Skip to main content
book cover for The Gods in Small Doses

The Gods in Small Doses

Stories

You must sign in to see if this title is available for request. Sign In or Register Now

Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Mar 17 2026 | Archive Date Mar 20 2026

Talking about this book? Use #TheGodsinSmallDoses #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

The magical and mundane twist together in this collection of surreal stories

In this collection of stories set in an uncanny American suburbia and haunted by a lurking unease, the peculiar feeling of ephemeral youth finds its voice. The stories in The Gods in Small Doses depict childhood through a funhouse mirror, as a time of myth and damage, of tenderness and terror. Anything—except what should happen—can happen next.

A retired witch traps a goat-killing feral child, a girl becomes obsessed with the regenerative properties of her younger brother’s body, Armageddon is fought between the forces of good (those who like to go to bed early) and evil (those who prefer to stay up late), a supernatural orphan insinuates his way into an all-American family, the god Poseidon wrecks a high-school house party, and the women of a fabulated island city all mysteriously disappear overnight. In these fast, comic, and troubling tales, sweetness and violence vie to become synonymous.

This is a universe of both realism and surrealism, of magic and the mundane, where strong but deeply flawed characters fight to exert control over things—time, death, themselves—that can’t be controlled. Dreamlike moments of body horror, catastrophe, and absurdity challenge the reader to embrace the taboo and to expect—always—the unexpected. Bell’s stories offer a twisted, unique, and utterly fascinating take on what it means to “grow up,” and all of the questions that the notion inspires.

The magical and mundane twist together in this collection of surreal stories

In this collection of stories set in an uncanny American suburbia and haunted by a lurking unease, the peculiar feeling of...


Advance Praise

"The Gods in Small Doses is the most fun I've had reading in a long, long time. I had that euphoric urge to open my mouth wide, then wider, because something was trapped, a shout or a laugh or a sob, and then they all three burst in like fools through a doorway. This book is so funny, so charming and strange, that I'd follow it into the woods any old evening. Dear Reader, buckle up."—Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive

"Mixing the confidence and violence of a Grimms fairy tale with the sharp perception of the best contemporary critiques of the often senseless ways we work, couple, and live now, The Gods in Small Doses is odd, funny, unsettling, timeless, and devastating. These stories will wake you up and keep you awake at night."—Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of Housemates

"I have never eaten god before, but reading Josh Bell feels like coming mighty close. Each story in this collection entered my body like a shocking burst of light. Bell must write with ink given to him by some feral mystic who is guarding an alphabet too hot to touch. The Gods in Small Doses is a freaking masterpiece."—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Happily: a Personal History-with Fairy Tales

“The stories in The Gods in Small Doses are unpredictable and startling little gothic comedies largely about the perversions of childhood and family life—winning, hilarious, and peppered judiciously with breath-catching flashes of emotion washed clean of any overblown sentimentality. Thoughtful, disciplined writing, limning an unknown territory of genre-pleasure that is just short of fabulist: these marvelous stories seem to come from the past and future all at once.”—Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox and Night Night Fawn

"The Gods in Small Doses is the most fun I've had reading in a long, long time. I had that euphoric urge to open my mouth wide, then wider, because something was trapped, a shout or a laugh or a sob...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781625349248
PRICE $22.95 (USD)
PAGES 168

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Reader (PDF)
NetGalley Shelf App (PDF)
Send to Kindle (PDF)
Download (PDF)