This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major award winning author and illustrator T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) whose latest book, The Hollow Places: A Novel is available now.

About The Hollow Places: A Novel: Pray they are hungry. Kara finds the words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring this peculiar area—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more one fears them, the stronger they become.

With her distinctive “delightfully fresh and subversive” (SF Bluestocking) prose and the strange, sinister wonder found in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, The Hollow Places is another compelling and white-knuckled horror novel that you won’t be able to put down.

About T Kingfisher: T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon. In another life, she writes children’s books and weird comics, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections.

Ursula Vernon is the author and illustrator of far more projects than is probably healthy. She has written over fifteen books for children, several novels for adults, an epic webcomic called “Digger” and various short stories and other odds and ends.

Her work has been nominated for the Eisner, World Fantasy, and longlisted for the British Science Fiction Awards. It has garnered a number of Webcomics Choice Awards, enough Junior Library Guild Selections to allow her to cosplay as a six-star general, and a mention in the New York Times, which she did not get tattooed to her forehead, despite her mother’s insistence.

In addition to writing and making art, Ms. Vernon gardens, feeds the birds, and has an unhealthy obsession with mulch.

This week’s picks:

* T Kingfisher:

A Bean Collector’s Window

* Tracy: The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interstellar Travel (audiobook)

* Patrick: Star Trek: Discovery (Season 3)

Links:

* T Kingfisher on Twitter

* Tracy Townsend on Twitter

* Patrick Hester on Twitter

* The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2020 Patrick Hester