Everything After

Every ending arrives from the wrong direction.

Everything After is a debut collection of three stories set at the far edge of the world - and the small, human things that survive there. Spare, unsettling, and by turns tender, harrowing, and darkly funny, these are tales about the lengths we go to for the people we love, and the moment devotion becomes the thing that destroys us.

On a fortified hill at the end of the world, an old survivalist keeps one rule: the gate stays shut. Then a young woman makes camp at the foot of it, and everything he built to keep the world out begins, quietly, to open.

In a city gone dark, the crowds have begun to smile in unison. A father leads his son toward a rumored light - and toward a choice about what is real, and what is worth believing when believing may be the very thing that kills you.

And high in the frozen Colorado silver country, in the winter of 1884, a snowbound supper party runs out of everything but appetite and good cheer. Its guests are about to learn exactly how far good manners will carry them.

Each story turns on something you won't see coming. By the last page, you'll wonder which ending you should have feared most.

Ranging from post-apocalyptic survival to historical dread to the quiet horror of a family coming apart, Everything After lives where survival meets longing, where love is hard to tell from a trap, and where the apocalypse turns out to be a deeply personal affair. Kyle Cunniff's debut asks what we hold onto when the world ends - and what, against all sense, still grows.