Hideous Faces, Beautiful Skulls: Tales of Horror and the Bizarre

Mark McLaughlin's darkest tales of the bizarre have been compiled in HIDEOUS FACES, BEAUTIFUL SKULLS from Wildside Press. Impossible love is a major theme in this collection: relationships that should not be, and yet they happen because these strong attractions cannot be denied. In "Adroitly Wrapped," the shape-shifting witch Athena Moth tries to help a friend to fulfill his need for love ... but what about her own needs? "Eye Dew" explores the institution of marriage and how it changes the participants, and so often, not for the better. "You Shall Have This Delicacy" tells of a magical woman who can have any lover she desires, yet she wants only one: someone who has been taken from her in a fashion that most would consider irreversible. "ascloseasthis" is about a wildly unlikely pair ... their sexual orientations don't even match. But the lovers learn to change - in startling ways. "Claws of the Internet Witches" and "Prince of the Dark Green Sea" both concern supernatural creatures longing for love ... and really, don't all living things deserve love? Even monsters? Those are just a few of the stories in HIDEOUS FACES, BEAUTIFUL SKULLS, available as a trade paperback or as a Kindle download.**About the AuthorAuthor Mark McLaughlin's latest releases are the story collections, HIDEOUS FACES, BEAUTIFUL SKULLS and BEST LITTLE WITCH-HOUSE IN ARKHAM, and the two-author poetry collection, REVENGE OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER (with Michael McCarty). Other recent works by McLaughlin include the story collection BEACH BLANKET ZOMBIE, the collaborative collection PARTNERS IN SLIME (with Michael McCarty), and the collaborative horror novel, MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL (with Michael McCarty).Mark's fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in more than 1,000 magazines, newspapers, websites, and anthologies, including DARK FUSIONS: WHERE MONSTERS LURK!, GALAXY, LIVING DEAD 2, WRITER'S DIGEST, CEMETERY DANCE, MIDNIGHT PREMIERE, DARK ARTS, and two volumes of YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES (DAW Books). Mark is the coauthor, with Rain Graves and David Niall Wilson, of THE GOSSAMER EYE, which won the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Poetry. He also writes a blog on cinematic horror and other dark topics called BMovieMonster.  What critics and colleagues have said about Mark McLaughlin's work over the years: "In the most devious manner, McLaughlin's stories achieve a high degree of demonism by perpetuating a sinister 'humor' at the gallows of the human comedy."
-- Author Thomas Ligotti "Listen up. Noel Coward is back. Salvador Dali is back. Dylan Thomas is back. And they're all rolled into one in the shape of Mark McLaughlin who writes stories that are wonderfully witty, surrealistic and ineffably strange. Absolutely fabulous. .... If your palette is jaded, come to the feast that is Mark McLaughlin."
-- Author Simon Clark "McLaughlin's tales are laugh-out-loud assaults on consensus reality."
-- Paul Di Filippo, ASIMOV'S










"Reading Mark McLaughlin is a little like stepping out of the door of an airplane in mid flight. The view is pretty amazing, but the shock of impact may do you in ... gruesome, funny and touching. Top that: anybody...."
--Matthew Nadelhaft, TANGENT