Little Deaths
A World Fantasy Award–winning anthology of erotic horror stories, including dark tales of desire by Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen Dedman, Harry Crews, and others.
The title of this acclaimed anthology comes from the French term “la petite mort,” a seventeenth-century euphemism for orgasm. It was thought that part of a man’s life-force was drained from him each time he climaxed. In Little Deaths, renowned horror editor Ellen Datlow collects twenty-two stories that explore the connection between sex and death.
These stories range from the erotic to the psychological, all against a backdrop of horror. Authors include Lucy Taylor, Nicola Griffith, Kathe Koja, Richard Christian Matheson, Lucius Shepard, and many more.
Ellen Datlow, J. Calvin Pierce, Kathe Koja, Barry N. Malzberg, Joel Lane, Joyce Carol Oates, Melanie Tem, Kelley Eskridge, Sarah Clemens, Nicola Griffith, M. John Harrison, Jack Womack, Douglas Clegg, K. W. Jeter, Richard Christian Matheson, Lucius Shepard, Stephen Dedman, Lucy Taylor, Harry Crews, Wayne Allen Sallee, Nicholas Royle, Pat Cadigan
Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York.
