Selected as the Best Fiction Book of the Year by Rue Morgue Magazine.

"'20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism' [the pivotal story within The Secret of Ventriloquism] is what might be deemed an ultimate horror vision. What makes such a piece always resides in an ambition to transcend literature itself. As purely a matter of literary taxonomy, I would place this magnificently executed short story in a class with Lovecraft's 'Call of Cthulhu, ' Blackwood's 'The Willows, ' and Jorge Luis Borges's 'The Lottery in Babylon.' These are tales that lead one to say, 'This is a revelation of how things are.' Like them, '20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism' pulls out all the stops to convey a towering perspective that encompasses and reveals the essence of existence. That is its scope. That is how it affects those exposed to the story. When it comes to a close, one's reaction is, 'There is nothing more to be said.' And, of course, what has been spoken by '20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism' is by necessity deftly strange and awful, like life itself once its façade has been peeled away little by little. That is how an ultimate horror vision works its wonder."

-Thomas Ligotti, author of Noctuary & The Spectral Link

"The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett's lines raised the hair on my neck. The stories radiate darkness... In a year of exceptional weird fiction, this is a mattock-handle-wrapped-in-barbed-wire heavy hitter."

-Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

"Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. There's no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of."

-Dejan Ognjanovic, Rue Morgue Magazine

"Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism is a horror revelation. The interconnected short stories are ghastly, clever, dryly witty, but also genuinely and bone-rattlingly creepy and disturbing. Sure, going in, I was already afraid of ventriloquist dummies, but now I'm deathly afraid of Jon Padgett."

-Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock.

"There's quite enough variety of tone, setting, and focus here to surprise and disconcert any reader, and leave preconceived expectations flopping and gasping in the cold black mud of Padgett's imagination...Padgett is a chilling master in his own right."

-Paul StJohn Mackintosh, Teleread

"Jon Padgett... satisfied ALL of my wants and needs as a reader of dark and weird fiction. These stories... are as utterly satisfying as short fiction can be."

-Charlene Cocrane, Horror After Dark

Publisher: Jon Padgett Productions

Pub date: 2023-08-01

Length: 342 pages