Shelfology Book Pairing

by Nathan Ballingrud

In New Orleans a rare bookdealer is forced to track down an infernal atlas dragged from hell itself and now stashed in the swamps of the bayou. A dive bartender picks up a phone left behind after a brawl and is pulled into a waking nightmare. On a sea voyage, a decadent group of diabolists are intent on an audience with the Devil himself. Across six tales The Atlas of Hell takes us to the fringe of sanity, the limit of infernal ambition, and the very border of our reality. Nathan Ballingrud has earned a reputation as one of the leading voices in contemporary horror fiction and in The Atlas of Hell he shows us the deepest and darkest recesses of his imagination. Ballingrud probes the wounds that are the human condition and peels back the skin to reveal the monstrous and miraculous beneath. From the author of North American Lake Monsters, this is a collection for readers unafraid to gaze into the abyss and meet the eyes of what stares back.

A Poem in Twelve Books

by John Milton

Concerns the Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men" and elucidate the conflict between God's eternal foresight and fre e will.