How They Were Found

In his debut collection How They Were Found, Matt Bell draws from a wide range of genres to create stories that are both formally innovative and imaginatively rich. In one, a 19th-century minister follows ghostly instructions to build a mechanical messiah. In another, a tyrannical army commander watches his apocalyptic command slip away as the memories of his men begin to fade and fail. Elsewhere, murders are indexed, new worlds are mapped, fairy tales are fractured and retold and then fractured again. Throughout these thirteen stories, Bell's careful prose burrows at the foundations of his characters' lives until they topple over, then painstakingly pores over the wreckage for what rubbled humanity might yet remain to be found.

Contains the story "Dredge," selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2010.

Matt Bell's often non-realist, always genre-bending stories combine sci-fi, mystery, and horror into innovative literary fiction.

From a mechanical messiah to an apocalyptic army commander, and from the historical myth of the Collyer brothers to the fairy tale of Red Riding Hood, Matt Bell's obsessive stories unearth what horrors and hopes lie buried beneath our daily lives. Includes "The Collectors", which sold out of a limited edition chapbook.

Matt Bell's fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories and Best American Fantasy. He is also the editor of The Collagist, series editor of Best of the Web, and a senior editor at Dzanc Books.