No one can strip down love to its primordial fertility and minerals like Karen M. Vaughn, and in this immersive follow-up to her debut collection, love is stripped so we can watch it haunt, seduce, whisper, rage, and slink.

Good horror-and Vaughn's is the best-looks lingeringly on what we'd rather only glance at over our shoulders. With Technicolor magical realism, Vaughn pulls and worries at every kind of love that humans feel (especially secretly feel) and how it might save us even as we let it consume us. As is so often the case with Vaughn's scary/witty/delicious stories, Death Comes for the Trophy Wife gloriously muralizes our most private fears until we feel more human than we did before we read it.

PRAISE FOR KAREN M. VAUGHN

"Each story is tightly crafted, with vivid and weird-yet oddly relatable-situations. Fans of writers like Karen Russell and George Saunders will especially enjoy A Kiss for a Dead Film Star, but there's something here for everyone in this artfully written collection of uncanny and human tales." -Lawrence Public Library

"The weight of these stories is much heavier than this slight volume should allow, and each of them packs an emotional punch. They are also compellingly readable. I tried to ration myself to one a day and failed; I had to go back and reread to make sure that each one got the attention it deserves. ... Highly recommended." -The Future Fire Reviews on A Kiss for a Dead Film Star

"Months after reading, [the stories] still haunt me." -Stephanie Alford, 7Stillwell SF/F Feminism Reviews on A Kiss for a Dead Film Star