Willy has the coolest train set ever. Even though everything in it is really small, it takes up half the basement. But ever since Willy added Hurley the Hobo to his tiny collection, Tiny Town has been...well, strange. Willy's toys aren't always where he left them, and sometimes Willy even hears the Tiny Town train hooting in the night. But tiny little figures can't really be plotting to take over Willy's house- can they?
Truman Capote was one of the most gifted and flamboyant writers of his generation, renowned for such books as Other Voices, Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and his masterpiece, the nonfiction novel In Cold Blood. What has received comparatively little attention, however, is Capote's last, unfinished book, Answered Prayers, a merciless skewering of cafe society and the high-class women Capote called his "swans." When excerpts appeared he was immediately blacklisted, ruined socially, labeled a pariah. Capote recoiled--disgraced, depressed, and all but friendless. In Tiny Terror, a new volume in Oxford's Inner Lives series, William Todd Schultz sheds light on the life and works of Capote and answers the perplexing mystery--why did Capote write a book that would destroy him? Drawing on an arsenal of psychological techniques, Schultz illuminates Capote's early years in the South--a time that Capote himself described as a "snake's nest of No's"--no parents to speak of, no friends but books, no hope, no future. Out of this dark childhood emerged Capote's prominent dual life-scripts: neurotic Capote, anxious, vulnerable, hypersensitive, expecting to be hurt; and Capote the disagreeable destroyer, emotionally bulletproof, nasty, and bent on revenge. Schultz shows how Capote would strike out when he felt hurt or taken for granted, engaging in caustic feuds with Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and many other writers. And Schultz reveals how this tendency fed into Answered Prayers, an exceedingly corrosive and thinly disguised roman a clef that trashed his high-society friends. What emerges by the end of this book is a cogent, immensely insightful portrait of an artist on the edge, brilliantly but self-destructively biting the jet-set hands that fed him. Anyone interested in the inner life of one of America's most fascinating literary personalities will find this book a revelation.
Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination. Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.
The heroes of Deadtime #1, have been shrunk and are trapped in that dangerous train-set world, Tiny Town. Now the evil Hurley the Hobo is looking for them...
Killer on the warpath. Monsters on the street. Vampires in the night. Zombies on the hunt. Welcome to Terror Town. The place where no one is safe. Nothing is sacred. All will die. All will suffer. From the twisted mind of James Roy Daley, author of THE DEAD PARADE, INTO HELL, and 13 DROPS OF BLOOD, comes one of the most violently brutal stories ever told. Terror Town isn't for the faint of heart. Adventure, fear, and mayhem await - delivered through an omnipresent viewpoint reminiscent of the early works of Stephen King and John Saul. Five stars Matt Hults, author of Husk Do you remember discovering Robert R. McCammon, or King's Carrie? Reading Terror Town you'll experience that same dark funhouse gravity. Spare but cinematic, the pace is crisp and moves well. Recommended Author, Simon McCaffery This book is the most disturbing, graphic, and disgusting book I've read in my entire life, hands down. I've never come across a story that is as horrifyingly brutal than this. That being said, you MUST read it Eliose J. Knapp, author of The Undead Situation The scariest book I have ever read in my life. Cynthia Gould, High Heels Lo Fi Twisted, unpredictable, and deliciously morbid, Terror Town has it all: horrifying creatures, vampires, zombies, and one of the best-written, sadomasochistic serial killers since 'Buffalo Bill.' Terror Town is the ultimate Scarefest Lipstick Indie
A classic tale of terror and grotesquerie by the original master of horror H. P. Lovecraft proclaimed his Dunwich Horror "so fiendish" that his editor at Weird Tales "may not dare to print it." The editor, fortunately, knew a good thing when he saw it. One of the core Cthulhu stories, The Dunwich Horror introduces us to the grim village of Dunwich, where each member of the Whateley family is more grotesque than the other. There's the grandfather, a mad old sorcerer; Lavinia, the deformed, albino woman; and Wilbur, a disgusting specimen who reaches full manhood in less than a decade. And above all, there's the mysterious presence in the farmhouse, unseen but horrifying, which seems to be growing . . . Wilbur tracks down an original edition of the Necronomicon and breaks into a library to steal it. But his reward eludes him: he gets caught, and the result is death by guard dog. Meanwhile, left unattended, the monster at the Whateley house keeps expanding, until the farmhouse explodes and the beast is unleashed to terrorize the poor, aggrieved village of Dunwich. As chilling today as it was upon its publication in 1929, The Dunwich Horror is a horrifying masterwork by the man Stephen King called "the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale."
Fans of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" will embrace Poe Ballantine's "Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere." Poe Ballantine's "Free Rent at the Totalitarian Hotel" included in Best American Essays 2013, and for well over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd jobs, living in small rooms, trying to make a living as a writer. At age 46, he finally settled with his Mexican immigrant wife in Chadron, Nebraska, where they had a son who was red-flagged as autistic. Poe published four books about his experiences as a wanderer and his observations of America. But one day in 2006, his neighbor, Steven Haataja, a math professor from the local state college disappeared. Ninety five days later, the professor was found bound to a tree, burned to death in the hills behind the campus where he had taught. No one, law enforcement included, understood the circumstances. Poe had never contemplated writing mystery or true crime, but since he knew all the players, the suspects, the sheriff, the police involved, he and his kindergarten son set out to find out what might have happened.
“Phantoms is gruesome and unrelenting…It’s well realized, intelligent, and humane.”—Stephen King They found the town silent, apparently abandoned. Then they found the first body, strangely swollen and still warm. One hundred fifty were dead, 350 missing. But the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California. At first they thought it was the work of a maniac. Or terrorists. Or toxic contamination. Or a bizarre new disease. But then they found the truth. And they saw it in the flesh. And it was worse than anything any of them had ever imagined...
JO LAROUCHE HAS lived her 13 years in the California desert with her Aunt Lily, ever since she was dropped on Lily’s doorstep with this note: This is Jo. Please take care of her. But beware. This is a dangerous baby. At Lily’s annual Christmas costume party, a variety of strange events take place that lead Jo and Lily out of California forever—and into the mysterious, strange, fantastical world of Eldritch City. There, Jo learns the scandalous truth about who she is, and she and Lily join the Order of Odd-Fish, a collection of knights who research useless information. Glamorous cockroach butlers, pointless quests, obsolete weapons, and bizarre festivals fill their days, but two villains are controlling their fate. Jo is inching closer and closer to the day when her destiny is fulfilled, and no one in Eldritch City will ever be the same.
