A star-studded roster of urban fantasy authors is the main attraction in Carniepunk, a collection of short stories set against the eerie and often horrifying backdrop of a slew of paranormal carnivals.
In "Painted Love" by Rob Thurman, a mystical drifter tags along with a sociopath in order to catch the lesser-known thrills of a traveling carnival but finds himself driven by love to break his code of not getting involved with the humans he observes. Rachel Caine delivers a sad and chilling tale of violence in "Cold Girl," in which a teenaged girl falls victim to depraved betrayal by her first love and must decide whether to take revenge at great cost to her soul. And in "A Duet with Darkness" by Allison Pang, an arrogant young fiddler discovers her music has the power not only to attract the Other Folk, but the ultimate evil as well. Of course, no carnival-themed anthology would be complete without at least one vaguely creepy clown, such as the one in Jennifer Estep's "Parlor Tricks," which finds Gin Blanco, aka the Spider, searching for the connection between a missing girl and an Air Elemental who stars in a knife-throwing act.
Fans of horror and dark fantasy will savor this combination of exotic and macabre from their favorite writers, but anyone who has ever felt that their reflection in the funhouse mirror kept watching them after they turned around will find this collection creepy yet satisfying. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads