We’re delighted to present the contents list for our upcoming Beyond & Within anthology: This Way Lies Madness, edited by Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery. In the tradition of Poe’s ’The Tell-tale Heart’, This Way Lies Madness presents fictional interpretations of madness from some of the biggest names in the horror genre, a combination of commissioned authors and tales selected from an extremely popular submissions call. Featuring monstrous manifestations of trauma and guilt, paranoia and persecution, anxiety, addiction, and crippling terror, this anthology of dark tales is intended to showcase ’madness’ in horror in ways that challenge stigma and promote understanding, with each contributor giving a unique introduction exploring their inspiration for their bone-chilling tale. Horror artist Greg Chapman provides the stunning frontispiece image and cover detail for this exciting new book.

The Flame Tree Beyond and Within short story collections bring together tales of myth and imagination by modern and contemporary writers, carefully selected by anthologists, and sometimes featuring short stories from a single author. Overall, the series presents a wide range of diverse and inclusive voices with myth, folkloric-inflected short fiction, and an emphasis on the supernatural, science fiction, the mysterious and the speculative. The books themselves are gorgeous, with foiled covers, printed edges and published only in hardcover editions, offering a lifetime of reading pleasure.

 

Introduction excerpt by Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery:

‘In these pages, you will discover tales of trauma, dissociation, body dysmorphia, psychosis, depression, anxiety, and more, captured in all forms of horror from the extreme to the nuanced. There is jaw-dropping violence, skin-crawling body horror, and quirky dark humour, alongside the quiet, heartbreaking introspections of people spiralling into madness. Yet all the stories and poems in this volume are framed so that the insensitive, stereotypical presentations of mental illness commonly found in horror are resoundingly and appropriately absent. Our authors have achieved this in a number of ways. As well as drawing on lived experience and careful research, they have all made effective and inventive use of metaphor; a conceit also employed by horror masters like Poe and Gilman, to explore the complex effects that mental illness incurs on a person. Conjuring ghosts and poltergeists, vampires, haunted houses, and other unnerving manifestations, our authors have punctuated their tales with powerful symbolism, startling imagery, and compelling, and often confronting, intimacy. For a moment, we are living in the minds of their protagonists, obliged to experience their psychoses first hand, to listen to their reasoning, to see the inexorable lengths they will go to survive. We are forced to watch the horrific loss of self.’

 

TBR by Kayleigh Dobbs

The Scarlet Angels of Regret by Jonathan Maberry

Bangs by Emily Ruth Verona

Sawn Wife by Stephen Volk

Self-Portrait by Cynthia Pelayo

The Mark by Grace Chan

Poppet by Freddie Bonfanti

Dissolution of the Self on the Altar of Your Dreams: A Case Study by Sayan J. Soselisa

Calm Springs by C.D. Vázquez

The Soup of Life by Callum Rowland

Speak by L.E. Daniels

A Solitary Voice by Ramsey Campbell

My Ghosts Have Dreams by Sumiko Saulson

Nothing and the Boy by Amanda Cecilia Lang

The Familiar’s Assistant by Alma Katsu

We Don’t Talk About the Sink by Ryan Cole

Old Friends by Tim Waggoner

A Note for William Cowper by Sara Larner

There’s a Ghost in My House by Marie O’Regan

The Book of Dreems by Georgina Bruce

The Dark Gets In by Sean Hogan

Eighty-five Per Cent, Give or Take by Alan Baxter

The Carousel by Stephanie M. Wytovich

---

 

Lee Murray is from Aotearoa-New Zealand and is a Shirley Jackson Award and five-time Bram Stoker Award winner with more than forty titles to her credit. Murray holds a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction and is an Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Author of the Taine McKenna Adventures, The Path of Ra trilogy (with Dan Rabarts) and Grotesque: Monster Stories, she has edited numerous volumes of speculative fiction, including Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women.

 

Dave Jeffery is the author of 18 novels, two collections, and numerous short stories. Prior to retirement to write full time, Jeffery worked for 35 years in the National Health Service (NHS), specialising in the field of mental health nursing and risk management. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Mental Health Studies and a Master of Science Degree in Health Studies. A mentor on the Horror Writers Association’s Mentorship Scheme, Jeffery is the 2023 recipient of the HWA Mentor of the Year Award. He is currently co-chair of the HWA Wellness Committee.