All the Things We Never See

This collection from editor and author Kelly (also the owner of Undertow) is everything weird fiction should be. Hovering between the uncanny and the disturbing, these 31 tales unsettle and destabilize, and Kelly captures a deep-rooted existential anxiety and plays with the reader’s primal fears. In the gripping “The Face That Looks Back at You,” a couple desperately try to rebuild their relationship even as they lose their hold on themselves. “A Crack in the Ceiling of the World” is one man’s journey from one post-apocalyptic world to another. A couple’s first date goes eerily awry in “Blink,” which blends horror and metafiction. “Some Other You” is an exercise in dissociation as a man’s senses of purpose and self unravel. While some pieces, such as “The Wounded Bird” and “October Dreams,” evoke a more melancholic atmosphere, at the heart of Kelly’s fiction is a deep mistrust of reality. His ability to upend the reader’s sense of expectation is truly top notch, and fans of weird fiction will delight in every word. (Sept.)