"It's as though a modern-day woman had picked up where Lewis Carroll left off, and was writing for the grown women that Carroll's little girls would have eventually become."
DeAnna Knippling, author of Choose Your Doom: Zombie Apocalypse.
Zombies, Robots and Monsters, oh my!
A collection of strange, surreal, and magical short fiction
Publisher: Strange Publications
Published: August 2010
Introduction by Nate Lambert
Cover Art by Aaron Polson
Available in paperback from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository and Strange Publications and as an ebook from Amazon UK and Amazon US *
*due to an as yet unresolved problem, Strange Men is currently unavailable as an ebook via Amazon - my publisher is working on the problem - in the meantime the paperback is still available and is far, far prettier*
Reviews:
...is a smorgasbord of the surreal with strands of absurdity ripping through its core, each quirky story riffing on an internal logic with echoes of Monty Python at its most bizarre and informed by a delight in language that matches the exuberance of Bradbury at the height of his powers... There is an addictive quality to these stories, so that as soon as you finish one you want to rush on to the next..
Peter Tennant, Black Static
There’s an absolutely wonderful line in one of the stories included in this collection (Trench Foot) which sums everything up about Cate Gardner’s stories, and which goes thusly: “Sometimes Amelia forgot she was living with people who existed on the wrong side of reality.
Simon Marshall Jones, Beyond FictionThe 24 stories which make up Ms. Gardner’s first collection, the aptly named Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits and Other Curious Things, each have a title which is at once both evocative and intriguing. Luckily for the reader, the stories attached to those titles do not disappoint. They are a frothy mixture of reprints and previously unpublished works, but the various themes remain constant throughout.
Joshua Reynolds, Innsmouth Free Press
This land may be called Wonderland or Nowhere, but whatever the name, Gardner maps it with careful, melancholy strokes.
E Catherine Tobler, Shimmer
That quality of innocence is fundamental to Cate's work. If there's an overriding theme to Strange Men In Pinstripe Suits then it's the struggle to preserve it in a grim, inimical world. It's a struggle to do so; it would be so easy to let that quality be extinguished for the sake of an easy ride, a quiet life. But do so, and you're lost forever.
Simon Bestwick
Reading Cate Gardner’s short stories is like watching The Twilight Zone hosted by Franz Kafka, with adaptations by Lewis Carroll. This isn’t run of the mill writing. In the collection Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits and Other Curious Things, Gardner’s highly unusual fiction is displayed in all its bizarre glory. Calling her work odd is an understatement; it doesn’t do justice to her great imagination.
Sheila M. Merritt, Hellnotes.
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