A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror

Jacobs’s collection bundles two evocative novellas exploring human depravity and corruption. “The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky” focuses on the tenuous relationship between aging, once-infamous poet Rafael Avendaño and young academic Isabel Certa, both exiles from the dictator-ravaged South American country of Magera and now living in Málaga, Spain. When Isabel finds Rafael’s journal and his attempts to translate an unsettling text (“It is a lure, a sweet aroma,/ the killing and/ the letting of blood”) from Latin and Greek into Spanish, she descends into a world of unthinkable corruption. In “My Heart Struck Sorrow,” a librarian discovers the journals and recordings of a man who recorded blues music in the Deep South, and learns of his fall into madness as he uncovers the Satanic roots of a popular blues tune. In Jacobs’s work, the present is held in a manacled grip by the foolishness and horrors of the past. His writing is meticulous, detailed, and atmospheric, evoking a sense of place and suspense in equal turns. Horror readers will enjoy Jacobs’s dark vision of human nature. Agent: Stacia Decker, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary. (Oct.)