The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales

The 10 macabre tales that make up Veres’s English-language debut stake their scares on their wildly unpredictable plots. All Veres’s stories begin in realistically grounded settings before veering unexpectedly into territory rife with unforeseeable and surreal menaces. “Fogtown” is presented as the scattered notes of a rock journalist who succumbs to the fatal allure of a band whose only legacy, having never released an album, is the weird effect their music had on those who saw them live. “Multiplied by Zero” is one of several stories that evoke H.P. Lovecraft, in this instance through a tongue-in-cheek travelogue chronicling the narrator’s excursion into a dark and dangerous otherworld. It has a companion piece in “In the Snow, Sleeping,” about a young couple’s sojourn at a vacation outpost that deteriorates into rot and decay before their eyes. These tales wear their resistance to conventional horror tropes and formulas as a badge of honor. Readers are sure to be impressed. (Oct.)