TBR
Items in this hypelist
Books
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Amal El-Mohtar · 2020
Paradise Rot: A Novel
Jenny Hval · 2018
Her Body And Other Parties
Carmen Maria Machado · 2017
In her provocative debut, Carmen Maria Machado demolishes the borders between magical realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. Startling narratives map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited on their bodies, both in myth and in practice.<br/><br/>A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the mysterious green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague spreads across the earth. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery about a store's dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted house guest.<br/><br/>Bodies become inconsequential, humans become monstrous, and anger becomes erotic. A dark, shimmering slice into womanhood, Her Body and Other Parties is wicked and exquisite.
Penpal
Dathan Auerbach · 2012
Bluejay
Megan Stockton · 2023
Nefando
Mónica Ojeda · 2023
Several People Are Typing: A Novel
Calvin Kasulke · 2021
My Husband: A Novel
Maud Ventura · 2023
Tear This Heart Out
Angeles Mastretta
A love story set in the years after the Mexican revolution.
Pedro Paramo
Juan Rulfo · 1999
The Stranger Albert Camus
Albert Camus · 2021
These Violent Delights: A Novel
Micah Nemerever · 2021
Radio Silence
Alice Oseman · 2019
Flowers For Algernon
Daniel Keyes · 2005
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey · 2007
Wallflower
Chad Lutzke · 2017
Monstrilio: A Novel
Gerardo Sámano Córdova · 2023
A “wholly unique” and “uncompromising” literary horror debut about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes (Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes)<br/><br/>Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses―though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care―threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.<br/><br/>A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.
You Dreamed of Empires
Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer · 2023
Lilianas Invincible Summer
Cristina Rivera Garza · 2023
An astonishing work of creative non-fiction from one one of Mexico's greatest contemporary writers, that reignites the brilliant spark of a young woman erased and illuminates an epidemic of femicide in Mexico<br/><br/>On the dawn of 16 July 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, Cristina Rivera Garza's sister, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of femicide. She was a twenty-year-old architecture student who had been trying for years to end her relationship with a high school boyfriend who insisted on not letting her go. A few weeks before the tragedy, Liliana made a definitive decision: at the height of her winter she had discovered that, as Albert Camus had said, there was an invincible summer in her. She would leave him behind. She would start a new life. She would do a master's degree and a doctorate; she would travel to London. But his decision was that she would not have a life without him.<br/><br/>Returning to Mexico after decades of living in the United States, Cristina Rivera Garza collects and curates evidence - handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, voice recordings and architectural blueprints - to defy a pattern of increasingly normalised, gendered violence and understand the life lost. What she finds is Liliana: her sister's voice crossing time and, like that of so many disappeared and outraged women in Mexico, demanding justice.<br/><br/>A multi-layered portrait of Liliana's experience on earth, Liliana's Invincible Summer is an excavation of the life of a brilliant woman who lacked, like everyone else, the necessary language to identify, denounce and fight against sexist violence and intimate partner terrorism. Marshalling the skills of scholar, translator, novelist and poet, Rivera Garza presents an astonishing work of creative non-fiction that celebrates her sister's passage through the earth, and reveals the incalculable problem of violence against women.
The Houseguest and Other Stories
Amparo Dávila · 2018
Los de abajo
Mariano Azuela · 1997
In this deeply moving picture of the turmoil of the first great revolution of the twentieth century—the Mexican Revolution of 1910—Azuela depicts the anarchy and the idealism, the base human passions and the valor and nobility of the simple folk, and, most striking of all, the fascination of revolt—that peculiar love of revolution for revolution's sake that has characterized most of the social upheavals of the twentieth century. Los de Abajo is considered "the only novel of the Revolution" and, since the spring of 1925, has been published in several languages and more than twenty-seven editions. Azuela's writing is sometimes racy and virile, sometimes poetic and subdued, but always in perfect accord with the mood and character of the story.
When God Was a Woman
Merlin Stone · 1978
Cultish
Amanda Montell · 2021
“One of those life-changing reads that makes you see—or, in this case, hear—the whole world differently.” —Megan Angelo, author of Followers “At times chilling, often funny, and always perceptive and cogent, Cultish is a bracing reminder that the scariest thing about cults is that you don't realize you're in one till it's too late.”—Refinery29.com The New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Magical Overthinking and Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how “cultish” groups, from Jonestown and Scientologists to SoulCycle and social media gurus, use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
Caitlin Doughty · 2015
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot · 2010
The Baron In The Trees
Italo Calvino · 1977
I Am a Truck
Michelle Winters · 2016
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
David Eagleman · 2009
The Memory Police: A Novel
Yoko Ogawa · 2020
Tender Is the Flesh
Agustina Bazterrica · 2020
<b>INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER</b><br> <br><b>Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.</b><br><br>His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.<br> <br>Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.
My Death
Lisa Tuttle · 2023
Swan Song
Robert McCammon · 2016
In a nightmarish, post-holocaust world, an ancient evil roams a devastated America, gathering the forces of human greed and madness, searching for a child named Swan who possesses the gift of life.
The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon · 2005
First published in 1961, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is a masterful and timeless interrogation of race, colonialism, psychological trauma, and revolutionary struggle. In 2020, it found a new readership in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the centering of narratives interrogating race by Black writers. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in spurring historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other. A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world. Translated by Richard Philcox, and featuring now-classic critical essays by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha, as well as a new essay, this sixtieth anniversary edition of Fanon’s most famous text stands proudly alongside such pillars of anti-colonialism and anti-racism as Edward Said’s Orientalism and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
I Who Have Never Known Men
Jacqueline Harpman · 2019
<p><b>SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.</b><br> <br> <b>Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation.</b><br> <br> Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?<br> <br> Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner.<br> <br> Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.<br> <br> <b>WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE <i>WATER CURE</i><br> <br> **<i>Orlanda</i>, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**</b></p>
The Great God Pan
Arthur Machen · 2017
A gothic masterpiece set in Victorian England: “One of the best horror stories ever written. Perhaps the best in the English language” (Stephen King). When Mr. Clarke agrees to visit his friend Dr. Raymond, he is dubious about the proceedings he is to witness. In pursuit of what Raymond calls “transcendental science,” the doctor intends to make a small incision in a woman’s brain, allowing her to see past the world of the senses to a reality beyond imagining—a realm where, Raymond says, one can see the great god Pan. Though the experiment is an apparent failure, it will not be Clarke’s last brush with the sinister beyond. Years later, Clarke hears of a woman named Helen Vaughan, who is said to be at the root of many mysterious and tragic events. From London to the Americas and back, a string of suicides and disappearances lay in the wake of this evil seductress, whom Clarke believes is not entirely of this world. Upon publication in 1890, Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan was deemed controversial for its depictions of paganism and sexual depravity. It has since been recognized as a masterwork of gothic horror. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 2004
This Thing Between Us
Gus Moreno · 2021
Walking Practice: A Novel
Dolki Min · 2023
A Touch of Jen
Beth Morgan · 2021
A young couple's toxic Instagram crush spins out of control and unleashes a sinister creature in this twisted, viciously funny, "bananas good" story (Carmen Maria Machado).<br/>"Um, holy shit...This novel will be the most fun you'll have this summer." —Emily Temple, Literary Hub<br/>Remy and Alicia, a couple of insecure service workers, are not particularly happy together. But they are bound by a shared obsession with Jen, a beautiful former co-worker of Remy’s who now seems to be following her bliss as a globe-trotting jewelry designer. In and outside the bedroom, Remy and Alicia's entire relationship revolves around fantasies of Jen, whose every Instagram caption, outfit, and new age mantra they know by heart.<br/>Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, in the flesh, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her wealthy boyfriend and their group. Once there, Remy and Alicia try (a little too hard) to fit into Jen’s exalted social circle, but violent desire and class resentment bubble beneath the surface of this beachside paradise, threatening to erupt. As small disturbances escalate into outright horror, we find ourselves tumbling with Remy and Alicia into an uncanny alternate reality, one shaped by their most unspeakable, deviant, and intoxicating fantasies. Is this what “self-actualization” looks like?<br/>Part millennial social comedy, part psychedelic horror, and all wildly entertaining, A Touch of Jen is a sly, unflinching examination of the hidden drives that lurk just outside the frame of our carefully curated selves.
Cain
José Saramago · 2011
Saramago's "Cain" is a dramatic retelling of the biblical story of Cain and Abel.
The Eyes Are the Best Part
Monika Kim
“Violent, smart, gruesome and wildly original, this novel pulls readers into a horrific world of murder and cannibalism while also critiquing misogyny, exploring Asian fetishization and stereotypes, sharing what it’s like to navigate two cultures and telling a touching story of a family in turmoil.” —New York Times Book Review<br/><br/>TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF THE YEAR<br/><br/>Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this brilliantly subversive, feminist psychological horror novel about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.<br/><br/>Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying . . . yet enticing.<br/><br/>In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Mouthwatering blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescendingly toward Ji-won and her sister, as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. But George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.<br/><br/>No matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.<br/><br/>"I was enticed from the first line and entertained throughout. The Eyes Are the Best Part is a quirky, engaging read."—Oyinkan Brainthwaite, author of My Sister, the Serial Killer
Blob
Maggie Su · 2025
“There is so much at play in this wondrous novel. Vi, struggling to place herself in any context that makes sense within the world, earnestly leads us into a wild experiment, to turn a blob into the man of her dreams, and I was transfixed by her voice. This is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways.” — Kevin Wilson, bestselling author of Now Is Not the Time to Panic A humorous and deeply moving debut novel in the vein of Bunny and Convenience Store Woman about a young woman who tries to shape a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend. The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Aimless after getting dumped by her boyfriend and dropping out of college, Vi works at the front desk of a hotel where she greets guests, refills cucumber water samovars, and tries to evade her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. Little does Vi know her life is about to be permanently transformed when she agrees to a night out with Rachel. In the alley outside the bar, Vi discovers a strange blob—a small living creature with beady black eyes. In a moment of concern and drunken desperation, she takes it home. But the blob is no ordinary pet. Becoming increasingly sentient, it begins to grow, shift shape, and obey Vi’s commands. As the entity continues to change, Vi is struck with a daring idea: she’ll mold the creature into her ideal partner. Feeding it a stream of sweet breakfast cereals and American pop culture, the creature grows into a movie-star handsome white man. But when Vi’s desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, her aloof ex-boyfriend, and the racial marginalization that has defined her relationships—a journey of self-discovery that teaches her it’s impossible to control those you love. Blending the familiar with the surreal, Blob is a witty, heartfelt story about the search for love and self and what it means to be human.
El cuerpo en el que nací
GUADALUPE NETTEL
Mujeres de ojos grandes
Ángeles Mastretta · 2001
Product description<br/><br/>A las mujeres que protagonizan estos relatos el mundo les había reservado una felicidad circunscrita a las paredes de su casa. Pero más allá de la dedicación a su marido, la cocina y los niños, siguen latiendo sus singulares personalidades. Llegado el momento, reconocerán la señal reservada para que cada una de ellas dé un<br/><br/>About the Author<br/><br/>Nacida en Puebla en 1949, se graduó en periodismo en la facultad de ciencias políticas y sociales de la UNAM. En 1985 publicó su primera novela, Arráncame la vida (Seix Barral, 1992), que obtuvo el Premio Mazatlán en México y se convirtió en un verdadero fenómeno editorial, tanto en el mundo de habla hispana como en sucesivas traducciones a quince idiomas. Ha publicado también los libros de relatos Mujeres de ojos grandes (1990; Seix Barral, 1991) y Maridos (Seix Barral, 2007), tres volúmenes que reúnen relatos cortos y textos periodísticos o autobiográficos: Puerto libre (1994), El mundo iluminado (1998) y El cielo de los leones (Seix Barral, 2004), y la novela corta Ninguna eternidad como la mía (1999). En 1997, su novela Mal de amores (1995) obtuvo el prestigioso Premio Rómulo Gallegos, concedido por primera vez a una mujer.
The Mustache
Emmanuel Carrere · 1988
Nothing to See Here
Kevin Wilson · 2019
A New York Times Bestseller • A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, People, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, TIME, The A.V. Club, Buzzfeed, and PopSugar “I can’t believe how good this book is.... It’s wholly original. It’s also perfect.... Wilson writes with such a light touch.... The brilliance of the novel [is] that it distracts you with these weirdo characters and mesmerizing and funny sentences and then hits you in a way you didn’t see coming. You’re laughing so hard you don’t even realize that you’ve suddenly caught fire.” —Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of Fleishman is in Trouble, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of The Family Fang, a moving and uproarious novel about a woman who finds meaning in her life when she begins caring for two children with a remarkable ability. Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. But then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal and they’ve barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help. Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth. Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other—and stay cool—while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her—urgently and fiercely. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for? With white-hot wit and a big, tender heart, Kevin Wilson has written his best book yet—a most unusual story of parental love.
Chouette
Claire Oshetsky · 2021
Universal Harvester
John Darnielle · 2018
Life in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut. So begins Universal Harvester, the haunting and masterfully unsettling new novel from John Darnielle, author of the New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award Nominee Wolf in White Van.<br/><br/>A New York Times Bestseller<br/>A Finalist for the Locus Award (Best Horror Novel)<br/><br/>"A moving, beautifully etched picture of America’s lost and profoundly lonely." ―Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature<br/><br/>“Brilliant . . . Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent; it’s nearly impossible to stop reading . . . [Universal Harvester is] beyond worthwhile; it’s a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction.”<br/>―Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times<br/><br/>“Grows in menace as the pages stack up . . . [But] more sensitive than one would expect from a more traditional tale of dread.” ―Joe Hill, New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)<br/><br/>“The most unsettling book I’ve read since House of Leaves.”<br/>―Adam Morgan, Electric Literature<br/><br/>It’s the late ’90s, and you can find Jeremy Heldt at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa―a small town in the center of the state. The job is good enough for Jeremy, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a carwreck. But when a local school teacher comes in to return her copy of Targets―an old movie, starring Boris Karloff―the transaction jolts Jeremy out of his routine. “There’s something on it,” she says as she leaves the store, though she doesn’t elaborate. Two days later, another customer returns another tape, and registers the same odd complaint: “There’s another movie on this tape.”<br/><br/>In Universal Harvester, the once-placid Iowa fields and farmhouses become sinister, imbued with loss and instability and foreboding. As Jeremy and those around him are absorbed into tapes, they become part of another story―one that unfolds years into the past and years into the future, part of an impossible search for something someone once lost that they would do anything to regain.
Hard Copy
unknown author
If Cats Disappeared from the World
Genki Kawamura · 2019
The Piano Teacher
Elfriede Jelinek · 1999
Text: English (translation)<br/>Original Language: German
No Longer Human
Osamu Dazai · 1973
<p> Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. </p><p>Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.</p><p>Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." (The Japan Times)</p>
Perfume: The Story of Murder
Patrick Suskind · 1986
The Pillowman: A Play (Faber Drama)
Martin McDonagh · 2004
While still in his twenties, the Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has filled houses in New York and London, been showered with the theatre world's most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies. With echoes of Stoppard and Kafka, his latest drama, The Pillowman, is the viciously funny and seriously disturbing tale of a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child-murders occurring in his town.
Black Flies
Shannon Burke · 2010
In Harlem, In The Mid-1990s, Paramedic Ollie Cross Is In His First Year On The Job, Gathering Enough Experience To Start A Medical Degree. But The Shoot-outs, Bad Cops, Unhinged Medics, And Hopeless Patients Mean That Ollie Struggles To Balance His Instinct To Help Against The Growing Callousness That Witnessing Daily Horrors Seems To Encourage. And When Lives Hang In The Balance, A Single Job With A Misdiagnosed Newborn Sends Cross And His Long-serving Partner Into A Life-changing Struggle Between Good And Evil.
Exquisite Corpse
Poppy Z. Brite · 1997
From the acclaimed author ofLost Souls, Drawing Blood,andWormwood comes the provocative and thrilling serial killer novel that #1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub calls “a guidebook to hell.”<br/><br/>To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the ambition of bringing his art to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his own art to limits even Compton hadn’t previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.<br/><br/>Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London’s Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of New Orleans’s French Quarter, Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. With “intelligence, sweep, nerve, knowledge, and deeply unsettling erotic power” (Dennis Cooper, author of Frisk), Exquisite Corpse is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one.
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Eric Larocca · 2021
The Iraqi Christ
Hassan Blasim · 2013
A soldier with the ability to predict the future finds himself blackmailed by an insurgent into the ultimate act of terror…<br/>A deviser of crosswords survives a car-bomb attack, only to discover he is now haunted by one of its victims…<br/>Fleeing a robbery, a Baghdad shopkeeper falls into a deep hole, at the bottom of which sits a djinni and the corpse of a soldier from a completely different war…<br/><br/>From legends of the desert to horrors of the forest, Blasim’s stories blend the fantastic with the everyday, the surreal with the all-too-real. Taking his cues from Kafka, his prose shines a dazzling light into the dark absurdities of Iraq’s recent past and the torments of its countless refugees. The subject of this, his second collection, is primarily trauma and the curious strategies human beings adopt to process it (including, of course, fiction). The result is a masterclass in metaphor – a new kind of story-telling, forged in the crucible of war, and just as shocking.
