Solidly in the New Wave Fabulist writing school that blends Fantasy, History, Horror, and Science Fiction with impeccable literary writing. Influences include Angela Carter, Isak Dinesen, and Edgar Allen Poe. In the tradition of Angela Carter or Kelly Link, these stories look for new ways to consider sexual identity and its relation to history. In "Sodom and Gomorrah," we encounter a subversive and ecstatic new version of the Old Testament story. In "The Re'em," a medieval monk's search for a mythic beast conjures forbidden desire. And in "Notes on Inversion," German psychiatrist Kraft-Ebbing receives a surreal retort to his clinical descriptions of same-sex desire. Much of McOmber's writing is an investigation into mythology, animism, and queer identity-disrupting conventional notions of both gender and Romanticism. Booklist says of his novel, The White Forest: "McOmber explores the nexus between the natural and the artificial, the intangible and the concrete....Commandingly erudite and imaginative, McOmber meshes myth, the occult, and 19th-century technological advances in an uncanny and captivating gothic tale." Uses historical figures and settings, and bends factual information with fantastical writing to create plausible alternative histories that ultimately comment on our own notions of modern life. Strong LGBTQ themes and characters.

"She admits she is pleased when the new placard is raised, "Madame Tussaud's House of Wax." She stands in the crowd with Francois at her side. He leans close enough to touch her ear with the fringe of his mustache and whispers, "What part of the museum would the famous Madame Tussaud like to survey on her inaugural visit?"

"The Chamber of Horrors, I think," she says softly.

"Really, my dear? All that grim fantasy and blood?"

"There is no fantasy about it, Francois. It is an embryo, a showing of what is to come.""

Blending historical fiction with fantasy and the macabre, Adam McOmber's debut short story collection brings the influence of Angela Carter, Isak Dinesen, and Edgar Allan Poe to the next generation. In "The Automatic Garden," a solitary architect from the court at Versailles builds a water-powered pleasure garden; in "There Are No Bodies Such as This," we read a haunted and romantic fiction about the creation of Madame Tussaud's wax museum; in "Fall, Orpheum," a small town movie palace becomes the temple for an entire town's devotion and sacrifice. McOmber seamlessly blends history, artifice, and desire to create a dream of the past that intertwines with our own notions of modern life.

Adam McOmber's stories appear in "Conjunctions," "StoryQuarterly," "Third Coast," "The Greensboro Review," "Arts & Letters," and "Quarterly West." He is assistant director of creative nonfiction at Columbia College Chicago and associate editor of the literary magazine "Hotel Amerika."

Jane Silverlake lives with her father in a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret--an unexplainable and frightening gift that allows her to see the souls of man-made objects--and this talent isolates her from the outside world. She finds solace in her only companions, Madeline and Nathan, but as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by jealousies and by Nathan's interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London's elite.
A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan's disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent, and use it to find Nathan herself, before it's too late.