Michele Tracy Berger, Doll Seed

If you’re a fan of Octavia Butler, Dean Koontz or Kelly Link you’ll enjoy this debut short story collection by Michele Tracy Berger. Playful and provocative, these speculative stories cover a wide territory including sci-fi, contemporary fantasy, weird, horror and magical realism.

The stories span horror, fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism, but are always grounded in very real characters and beautifully rendered, distinctive communities. Often thematically centered on the lives of women and girls, especially women of color and their experiences of vulnerability and outsider status, these stories are often playful and always provocative.

Fifteen stories invite you to get comfortable in the dark, to consider freedom and sacrifice, trust and betrayal, otherness, and safety. Marisol, an aspiring jewelry artist is haunted by a fast-food icon. Chevella, a self-aware doll, finds herself in 1950s America playing a key role in the Civil Rights Movement. Lindsay, a Black girl in 1970s America “wins” an extraterrestrial in a national contest only to find her family’s life upended. Chelsea and Jessa, two sisters, fight about what a strange child means for their family. A meat grinder appears in a magical forest and chaos ensues. All this and more.

…Off-key music boxes, a masterclass of atmospheric wonder and dread.—Jen Julian, author of Red Rabbit Ghost

This is Black Mirror with the emphasis on Black. —Vincent Tirado, author of We Came to Welcome You: A Novel of Suburban Horror

Michele Tracy Berger has a voice like no one else. —Julia Rios, Hugo Award-winning editor

Michele Tracy Berger is the Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. She has a secondary appointment in the Department of English. Her short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction has appeared in 100 Word Story, Glint Literary Journal, The Wild Word, Blood and Bourbon, FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, Midnight and Indigo, Oracle: Fine Arts Review, Carolina Woman, Ms., and various anthologies.