Nathan Ballingrud''s award winning debut collection is a cornerstone of contemporary horror fiction that dismantles the boundaries around genre fiction. Shattering and luminous, North American Lake Monsters explores the darker parts of the human psyche to reveal monsters, real and imagined, external and internal. They are us and we are them. What is revealed in these stories is a working class portrait of 21st century American life that is as cruel as it is fragile and as precarious as it is tenacious. These are love stories and monster stories. Monsters who wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The people in these stories are driven to extremes by love and by desperation. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to escape.