A town where people go missing and inexplicably return as cruel versions of themselves.

A not-quite-human mother races against time to build a new body for her ailing daughter.

Lovesick ghosts inhabit the body parts of living people in a world where the only other choice is amputation.

A woman takes extreme measures to combat the repercussions of a childhood hazing ritual gone wrong.

Obsession. Selfishness. Cruelty. Doppelgangers. In these dark, speculative stories-six reprints and six never before published, including the novelette "Girls Tied to Trees"-J.A.W. McCarthy explores how far humans and the not-quite-human will go to tame the darkness in their world and within themselves.