In these fifteen stories of ecological horror and dark fantasy, Farrenkopf delves into the depths of environmental decay and cursed ecosystems, searching ancient forests for elder gods and swimming the oceans with nameless things that live in the deep.
In “Mother’s Wolves” an academic searches for her disappeared mother under the guise of a gray wolf rehabilitation study in the backwoods of Maine. In “We’ve Been in Enough Places to Know” and “Waterlogged,” an underemployed property manager on Cape Cod traverses the crumbling halls of a seaside luxury condominium as something aquatic sings to him from the flooded basement. “To Tend a Grove” is the story of an eccentric millionaire’s desire to rewild a golf course in the name of an ancient forest deity and the landscaper trapped in his verdant machinations. In “Translations for a Dead Sea” a down on her luck graphic designer retreats to her deceased father’s bayside cabin in order to translate a long-lost poem that will either save the world from environmental collapse or speed up the apocalypse. In “The Tap, Tap, Tap of a Beak” a heartbroken ornithologist must make a pilgrimage to the mountain of bones that is the final resting place for endangered species, but a shady bone collector has other plans for the deceased woodpecker she carries with her.
In these stories, three published here for the first time, we encounter ethical werewolf rearing, murderous tree cults, Weird insectile evolutions, seaside folk horror, corrupt environmental tourism, gothic forest wanderings, eternal plastic pollution, sea-bound cosmic horror, hostile swamp creatures, and the ever creeping threat of climate change. Crack the spine. Step into the trees. Wade into the water. You will always be welcome in these haunted ecologies.
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What authors are saying about Haunted Ecologies:
"As the world we live in becomes stranger and darker under our influence, we need art to meet it. Corey Farrenkopf's Haunted Ecologies does this work beautifully. These ecological horror stories are fueled by melancholy, anger, grief, and an abiding tenderness both toward the damaged world and toward ourselves, the fragile agents of nature's destruction. It's an excellent book and I want you to read it."
-- Nathan Ballingrud, author of Crypt of the Moon Spider and The Strange
"In Haunted Ecologies, Corey Farrenkopf combs the cold shores, misty forests, and damp basements of realities not quite our own, conjuring uncanny encounters between the human and the (super)natural in which each is transformed by the other. A dreamy, lush collection that drips, slithers, and crawls from the page." — Kay Chronister, author of The Bog Wife
“The intricate eco-horrors of Haunted Ecologies skillfully thread the needle between sorrow and transformation, between collapse and survival. These stories are steeped with regret for the choices that we've made, but Farrenkopf still throws us a lifeline - the possibility that something will survive, even if it's monstrous, even if it costs us.”--Nadia Bulkin, author of She Said Destroy
“Readers expecting stories of gardening cults, apocalyptic forests, and dying seas will not be disappointed by Haunted Ecologies. But Corey Farrenkopf’s stories excel in capturing humanity’s deep and aching hurt as the natural world unravels around us. Read it and be moved.” -- Wendy N. Wagner, author of GIRL IN THE CREEK and THE DEER KINGS
"These stories are indeed haunted places - full of mist and smoke and monsters and shadows but above all, the mess that makes up the human race. And they're going to stay with me for a long time." --Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You
“Haunted Ecologies is a collection written in a classic and melancholic voice, filled with a blend of cli-fi and academia that follows enduring families, illuminating collapsing economics and ecosystems, presenting readers with nature metaphors that symbolize the change, turbulence, and turmoil in human lives. At the core theme of these interconnected short stories is the criticism of corporate corruption, wasting landscapes that offer daunting and prophetic futures, continuing memories, things lost and changed through translation, yet it also offers hope, even with the looming end of the world.” —Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker and Nebula award-winning author of Linghun
"During my time with Corey Farrenkopf's Haunted Ecologies, I began to suspect that the Earth is our haunted house, and we are the ghosts who wander it. Uncertainty pervades these quietly memorable narratives. Mysteries, cryptids, and missed chances undermine the comforting normalcy of everyday life and familiar settings. All of this is accomplished through Farrenkopf's unassailably clean, pristine language to ghostly and devastating effect." -- Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and Invaginies
“Brightly colored tales of unsettling and strange transformations, alive with humor and the beating of a compassionate heart.” -Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying