The Apocalypse-A-Day Desk Calendar

In this eclectic assortment of flash fiction, Bram Stoker Award-winner Norman Prentiss concocts a different end-of-the-world scenario for each calendar day. The stories range from humorous to bizarre to unsettling, commemorating holiday and observance days (New Year's or Valentine's Day, National Pig Day), famous birthdays (Robert Frost, Charles Dickens), or notable historical events (the first computer...and the first computer virus; the sinking of the Titanic or the Great Chicago Fire). Other daily entries include a riff on the first (and only) golf game on the moon; "The Milking of Elm Farm Ollie," which reinvigorates an in-flight publicity stunt by adding apocalyptic results; and occasional letters from the sardonic "Dear Apocalypse" advice column. A handful of longer, serialized stories include: "The Hell of Food That Looks Like Other Food," "The Exterminator's Visit," and "The Child Who Ended the World."

This massive collection includes all 365 entries from an ambitious yearlong project: more than 170,000 words of bleak or humorous vignettes, stories, serials, poems, and a few unclassifiable oddities-ready to be sampled in small doses just like the pages of those desk calendars you buy for 50%-off in

February...or available all at once for your immediate binge-reading pleasure