and American Savages was a finalist for the Sultry Listener's Award. Recording LGBT material as "Joel Leslie," he was awarded Narrator of the Year 2017 and Audiobook of the Year 2017 by Sinfullymmbookreviews. When not recording, Joel is often chasing two loquacious wiener dogs who delight in preventing him from recording.
Helen Lloyd is a British actor and voice artist who, since recording her first voiceover at the age of fourteen, has spent much of her career speaking other people’s words and bringing characters to life. A classically trained actor, she has performed in many of Britain’s leading repertory theatres and in the West End. She began narrating audiobooks in 2013.
Emily Lawrence is a passionate actor, voiceover artist, and writer. The narrator of almost 200 audiobooks, she has also worked in television, film, and theater. Born and raised in New York, she received her bachelor’s degree in drama from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. While her greatest loves are narrating and acting, her other passions include traveling, aerial circus, and chocolate.
Gabrielle de Cuir, an Audie and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. Her “velvet touch” as an actor’s director has earned her a special place in the audiobook world as the foremost producer for bestselling authors and celebrities.
If you've watched TV at all in the past ten years, you've definitely seen her face and heard her voice countless times in any number of wildly successful national, global, and Super Bowl commercials, as well as playing the first blond Vulcan in Star Trek history. The daughter of two English professors, Natasha Soudek was raised in the South, speaks native German, lived in Berlin and Vienna, and finally settled in the Lower East Side of New York City as a teenager. After honing her stage presence by studying acting and playing hundreds of sold-out live music shows (singing and playing bass), she moved to LA to record with Channel/DreamWorks and act on TV. Favored on KCRW, Chris Douridas compared her voice and songwriting to the Beatles' Let it Be in meaning and soulfulness... qualities that translate especially well into her career as an audiobook narrator. Her voice is as distinct and memorable as the range of characters she's played on-screen, which gives listeners an immediate familiarity to connect to, along with a warmth and intimacy that spans and uplifts any genre.
Jo Anna Perrin is an audiobook narrator whose readings include Disarming the Narcissist by Wendy T. Behary, You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin, American Freak Show by Willie Geist, and many others.
Carlotta Brentan is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.
Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.
Jean Brassard is a theater and television actor, singer, voice-over talent, audiobook narrator, and writer. He is the winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award.
Tim Lounibos is a longtime film/TV actor whose credits include Star Trek: The Next Generation, JAG, The West Wing, Bosch, and NCIS. Tim's voice has been described as rich, soothing, expressive, gritty, and honest. He loves bringing conflicted heroes, misunderstood characters, wise elders, and sinister antagonists to life. His favorite genres include fantasy/sci-fi, crime, mystery/thriller, YA, horror, self-help, and biography. When not acting, Tim enjoys playing board games, solving escape rooms, and laughing and hanging with family and friends.
Nancy Wu has narrated audiobooks since 2004. A New York theater, television, and film actor, she has recorded in studios all over the world.
Paul Woodson has won SOVAS & Earphones awards, and has recorded close to 350 audiobooks in many different genres—including romance, fiction, history, biography, and mystery—in American and British accents—and received his BFA in acting at Boston University. In his theater days, he worked in many NYC shows, toured the USA and Europe, and starred in NYC as Vincent van Gogh in the sung-through, OOBR Award–winning musical Vincent. He enjoys backpacking the Appalachian Trail and visiting national parks in his spare time. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA.