In Vile Affections, Caitlín R. Kiernan's seventeenth short fiction collection, the boundaries of desire, fascination, passion, and dread collide. That which is beautiful may easily be profane. Those who love us may devour us alive. A shadow may shine like a supernova. The eye of the beholder is God. In these twenty-two stories, Kiernan's range takes us from submerged and monster-haunted dreamscapes to quiet bedroom conversation between lovers, from unexpected and uncanny roadkill to an object lesson on the perils of picking up hitchhikers on rainy Appalachian nights. The collection moves between such disparate genres as cyberpunk, fairy tales, and Southern Gothic.

Cambrian Tales has been assembled from a few surviving brittle typescripts of these early tales, dating from 1979 to 1991 (all of which are now preserved at Brown University). The collection includes junior high and high school attempts at science fiction – 'Untitled Space Opera,' 'Dinosaur Novel Fragment' – to Southern Gothic pieces written in Kiernan's college years – 'Bedtime Story,' 'The Fall' – along with a smattering of non-fiction and poetry.