The Atlas of Hell
by Nathan Ballingrud
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Pub Date 24 Jul 2025 | Archive Date 28 Jul 2025
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Description
In his first collection, North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud carved out a distinctly singular place in American fiction with his “piercing and merciless” (Toronto Globe and Mail) portrayals of the monsters that haunt our lives—both real and imagined:
“What Nathan Ballingrud does in North American Lake Monsters is to reinvigorate the horror tradition”
Los Angeles Review of Books.
Now, in The Atlas of Hell, Ballingrud follows up with an even more confounding, strange, and utterly entrancing collection of stories, including one new novella. From the eerie dread descending upon a New Orleans dive bartender after a cell phone is left behind in a rollicking bar fight in ‘The Visible Filth’ to the search for the map of hell in ‘The Butcher’s Table’, Ballingrud’s beautifully crafted stories are riveting in their quietly terrifying depictions of the murky line between the known and the unknown.
Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on off shore oil rigs. His story ‘The Monsters of Heaven’ won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.
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Publicity by FMcM Associates
Publicity by FMcM Associates
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781068349706 |
| PRICE | £10.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 293 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Ciaran S, Reviewer
The Atlas of Hell is quite a collection; it sets its stall out early with the title story, a grim tale of a New Orleans book dealer seeking an atlas drawn from Hell itself. Short vignettes describing hell are effectively stomach turning, and the highlights for me are the visible filth (made into the film Wounds) and the Butcher’s table - a boat trip into Hell to meet the devil. Less effective for me is the Diabolist - I genuinely wondered if the book was for me during that one but I’m glad I persevered for the horrific tales that followed.
I wouldn’t recommend this to many of my friends - it would be a select crowd who I know would appreciate its grim atmosphere.
Missy J, Reviewer
"The ache of need is a music in hell."
Nathan Ballingrud's new collection features a great blend of grotesque and weird horror tales. Taking the darker corners of human nature, these stories push the characters to the cliff's edge leading them towards something much darker than one can anticipate.
Having recently read "North American Lake Monsters" I was excited to see this new collection.
Included are the following:
The Atlas of Hell
Still Harbour
The Diabolist
The Mountain that Breathes
Skullpocket
The Concert Hall
The Maw
Persons of Interest In Hell and Its Environs
The Visible Filth
The Black Iron Monastery and the Bright Road
The Butcher's Table
There's one where in New Orleans a rare bookdealer is forced to track down an infernal atlas dragged from hell itself and now stashed in the swamps of the bayou. A dive bartender picks up a phone left behind after a brawl and is pulled into a waking nightmare (Wounds). On a sea voyage, a decadent group of diabolists are intent on an audience with the Devil himself.
I enjoyed reading these stories, there were many that I won't be forgetting quickly.
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