Tagged: contemporary fiction
Very Fine People by Scott Gannis
Very Fine People
Scott Gannis
308 pages
ISBN: 978-1941918753
Release Date: October 2, 2020
Fiction/Literature/Politics
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It’s Fall 2016 in flyover country and Jude Glick’s mother has just died after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind a house in foreclosure, tens of thousands in medical debt, and compounding psychological trauma. Already a struggling standup comic and museum security guard, Jude thinks his life can’t get any more humiliating. But poverty and institutional cruelty find new ways to grind him down-and beat him up-just as his childhood bully, Stephen Scheisskopf, becomes a household name as propaganda minister for a proto-fascist Presidential candidate. When this unnamed nominee improbably wins the election and Scheisskopf transforms the Glick family story into a partisan political symbol, Jude can’t take it anymore and finally inflicts himself on the people, and country, he hates. Alternating between raw emotionalism, cutting satire, and wild flights of imagination, Gannis’s brilliant debut novel builds to an unforeseen and shattering climax.
Distant Hills by Lydia Unsworth
NOW AVAILABLE
Distant Hills
Lydia Unsworth
154 pages
ISBN: 978-1-941918-73-9
Paperback:
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Fiction/Literature/Poetry/Travel
“A small tasty novel whose events bend language into thrilling shapes . . .”
—Ed Garland, author of Earwitness
Leaving behind the familiar hills of England, X makes for Europe with just her 75-litre backpack. She’s determined to find loneliness. And she does, sublimely on a new hilltop or painfully in a tone of disconnection. But she also finds companionship and separations. It is by committing herself to new people, new wilds, and new homes that X explores inner expanses. This is reflected in Unsworth’s outward-looking prose, which captures both fibrous detail and planetary speeds and motions. Unsworth’s debut novel is a testament to the versatility of language and of the human spirit.
Murder House by C.V. Hunt
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Murder House
C.V. Hunt
128 pages
ISBN: 978-1-941918-67-8
Paperback and Kindle
Fiction/Literature/Horror
It’s not the house you should be afraid of, it’s the people who live there.
Laura’s boyfriend, Brent, is an author and he’s writing a true crime book about the Hallows’ Eve Massacre. The publisher has given Brent a tight deadline and the opportunity to stay in the house where the massacre took place. But the basement creeps Laura out and she’s left questioning her sanity after she sees things that may or may not be there. When Brent begins to act strange, Laura writes it off to the pressure of his deadline. Is Laura really losing her mind or is there something in the house that’s changing the couple?
Hold for Release Until the End of the World by C.V. Hunt
Hold for Release Until the End of the World
C.V. Hunt
Paperback, Ebook, and Audio
112 pages
ISBN: 978-1941918272
This is the last thing you’ll ever see.
Welcome to Daxton. The neighbor is crazy. The roommate is running a perpetual scam. Being degraded by the boss on a daily basis is part of the job. The children are willingly abducted. The probability of getting shot while purchasing groceries is high. And don’t forget to fill your quota of junk strategically placed in your yard to be viewed from the street.
Why would you want to live anywhere else?
Die Empty by Kirk Jones
Die Empty
Kirk Jones
Paperback and Ebook
178 pages
ISBN: 978-1941918234
middle age (mid′l-āj) n. 1. Spending one year’s disposable income on vinyl figures, only to realize a complete He-Man collection isn’t going to make your current life any better. Beast Man and Cyclops don’t give a fuck about you or your failing marriage. 2. Resolving to die empty and alone. 3. Death showing up at your office door in need of a vacation. 4. Designing goods for Death that inspire consumer-driven fatalities—faulty steering mechanisms, toxic dishwasher detergent inserts that look like jumbo fruit snacks—anything that will help tip people over the edge before Death has to pursue them. 5. Waking to find your house chock-full of the merchandise you created, merchandise designed to kill. Now everything from pouring your cereal to activating your car’s cigarette lighter has become a death trap. Yet as your world falls apart, no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to fucking die.
Death Metal Epic (Book Two: Goat Song Sacrifice) by Dean Swinford
NOW AVAILABLE
Death Metal Epic (Book Two: Goat Song Sacrifce)
Dean Swinford
Paperback
228 pages
ISBN: 978-1941918166
Black metal juggernaut Desekration stand poised to record their forthcoming masterwork … once David and Svart get a few more dudes to join the band.
Book Two of The Death Metal Epic finds David Fosberg living his rock and roll fantasy. Which means drinking every day and sleeping on Svart’s couch.
His mom’s couch. Svart lives at home.
David has left Miami behind. Left the Bard behind. And joined forces with Svart, a brutish nekrowarrior who only listens to, like, Celtic Frost, Destruction, and Bathory. The early stuff.
As Desekration start to record Infernö, David’s bandmates rail on about the mystic power of something they call “The Goat Song.” And what they’ll sacrifice to play it.
Arafat Mountain by Mike Kleine
We open Google Maps. We search for life on other planets. We search for Arafat Mountain. Then we search for palm trees and things like that.
Arafat Mountain
Mike Kleine
Paperback and Ebook
166 pages
ISBN: 1941918034
Advance Praise for Arafat Mountain
“These pages are a delicatessen, a thousand lives distilled into something quaint and beautiful. There’s cosmic magic at play on every page, speedboats and celestial catastrophe all surround the monolith of Arafat Mountain. Every subtlety is sumptuous, every page a journey. These pages are full of death and I wonder—has death ever been so delightful?”
—Frank Hinton, author of Action, Figure
“In his brilliantly imaginative and allegorical collection of linked pieces, Mike Kleine explores that which remains standing in the face of human mortality. From Google maps to the pink sky, the hospital waiting room to the moon and tides, Kleine conveys the eternity of nature within a web of impermanence.”
—Melissa Broder, author of Scarecrone
“Arafat Mountain is a sad eternity of pointless deaths and consumerism. A celebration of late capitalism in decline—dressed in animal skins and death. You will gnash your teeth and tear at your eyes and fill your mouth with charcoal and paper clips.”
—Ofelia Hunt, author of Today & Tomorrow
“Inject Kanye West with cosmological prowess and the desire to kill, and he just might write Arafat Mountain. This is one weird guide to the inner fashions of the violent rich.”
—Ken Baumann, author of Solip
“Come to no decisions. Expect nothing in particular. Expect anything. Expect everything. This is not an object you are holding. Arafat Mountain is a hole—like being in a light-speed car, where everything is super bright, a beautiful blur, but then the car stops for a brief moment and suddenly, you can see everything, before shooting away again at the speed of light. The parallel universes in this book exist, not so that Mike, or the reader, can explore the idea of parallel universes, but rather, to make it clear that with this book, it is permissible to inhabit a parallel universe. You, the reader, can create your own parallel universe, your own sense of fashion, your own gods. This book—for me—was a lesson in meaninglessness. Any attempt to settle upon a final approach was meaningless. And what makes this book so powerful is the fact that you actually can feel here, in what you read, what you aren’t reading. This book will startle you. It will startle you every time you pick it up.”
—Ken Sparling, author of Intention Implication Wind
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