Adventurous readers will soon learn there is little Amelia Gray will not try her pen at, whether it is a modern fable with a dark edge or a horror story in which bizarre events force human desires and fears to the surface. This unexpected quality has led to comparisons with David Lynch and Cronenberg. But however experimental her style, and however dark and disturbing the worlds she creates, Gray’s sense of humor and subtle character sketches make us follow wherever she leads. The same holds true for ‘Vultures’, in which an inexplicable plague grips a small American town. As the constant threatening presence of the vultures drives the residents to extremes, underlying tensions rise to a crescendo. Gray shows us characters who not only struggle with the uncontrollable and absurd, but also with the limits of self-deception and of the compromises which are part and parcel of their daily lives. ‘Vultures’ is at once absurd, funny, unpredictable, disturbing and human, which is why it is a prime example of what makes Amelia Gray’s work so captivating. Perhaps the biggest mystery is why her works have yet to appear in Dutch translation.

Amelia Gray is the author of three collections of short stories and a novel, the psychological thriller THREATS, which appeared in 2012 and was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction. Her most recent work, Gutshot, appeared in April 2015. The story ‘Vultures’ is taken from the 2010 collection Museum of the Weird, for which Gray received the Ronald Suckenick/American Book Review Innovative Fiction Prize, and is used here with the permission of the publisher, FC2, an imprint of The University of Alabama Press. For more information go to the FC2 website or visit The University of Alabama Press. Museum of the Weird © 2010 Amelia Gray. All rights reserved.