He challenged her sanity. She shattered his reality. They dared each other...to the brink of madness. A dark and twisted maze awaits criminal psychologist London Noble when she falls for her patient, convicted serial killer, Grayson Pierce Sullivan. As she unravels the traps, her sanity tested with each game, she's forced to acknowledge the true evil in the world around her. *Trigger warning: confined spaces. Serial killers.
Duet: a performance by two. But who is acting, and who is devolving? A buried past is unearthed, and Grayson Sullivan--AKA The Angel of Maine--retaliates against the system who made him, deploying psychological warfare on the woman who initially set him free. Dr. London Noble probes deep into the mind of the killer she's fallen for, searching for answers, as a copycat killer threatens their unity. Are they partners, lovers, or enemies? One final trap will reveal all.
The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense. From The Gashlycrumb Tinies to The Doubtful Guest, Edward Gorey's wickedly funny and deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in innumerable ways, from the works of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman to Lemony Snicket. Some even call him the Grandfather of Goth. But who was this man, who lived with over twenty thousand books and six cats, who roomed with Frank O'Hara at Harvard, and was known -- in the late 1940s, no less -- to traipse around in full-length fur coats, clanking bracelets, and an Edwardian beard? An eccentric, a gregarious recluse, an enigmatic auteur of whimsically morbid masterpieces, yes -- but who was the real Edward Gorey behind the Oscar Wildean pose? He published over a hundred books and illustrated works by Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Edward Lear, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Hilaire Belloc, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, Gilbert & Sullivan, and others. At the same time, he was a deeply complicated and conflicted individual, a man whose art reflected his obsessions with the disquieting and the darkly hilarious. Based on newly uncovered correspondence and interviews with personalities as diverse as John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, and Anna Sui, Born to Be Posthumous draws back the curtain on the eccentric genius and mysterious life of Edward Gorey.
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in massive doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself. Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.
This teen gothic mystery novel, perfect for fans of Madeleine Roux and Lisa Maxwell, takes readers to the cold, creepy island of Darkhaven, where a girl with unexplained blackouts grapples with secrets from her dead mother’s past and a legacy of murders that have been committed by her family. Ivy Bloodgood’s mother is dead, and she should probably be sad about it. But she isn’t. Myra Bloodgood was a manipulative personality who never told the truth—about where she came from, who Ivy’s father was, or why they were living their lives on the run. Now that Ivy has been sent to the family estate on Darkhaven, an island off the New England coast, she is forced to reckon with her mother’s past. Ivy can tell right away there are long-held family secrets buried within these walls, but when she wakes up from one of her nightmares covered in someone else’s blood, Ivy fears that whatever demons her mother battled while she was alive have come to roost in her own mind. Scared that she can no longer trust what she sees, Ivy seeks the help of a boy who thinks her episodes are connected to the sordid history of Darkhaven—but what they don’t know might kill them both.
Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Over the past thirty years, serial killers have become iconic figures in America, the subject of made-for-TV movies and mass-market paperbacks alike. But why do we find such luridly transgressive and horrific individuals so fascinating? What compels us to look more closely at these figures when we really want to look away? Natural Born Celebrities considers how serial killers have become lionized in American culture and explores the consequences of their fame. David Schmid provides a historical account of how serial killers became famous and how that fame has been used in popular media and the corridors of the FBI alike. Ranging from H. H. Holmes, whose killing spree during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair inspired The Devil in the White City, right up to Aileen Wuornos, the lesbian prostitute whose vicious murder of seven men would serve as the basis for the hit film Monster, Schmid unveils a new understanding of serial killers by emphasizing both the social dimensions of their crimes and their susceptibility to multiple interpretations and uses. He also explores why serial killers have become endemic in popular culture, from their depiction in The Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files to their becoming the stuff of trading cards and even Web sites where you can buy their hair and nail clippings. Bringing his fascinating history right up to the present, Schmid ultimately argues that America needs the perversely familiar figure of the serial killer now more than ever to manage the fear posed by Osama bin Laden since September 11. "This is a persuasively argued, meticulously researched, and compelling examination of the media phenomenon of the 'celebrity criminal' in American culture. It is highly readable as well."—Joyce Carol Oates
The host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, shares his personal story and the injustices he faced while growing up half black, half white in South Africa under and after apartheid in this New York Times bestselling young readers' adaptation of his adult memoir. “A piercing reminder that every mad life--even yours--could end up a masterpiece." --JASON REYNOLDS, New York Times bestselling author We do horrible things to one another because we don’t see the person it affects. . . . We don’t see them as people. Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, shares his remarkable story of growing up in South Africa with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child to exist. But he did exist--and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his keen smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a racist government. In a country where racism barred blacks from social, educational, and economic opportunity, Trevor surmounted staggering obstacles and created a promising future for himself thanks to his mom’s unwavering love and indomitable will. This honest and poignant memoir adapted from the #1 New York Times bestseller Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood will astound and inspire readers as well as offer a fascinating perspective on South Africa’s tumultuous racial history. BORN A CRIME IS SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING OSCAR WINNER LUPITA NYONG'O!
A tour de force, voice-driven debut that examines how one woman finally found the middle ground between Heaven and Hell--an NPR Best Book of the Year. As a young girl, Maggie Rowe took the idea of salvation very seriously. Growing up in a moderately religious household, her fear of eternal damnation turned into a childhood terror that drove her to become an outrageously dedicated Born-again Christian —regularly slinging Bible verses in cutthroat scripture memorization competitions and assaulting strangers at shopping malls with the “good news” that they were going to hell. Finally, at nineteen, crippled by her fear, she checked herself in to an Evangelical psychiatric facility. And that is where her journey really began. Surrounded by a ragtag cast of characters, including a former biker meth-head struggling with anger management issues, a set of identical twins tormented by erotic fantasies, a World War II veteran and artist of denial who insists that he’s only “locked up for a tune-up,” and a warm and upbeat chronic depressive who becomes the author’s closest ally, Maggie launches a campaign to, in the words of Martin Luther, "Sin bravely in order to know the forgiveness of God."
From USA Today bestselling author Trisha Wolfe comes a new dark psychological thriller.I was born a psychopath. But he made me a killer.Revenge is a lucrative business, and for Blakely Vaughn, it's more than just profitable, it's fun-until it becomes personal. As a biomedical scientist, Dr. Alex Chambers has devoted his life to the study of curing diseases. When he loses someone close to him to an act of violence, he vows to cure the illness he believes is at fault. Blakely and Alex collide on a path of immeasurable ruin. A quest to avenge a loved one sparks a dark and deadly obsession, where a dangerous union of cruel minds raises the question: How far is too far?
