Pet Monsters: Ten Tales of Monsters and the Kids Who Befriend Them (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 78)

You were a weird kid once. So were they — right up until the monster showed up.

A boy brings a rotten sandwich back to life and discovers the truest friend he has ever had. A lonely girl pulls a crashed alien out of a cornfield. A grieving kid hides a fire-breathing salamander in his dead father's office. And out past the porch light, something with too many tentacles is looking up at the same stars — and quietly noticing the marriage coming apart inside the house.

Pet Monsters gathers ten original stories about the strange, misunderstood creatures that crash into ordinary lives, and the children brave enough to love them back. They are funny, they are frightening, and underneath every one of them runs the same what it costs to be an outcast, what it means to finally be understood, and how much it hurts to let go.

For readers raised on E.T., The Iron Giant, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and for anyone who still, on the right kind of night, half-hopes to find something waiting at the edge of the yard. In the tradition of Ray Bradbury and Joe ten tales where childhood wonder shades, story by story, into the uncanny and the unforgettable.

Ten authors. Ten monsters. One anthology about the friends we lose, the people we become, and the small impossible miracle of being seen.