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Trail of Shadows

Mike Allen

$38.95

Paperback

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English
Miscellaneous
07 October 2025
Two-time World Fantasy Award finalist Mike Allen spins a tale of spirit beings, serial killers, and supernatural horrors.

Nathan's freshman year in college delivers alternative rock, relationship adventures, and a plague of waking nightmares. He flees campus for the Appalachian Trail, hoping to leave his personal demons behind. But a scream for help from a boy made of shadows rips his reality to pieces.

The rescue of the boy ends in a blood-soaked struggle that teaches Nathan monsters are real. And that he is one of them. Forgotten powers and hungers from his childhood manifest in claws that can tear apart flesh and spirit.

But wonders soon bring terrors as the revelation of Nathan's true nature exposes his existence to enemies he never knew he had. As he desperately seeks the ancestor who can unlock the secrets of his heritage, a shape-shifting mass murderer stalks close behind. And even worse things await him in the shadows of the spirit realm.
By:  
Imprint:   Miscellaneous
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 16mm
Weight:   372g
ISBN:   9781940372723
ISBN 10:   1940372720
Pages:   276
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Mike Allen wears many creative hats, at least one of them tailor-made by his wife and partner-in-crime Anita. An author, editor, and publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, Mike has written, edited, or co-edited thirty-nine books, among them this dark fantasy novel Trail of Shadows, his sidearms, sorcery, and zombies sequence The Black Fire Concerto and The Ghoulmaker's Aria, and his latest horror collection Slow Burn. Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, his first two volumes of horror tales, were both finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Story Collection, and his dark fable ""The Button Bin"" was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Another collection, The Spider Tapestries, contains experiments in weird science fiction and fantasy. As editor and publisher, Mike has been nominated twice for the World Fantasy Award: first, for his anthology Clockwork Phoenix 5, the culmination of the Clockwork Phoenix series, showcasing tales of beauty and strangeness that defy genre classification, and for Mythic Delirium, the magazine of poetry and fiction he edited for twenty years. He's also a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for poetry. His six poetry collections include Strange Wisdoms of the Dead, a Philadelphia Inquirer Editor's Choice selection, and Hungry Constellations, a Suzette Haden Elgin Award nominee. With Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, based in Roanoke, Virginia. Their cat Pandora assists.

Reviews for Trail of Shadows

""Allen is a master at serving up striking imagery and evocative, atmospheric settings. He also excels at creating characters who feel fully realized, then dropping them into horrific situations, keeping the reader invested in their journeys and well-being."" (A.C. Wise, author of Wendy, Darling and Catfish Lullaby) ""Dripping with Cronenberg body horror, infused with Barker misanthropy, and crawling with the darkest fantasy. [...] You can't just assume you know where you are in a Mike Allen story, or where you're going, or where the path ends."" (Michael Wehunt, author of The Inconsolables and Greener Pastures) ""Allen masterfully succeeds in being transgressive in all the best and most beautiful ways."" (Sunny Moraine, author of Your Shadow Half Remains) ""Mike Allen habitually upends Lovecraftian tropes with his own brand of cosmic horror."" (Laird Barron, author of Not a Speck of Light: Stories) ""Allen demonstrates again and again his masterful ability to infuse cosmic, existential terror into the most intimate and mundane aspects of our lives, while never failing to point out the self-made horror already there."" (R.S. Belcher, author of The Six-Gun Tarot) ""A poet who writes in dread and awe rather than ink."" (Gemma Files, author of Experimental Film) ""Mike Allen blends a poet's attention to language with a crime reporter's instinct for the darker precincts of human behavior."" (John Langan, author of The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies) ""Mike Allen will infect your subconscious with hallucinatory and alarming delight."" (Helen Marshall, author of The Migration) ""Allen twists and skews the reality and the everyday, tucking shadows and terrors into the cracks of what we think is real."" (Maria Haskins, reviewing for Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Short Fiction Roundup) ""Allen overflows the tank with nightmare fuel"" (Publishers Weekly)


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