The Number 121 to Pennsylvania & Others

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By Kealan Patrick Burke

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Publisher Description

The acclaimed collection THE NUMBER 121 TO PENNSYLVANIA & OTHERS, almost 100,000 words of short fiction by the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE TURTLE BOY.

The lonesome sound of a long forgotten train draws an old man to memories of a horrific past... A journalist makes the mistake of visiting a website where real-life executions are the order of the day... At the foot of an old tree, an insidious evil awaits two boys digging for treasure... A browbeaten salesman finds hope and a possible escape from the banality of his world when he returns home to find a fairytale beanstalk sprouting from his garden... A man resists the social pressure to quit smoking and puts himself at an unimaginable risk... A high school student accepts a dare to ask out the ugliest girl in school and enters a world of pain and violence... A comedian finds himself faced with a most peculiar and deadly audience...The pariah of a village accepts an offer of peace at his mother's funeral, but the olive branch may have hidden thorns...A bunch of barflies doomed to murder sinners get together for one last drink in a dying town...

These are just some of the passengers, headed for a ride through the dark uncharted regions of the heart and mind...on The Number 121 to Pennsylvania.

Includes such reader favorites as "Empathy", "Mr. Goodnight", "Underneath", "The Grief Frequency" and "Peekers".

"In 14 dark fantasies collected here, Burke creates characters whose angst opens them up to uncanny incidents and ghostly encounters that seem an extension of their own spiritual malaise... Burke shows skill at imagining expressive supernatural experiences appropriate for his well-developed characters and their agitated emotions." - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Don't read it late at night." - BOOKLIST

"Each tale grabs you within the first few sentences and never lets go, resulting in a collection guaranteed to take you on one of the scariest rides of your life." - RUE MORGUE

10 Reviews

4.5

Reagan Jacobs

Created about 1 year ago

Kia Lenae

Created over 1 year ago

Jari -chan

Created about 5 years ago

“Kurzgeschichten sind ja nicht wirklich meins, da ich sie einfach zu schnell wieder vergesse. Selten bleibt mal etwas hängen, dann zeigt sich, dass es ein gutes Buch war. Dies scheint hier der Fall zu sein; habe ich doch auch einige Wochen nach Beenden der Lektüre noch immer viele Szenen im Kopf. Das mag wohl daran liegen, dass Burke richtig gute Geschichten schreiben kann. So richtig schön schauderhaft - so, wie es sein soll im Horrorgenre. Ausserdem sind alle Texte sehr unterschiedlich. Nicht nur was die Themen betrifft, sondern auch Charaktere und Schreibstil. Das hat mich tief beeindruckt. So abwechslungsreich hat sich bisher noch keine Kurzgeschichtensammlung gezeigt. Zumindest keine, die von demselben Schriftsteller verfasst wurde. Kurzgeschichten beherrscht Kealan Patrick Burke also meiner Ansicht nach ausgezeichnet. Sollte es sich ergeben, werde ich mich auch sehr gerne an einer Geschichte in voller Länge von ihm versuchen. Mal sehen, ob er das auch drauf hat.”

Steven Gomzi

Created over 6 years ago

“This is my first short story collection from Kealan Patrick Burke, the powerhouse horror writer who has become one of my favorite authors, and whose work I try to shout adulation about wherever I can. Because everyone should be reading him. With this collection, he has surpassed Stephen King as my favorite horror author. An author who has held that post for the last 30 years. Most short story collections have a few included that can be considered fillers, stories that are forgettable or not up to the standard of an author’s best work. Not so here. Every story here was amazing, touched me emotionally, left a lasting impression, or just plain scared the shit out of me. My five favorites were The Grief Frequency- a grim little tale of death and the grieving that follows. This one disturbed me in many ways. The Number 121 To Pennsylvania; Peekers And Mr. Goodnight-both which succeeded in providing some lovely nightmare fuel, and Cobwebs-a story which resonated due to my recent birthday. My birthday is an occasion I usually try to ignore, because the numbers are getting too high for comfort, and they are designed in themselves, as we get older, to remind us of our eventual mortality! 😉 Anyway, this story hit my sadness button, and actually made me pick up the phone to call my aging parents, something I haven’t done in a number of days, because I don’t want them to feel forgotten, the way the poor soul in this story does. A brilliant collection that would be an excellent place to start if you’re new to his work. Loved it!”

Theatretenor

Created about 7 years ago

About Kealan Patrick Burke

Born and raised in a small harbor town in the south of Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke knew from a very early age that he was going to be a horror writer. The combination of an ancient locale, a horror-loving mother, and a family full of storytellers, made it inevitable that he would end up telling stories for a living. Since those formative years, he has written five novels, over a hundred short stories, six collections, and edited four acclaimed anthologies. In 2004, he was honored with the Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Turtle Boy.

Kealan has worked as a waiter, a drama teacher, a mapmaker, a security guard, an assembly-line worker at Apple Computers, a salesman (for a day), a bartender, landscape gardener, vocalist in a grunge band, curriculum content editor, fiction editor at Gothic.net, and, most recently, a fraud investigator.

When not writing, Kealan designs book covers through his company Elderlemon Design.

A movie based on his short story "Peekers" is currently in development as a major motion picture.