The fate of Sam, Charlie, Alice, Daisy, and other Galvestonians hangs in the balance as the flood waters rise during the great hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, in 1900.
From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between. The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.
The year was 1900--a time before cars, evacuation routes, and up-to-the-minute weather reports. It was the day the deadliest storm in US history hammered Galveston, Texas. It was the day an entire island city was nearly wiped from existence. At the onset of the hurricane, Albert Campbell and the other boys at the orphanage kicked and splashed in the emerging puddles. Daisy Thorne read letters from her fiancé, and Sam Young wondered if his telegram had reached the mainland, warning his family of the weather. Just a few hours later, torrential rains and crushing tidal waves had flooded the metropolis. Winds upwards of one hundred miles per hour swept entire houses and trees down the streets. Debris slashed through the air; bodies whirled amid the rushing waters. Albert, Daisy, and Sam weren’t safe. No one was. Based on an historic natural disaster, CITY OF THE DEAD weaves together a shocking story where some miraculously survive . . . and many others are tragically lost. CITY OF THE DEAD is the first book in the Horrors of History series. The series commemorates horrific, life-changing events in our nation's past. Each novel makes history accessible with a combination of thorough research, descriptions of a specific time period, narrative accounts of actual historical persons, and fictionalized characters.
In the early eighteenth century, a delegation of Iroquois visited Britain, exciting the imagination of the London crowds with images of the “feathered people” and warlike “Mohocks.” Today, performing in a popular Afrodiasporic tradition, “Mardi Gras Indians” or “Black Masking Indians” take to the streets of New Orleans at carnival time and for weeks thereafter, parading in handmade “suits” resplendent with beadwork and feathers. What do these seemingly disparate strands of culture share over three centuries and several thousand miles of ocean? Interweaving theatrical, musical, and ritual performance along the Atlantic rim from the eighteenth century to the present, Cities of the Dead explores a rich continuum of cultural exchange that imaginatively reinvents, recreates, and restores history. Joseph Roach reveals how performance can revise the unwritten past, comparing patterns of remembrance and forgetting in how communities forge their identities and imagine their futures. He examines the syncretic performance traditions of Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the urban sites of London and New Orleans, through social events ranging from burials to sacrifices, auctions to parades, encompassing traditions as diverse as Haitian Voudon and British funerals. Considering processes of substitution, or surrogation, as enacted in performance, Roach demonstrates the ways in which people and cultures fill the voids left by death and departure. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this classic work features a new preface reflecting on the relevance of its arguments to the politics of performance and performance in contemporary politics.
Seventh-grader Molly has always been an outsider, even at New York City's elite Metropolitan Institute of Science and Technology, but that changes when she is recruited to join the Omegas, a secret group that polices and protects zombies.
Far, far Upriver, where knowledge failed and fable ruled, in a frozen land of demons and monsters, the City of the Dead stood guard over a great treasure. Now the Mai, Delta-dwellers of the planet Horseye, as befitted a race of busy traders and merchants, had a great respect and love for wealth. But, a prudent species, they knew also that danger was, well, dangerous. So their thoughts turned to the Humanx couple, Lyra and Etienne Redowl, impatiently waiting permission to explore the planet. Suddenly bureaucracy was benign, permits permitted and their epic voyage up the most spectacular river chasm in the whole Humanx Commonwealth was underway...
A relentless thrill ride. . . Break out the popcorn, you're in for a real treat. --Harry Shannon, author of Dead and Gone Texas? Toast. Battered by five cataclysmic hurricanes in three weeks, the Texas Gulf Coast and half of the Lone Star State is reeling from the worst devastation in history. Thousands are dead or dying--but the worst is only beginning. Amid the wreckage, something unimaginable is happening: a deadly virus has broken out, returning the dead to life--with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. . . The Nightmare Begins Within hours, the plague has spread all over Texas. San Antonio police officer Eddie Hudson finds his city overrun by a voracious army of the living dead. Along with a small group of survivors, Eddie must fight off the savage horde in a race to save his family. . . Hell On Earth There's no place to run. No place to hide. The zombie horde is growing as the virus runs rampant. Eddie knows he has to find a way to destroy these walking horrors. . .but he doesn't know the price he will have to pay. . . "Hair-raising. Do yourself a favor and snag a copy. . . thank me later." --Gene O'Neill, author of Deathflash "A merciless, fast-paced and genuinely scary read that will leave you absolutely breathless." --Brian Keene
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The past comes back to haunt psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis when they investigate a grisly double homicide and uncover an even more unspeakable motive in this riveting thriller from the bestselling master of suspense. Los Angeles is a city of sunlight, celebrity, and possibility. The L.A. often experienced by Homicide Lt. Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware, is a city of the dead. Early one morning, the two of them find themselves in a neighborhood of pretty houses, pretty cars, and pretty people. The scene they encounter is anything but. A naked young man lies dead in the street, the apparent victim of a collision with a moving van hurtling through suburbia in the darkness. But any thoughts of accidental death vanish when a blood trail leads to a nearby home. Inside, a young woman lies butchered. The identity of the male victim and his role in the horror remain elusive, but that of the woman creates additional questions. And adding to the shock, Alex has met her while working a convoluted child custody case. Cordelia Gannett was a self-styled internet influencer who’d gotten into legal troubles by palming herself off as a psychologist. Even after promising to desist, she’s found a loophole and has continued her online career, aiming to amass clicks and ads by cyber-coaching and cyber-counseling people plagued with relationship issues. But upon closer examination, Alex and Milo discover that her own relationships are troublesome, including a tortured family history and a dubious personal past. Has that come back to haunt her in the worst way? Is the mystery man out in the street collateral damage or will he turn out to be the key to solving a grisly double homicide? As the psychologist and the detective explore L.A.'s meanest streets, they peel back layer after layer of secrets and encounter a savage, psychologically twisted, almost unthinkable motive for violence and bloodshed. This is classic Delaware: Alex, a man Milo has come to see as irreplaceable, at his most insightful and brilliant.
Hawk, the daughter of Maximum Ride, teams with her mother up to help save their beloved but dangerous city in this action-packed thriller. For Hawk, being a hero weighs heavily on her wings. In the City of the Dead, life happens in the shadows. That's why a war is brewing against an enemy no one can see. Hawk and Maximum Ride never back down from a conflict, or from each other, and they argue more than they agree. But as the dead begin to outnumber the living, a mother's experience and a daughter's instinct can make for one powerful arsenal.