Infernal Tramps by Alex Grass
Dickinson Publishing Group (July
2026)
Reviewed by Danica Davidson
Infernal Tramps is a fascinating, morbid, and hallucinatory collection of seventeen short stories. Reading them is a bit like reading something that combines nightmares, surrealist paintings, and an extra shot of weirdness, all into a cocktail of well-written, genre-defying tales of horror.
The titular story, “Infernal Tramps,” follows a “tramp” who adopts a child thrown from a train, and then that child grows up, we’ll say, very unusually.
In “Eguisto Zanosi’s Fast,” Eguisto’s wife and mother-in-law take a creative path to teaching him a lesson about his sins.
In “A Woman of Distinction,” a 500-year-old woman takes it into her own bloody hands to teach a man some manners. This story was short and to the point, but something about it was so powerful that I think it might be my favorite in the collection.
“Pujkamaunka Splash,” a story about a game from the 90s, might sound as if it’s about something nostalgic and innocent. Still, this story was especially visceral — and sometimes felt very real — and this is the story that creeped me out the most.
The stories themselves are hard to describe without going into too much detail. And then it’s hard to go into detail, because Grass has such a unique way of telling stories. The writing is unique, takes interesting angles, and is written with an intelligent flair and vocabulary. Descriptions are vivid, detailed, and sometimes out of this world. Some of the stories are on the shorter end, flash fiction pieces that get a lot of emotion across with very little wording. While some of them are pretty straightforward, much more often they’re open to interpretation. The stories never outright terrify, but they do a good job of getting under your skin, especially the more you read.
At the same time, they aren’t just nightmares and creepiness. These stories also have dark humor and satire. And each story opens with a black-and-white picture that fits the mood, either artwork by the author or a shadowy image of a sculpture, a photograph, or a netsuke. While a few stories have been previously published, most are new to this collection.
More than one story deals with murder, and there’s a fair share of gore, though it never feels particularly gory. Even with some themes revisited, each story feels very much its own, shining in its own weird way. This is a solid horror collection for someone who wants something a little different to disquiet their nights.
Grass is also the author of Black River Lantern, Dreck, and A Boy’s Hammer.
