Beneath a Pale Sky

Q: Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?

No, you don’t have to buy the ebook to participate, but we do recommend it to get the most out of your club. There are several premium social reading features that are only available when you buy the ebook, like annotations, reactions, comment threads, resources, discussion prompts, and more, all embedded right in the text. It’s a unique and immersive way to read.

Q: Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?

It’s annoying, we know. App store rules prevent us from selling directly in the app, so for now you can only purchase ebooks on our website. Don’t worry: when you purchase an ebook on the web, it’s automatically added to your bookshelf in the app.

Q: How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?

Kindle is a straightforward e-reader; Fable is an interactive e-reader that includes social features inside the ebooks. When you read an ebook on Fable, you can see and react to the text with others in real time. Start a discussion, share highlights and quotes, add emoji reactions—all of it lives right inside the book. It’s hard to explain and easy to see, so we recommend reading the free sample in one of our most active clubs to get a feel for it.

Q: Do you sell physical books too?

We do not sell physical books at this time. Wish we did? Let us know why here!

Q: Are book clubs free to join on Fable?

Most of our clubs are completely free to join. The only exceptions are clubs marked as “Premium” or “Career Development,” which do require a fee. You can find out more on each club’s detail page.

Q: How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?

The first step is to download the Fable app. From there, you’ll be able to create your own private or public book club and invite others to read with you. Once your club is created, click on the plus sign under “Currently reading” and search for this book to add it to your club.

By Philip Fracassi

Publisher Description

Beneath a Pale Sky collects eight stories of horror, including two original novellettes, that will take you from the high-security ward of a mental hospital to the top of a Ferris Wheel on an ocean pier. These stories will bury you in the rubble of an earthquake, pull back the veil on a soul's journey into the afterlife, and turn a small midwestern town into the secret domain of cross-dimensional gods. Combining old-school horror with the modern weird, acclaimed author Philip Fracassi will take you places you've never been before, and show you sights you won't soon forget.The supernatural intrudes upon a wedding; a pier becomes the site of tragedy; a collapsed building is only the start of the nightmare for those trapped in the ruins; a scientist who makes the discovery of a lifetime, only to find out that what he's unearthed has dire consequences not only for himself, but for all of mankind.

Download the free Fable app

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities

Beneath a Pale Sky Reviews

4.0

Nienke ♡

Created 2 months ago

“Some nights linger in your bones… Beneath a Pale Sky is exactly the sort of horror collection that haunts long after the page is turned 🌙👁️ This collection brings together eight stories, two of them novelettes, by Philip Fracassi: Harvest, The Wheel, Soda Jerk, Symphony, Ateuchus, ID, Fragile Dreams and Death, My Old Friend. The settings shift wildly, from small-town celebrations to claustrophobic disasters, to surreal and cosmic encounters that crawl under your skin 😱 Each tale blends the deeply human with the deeply horrifying, creating a mix of fear, grief, obsession and that unsettling feeling that something is always just out of sight 👀😶‍🌫️ Harvest 🌾🎉 It starts innocently.. a small-town wedding, people coming together, family dynamics bubbling. And then, like Fracassi does so well, the ordinary cracks open into something dark 🤯 The build-up is rich and layered, but the ending left me a little restless, like the final chord of a song that never quite resolves 🎻😬 The Wheel 🎡😱 A carnival at night, neon lights, cheap thrills and a Ferris wheel that should’ve stayed broken. It’s eerie, atmospheric and you can almost smell the popcorn turning stale 😯 Again, the set-up had me hooked, but the final note was more a whisper than a scream 🌌🍿 Soda Jerk 🥤😶 Moving to a new town, a new job, trying to start fresh. We’ve all felt that mix of hope and isolation. This one takes those feelings and twists them until they’re uncanny. Loved the ride, but the landing was shaky 🤯😬 Symphony 🎶🐐 Grief and strange fantasy melt together here. A child’s dreams, an adult’s wounds and the thin line between memory and nightmare 👻 Fracassi nails the emotions, it felt raw, vivid, almost too close. The ending though… again, a bit too open for my taste 💔🕯️ Ateuchus 🪲🧐 Meteorites, obsession and cosmic dread. This one screams “don’t mess with things you don’t understand.” 🤓 It’s dark, strange and deliciously creepy.. but yep, another ending that slipped through my fingers 🌑😨 ID 🪞💔 Set in and around institutional walls. Questions of recovery, identity and what it means to be free. It’s intense, disturbing and made me uneasy in the best way 🤯 But the last page left me blinking at the ceiling instead of gasping 🏥😶‍🌫️ Fragile Dreams 🧱😨 Claustrophobia dialed up to eleven. Imagine being trapped under rubble, no escape, only your thoughts pressing in as hard as the concrete above you 😱 I was fully immersed.. but again, I wanted a sharper punch at the end..💀 Death, My Old Friend ☠️🕰️ The most reflective of the bunch. Death as a character, as a presence, as something familiar rather than terrifying 👻 It’s softer, almost poetic and stayed with me long after. Beautiful in its way, but still carried that same pattern of open-endedness 🌌🖤 What ties all these stories together is how incredibly strong the build-ups are. Every single one had me fully immersed.. the settings felt alive, the characters were flawed but real and the creeping dread grew so naturally that I often forgot I was reading and not just experiencing it 📖😬 That’s Fracassi’s true talent: he knows how to drag you in and keep you there ✍ The downside for me was the endings. Almost all of them leaned too open, too vague, leaving me with the feeling that I’d been carried up this dark, thrilling rollercoaster only to be let off quietly instead of with a final scream 🎢😵‍💫 Some readers love that ambiguity, but I personally crave more closure.. a punch, a twist, something that lingers with clarity instead of only shadow. Philip Fracassi has quickly become one of the names to watch in modern horror. His style is vivid and descriptive, but never just for the sake of it.. every unsettling detail feels intentional ✍ He blends cosmic dread, human fragility and raw emotion in a way that makes his stories feel both timeless and timely. His characters are rarely simple; they carry grief, obsession, longing and fear in ways that make them painfully relatable. Reading him is like being whispered to in the dark: you’re not sure what’s coming, but you can’t look away 👂😨 In the end, Beneath a Pale Sky is a collection I’d recommend to anyone who loves atmospheric, character-driven horror with a surreal edge. The stories are beautifully crafted, dripping with dread and emotion. For me, the endings held it back from being a 5-star experience, but the journey there was absolutely worth it 😱💯 ⭐⭐⭐ Haunting, immersive and unsettling in all the right ways… just don’t expect the final pages to tie a neat bow around the horror 🎀💀”

mbuendia

Created 5 months ago

Thomas Hamil

Created 6 months ago

“Fracassi sits with Barron at the top of my favorites in modern horror after this book. I reread a couple of these several times and many of the stories hold a dreamlike and surreal quality to them that really shows his writing chops. There’s exploration of mental health, insanity, depression, death (and what comes after), and just a twinge of the eldritch in here. And of all things, it ends up on almost a comforting note in the last story. Also, Mr. Fracassi was kind enough to email me back regarding a question I had about one of the stories in here, which I cannot express sufficient appreciation for. It is wonderful to see an author interact with a reader and even further solidified my urge to write this review and champion him as a titan of modern horror. Don’t skip this one. It’s worth your time.”