With themes reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, and Bruno Shulz, but with a strikingly unique vision, Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism heralds the arrival of a significant new literary talent. 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 who seeks vengeance within a bed's hollow box spring; a lucid dreamer haunted by an impossible house; a dummy that reveals its own anatomy in 20 simple steps; a stuttering librarian who holds the key to a mill town's unspeakable secrets; a commuter whose worldview is shattered by two words printed on a cardboard sign; an aspiring ventriloquist who spends a little too much time looking at himself in a mirror. And the presence that speaks through them all.
**
Review
"The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett's lines raised the hair on my neck."
--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
**
**
"... Greater Ventriloquism is the fictional philosophy cutting through all of the stories in this collection, giving them a much appreciated spine of intent and eerie energy. When we understand that we are no better than dummies--when we see the strings that move us and hear the voice that animates us--we become the uncanny object, as opposed to the dummy. Our own embodiment thus becomes a vessel for great horrors."
--Adam Mills, Weird Fiction Review
__"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, Associate Editor of Teleread
"...for those who enjoy fiction of a weird nature with a capital 'w' The Secret of Ventriloquism should not be missed."
--Kev Harrison, This Is Horror
**
**
**
**
**
**
"...Jon Padgett [is] one of the best writers you might not have heard of yet..."
--Kayleigh Marie Edwards, Ginger Nuts of Horror
"Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism may very well be at the vanguard of a new movement in American Weird,where the lessons of Thomas Ligotti are recontextualized and used to birth something as frightening and bizarre as it is different."
--Simon Strantzas, author of Burnt Black Suns
From the Author
Ventriloquist dummies are similar in shape and size to human children and appear alive via the ventriloquist's movements and thrown voice. And when these wooden and plaster child-replicas are made to be active in such a way, a willing audience more or less believes in the dummy's objective reality. But it is not the dummy's uncanny movements that are, by themselves, frightening. It is when the dummy is inert, perhaps sitting on a chair by itself after the show is over, that the real shivers begin. We know those staring, vacant dummy eyes can move back and forth. We know that still dummy head can swivel. We know that closed dummy mouth can open. We know that silent dummy can talk. What's more, we now expect to see these signs of life even when the ventriloquist is nowhere to be found.