Artists of various stripes give the uncanny shape and dangerous substance in this pleasing horror anthology from Pelan (Lost on the Darkside
). Steve Rasnic Tem leads off with "The Disease Artist," a Kafkaesque account of a performance artist in an antiseptic future who simulates disease symptoms to reacquaint people with their mortality. Matt Cardin and Mark McLaughlin close the book with "Nightmares, Imported and Domestic," a cleverly inverted story about an artist whose dreams of an alternate life in a depressingly bleak and ordinary world begin to overwhelm his waking hours. These two fine tales serve as bookends for 20 stories that tend to feature gruesome works of art that prove to have a basis in real life or artists whose dark visions expose the grim reality of existence, notably Brian Hodge's "With Acknowledgments to Sun Tzu" and Lucy Taylor's "I Hear You Quietly Singing." Other contributors include Gerard Houarner, Tim Lebbon, Jeff VanderMeer and David Niall Wilson. (June)
