I'm pleased to announce the release of Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection by Tara Campbell as the eightieth volume in Aqueduct Press's Conversation Pieces series, in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase a copy now at www.aqueductpress.com.
Deep in the recesses of childhood memory, your old playthings await. Listen: don’t you hear them crying out for you? Come take a peek inside the Cabinet of Wrath to find out what really happens when toys go missing and the stark decision they must make if they ever want to go home again. Discover what doll heads really think about being separated from their bodies. Follow a skull-and-bones novelty ring as it assembles a full body for itself, bit by grisly bit, and learn how loving your doll too much can lead to grave consequences. Open the door to these fabulist tales of toys and vengeance for a playtime you’ll never forget.
Celebrate the release of the book with for a virtual reading and discussion of Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection, in conversation with Kelly Ann Jacobson, author of Tink and Wendy and An Inventory of Abandoned Things, with an introduction by L. Timmel Duchamp at the Writer's Center on July 15 here.
Katharine Blair has a long, thoughtful review of Cabinet of Wrath at Trampset. "Sometimes the most effective and thought-provoking speculative fiction is found in the smallest of shifts in perspective. Given the number of stories in Cabinet of Wrath that explore the ways in which a woman’s value depends so profoundly on the motives of her oppressors, I think anything that keeps us as readers closer to the root of our own culpability is best.Lost loves and predators, manipulation and finding solace, violence and the search for connection. These most human of experiences are at once the beauty and the horror of this collection and the perfect subject for its vantage of a seemingly childlike entry point into our world. Childhood has always been as much about powerlessness as innocence.... Now here, twenty years, a divorce, and eight pregnancies later, I think I’m ready to call it: if you want to understand the human experience, speculative fiction, and specifically a collection like Cabinet of Wrath, this is a great place to start. Let these dolls be the abstraction that allows the necessary distance to examine your own world with clarity."
Campbell delivers nine spooky stories of toys turned sinister that are sure to make readers reconsider the dolls, stuffed animals, and childhood playthings collecting dust in storage....[T]he imaginative scenarios and alluring voice never waver. Readers looking for bite-size horror will be delighted.—Publishers Weekly
A delectably gruesome, tantalizingly bitey cabinet of wonders awaits you in this jewel box of a collection from Tara Campbell.—Tina Connolly, Hugo-nominated author of The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections
I thought I’d seen it all with the “creepy doll” story line, but Tara Campbell takes it to the next level with her twisted and delightful imagination. Kidnappers. Lovers. Killers. Seekers. I will be thinking about these stories in my nightmares. –Tara Laskowski, author of One Night Gone and Modern Manners For Your Inner Demons
