Tor.com is pleased to reveal the Yuko Shimizu cover for Monstrous Affection, an anthology of beastly tales edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant! Fifteen top voices in speculative fiction explore the intersection of fear and love in a haunting, at times hilarious, darkly imaginative volume, available this September from Candlewick Press.

Shimizu also created the artwork for Link and Grant’s previous anthology, Steampunk!, also with Candlewick Press. For Monstrous Affection, Shimizu tells us:

“They wanted something that tie them together without making it obvious. Anthology covers can be tough to come up with ideas at the starting point, because it has to represent multiple stories by different writers. There was a lot of back and forth with the art director, Nathan Pyritz. At the end we decided to focus on the relationship between human and monsters. Clients usually don’t necessarily call me for monster illustrations, so I had a lot of fun designing it.”

Ultimately she created a cover that is both pretty and unsettling, a shadowy monster with teeth that seem ominously concrete and floral patterns that are alluring and red with warning.

Find out more about the anthology below, including the full table of contents.

Predatory kraken that sing with—and for—their kin; band members and betrayed friends who happen to be demonic; harpies as likely to attract as repel. Welcome to a world where humans live side by side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you’ll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today’s top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.

Table of Contents:

Paolo Bacigalupi—Moriabe’s Children

Cassandra Clare—Old Souls

Holly Black—Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)

M. T. Anderson—Quick Hill

Nathan Ballingrud—The Diabolist

Patrick Ness—This Whole Demoning Thing

Sarah Rees Brennan—Wings in the Morning

Nalo Hopkinson—Left Foot, Right

G. Carl Purcell—The Mercurials

Dylan Horrocks—Kitty Capulet and the Invention of Underwater Photography

Nik Houser—Son of Abyss

Kathleen Jennings—A Small Wild Magic

Kelly Link—The New Boyfriend

Joshua Lewis—The Woods Hide in Plain Sight

Alice Sola Kim—Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying