"Describes an activist life of teaching and writing queerly over the past twenty years from the author's subject position as a queer immigrant scholar/teacher of color situated in the field of rhetoric and composition"--
Eight stories from the author of A Book of American Martyrs that display her “mastery of imagery and stream of consciousness” (Kirkus Reviews). Joyce Carol Oates is an unparalleled investigator of human personality. In these eight stories, she deftly tests the bonds between damaged individuals—brother and sister. teacher and student, two lonesome strangers on a subway—in the beautiful, bracing prose that has become her signature. In the title story, a white, aspiring professor in Detroit tries to shake a black, male shadow during the summer of the city’s 1967 race riots. In “The Rescuer,” a promising graduate student detours to inner-city Trenton, New Jersey, to save her brother from a downward spiral, only to find herself entranced by his dangerous new world. Meanwhile, a young woman prowls the New York City subways in search of her perfect man in “Lorelei.” In each of these short stories, Oates portrays a desperate confrontation with the demons inside us. Sometimes it’s the human who wins, and sometimes it’s the demon. “Oates offers unexpected glimmers of redemption amid the grotesquerie, degradation, and exploitation that fill this collection’s eight tales.” —Publishers Weekly
Acclaimed epic fantasy author John Gwynne returns with the first book in a new trilogy, perfect for fans of George R. R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, and David Gemmell. "A Time of Dread reminds me of why I became a fantasy enthusiast in the first place." -- Robin Hobb A race of warrior angels, the Ben-Elim, once vanquished a mighty demon horde. Now they rule the Banished lands, but their peace is brutally enforced. In the south, hotheaded Riv is desperate to join the Ben-Elim's peacekeeping force, until she unearths a deadly secret. In the west, the giantess Sig investigates demon sightings and discovers signs of an uprising and black magic. And in the snowbound north, Drem, a trapper, finds mutilated corpses in the forests. The work of a predator, or something far darker? It's a time of shifting loyalties and world-changing dangers. Difficult choices need to be made. Because in the shadows, demons are gathering, waiting for their time to rise. . .
San Antonio is full of secrets, and seventeen-year-old Erasmo Cruz investigates the strangest of them. After gaining renown for surviving the city's legendary Ghost Tracks, he has set up shop as a paranormal investigator. But helping exorcize other people’s demons doesn’t seem to relieve his own; his best friend Rat has abandoned him, his grandmother is nearing death, and his own health has taken a sudden decline. None of these hardships can prepare Erasmo for the story his newest client brings him. Two decades after a strange ritual at a rural ranch, Bradley Erickson is being hunted by the Devil. In exchange for the life of his dreams, Bradley must surrender the blood of his child. The case hurls Erasmo into a dark web of cults, bargains, and broken pasts. Only one thing is certain: the Devil keeps his promises.
DREAD IN THE BEAST used to be a novella about the goddess of waste and the king of wasters. Now it is a novel, stuffed full of the gruesome and horrible. Taken from the mythologies and histories of humankind, it follows the trail of the Mother Spirit of the worst that the world is capable of producing. From the catacombs of ancient Rome where a blasphemous sect twisted the message of the early Christians—to modern America with its obsession with violence, deities and saints and the reincarnations of beasts battle over sublime and profane, where the very reasons for existence for us all may lie in the unthinkable. Edward Lee (author of CITY INFERNAL, MONSTROSITY, INCUBI, and SUCCUBI) says in his introduction to this new novel-length version, "What's most unique of all here (and jealously fascinating) are the creative guts of the author. If there's an ultimate dichotomy in the horror genre, it's got to be Jacob…armed with a talent to write the most beautiful prose yet using that talent to examine the most unspeakable and detestable horror. …It's one of my all time favorite novels in the field.
Dead men tell no tales. Until they meet ghost hunter Verity Long. Verity Long is proud to say she gets along with just about anybody—dead or alive. But she’s put to the test when her well-meaning boyfriend and her sweet-as-pie sister con her into a remote island “double date” weekend with her sister’s new flame and Verity’s long-time nemesis, Alec Duranja. Her plans to avoid the uptight police officer go up in smoke when the four of them team up for a weekend treasure hunt competition based on the island’s legendary pirate past. And it doesn’t take long for Verity and her team to discover more than game clues. Someone is using the game to dig up real pirate gold...and they’re willing to kill to keep it. There’s no escaping the island or the game. And when the killer targets someone Verity loves, she realizes she’s the only one who can uncover the truth behind the legend. She must stay one step ahead of the dangers of the island and two steps ahead of Frankie’s new ghostly pirate buddies—all in a race against time to solve a centuries-old puzzle and take down a real live killer before he strikes again.
"Playfully, poetically unstable . . . What compels a woman to turn to the wilderness? What brings one, after a decade of caregiving, to exchange a terminal parent’s final vigil for the company of strangers? Goldblatt poses these questions with great assurance." —Lisa Locascio, The New York Times Book Review Denny works nights as a tech in a labyrinthine facility outside of D.C., readying fruit flies for experimentation. Her life’s routine is straightforward, limited. But when her father announces that he won’t be treating his recurrent, terminal cancer, she responds by quietly dismantling her life. She constructs in its place the fantasy of perfect detachment. Unsure whether her impulse is monastic or suicidal, she rents a secluded cabin in the mountains. Without saying goodbye, she leaves her parents behind and enters a new, solitary world. It’s not without disruption: her blowsy trash bag of an imaginary pal is still lingering. And then a house cat appears out of nowhere. And after a bad storm rips through the mountainside, someone else shows up, too. Her time in the wilderness isn’t the perfect detachment she was expecting. Denny is forced to reckon with this failure while confronting a new life with its own set of pleasures and dangerous incursions. Morbidly funny, subversive, and startling, Hard Mouth, the debut novel from 2018 NEA Creative Writing Fellow Amanda Goldblatt, unpacks what it means to live while others are dying. "The novel begins existential (think: Camus as an intersectional feminist), and ends with a gut punch that somehow manages a deeply felt sympathy for its characters." —Rebekah Frumkin, NYLON
Joe and Rico Dredd: clone brothers who chose to live on different sides of the law. Thirty-seven years ago, Dredd arrested his twin in Cafe Cesare and condemned him to life as a cyborg on the prison-moon Titan. Now the Cafe seems to be at the heart of a wave of hallucinations sweeping Mega-City One. Even the Judges are affected. Their behaviour is increasingly erratic. It's almost as if they become entirely different people. And throughout the city, people are being tortured and killed by a man who calls himself Chief Judge Dread. To save his world, Judge Dredd must cross to another dimension where Judge Caligula is the Governor of New Rome and Anderson and Giant lead anti-Judge rebels. A dimension in which history took one very wrong turn . . .