Eleven Haunting Tales of Forbidden Wishes and Dangerous Desires
by
WILL YOU BE ONE OF THE INVITED? A forbidden midnight market is coming to town. The Night Bazaar isn't new. In fact, it's as old as civilization. Its first recorded appearance was in Sana'a, around 700 B.C.E. with secretive merchants from the East who presented covered stalls of exotic goods and arcane services. Various mentions appear in obscure and controversial works from around the world. The only common element is that the market opens at midnight, closes before sunrise, and may appear for up to a week in the same city . . . Paris, 1796 . . . London, 1888 . . . Berlin, 1936 . . . San Francisco, 1906 . . . but never in the same venue each night. And never again in the same city. There's just one catch: In order to find it, you must be Invited.
Tonight, The Night Bazaar opens in a parking garage somewhere in Manhattan. A whole subterranean city full of antique costumes, alchemical treatments, magical dentistry, palmistry, Tarot, tea leaf-reading, and water-, glass-, and crystal-gazing, oddities and objets d’art, medical curiosities and surgical instruments. Other lost arts and body alterations are offered in certain alcoves. Through the narrow aisles throng jongleurs, freaks, charlatans, mountebanks, faeries, prostitutes, and acrobats. The scents of opium, perfume, tobacco, greasepaint, incense, plastic explosive, alcohol, and sex permeate the air. But each object or service comes with a gift, a curse, or a haunting.
(This is the summary of volume one. However, The Night Bazaar anthologies need not be read in any particular order; they are all designed to stand alone as well.)
The Bazaar sells that which cannot be had elsewhere. Everything you’ve read about but thought had passed away, or perhaps never existed. How wrong you were! Your guide is Madame Vera, a tall, thin woman of uncertain age, ethnicity, and trustworthiness. The stories within are your invitation to join us. It seems you have already spotted something you desire . . . but don’t head off that way, not just yet. You have all night . . . but not a moment more.
Publisher: Northampton House Press
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Cover Artists:
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Series Type: Same Universe / Various Characters
Series Type: Same Universe / Various Characters
In this dark fantasy anthology, editor Hart invites 11 authors to explore the concept of the Night Bazaar, a place where the magical intertwines with the everyday. The setting is reminiscent of The Twilight Zone in scope, and throughout the anthology there is the ever-present sense that something nasty is lurking around the corner. Jim Scheers’s wonderfully unsettling “Weekly Pass” follows a man who sees his own alternate lives unfold on an endless train line. Rich in creativity, “Whirl Away” by Carol MacAllister details the decline of a 40-something businessman as he relives the past in a series of haunted rental tuxedos. The most stunning piece is Edison McDaniels’s “The Least Detailed Plans of a Great and Complicated Apparatus,” a tale of a series of possessions convened by an ancient magical skull with the help of an overeager doctor. There are no pieces that seem out of place; all the stories contribute to a sense of otherworldly dread. Appealing to those who like their fantasy served with a side of psychological horror, this anthology is sure to entertain. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (Feb 1.)
