Lee Thomas (horror writer)

Lee Thomas is an American author of horror fiction. He is best known for his novel The Dust of Wonderland, which won the Lambda Literary Award for SF/Fantasy/Horror. In addition to numerous magazines, his short fiction has appeared in the anthologies A Walk on the Darkside (Roc), Unspeakable Horror (Dark Scribe), Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year’s Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press), and Inferno (Tor), among others. He has won the Bram Stoker Award for his novel Stained.

Writing as Thomas Pendleton and Dallas Reed, he is the author of the novels, Mason, Shimmer, and The Calling, from HarperTeen.

Lee currently lives in Austin, TX, where he's working on a number of projects.

Contents

Critical reception

From Publishers Weekly

THE GERMAN: Lambda-winner Thomas (The Dust of Wonderland) sets this powerful thriller in a small Texas town in 1944. As a mysterious killer preys on the community's young men—leaving pro-Nazi notes inside the victims' mouths—the frightened residents cast blame on the area's sizable German population. Their chief suspect is Ernst Lang, a gay ex-soldier who fled Germany years earlier. Lang has been an exemplary neighbor, but his nationality and sexuality make him a target for a largely ignorant and panicked populace looking for a scapegoat. The supernatural element of the story is decidedly understated, but the novel's overall thematic power and narrative eloquence are wrenching. Thomas's compelling imagery (religion and politics are "gardens of atrocity" that grow "fat succulent flora") and disturbing portrait of humanity at its worst will haunt readers long after the last page is turned. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From Lambda Literary Review With THE GERMAN, Thomas chips away at the thin coat of varnish that separates the veneer of civility from the undercoat of barbarism. The result is a novel that builds slowly with painstaking attention paid to character development and the establishment of mood to an unexpectedly fierce, heartrending finale that's less an eyebrow-raising surprise and more a series of rapid-fire sucker punches that will leave you slack-jawed and breathless. Devastating in its unflinching look at the nature of human cruelty arising from fear of the unknown and gorgeously rendered in a literary style that calls to mind earlier Peter Straub, The German is this summer's must-read genre title. --Lambda Literary

Awards

  • Bram Stoker Award for his novel Stained. (Also nominated for his short story collection In the Closet, Under the Bed, and the short stories, "An Apiary of White Bees," and "Turtle.")
  • Lambda Literary Award for The Dust of Wonderland (also a finalist for his collection, In the Closet, Under the Bed).[1][2]

Bibliography

Novels (as Lee Thomas)

  • Stained
  • Parish Damned (Telos)
  • Damage (Sarob)
  • The Dust of Wonderland (Alyson)
  • In the Closet, Under the Bed (Dark Scribe)
  • The German (Lethe)

Novels (as Thomas Pendleton and Dallas Reed)

  • Mason (HarperTeen)
  • Shimmer (HarperTeen)
  • The Calling (HarperTeen)

Short fiction

  • "An Apiary of White Bees"

References

  1. ^ "Lambda Literary Awards Announce Winners". Lambda Literary Foundation. 2008. http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/current_winners-2007.html. Retrieved 2008-11-13. 
  2. ^ Kelly, Valerie A. (2008). "Lambda Literary Foundation Awards 2008". Lambda Literary Foundation. http://vkellyphotography.com/Site/LLF%20Awards.html. Retrieved 2008-11-13. 

External links