A monkey sculpture holding a light bulb, set against a patterned background with radial design and vertical lines.

Tales From the Liminal

Delightfully strange. Endlessly thought-provoking.

In this collection of fifteen curious and delightful short stories, you never know who you’re going to meet or where you’re going to end up. You can be certain, however, that you’ll always find yourself smack dab in the middle of some befuddling predicament of existence.

Using humor and horror, satire and allegory, fabulism and realism, Tales From the Liminal takes you for an extraordinary ride, submerging you in spaces where anything is possible, especially transformation. 

“It’s a breed of storytelling that encases an entire cosmos within a compact form, with prose that pulses with life, with tableaus that transfix the imagination with glimmers of divine order in an emotionally turbulent landscape…tinted by the surreal.” —Timothy Cech, fiction editor, Reed Magazine

Listen to a 5-minute audiobook Sample

“A sometimes dizzying, eclectic look at the hunger of the human soul for more. The collection at times feels like embodied philosophy, with perspectives contending. The images, at times, are almost surreal. They stay with you after reading, stirring up timeless questions you’ve forgotten, or the unformed whispers of questions you haven’t yet articulated.” 
      — Dr. Matthew Flaherty, Literature Faculty, Bard High School, Early College Baltimore

Find Out More
Order Print & Audio

Featured Events


Our Esteemed Judges have announced the Winners of the 3rd Annual Liminal Essay Contest!

Learn more

Essay Contest Winners discuss liminality in Dr. Timothy Carson’s Honors Class, University of Missouri


art as liminal phenomena

Presentation by S. K. Kruse for The Guild for Engaged Liminality
September 2023

Drawing on such luminaries as Rudolph Otto, Maya Angelou, Frederick Nietzsche, and more, S. K. Kruse makes the case that if you want to create art, you must submerge yourself in the liminal.

See All Events

Study Edition Now Available

“If this imaginative world of S. K. Kruse creates more perplexity than certainty, literary sojourners should know that they have arrived in the right place. I know that happened for my students as we read, studied, and discussed this most delightful book.”

— Dr. Timothy Carson, Professor of Liminal Studies, Honors College University of Missouri

Learn More