Slights

When Stevie Searle almost dies in the accident that kills her mother, she doesn’t see a shining path or a golden light. Instead, she sees everyone she’s ever slighted, waiting to take a piece of her in a cold, dark room. The person whose place she took in the queue, the schoolmate she cheated off, the bus driver she didn’t pay? All waiting. All wanting to take their revenge when she finally crosses over. Stevie is fascinated by the dark room, so she sends herself there again. And again. And again.

“Kaaron Warren is a fresh, amazingly talented voice out of Australia. You must read her work.” —Ellen Datlow

“Slights is dark, really dark. It is… a perversely beguiling mix of outright horror and gently revealed mystery. Slights…is a book you have to finish whether you like it or not, as well as being hugely and genuinely disturbing.” —SciFi Now

 “Slights is a delightful middle class suburban fright, told from deep inside the well of madness. Warren doesn’t play for the reader’s sympathy at all. She instead slices away comfortable expectations with an uncompromising immersion in the subtle evil which can stalk even the most ordinary street.” —Jay Lake

“Powerful stuff. So powerful, in fact, that my throat is hurting with my attempt to keep my emotions under control. I get like that sometimes with a good movie; not for a long time with a book. I was completely drawn in, totally immersed. I felt ill much of the time.” —Russell Kirkpatrick

“Simply gut-wrenching in its desire to see what boundaries can be pushed until they’re broken.” —Jon Courtenay Grimwood, SFX

Shirley Jackson award-winner Kaaron Warren published her first short story in 1993 and has had fiction in print every year since. She was recently given the Peter McNamara Lifetime Achievement Award and was Guest of Honour at World Fantasy 2018, Stokercon 2019 and Geysercon 2019. Kaaron was a Fellow at the Museum for Australian Democracy, where she researched prime ministers, artists, and serial killers. She’s judged the World Fantasy Awards and the Shirley Jackson Awards. She's published five multi-award winning novels (Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, The Grief Hole, & Tide of Stone).