This Way Lies Madness

Short stories of madness from the mental health perspective: an engaging and entertaining read, and a must-have book for lovers of horror.

In the tradition of Poe’s 'The Tell-tale Heart', This Way Lies Madness presents fictional interpretations of madness from some of the biggest names in the horror genre – an anthology of dark stories featuring monstrous manifestations of trauma and guilt, paranoia and persecution, anxiety, addiction, and crippling terror. With each contributor giving a unique introduction exploring their inspiration for their bone-chilling tale, This Way Lies Madness will provide a creative benchmark for writers, and challenge mental health stigma, awaken understanding, and offer hope to readers through the lens of horror fiction.

A mix of commissioned authors and stories selected from a hugely popular submissions call, the full list of featured authors in this book is: Alan Baxter, Freddie Bonfanti, Georgina Bruce, Ramsey Campbell, Grace Chan, Ryan Cole, L.E. Daniels, Kayleigh Dobbs, Sean Hogan, Alma Katsu, Amanda Cecilia Lang, Sara Larner, Jonathan Maberry, Marie O’Regan, Cynthia Pelayo, Callum Rowland, Sumiko Saulson, Sayan J. Soselisa, C.D. Vázquez, Emily Ruth Verona, Stephen Volk, Tim Waggoner, and Stephanie M. Wytovich.

The Flame Tree Beyond and Within short story collections bring together tales of myth and imagination by modern and contemporary writers, carefully selected by anthologists, and sometimes featuring short stories from a single author. Overall, the series presents a wide range of diverse and inclusive voices with myth, folkloric-inflected short fiction, and an emphasis on the supernatural, science fiction, the mysterious and the speculative. The books themselves are gorgeous, with foiled covers, printed edges and published only in hardcover editions, offering a lifetime of reading pleasure.

About the author

Lee Murray is from Aotearoa-New Zealand and is a Shirley Jackson Award and five-time Bram Stoker Award winner with more than forty titles to her credit. Murray holds a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction and is an Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors.
Dave Jeffery is the author of 18 novels, two collections, and numerous short stories. Prior to retirement to write full time, Jeffery worked for 35 years in the NHS, specialising in mental health nursing and risk management. He is the 2023 recipient of the HWA Mentor of the Year Award and current co-chair of the HWA Wellness Committee.
Alan Baxter is a multi-award-winning British-Australian author of horror, supernatural thrillers and dark fantasy liberally mixed with crime, mystery and noir. This Is Horror podcast calls him ‘Australia’s master of literary darkness’ and the Talking Scared podcast dubbed him ‘The Lord of Weird Australia’.
Freddie Bonfanti is a London-based filmmaker and writer with an unyielding curiosity for stories that challenge, unsettle, and provoke. His work often dwells in the borderlands of dark and weird, where familiar worlds twist into disquieting shapes and the human experience is thrust into unsettling new contexts.
Georgina Bruce is a housesitter who also purports to be a writer. Her latest story collection, The House on the Moon, is available from Black Shuck Books. She writes a weekly humorous column on her substack, The Distractionist.
Ramsey Campbell has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Grace Chan won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story in 2022. Her debut novel, Every Version of You, was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year, longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Indie Book Awards and won the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards People’s Choice Award. In her other life, she works as a psychiatrist.
Ryan Cole is a speculative fiction writer who lives in Virginia. By day, he reviews contracts and wields the mighty red pen of a paralegal. His work has appeared in Clarkesworld, PodCastle, Factor Four, Gallery of Curiosities, and Voyage YA by Uncharted, among others, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
L.E. Daniels is an American author, poet and Bram Stoker Award finalist living in Australia. Her novel Serpent’s Wake is a Notable Work with the HWA’s Mental Health Initiative. Lauren co-edited the Aurealis Award-winning anthology Relics, Wrecks and Ruins, and the Aurealist 2022 finalist We are Providence. Lauren runs Brisbane Writers Workshop.
Kayleigh Dobbs is an author, editor, and playwright from South Wales, who also runs a book review website called Happy Goat Horror, with a focus on independent horror. Her recent short story collection The End (Black Shuck Shadows) was a 2023 Imadjinn Award Finalist.
Sean Hogan is a writer and filmmaker based in the UK. He has published several books of cinema metafiction, including England’s Screaming and its sequel (each named as one of the five best genre novels of their year by The FT). His latest novel is The Corpse Road, and feature film credits include the acclaimed folk horror To Fire You Come at Last.
Alma Katsu is the award-winning author of eight books and numerous stories in a variety of genres, including horror. Her next horror novel, Fiend, will be published by GP Putnam’s Sons in fall 2025.
Amanda Cecelia Lang is a horror author and aspiring recluse from Colorado. Her stories haunt the dark corners of many popular podcasts, magazines, and anthologies, including Gamut, Ghoulish Tales, Cast of Wonders, Uncharted, Dark Matter, and Flame Tree’s Darkness Beckons.
Sara Larner is a screenwriter and novelist based out of Los Angeles. They write predominantly young adult fantasy, with frequent dalliances in horror. When not writing, they spend their time painting, losing to one of their partners at Magic: The Gathering and talking superheroes with their other partner.
Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, 5-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. Works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, V-Wars and many others. He is a former board member of the Horror Writers Association and the president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. He lives in Del Mar, California.
Marie O’Regan is a Shirley Jackson, Australian Shadow and British Fantasy Award-nominated author and editor. She is co-editor of anthologies including the bestselling Hellbound Hearts, Cursed, Twice Cursed and The Other Side of Never, and is also Managing Editor of PS Publishing’s novella imprint, Absinthe Books.
Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker and International Latino Book Award-winning author and poet. Her novels include Vanishing Daughters, Forgotten Sisters, Children of Chicago and The Shoemaker’s Magician. Pelayo has also written numerous short stories and is editor of Ghosts of Where We Are From: An Anthology of Latinx Horror. She lives in Chicago.
Callum Rowland is a UK-based writer and co-founder of charity publisher TL;DR Press.

When not writing he works in the medical supply industry. A finalist in the Writers of the Future competition, his stories can be found in: Daily Science Fiction, Aphelion Webzine, ExoPlanet Magazine, Bandit Fiction, and a number of other markets and anthologies.
Sumiko Saulson is a Bram Stoker-nominated poet for their 2022 collection The Rat King: A Book of Dark Poetry (Dooky Zines), and an award-winning author of Afrosurrealist and multicultural sci-fi and horror whose latest novel Happiness and Other Diseases is available on Mocha Memoirs Press.
Sayan J. Soselisa is a neurobiologist and professional troubleshooter whose stories tend to be either funny, tragic or both. As a non-binary person of mixed heritage, Sayan tends to root for the underdog, the (sometimes) unjustly vilified; the outcasts, outsiders and everything and everyone that doesn’t neatly fit into a box.
C.D. Vázquez is an author and tech entrepreneur born and raised in Puerto Rico. A creative technologist by day and storyteller by night, his writing draws from his love for vintage horror and his research. He has authored scientific publications on Human Computer Interaction and Computer Vision and is the co-creator of the SFF Fyat Lux universe.
Emily Ruth Verona is the author of the novel Midnight on Beacon Street. She is a Pinch Literary Award winner, a Bram Stoker Awards nominee, and a Rhysling Award Finalist. Her work has been featured in magazines and anthologies that include The Ghastling, The Jewish Book of Horror, Strange Horizons and Nightmare Magazine. She lives in New Jersey.
Stephen Volk created BBCTV’s notorious ‘Halloween hoax’ Ghostwatch, ITV’s paranormal drama series Afterlife and the crime/supernatural thriller Midwinter of the Spirit based on the book by Phil Rickman. He is a two-time British Fantasy Award winner and the author of multiple screenplays and four collections of short stories.
Bram Stoker Award-winning author Tim Waggoner writes both original and media tie-in fiction, and he has published over forty novels and four short story collections. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.Stephanie M. Wytovich is a two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning American poet. She has featured in Year’s Best Hardcore Horror and Best Horror of the Year: 8 & 15. She has received the Elizabeth Matchett Stover Memorial Award, the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant, and the Rocky Wood Memorial Scholarship for nonfiction writing.

Product details

• Assisted by: Jeffery Dave (Editor), Murray Lee (Editor)
• Publisher: Flame Tree
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 14.10.2025
• EAN: 9781804179062
• ISBN: 978-1-80417-906-2
• Dimensions: 195 mm x 122 mm x 25 mm
• Weight: 600 g
• Illustrations: Zeichnungen, schwarz-weiss
• Series: Beyond and Within
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Short Stories, FICTION / Anthologies (multiple authors), LITERARY CRITICISM / Horror & Supernatural, Horror & ghost stories, Horror & supernatural fiction, FICTION / Horror / General