The Venus Complex by Barbie Wilde

From Bram Stoker Award winner Alessandro Manzetti, one of Italy s most visionary minds, comes 20 of his most horrifying short stories in one unsettling collection with tales from the past, future and present:

An apocalyptic and bloody Rome is dominated by the first She-Pope who organizes shocking exhibitions in the new Coliseum; the bloody and cannibalistic Jerusalem during the First Crusade is overrun with gangs of rapists, criminals, and anthropophagy addicts; the future ultra-violent district Paris Sud 5 goes full dark with the rot of human corruption and a human landfill; Spanish invaders are sacrified through unthinkable and brutal rites by blood-frenzied Aztecs, and many more.

In this Garden of Delight, you'll discover forbidden fruits, adrenaline and sin, and experience the taste of human flesh . . . the Holy Graal of pleasure.

“Alessandro Manzetti is at heart a dark poet, but what makes his fiction so compelling is the way he combines lyricism, visceral horrors, and lush plotting. Reading these stories is like being torn open by a clawed hand in a velvet glove.” —Lisa Morton, multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author

“. . . Engorged with gruesome incidents.” —Publishers Weekly

“Bosch, Goya, and Hogarth—you’ll find them in words in Alessandro Manzetti’s The Garden Of Delight. There’s a dollop of science-fiction of the “if this goes on” school, a smidgen of bizzaroism a la “whacked-out, huh?,” and the nasty tinge of “in your face and your guts” 1980s horror to these stories, all that filtered through a uniquely old/new world sensibility. Mostly, though, I am reminded of Kenneth Patchen’s too little read today 1941 novel, The Journal of Albion Moonlight. No, there’s nothing imitative about GARDEN, but Patchen and Manzetti know that to get to the real you’ve gotta get weird.” —Mort Castle, multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author