This month’s Book Cover Spotlight lands on the first book cover I fell in love with: the cover on the Night Shade Books’ hardcover edition of Tom Piccirilli’s A Choir of Ill Children
This was my first introduction to the artist Caniglia (Click here to visit the Caniglia’s website and see more of his art work). I’d seen his work on other book covers but this one moved me to find out more about the artist.
The painting is titled “A Paler Shade of Being” and it is one of only two horror art prints I personally own. I love it for its disturbing quality that much.
Because of the painting, I decided I had to read the book — and A Choir of Ill Children turned out to be one of my favorite horror novels of all time.
Choir was the first story by Tom Piccirilli I’d ever read and I’ve been an avid fan of his ever since. I even went with him when he began publishing noir crime novels like The Fever Kill and The Cold Spot.
I highly recommend A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli. It is now out in mass market paperback and available as an ebook, too.
  |
A Choir of Ill ChildrenAuthor: Piccirilli, Tom |
||
 |
A Choir of Ill ChildrenAuthor: Piccirilli, Tom |
||
|
This lyrical tale of evil, loss, and redemption is a stunning addition to the Southern Gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews. A Choir of Ill Children is the startling story of Kingdom Come, a decaying, swamp backwater that draws the lost, ill-fated, and damned. Since his mother’s disappearance and his father’s suicide, Thomas has cared for his three brothers — conjoined triplets with separate bodies but one shared brain — and the town’s only industry, the Mill. Because of his family’s prominence, Thomas is feared and respected by the superstitious swamp folk. Granny witches cast hexes while Thomas’s childhood sweetheart drifts through his life like a vengeful ghost and his best friend, a reverend suffering from the power of tongues, is overcome with this curse as he tries to warn of impending menace. All Thomas learns is that “the carnival is coming.” Torn by responsibility and rage, Thomas must face his tormented past as well as the mysterious forces surging toward the town he loves and despises. |
|||
|
|||
- January’s Book Cover Spotlight: Siren
- September’s Book Cover Spotlight: Pork Pie Hat
- February’s Book Cover Spotlight: A Choir of Ill Children
- March’s Book Cover Spotlight: Seldom Seen in August
- April’s Book Cover Spotlight: In the Midnight Museum
- May’s Book Cover Spotlight: Butterfly
- June’s Book Cover Spotlight: The Red Church
- July’s Book Cover Spotlight: Johnny Halloween
- August’s Book Cover Spotlight: The Condemned
- December’s Book Cover Spotlight: Spore
Comments on this entry are closed.