A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez

Nominee for Readers' Favorite Horror (2024)

A woman wakes with partial facial paralysis, and soon realizes that her entire face is slowly disappearing. A girl tries on a vintage dress taken from a palace with a dark history, only for it to leave her with horrible wounds. A cult forms around a young woman who was found drowned in the water tank of a faded hotel.

In her first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez invites us to face the horror of everyday atrocities, intergenerational trauma and feeling painfully uncomfortable in one's own skin.