The Secret of Ventriloquism - by Jon Padgett

Book Synopsis

Jon Padgett's acclaimed collection/hybrid novel, The Secret of Ventriloquism, named the Best Fiction Book by Rue Morgue Magazine, now returns in an expanded edition of the original, with three new stories. The book features Dave Felton's iconic cover art and frontispiece as well as a Foreword by the legendary Thomas Ligotti.

With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Ligotti, and Bruno Schulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Padgett's work explores the mystery of human suffering, the agony of personal existence, and the ghastly means by which someone might achieve salvation from both. A bullied child seeks vengeance within a bed's hollow box spring. A lucid dreamer is haunted by an impossible house. A dummy reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps. A paranoid flyer's worst fears are realized in a way not even he could imagine. A stuttering librarian holds the key to a mill town's unspeakable secrets. A commuter's worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign. An aspiring ventriloquist spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. A job-fatigued woman seeks out an invisible, identity-blasting hole of alluvium from her past. A spirit of homelessness plans its escape to a possibly mythical mountain. A fog-soaked city heaves its dying breath. And a presence speaks through them all.

Review Quotes

Selected as the Best Fiction Book of the Year by Rue Morgue Magazine.

"'20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism' [the pivotal story within The Secret of Ventriloquism] is what might be deemed an ultimate horror vision. What makes such a piece always resides in an ambition to transcend literature itself. As purely a matter of literary taxonomy, I would place this magnificently executed short story in a class with Lovecraft's 'Call of Cthulhu, ' Blackwood's 'The Willows, ' and Jorge Luis Borges's 'The Lottery in Babylon.' These are tales that lead one to say, 'This is a revelation of how things are.' Like them, '20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism' pulls out all the stops to convey a towering perspective that encompasses and reveals the essence of existence. That is its scope. That is how it affects those exposed to the story. When it comes to a close, one's reaction is, 'There is nothing more to be said.' And, of course, what has been spoken by '20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism' is by necessity deftly strange and awful, like life itself once its façade has been peeled away little by little. That is how an ultimate horror vision works its wonder."

-Thomas Ligotti, author of Noctuary & The Spectral Link

"The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett's lines raised the hair on my neck. The stories radiate darkness... In a year of exceptional weird fiction, this is a mattock-handle-wrapped-in-barbed-wire heavy hitter."

-Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

"Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. There's no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of."

-Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue Magazine

"Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism is a horror revelation. The interconnected short stories are ghastly, clever, dryly witty, but also genuinely and bone-rattlingly creepy and disturbing. Sure, going in, I was already afraid of ventriloquist dummies, but now I'm deathly afraid of Jon Padgett."

-Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock.

"There's quite enough variety of tone, setting, and focus here to surprise and disconcert any reader, and leave preconceived expectations flopping and gasping in the cold black mud of Padgett's imagination...Padgett is a chilling master in his own right."

-Paul StJohn Mackintosh, Teleread

"Jon Padgett... satisfied ALL of my wants and needs as a reader of dark and weird fiction. These stories... are as utterly satisfying as short fiction can be."

-Charlene Cocrane, Horror After Dark