The Knife Dance (Trade Paperback) (Michael Cisco)

Originally written in the late ‘90s and long thought lost, "The Knife Dance" is being published here for the first time. It will be available in two limited editions, Deluxe Hardcover and Trade Paperback.

Table of Contents:

* Introduction (Paul Tremblay)
* Author’s Note (Michael Cisco)
* The Knife Dance (Michael Cisco)
* Afterword (Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.)

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TRADE PAPERBACK edition

- Limited to 200 hand-numbered copies
- 124 pages
- Printed on 70# text paper
- Full color cover and three black and white interior illustrations by Harry. O. Morris
- Includes high-quality 6" x 9" color print of cover art

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DELUXE HARDCOVER edition:

- Limited to 100 hand-numbered copies
- 126 pages
- Printed on 70# text paper
- Three full-color interior illustrations
- Color signature page, signed by Michael Cisco and Harry O. Morris
- Cloth cover with dust jacket
- Foil stamped on spine and cover
- Includes a set of high-quality 6" x 9" color prints of all four illustrations

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“In The Knife Dance, we return to San Veneficio, city-setting of Michael Cisco’s award-winning first novel, The Divinity Student. An assortment of theological factions has gathered to decide the question of the exact nature of Jesus Christ, which promises profound consequences for the religion that bears His name. There is no dry debate here, however, as the various factions engage in shoot-outs and spycraft worthy of a gangland war. At the center of this brilliant fiction is the Knife Dance, a fabled saint’s greatest accomplishment, a deadly choreography that allowed him to overcome the Satan, but whose exact steps have been lost. Full of scenes of headlong action and ecstatic experience, The Knife Dance suggests that the edge of the blade on which we so often find ourselves may be our preferred location. It is another example of the considerable range of Michael Cisco’s talent.”

— John Langan, author of "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies"

MICHAEL CISCO is an American writer, teacher, and translator currently living in New York City. He is best known for his first novel, The Divinity Student, winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999. His novel, The Great Lover, was nominated for the 2011 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel of the Year, and declared the Best Weird Novel of 2011 by the Weird Fiction Review. He is interested in confusion.

HARRY O. MORRIS is a contemporary American artist working in the Surrealist tradition. A restless artist experimenting with a wide range of mediums, his early drawings gave way to intricate collages in the style of Max Ernst. In the 1980s his haunting, solarized photographs were a distinctive part of his style, while since the 1990s he has worked primarily in the digital realm. His work is marked by a disheartening sense of claustrophobia and paranoia. Along with his work, Morris is also known as a pioneering publisher of small press books and journals, the most well-known of which is Nyctalops, the first Lovecraft-oriented publication.

PAUL TREMBLAY is the author of six novels: Disappearance at Devil's Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn't Fly (with Stephen Graham Jones, written as PT Jones), Swallowing a Donkey's Eye, No Sleep Till Wonderland, and The Little Sleep. He's also the author of the collection In the Mean Time. His essays and short fiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times and numerous Year's Best anthologies. Paul is tall and has no uvula. He famously hates pickles but likes scary things. www.paultremblay.net

JOSEPH S. PULVER, SR. has released 4 acclaimed mixed-genre collections, a collection of his King in Yellow tales, 2 weird fiction novels, and edited
A Season in Carcosa, the Shirley Jackson Award-winning The Grimscribe’s Puppets, and Cassilda’s Song. His fiction and poetry has appeared in many notable anthologies (including The Children of Old Leech and Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year) and has been praised by luminaries like Michael Cisco, Laird Barron, Thomas Ligotti, and Jeffrey Thomas, among others.

DS-007TP / DS-007HC