They Live in Crooked Houses

Do you remember childhood fear?Alexander Roth’s debut collection explores that visceral terror, and what it means to be human, through themes of nihilism, alienation, hope, and regret. These eight stories guide you on an existential journey through grief, beliefs, and some of the darkest horrors that lurk in this world. By pitting fictitious, tormented individuals against very real monsters, Roth digs deep to uncover the unadulterated fear we abandoned as children.Something is lurking in the safety of American suburbia. Will parents or the cover of blankets protect one child from an unforgivable evil? This classic legend takes on a horrifying new shape that will reinvigorate your fear of monsters ('The Monster Under the Bed'); one winter, a young couple travels through a strange village on their way to a friend’s estate after suffering the unimaginable. Little do they know that the unimaginable isn’t only real, but it has legs and it will follow them wherever they go ('They Live in Crooked Houses'); a stranger in town is suddenly the last guest at a lonely bar, leading to a conversation with his host that not only shatters his life, but possibly the very world itself ('The Man in Black'); multiple guests of an old estate seek respite from the daily pains of life, only to find that the answers to their futures lie not only in their history, but also within the increasingly unsettling walls of His House ('His House'). These stories and more await to remind you that monsters are real, and even in their most deformed shapes, they aren’t just recognizable-they’re familiar.They’re terrifyingly human.