When it comes to solving murder, sometimes the pen can be mightier than the sword ... Handwriting expert Claudia Rose heads to the Big Apple at the behest of Grusha Olinetsky, the notorious founder of an elite dating service whose members are mysteriously dying. Drawn into the feckless lives of the rich and single, Claudia finds herself in a twisted world of love and lies fueled by desperation. But is one among them desperate enough to kill? Claudia must find clues in the suspects' handwriting before more victims are scribbled into the killer's black book...
Written by one of the world's leading paleographers, this book reconstructs the ways Western cultures have used writing—on tombstones, monuments, scrolls, books, posters—to commemorate the dead from the tombs of ancient Egypt to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The Writing Dead features original interviews with the writers of today's most frightening and fascinating shows. They include some of television's biggest names—Carlton Cuse (Lost and Bates Motel), Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies), David Greenwalt (Angel and Grimm), Gale Anne Hurd (The Walking Dead, The Terminator series, Aliens, and The Abyss), Jane Espenson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica), Brian McGreevy (Hemlock Grove), Alexander Woo (True Blood), James Wong (The X-Files, Millennium, American Horror Story, and Final Destination), Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files and Millennium), Richard Hatem (Supernatural, The Dead Zone, and The Mothman Prophecies), Scott Buck (Dexter), Anna Fricke (Being Human), and Jim Dunn (Haven). The Writing Dead features thought-provoking, never-before-published interviews with these top writers and gives the creators an opportunity to delve more deeply into the subject of television horror than anything found online. In addition to revealing behind-the-scene glimpses, these writers discuss favorite characters and storylines and talk about what they find most frightening. They offer insights into the writing process reflecting on the scary works that influenced their careers. And they reveal their own personal fascinations with the genre. The thirteen interviews in The Writing Dead also mirror the changing landscape of horror on TV—from the shows produced by major networks and cable channels to shows made exclusively for online streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Studios. The Writing Dead will appeal to numerous fans of these shows, to horror fans, to aspiring writers and filmmakers, and to anyone who wants to learn more about why we like being scared.
From Victor Halperin's White Zombie (1932) to George A. Romero's landmark Night of the Living Dead (1968) and AMC's hugely successful The Walking Dead (2010-), zombie mythology has become an integral part of popular culture. In a reversal of the typical pattern of adaptation, the zombie developed onscreen before appearing in short stories and comic books during the 20th century, and more recently as subjects of more traditional novels. This collection of new essays examines some of the most influential and inventive zombie literature, from the early stories to the most recent narratives, including some told from a zombie perspective.
Two redhead educators and a horror publisher walk into a bar . . . during a zombie apocalypse. Armed with only their wits and a fully-charged-laptop battery, they hammered out the world's darkest writing manual amidst the flurry and chaos of gnashing teeth and rotting cadavers. Each chapter of the handbook is devoted to a different genre of writing--everything from academic writing (complete with MLA and APA sample essays), business writing, and even poetry and fiction--all of it with a dark and undead twist. Developing or improving your writing skills has never been so enjoyable. WRITE OF THE LIVING DEAD is the spawn of two scholarly writers and a publisher conspiring to create a freshly dug look at writing for different genres and media. Spattered with popular horror culture and written with horror enthusiasts in mind, this book raises the struggling writing handbook from the dead. Addressing methods of voice, style, function, and formula, WRITE OF THE LIVING DEAD is the perfect tool for students, writers, poets, authors, business writers, and teachers with a dark side.
“A gothic and elegant page-turner.”—The Boston Globe Twenty years ago, Jane Hudson fled the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks after a terrible tragedy. The week before her graduation, in that sheltered wonderland, three lives were taken, all victims of suicide. Only Jane was left to carry the burden of a mystery that has stayed hidden in the depths of Heart Lake for more than two decades. Now Jane has returned to the school as a Latin teacher, recently separated and hoping to make a fresh start with her young daughter. But ominous messages from the past dredge up forgotten memories. And young, troubled girls are beginning to die again–as piece by piece the shattering truth slowly floats to the surface. . . .
This remarkable collection of twelve short stories is about the diverse folk--black and white, young and old, rich and poor, rural and sophisticated--who live in the eastern North Carolina town of Tims Creek. Among the memorable characters are Clarence Pickett, who at age three began receiving messages from beyond the grave and whose gift seems tied to a hog's ability to talk; matronly Ida Perry, haunted by a boy her judge husband may have drowned years before; Dean Williams, hired to seduce the richest black man in Times Creek, yearning after innocence while he betrays love.
Jennie's connection with her twin brother, Toby, grew stronger after he died in 1864. Now Jennie must rely on her ability to communicate with his spirit to find out what has happened to her beloved fiancé, Will, while he was off at war. The army says he died honorably in battle. But his brother confides that Will became a violent criminal and died in a prison camp. Jennie begins to doubt that anyone is telling her the truth. With the help of a spiritualist photographer, the spirit of her dead fiancé, and the clues she discovers and keeps in her scrapbook, Jennie must put together the pieces of this mystery before she loses her home, her fortune, and possibly her life.
Locked away in refrigerated vaults, sanitized by gas chambers, and secured within bombproof caverns deep under mountains are America's most prized materials: the ever-expanding collection of records that now accompany each of us from birth to death. This data complex backs up and protects our most vital information against decay and destruction, and yet it binds us to corporate and government institutions whose power is also preserved in its bunkers, infrastructures, and sterilized spaces. We the Dead traces the emergence of the data complex in the early twentieth century and guides readers through its expansion in a series of moments when Americans thought they were living just before the end of the world. Depression-era eugenicists feared racial contamination and the downfall of the white American family, while contemporary technologists seek ever denser and more durable materials for storing data, from microetched metal discs to cryptocurrency keys encoded in synthetic DNA. Artfully written and packed with provocative ideas, this haunting book illuminates the dark places of the data complex and the ways it increasingly blurs the lines between human and machine, biological body and data body, life and digital afterlife.
