Noctuidae [signed] [first edition]

From the World Fantasy Award-winning author of Do You Like to Look at Monsters? and Ana Kai Tangata . . . Scott Nicolay’s NOCTUIDAE follows a trio of hikers into the savage heart of an Arizona canyon. Far from any sign of living civilization, and with no way to call for help, the trip goes from wrong to worse when one of the hikers turns up missing. The remaining two find themselves stranded in a shallow cave, suspicious of each other and desperate to survive until sunrise, praying that whatever’s out there won’t hear them. “Scott Nicolay is the strongest voice to appear in horror fiction since Laird Barron.” —Rue Morgue “Exquisite, inventive, savage, and chilling, without being beholden to pulp-era titans. This is Weird Literature, circa now.” —Ross E. Lockhart, editor of Cthulhu Fhtagn! and The Children of Old Leech “We are not in the presence of a callow and bullish youth, but a man of erudition and experience. Nicolay is one who has seen much, endured much, has undergone prolonged pressure and the result is a diamond among stones.”—Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All “Nicolay’s writing is clean-limbed, not a shred of rococco excess on it. Poetry and the demotic mix well in his prose. He expertly delivers clues and foreshadowings and backstory tidbits attendant upon his enigmas and frights without hammering the reader over the head with gore or hyperbole. His characters are engrossing, if often repellant, his plotting assured, and his venues enticingly nasty.” —Locus “The first thing that hits you while reading Scott Nicolay. . . That old black magic that comes with encountering great weird fiction for the first time.” —Crows N’ Bones