The American Unconscious — M. Grant Kellermeyer

As the chief editor of Oldstyle Tales Press, Michael Kellermeyer has overseen the collection, annotation, and illustration of some of the most riveting Gothic fiction in the English language. His own writing reflects the influence that these tales have had over the course of his lifetime. His poetry broods over lurking doom, atmospheric landscapes, and the pull between helplessness and salvation. His short stories -- including four of his best ghost stories -- are redolent with murder, death, near-destruction, and the dreamlike hope of transcendence. Included in this collection are two of his six short novels: Daphne in Winter and The American Student, neo-Gothic meditations in guilt, hatred, and the hope for redemption. This anthology is a study in the sublimity of Romanticism, the horror of the Gothic, and the allure of the Transcendental, a truly attentive study of American literary and philosophical themes, and a painful, vulnerable, naked self portrait of the American unconscious.