An excerpt from B. Horror and Other Stories:

"When I get home the sub is cold anyway. I put it in the microwave a minute; I start laughing. At first it feels good to laugh. I am laughing at Robert and his weird Bride. Then I realize I am alone, laughing. I mean I am alone, and laughing about Robert's Bride, and I don't feel bad or anything, just scared--I continue to laugh because I am scared--and I get more scared as time passes, laughing the way you do when you're really frightened by something, like a shadow or a noise, then the earthly reason for the apparition appears, like a cat, or a book slumping over in the library and hitting the floor--and you're relieved because it was only some object, or thing, or a cat--but you're still laughing and scared at what it might have been. Something ghastly. Something that's dead and alive at the same time. Like Robert's Bride."

Click Microphones to Hear a Passage from "Mary Magdalena versus Godzilla"

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Stories in this book trace, fictively, the response to fear in our times, which range from the comic to the tragic, to those deeply mixed reactions that characterize so much of contemporary life.

"Beguiling ... Mayo, in his third book, demonstrates that 'horror' can mean something as simple as fear and apprehension, and in patient, sharp prose, he pushes his characters into small psychic duels, where people come close to understanding each other but can't--or won't--get there ..."
- The New York Times Book Review

"Mayo's gnomic parables showcase his facility for reading deeper meanings in the banal moments of ordinary life and the disposable artifacts of popular culture ... [They] shine with the professional polish of subtly wrought revelation."
- Publishers Weekly

"This is grand writing conveyed in the simplest words without the faintest hint of pulp fiction, although much of the subject matter comes from popular culture ... [D]o not pass this by."
- Kirkus Reviews

"Mayo is a magician who uses stylish prose and droll humor for his cape and wand. He keeps us constantly amused while he makes what we thought was reality - brides, monsters, even death itself - appear and disappear right before our eyes. The result is a versatile collection that lingers in the mind, provoking deep doubt as well as passionate affirmation."
- Enid Shomer, Author of Imaginary Men