Signs of the Imminent Apocalypse - by Heidi Bell (Paperback)

About the Book

"Two sisters play an unsettling game; a child witnesses a casually violent neighborhood ritual; an up-and-coming young professional is disturbed by the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings; a woman's ideal life unfolds in the pages of a mail-order catalog. The Midwestern men and women, girls and boys who populate Signs of the Imminent Apocalypse and Other Stories are united by a yearning-for answers or simply for relief-that is often twisted by their baser impulses. With lyricism, humor both dark and playful, and brutal clarity, Heidi Bell approaches reality sideways in her sensational debut collection."--

Book Synopsis

Finalist, Short Story/Anthology, Midwest Book Awards (2025)

Finalist, Short Fiction, National Indie Excellence Awards (2025)

Finalist, First Horizon Award, Eric Hoffer Awards (2025)

Two sisters play an unsettling game; a child witnesses a casually violent neighborhood ritual; an up-and-coming young professional is disturbed by the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings; a woman's ideal life unfolds in the pages of a mail-order catalog. The Midwestern men and women, girls and boys who populate Signs of the Imminent Apocalypse and Other Stories are united by a yearning, for answers or simply for relief, that is often twisted by their baser impulses. With lyricism, humor both dark and playful, and brutal clarity, Heidi Bell approaches reality sideways in her sensational debut collection.

Review Quotes

"With her mix of light and dark, lovable and unlikable characters, and hope and regret, Bell's collection is part Neil Gaiman and part Donald Barthelme, with a touch of Joyce Carol Oates."

-Booklist, starred review

"Bell knows Americans, and it is her masterful ability to capture the sentiments of these people that allows for her to so accurately portray the immediacy of their spiraling perspectives. In a way, it's all about the details again. What makes her characters and their trivial issues so prevalent and demanding is her ability to flesh them out with all those tiny facets that most of us recognize but fail to name, guided by her own years of observing the classic American: the Midwesterner."

-New City Lit

"Juxtaposing dark humor and lyrical writing, Bell captures the strange but emotionally charged interactions we have with family, coworkers, strangers, and even ourselves to dazzling effect."

-Electric Literature

"Bell knows American women and men, and she knows her way around the American language, from its jazzy and cornucopial top to its dank, bump-and-grind bottom. It seems there's nothing that Heidi Bell can't do, with her earthy wit and cunning imagination, encyclopedic resources of language, and deft mastery of literary forms, from short-short to classic long to modal in-between. This is a versatile, highly readable collection."

-Jaimy Gordon, author of Lord of Misrule, winner of the National Book Award

"An exquisite, achingly rendered collection of stories. . . . She pushes her characters to their limits, because the way through is the hard way."

-Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of The Waters and American Salvage, finalist for the National Book Award

"Heidi Bell is one of our great unsung writers. Let these stories sing to you. Listen to their music and you will fall under their spell as I did."

-Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder

"A fierce and funny collection from a highly original and enchanting sensibility. . . . Beauty and yearning blend with terror and depravity in these artfully written pages."

-Andy Mozina, author of Tandem