Craig Laurance Gidney is a magician. His stories are dazzling and transformative. His illusions shame reality for its fragility. He dares you to take a card—any card—and gives you back your watch, your wallet, your sanity.

The stories in The Nectar of Nightmares weave and remix myths, legends, and identities. Ranging from retold folktales to diverse settings like the Harlem Renaissance and the contemporary drag ball scene to phantasmagoric secondary worlds, this is a horror collection for those who have descended so far into the deep, there's nothing left to fear.

There is.

Craig Laurance Gidney has been nominated for the Lambda Literary Award on multiple occasions. The Nectar of Nightmares is his latest collection of weird and wondrous stories.

"The Nectar of Nightmares is a haunting collection of stories, filled with retellings and reimaginings, transgressive versions of familiar tales from our youth. It's important work that's being done here, visceral and unsettling, paired with humor and hope. This is an author to keep an eye on, for sure."
—Richard Thomas, author of Spontaneous Human Combustion

"The Nectar of Nightmares is an incredible and breathtaking achievement. There's a sublime magic in these stories as well as a lingering danger, one that lurks at the edges of every page, waiting to draw you nearer. No one else out there is writing weird and wondrous fiction like Craig Laurance Gidney. Prepare to be dazzled and bewitched."
—Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens and Reluctant Immortals