CLASH Books

Kyle Seibel's debut short story collection is a bracing look into the lives of society's misfits.

From a junkyard worker haunted by the death of a special cat to dinosaurs that materialize to dispense life advice—these stories explore the thin line between the mundane and the surreal.

Hilarious, poignant, gritty and bizarre, Hey You Assholes heralds the arrival of a bold new voice in American fiction.

How You Lose the Time War meets Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in this fast-paced queer horror novel in which an obsessive woman stumbles upon a second-chance romance with her flighty paramour, but it quickly deteriorates into a dark spiral of destruction.

Johnny spots her ex, Alice, at the local cafe with a vague sense that she’s been there before. Though she’s still angry about their breakup and Alice’s subsequent ghosting, Johnny can’t resist the draw of a second shot at their relationship and accepts Alice’s invitation back to her apartment. Once there, promises are exchanged. There’s talk of wonder and change and dreams made real. But after spending the night together, they face a morning in which Alice is still Alice, Johnny is still Johnny, and the dog has doubled in size.

Over the course of a week, increasingly bizarre changes in the world around them force Johnny to consider whether the pair can change just as easily, if they can change at all. Or if both her relationship and the bounds of reality are destined to implode. The narrative of I Can Fix Her operates on nightmare logic, putting forth an irresistible tale in which the world, the narrator, and time itself are not to be trusted.

From T.J. Martinson, author of The Reign of the Kingfisher, comes a poignant odyssey of aging, stardom, and memory explored through the literal eyes of Marilyn Monroe.

Susan Jackson’s serene life as a sixty-eight-year-old florist living in Indiana shatters following a groundbreaking eye transplant that comes with an unexpected side-effect—visions of the life of Marilyn Monroe. Initially a harmless oddity, the invasive visions swiftly escalate as she starts morphing into the iconic actress. As Susan’s transformation becomes undeniable, a battle of wills ensues between the long-dead Hollywood icon and the woman whose body she’s seized.

Her New Eyes is an evocative literary novel, playing out against the bittersweet stage of eternal Americana-icon worship. With a dreamy atmosphere and unforgettable characters, Martinson crafts a story that will provoke introspection while entertaining.

Little Lazarus is the story of two clairvoyant tortoises who bear witness to centuries of human suffering.

Teenagers Francois and Eleanor are lonely and wild in the small Southern town of Harmony that promises them nothing but more of the same: nothing. They attempt to escape their mundane existence and dysfunctional families but succeed only in finding each other. And that seems to be enough. Until one drunken night driving down a country road changes the course of their lives.

As Francois and Eleanor tell their stories in parallel sections, another larger story unfolds, told through the lives of two tortoises, Lazarus and Little Lazarus. Their respective journeys across continents constitute a tour of the human heart itself in all its manifestations. Their caretakers range from a billionaire intent on achieving immortality, to a series of mute men passing down the same seersucker suit through generations, to a dog named Pony at the end of the world.

With the deep longing of Carson McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and the narrative lyricism of Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar, New York City writer Michael Bible proves why he's a cult sensation to European readers. Little Lazarus is an unforgettable ballad of devastating love and spectacular sorrow.

In Amy DeBellis’ debut novel, The Hours meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation as, sometime in the near future, three Gen Z women ride the throes of late capitalist life in New York City.

In All Our Tomorrows, Janet, Anna, and Gemma lead separate lives, each ground down by the weight of the world they were born into, lost against the dazzling pixelated backdrop of the city. Too young to remember life before the iPhone 4, they think the real world was destroyed long before they were born.

Janet is an underpaid gig therapist who spends her time as a mental health matchmaker, responding to grievance letters from faceless online avatars. Anna is a model-turned-sugar-baby who dissociates during dates with her aging daddy, hoping to save enough not for a Birkin bag, but for the water wars of the near future. And Gemma is a freshman at NYU who aspires to become an influencer, but is so haunted by a recent loss that she can’t even film one video.

Sharp, incisive, and sparkling with dark humor, this is a novel for the age of the doomer generation. DeBellis delivers an unflinching examination of three young lives as they circle closer and closer to the drain of nihilism, climate anxiety, isolation, and grief. All Our Tomorrows is about finding yourself in a broken world, and the small but mighty decisions that can save you from leaking down the drain.

The tragic and mysterious death of Hazel Drew that inspired the cult hit TV show Twin Peaks, is finally solved by Dr. Jerry C. Drake.

The legend of Hazel Drew spread through stories of her ghost haunting the woods where her body was found. It was a hot summer day in July 1908 when the body of a young woman was found floating in a mill pond in Upstate New York. Hazel Irene Drew was murdered. Her death captured headlines across the nation and around the world, but after a whirlwind investigation lasting less than thirty days, the District Attorney abruptly closed the case.

Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, with clippings and photographs from local Troy and Albany newspapers from 1908, Dr. Jerry C. Drake parses out the facts from the legend through back alleys and dark mountain forests, in pursuit of Hazel Drew’s killer, in this engaging, historical investigation of a tragic American story.

With firsthand accounts from locals dreaming of clues, tabloid journalists, railroad Robber Barons and political bosses, psychic investigators, and even a mysterious hypnotist, the tabloid sensation is debunked and the real woman is finally revealed. This is the definitive story of Hazel Drew, whose ghost can finally rest, knowing that her killer has been exposed.

Weird fiction icon and award-winning author Michael Cisco's Black Brane, begins with the physical pain of a bad foot and later voyages into absurdity, mad science, occultism, and existential dread.

A man lying in a bed of pain flees from physical torment into his own memories, and into speculations about life and reality. He was, once, employed by the Temporary Institute for the Study of Holes, a think tank pursuing research that ranges from occult studies to advanced physics, including black holes—or, as they are known in string theory, black branes.

He meets and interacts with the various other members of the institute. Its founder, Dr. Marilyn Shitansky, a formerly homeless woman who claims to have a thinking hole in her brain; its resident occultist, the chain-smoking Daladara with his magic abacus; Ernie Allegre the engineer, who designed and built a decoherence reactor to power the institute; Dr. Liu, the string theorist; the linguist Dr. Corngholm, who can't sit still; and Dr. Shitansky's secretary, Renbrui, who seems to carry a mystery with her wherever she goes.

In memory, the speaker finds them again, in a story of physical and emotional pain, of social and quantum entanglement, that turns comic, speculative, and nightmarish. Echoing the work of Blake Crouch and Thomas Ligotti, Michael Cisco shows in Black Brane why he’s beloved by weird fiction and horror readers.

A Black nerd coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Boston about a boy who struggles to learn the truth behind his mother’s claims of otherworldly origins in the smoldering aftermath of the Civil Rights era and COINTELPRO's dying breaths.

Sean’s mother, Sojourner, consistently claims otherworldly origins—Saturn, specifically. A story he’s heard his entire life and never considered that it might be true until strange men intrude on his family’s lives. Complicating matters, his father, David, and his mother, were part of a Civil Rights era Black power group that captured the attention of the FBI.

A literal bombing put an exclamation point to the end of the organization. But as soon as Sean could read on his own, he immersed himself in science fiction, fantasy, and comic books, while largely ignoring the history of his people. That ignorance morphs into a disturbing proposition and learning the truth of his parents’ pasts could prove deadly.

Sean’s exploration introduces him to music, girls, delusions of privilege, and the thrills of revolution, all while becoming an adult. The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile marries golden age sci-fi with the nostalgia of roller skates, funk, and first love.

Kyle Seibel's debut short story collection is a bracing look into the lives of society's misfits.

From a junkyard worker haunted by the death of a special cat to dinosaurs that materialize to dispense life advice—these stories explore the thin line between the mundane and the surreal.

Hilarious, poignant, gritty and bizarre, Hey You Assholes heralds the arrival of a bold new voice in American fiction.

The Great Gatsby meets Hellraiser.

Mabel Rose Dixon will do anything to become a Ziegfeld girl—including picking the pockets of the wealthy NYC elite to fund her way to stardom. When she picks the wrong pocket, Mabel loses her soul to a hotel run by demons and tumbles into the world of The Grand Hotel, a place where any artist can make it big.

Mabel’s greatest wish to be famous is granted. Every night, she performs as the starring act to a crowded theater and finds she is never without patrons. But Mabel quickly learns that losing her soul to get everything she ever wanted comes at a much steeper cost than what she bargained for. She must steal her soul back before the Grand’s annual May’s Eve Ball or become a demon herself forever.

With stylish art deco design and beautiful illustrations by the author, this stunning debut novel by renowned New England artist Cat Scully is a crown jewel for the dark gothic horror lover’s collection. Welcome to The Grand Hotel. We hope you enjoy your stay.

Pushcart Prize Award-winning author Elizabeth Ellen’s American Thighs tells the darkly comedic story of a thirty-one-year-old former child star’s journey from Hollywood to Elkheart, Indiana, experiencing for the first time the off-screen life of a high school sophomore.

Tatum Grant spent the first years of her life on various film sets and locations in Hollywood, never knowing a real childhood, before becoming impregnated by an older, award-winning actor. Fifteen years after his death, experiencing an existential crisis, Tatum leaves Hollywood, her mother and her daughter behind, on a quest to find herself. Posing as a 16-year-old student with the help of her daughter’s stolen identification, Tatum uses the talents she learned portraying various film characters to earn a spot on the cheer team, date a football player, and befriend the most popular girl at school.

Like Tom Perrota’s Election, the novel is told through the voices of students and teachers at Dobson High, as well as social media influencers, actors, and celebrity children back in Hollywood, readers follow as Tatum’s past catches up with her amidst a cross-country road trip turned police chase.

Elizabeth Ellen manifests typical teenage woes into a breathtaking, rib-breaking story of love, loss, and media. American Thighs strikes the same chord as Heathers but for the TikTok generation.

While collecting the scattered stories of his parents’ entangled passages to the United States, the narrator begins to record the material onto videocassettes through a series of cutting and grafting, splicing footage of his present dislocation and overlaying on the audio track the polyphonic voices of his inherited exiles.

VHS reminds us, in its narrative’s insistence on mediation, that the slippage between speaker and listener, experience and memory, is also a fault line that can reveal our own prior movements.

From Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award-nominated author, Philip Fracassi, back by popular demand comes a new edition of his cult-classic, Gothic, in which a washed-up horror novelist is gifted an antique desk that channels an ancient darkness, one that flows onto the page and strangles his life.

Horror author Tyson Parks thinks his best days are behind him. He misses the heydays of the 1980s and 90s, when he was ruling the horror fiction charts, and now finds himself scrambling to remain a relevant author. He hasn’t had a hit in years, his agent won’t take his calls, and he’s never felt older.

Then, on his 59th birthday, his girlfriend gives him the gift of a lifetime: a monstrous antique desk. Rejuvenated by the desk’s mysterious energy, he begins writing with an all-consuming passion—and a savage darkness—he hasn’t felt in decades, and is eager to get his career back on track. Unfortunately, the desk, and the evil spirit that harbors within, has other plans. It won’t stop until it gets what it wants—even if it must destroy Tyson, and everyone he holds dear, in the process.

In this terrifying novel of art, obsession, and the horror of creation, Fracassi shows why he’s become a fan favorite among contemporary horror authors. Now in a brand-new edition, which includes a never-before-seen excerpt, Gothic is a dread-fueled dive into what a writer is willing to do to serve the muse, and his own desires.

“It was the year us girls had a feminine desire to go missing,” Vanessa Roveto, acclaimed author of bodys, begins her book within the remnants of a car crash, fragmenting identity, grief, and heart.

Beginning with the death of daddy, the “I” soon meshes with whatever and whomever she comes into contact with—strangers, actors, a Covid crush. She absorbs these people and objects, dispersing them into the Southern California landscape, the Uncanny Valley, warping time and naturalizing dreams.

Documenting a period of both global and personal loss, Roveto crafts a book-length poem that weighs heavier than the Ego in L.A. Splintering Self between Other and palm trees in the summer heat, Mulholland Dive spins a Lynchian setting within a feminine eruption of alluring language, fluked romance, and the aftershocks of grief.

Weird fiction icon and award-winning author Michael Cisco's Black Brane, begins with the physical pain of a bad foot and later voyages into absurdity, mad science, occultism, and existential dread.

A man lying in a bed of pain flees from physical torment into his own memories, and into speculations about life and reality. He was, once, employed by the Temporary Institute for the Study of Holes, a think tank pursuing research that ranges from occult studies to advanced physics, including black holes—or, as they are known in string theory, black branes.

He meets and interacts with the various other members of the institute. Its founder, Dr. Marilyn Shitansky, a formerly homeless woman who claims to have a thinking hole in her brain; its resident occultist, the chain-smoking Daladara with his magic abacus; Ernie Allegre the engineer, who designed and built a decoherence reactor to power the institute; Dr. Liu, the string theorist; the linguist Dr. Corngholm, who can't sit still; and Dr. Shitansky's secretary, Renbrui, who seems to carry a mystery with her wherever she goes.

In memory, the speaker finds them again, in a story of physical and emotional pain, of social and quantum entanglement, that turns comic, speculative, and nightmarish. Echoing the work of Blake Crouch and Thomas Ligotti, Michael Cisco shows in Black Brane why he’s beloved by weird fiction and horror readers.

In her electric debut, Madeline Cash synthesizes the godlessness of a digital age into a glimmering, sublime, life-affirming collage of stories.

Earth Angel is a book like no other, the paperback that swallowed the smartphone. An Isis recruit, an adolescent beauty queen, and a childless millennial walk into a bar. A Biblical plague rains down head lice, aerial drone strikes, gender non-conforming frogs. An app throws a slumber party for a friendless office worker. Texans in the winter, the Taliban in Springtime, Teslas with ℮☥ bumper stickers, Frozen 5 in Arabic, architectural consistency laws in Laurel Canyon, the longest recorded nosebleed in history.

An unhinged jet stream that is ultramodern and poignantly timeless, capturing the angst of the post-millennial generation.

Shortlisted for the 2023 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

A haunting and horror-filled tale of loneliness, trauma and spiritual yearning from the award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke.

After a recent string of disappearances in a small Connecticut town, a grieving widower with a grim secret is drawn into a dangerous ritual of dark magic by a powerful and mysterious older gentleman. Meanwhile, a member of local law enforcement tasked with uncovering the culprit responsible for the bizarre disappearances soon begins to learn of a current of unbridled hatred simmering beneath the guise of the town’s idyllic community―a hatred that will eventually burst and forever change the lives of those who once found peace in the quiet town of Henley’s Edge.

An insidious darkness threatens to devastate a rural New England village when occult forces are conjured and when bigotry is left unrestrained. In this revised second edition, readers can appreciate a terrifying, new alternate ending.

Horse Girl Fever is a hilariously weird collection, part autofiction, part outlandish daydream, that celebrates the horse girl within all of us.

From cult author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim, Kevin Maloney delivers a vision of the world that is hysterical, terrifying, and true. A cuckolded husband finds a new identity as a ghost. A homeowner has a nervous breakdown while building a pergola. An angst-ridden teenager finds his spiritual equal in the mosh pit of an Alice in Chains concert. 

In fourteen brutally funny stories, Horse Girl Fever plunges the reader into a world of misfits—inept drug smugglers, tattooed office workers, and philosophical strip club bouncers—who fumble toward the light but often end up flailing. Maloney’s writing conjures a dazzling spectrum of pain, joy, and humanity, peeking into the darkest corners of reality while high on Whippets.

Two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, V. Castro dims the lights in a collection where you might devour your next lover or meet your next meal.

Readers are invited to The Pink Agave Motel,where brutality and intimacy ooze across the pages, exploring the depths of the unhinged imagination and how human desire unlocks the impulse to bite. Castro’s voice, influenced by Mexican folklore and a feminist perspective, illuminates a deeper view of how unrequited love affects every type of being alike.

The titular story focuses on Valentina, the proclaimed leader of a creature cohort, who manages hotel guests, until she is enlightened to a carnivorous death on the property. To avoid exposure that threatens her existence, she partners with (the hauntingly handsome) grieving friend of the dearly departed to solve the murder. Further within these tales, discover a woman who is a fish out of water drinking at a seaside honky tonk, the trapped guests who undergo sexual liberation, and aliens who find the sexiest of disguises.

These short stories evoke an alluring voice, sure to make the reader shiver in arousal and horror, never quite knowing what could happen next. Castro pushes past the limits of gothic terror and fantasy to carve a dangerous path of lust and violence, all throughout the reader’s charming stay at The Pink Agave Motel.

A debut collection of stories from author Daisuke Shen, wherein divine beings and humans alike must rely on omens to navigate the unpredictable lives they find themselves inhabiting.

A couple employs exact clones of their partners, but then slowly begin losing their memories. Four boys with cruel intentions come across a field of statuesque women, unaware of the vengeance that awaits them. Paranoia leads a brilliant engineer into creating a language-processing machine that will tell her the truth of others' emotions.

Vague Predictions and Prophecies explores the myriad ways in which desire structures (and destroys) the self, language, and love, questioning the very nature of human connection. Through beautifully written prose, Shen invokes the surreal to create gigantic worlds packed inside deceptively small packages, emphasizing a resounding truth: that our fractured understandings of each other may yet be enough.

Jonas Williker is considered one of the most sadistic serial murderers of the modern era. This epistolary novel explores the aftermath of his arrest and the psychological trauma of those who lived through it.

The Pennsylvania native brutalized his way into the zeitgeist during the early part of the new millennium, leaving a trail of corpses across five states before his eventual arrest. All told, Williker was responsible for the rape and murder of 23 women, and is suspected in the deaths of dozens more. His calling card—a torn piece of fabric found on or inside the bodies of his victims—helped popularize his now ubiquitous nickname.

The Purple Satin Killer. 

In the years following his arrest, Jonas Williker received hundreds of letters in prison. Collected here, these letters offer a unique glimpse into a depraved mind through a human lens, including contributions from family, the bereaved, and self-professed “fans.” They represent a chilling portrait of the American psyche, skewering a media obsessed culture where murderers are celebrities to revere. What you learn about the man from these letters will shock you, but not as much as what you learn about yourself.

In this political satire-thriller, we follow a government official, an exiled influencer, and a burned-out delivery driver, living through a culture obsessed presidency that signs the policy to Kill the Rich.

The year is 2038, America’s new President won with a simple, snappy campaign slogan: Kill The Rich. Now in office, his administration kicks off with a televised public hanging of Kim Kardashian, whose lip kits have poisoned a working-class city.

The execution sets three very different people on a collision course that will change the nation forever. Jay, a senior adviser and best friend to the President, is hyper-focused on finding the next billionaire head to roll. Chloe, an influencer living in Russian exile, is willing to do anything to get her life of luxury back. Sasha, a burned-out pizza delivery driver, is desperate to find her missing brother. 

Their stories converge in a cryptocurrency-fueled secessionist city in the Nevada desert where they must come together to thwart an insurrection by the internet-poisoned, meme-obsessed, richest man in the world.

In each of these stories, the reader is lured into a sinister shadow space, one both familiar and uncanny.

Life is strange, beautiful, and terrible in the world of Victoria Dalpe's debut short story collection. Her characters run the gamut from nosy neighbors to boomtown prostitutes, sentient moss to ghouls with a taste for artist’s flesh. The stories contain chance encounters with truck stop mystics, haunted reality show renovations, and cat people roaming the western plains. In Dalpe's writing, horror mixes with humor, and the ordinary with the macabre. Les Femmes Grotesques is a unique and lush reading experience. Tragic and transformative—an unabashed exploration of the dark feminine.

In this science-fiction revision of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Kalivas lives in solitude on the Farallon Islands, off the San Francisco Bay, until the Master and his daughter M colonize his lonely realm.

Kalivas, the last free-range human, is pressed into completing dangerous and menial tasks on the Master's behalf. The new regime is disrupted when a great storm brings more cyborg mainlanders to the island shores. Can Kalivas finally break free and reclaim his islands, or will his affection for M keep him tied to the Master forever?

Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest reframes the drama as an anticolonial fantasia through futuristic gizmos, a broken continent, and a one-act play invoking the theater of the absurd. Told by the Bard's least civilized and most human creation, Nick Mamatas crafts a micro-epic for the modern era.

How You Lose the Time War meets Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in this fast-paced queer horror novel in which an obsessive woman stumbles upon a second-chance romance with her flighty paramour, but it quickly deteriorates into a dark spiral of destruction.

Johnny spots her ex, Alice, at the local cafe with a vague sense that she’s been there before. Though she’s still angry about their breakup and Alice’s subsequent ghosting, Johnny can’t resist the draw of a second shot at their relationship and accepts Alice’s invitation back to her apartment. Once there, promises are exchanged. There’s talk of wonder and change and dreams made real. But after spending the night together, they face a morning in which Alice is still Alice, Johnny is still Johnny, and the dog has doubled in size.

Over the course of a week, increasingly bizarre changes in the world around them force Johnny to consider whether the pair can change just as easily, if they can change at all. Or if both her relationship and the bounds of reality are destined to implode. The narrative of I Can Fix Her operates on nightmare logic, putting forth an irresistible tale in which the world, the narrator, and time itself are not to be trusted.

Shortlisted for the 2023 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

A haunting and horror-filled tale of loneliness, trauma and spiritual yearning from the award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke.

After a recent string of disappearances in a small Connecticut town, a grieving widower with a grim secret is drawn into a dangerous ritual of dark magic by a powerful and mysterious older gentleman. Meanwhile, a member of local law enforcement tasked with uncovering the culprit responsible for the bizarre disappearances soon begins to learn of a current of unbridled hatred simmering beneath the guise of the town’s idyllic community―a hatred that will eventually burst and forever change the lives of those who once found peace in the quiet town of Henley’s Edge.

An insidious darkness threatens to devastate a rural New England village when occult forces are conjured and when bigotry is left unrestrained. In this revised second edition, readers can appreciate a terrifying, new alternate ending.

In Amy DeBellis’ debut novel, The Hours meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation as, sometime in the near future, three Gen Z women ride the throes of late capitalist life in New York City.

In All Our Tomorrows, Janet, Anna, and Gemma lead separate lives, each ground down by the weight of the world they were born into, lost against the dazzling pixelated backdrop of the city. Too young to remember life before the iPhone 4, they think the real world was destroyed long before they were born.

Janet is an underpaid gig therapist who spends her time as a mental health matchmaker, responding to grievance letters from faceless online avatars. Anna is a model-turned-sugar-baby who dissociates during dates with her aging daddy, hoping to save enough not for a Birkin bag, but for the water wars of the near future. And Gemma is a freshman at NYU who aspires to become an influencer, but is so haunted by a recent loss that she can’t even film one video.

Sharp, incisive, and sparkling with dark humor, this is a novel for the age of the doomer generation. DeBellis delivers an unflinching examination of three young lives as they circle closer and closer to the drain of nihilism, climate anxiety, isolation, and grief. All Our Tomorrows is about finding yourself in a broken world, and the small but mighty decisions that can save you from leaking down the drain.

The Bulgarian Training Manual is a comic novel that tells the story of Cristina Acqualina Bontempi (a.k.a. Tina) in her quest to find her true parents and jeans that fit.

With the help of a mysterious book with magical powers, Tina makes her way from her waterlogged apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey, to an Oz-like journey to Bulgaria and back. Our heroine is the catalyst for a final contest that is part body-builder pose-off and part poetry slam. 

The novel is a sly look at self-improvement, our self-doubts and fervent dreams, and our endless internal yammering. Those who follow The Bulgarian Training Manual add more than muscle. They become poets.

Meet the greatest vampire hunter of all time's great-grandson, Jefferson Van Helsing, as he faces horrifying monsters and even more terrifying first dates in Portland, Oregon.

Polite conversation is quite limited when you’re a descendant of the man who hunted Dracula, and it makes going on nice dinner dates damn near impossible. But Jeff, Portland's local monster hunter, revels in the gore of his not-quite-day job.

In this guidebook, Jeff teaches the reader how to face an encounter with the most evil creatures of darkness, be they an 800-year-old blood-sucking fiend or a finance major who only has "coffee!!!" listed as their interest. He may still be learning the ins and outs of romantic etiquette, but killing monsters is in his blood.

Van Helsing’s Guide to Monsters and Dating is an illustrated monster/dating companion where readers will learn how to identify and fight ghouls, ghosts, vampires and more. In this harrowing debut by Ben Crew, Jeff stumbles into true love, discovers the importance of bro-time, and accidentally triggers a century-old prophecy all in a good-natured attempt to better the world by bettering himself.

In this science-fiction revision of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Kalivas lives in solitude on the Farallon Islands, until the Master and his daughter M colonize his lonely realm.

Kalivas, the last free-range human, is pressed into completing dangerous and menial tasks on the Master's behalf. The new regime is disrupted when a great storm brings more cyborg mainlanders to the island shores. Can Kalivas finally break free and reclaim his islands, or will his affection for M keep him tied to the Master forever?

Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest reframes the drama as an anticolonial fantasia through futuristic gizmos, a broken continent, and a one-act play invoking the theater of the absurd. Told by the Bard's least civilized and most human creation, Nick Mamatas crafts a micro-epic for the modern era.

8114 is a terrifying horror novel investigating the mysterious death of a high school friend through an embattled podcast and hallucinatory hauntings at the abandoned house of his childhood.

After returning to his hometown, Paul, the beleaguered host of a small-time podcast, discovers a longtime friend committed suicide in the dilapidated ruins of Paul’s childhood home. Desperate to find answers, Paul interviews friends and locals hoping to find closure. He finds himself in a chilling downward spiral of his memories and the land he grew up on. Has his past caught up with him or is there something far more sinister at play?

Joshua Hull, screenwriter of Glorious, brings an edge of horror film expertise to this story of small-town haunting, trauma, and grief that just won’t let go. 8114 roots out the rot of a small town’s past and unravels the memories we must face to survive the present.

Humorous, heartfelt, and endearing, My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor is the story of a young man (as empty as the Big Mac container itself) facing depression head on, and learning to find beauty and hope in a life mired by mental illness.

Daniel has been stalked by six-foot-tall sad-looking blue whales since childhood. Exhausted and ravaged by their miserable company (and excessive crying), 31-year-old Daniel can’t take it anymore. After breaking up with his girlfriend, Daniel, ever the fast food junkie, vows to end it all by burying his heart in an empty Big Mac container beneath the ocean floor—the only way, he feels, to responsibly end his life and keep his poisonous heart as far away from others as possible.

With the help of a wayward sad-looking blue whale, Daniel steals his ex's boat and he and the whale set off into the ocean. But once out on the water, things don't go as planned and they soon become stranded. Fighting heat stroke and delirium, surreal events unfold around them, forcing Daniel to not only confront the sad-looking blue whales and the troubled life they've forced him to live, but also his choice as to whether he truly wants to live or die.

Pulsating like an epic album by Daniel Johnston, Homeless shares a moving story about love, authenticity, and listening to the whale calls in your heart.

In this debut story collection, Gianni Washington opens portals bridging the strange and the lonely to the gruesome and the intimate.

Thirteen dark tales are told through the lenses of Black, female, and queer narrators, among others, which burrow deep into the heart of the gothic to challenge the conventional nightmare. Flowers from the Void unburies a haunted labyrinth of chilling alternate realities eerily similar to our own.

A high school freshman is lured into a sinister pact with a classmate that will cost him more than he could ever imagine. A grieving African witch prepares for initiation into a 17th century Salem coven of white women. A girl with no shadow befriends one.

Empathy and horrors collide to create a grimy discomfort that will never quite wash off. Otherworldly creatures, malevolent acts, and devastation consume these pages as Gianni Washington resurrects the skeletons in our closets and commands them to run amuck with a new zest for the macabre.

J.G. Ballard’s Crash meets Albert Camus’s The Plague in a transgressive horror novel for the TikTok generation.

Will is a fraud. Olivia is a wreck. They meet at a grief share group and quickly bond over their brokenness. They also have a peculiar hobby; they seek out sickness. Will hunts for the latest strain of flu. Olivia doesn’t feel comfortable in her body if she isn’t suffering from a fever. They become virus chasers, finding confidence in their ability to conquer every affliction they come across.

They soon discover an online community of chasers called The Source and realize that their hobby isn’t all that odd when seen from the right distance. And then the mysterious Zaff literally walks into their life, claiming that he has the goods, knows where the latest outbreak will drop. Intrigued, Will and Olivia decide to take their hobby to the point of obsession, believing that if they can conquer the newest strain, nobody can hurt them.

Locus Best Science Fiction of 2024

2025 LOCUS Award Shortlist

Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future.

Otherwise, he lives an ordinary life. But when a confrontation with a cop on a New York City subway goes tragically wrong, those seconds give Preble the chance to dodge a bullet—causing another man to die in his place.

Government agencies become aware of Preble’s gift, a manhunt ensues, and their ambitions shift from law enforcement to military. Preble will do whatever it takes to protect his family, but as events spiral out of control, he must weigh the cost of his gift against the loss of his humanity.

A breathless thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page, The Man Who Saw Seconds explores the nature of time, the brain as a prediction machine, and the tension between the individual and the systems we create. Alexander Boldizar provides an adrenaline-pumping read that will leave you contemplating love, fear and the abyss.

Notorious Los Angeles graffiti writer, SOBR, finds himself wanted for a murder he did not commit. 

With the help of a childhood friend, an LAPD Magistrate Inquirer, SOBR sets out to clear his graffiti name while haunted by a foretelling of his impending death. Set in a familiar version of LA located somewhere in the multiverse where the United States has become ruled by a king, the people worship the Greek and Roman gods, and society is on the brink of a proletarian revolution, ILL BEHAVIOR is an unorthodox take on LA noir and a modern extension of ancient mythology.

In her electric debut, Madeline Cash synthesizes the godlessness of a digital age into a glimmering, sublime, life-affirming collage of stories.

Earth Angel is a book like no other, the paperback that swallowed the smartphone. An Isis recruit, an adolescent beauty queen, and a childless millennial walk into a bar. A Biblical plague rains down head lice, aerial drone strikes, gender non-conforming frogs. An app throws a slumber party for a friendless office worker. Texans in the winter, the Taliban in Springtime, Teslas with ℮☥ bumper stickers, Frozen 5 in Arabic, architectural consistency laws in Laurel Canyon, the longest recorded nosebleed in history.

An unhinged jet stream that is ultramodern and poignantly timeless, capturing the angst of the post-millennial generation.

Thomas Kemp, the Libertine, turned cruelty, torture and humiliation into works of art. 

It was said that he had given his soul to something inhuman to be part of artistic immortality. It was said that his very ashes were used to make a set of charcoals still imbued with his spirit. When Shannon Hernandez, a traumatized and repressed art student, is tasked to draw with them by her lecherous professor, she feels a change in herself and something menacing calling out to her. She is offered a chance to create work that breaks boundaries and hearts alike but comes bound with a connection to a legacy of immortal terrors.

Sad Sexy Catholic follows the journey of a young twenty-something as she navigates the already difficult task of existing made even harder by trauma, body dysmorphia, a personality disorder, and leftover guilt from a religious upbringing. The speaker in these poems strives to find softness, even in the darkest of moments.

Weaving wisdom from her shamanic practice and the interstices of language, and in the difficult moments anticipating the deaths of her beloved dog companions, Separation Anxiety marks the first collection of poetry from acclaimed prose writer Janice Lee, and is a meditation on inhabitation and existence beyond the human.

Cutting-edge intoxicants, the vagaries of desire, and an obscure art magazine with unlimited ambitions collide on the ultimate stage, where only delusion can ease the chase of mystique. In an epic new novel ranging across acting, advertising, professional sports, and the city, Mark de Silva offers up a grand meditation on the bitter glories of 21st century being, the human impulse to search for something original in the cacophony of a continuously replicating world, and the self-revelations living in our perception of others. The Logos is a sweeping and intimate inquiry into all things New York, and now.

A surreal Blacksploitation joint for the 21st Century.
An Occult, Erotic Mystery bout Reverend Daddy Hoodoo helping his Wommin find their Lost-R-Missing Pussies with the help of the extraordinary Madam X. Featuring heartless gangsters, Vodoo sex Magick, and a young Wommin in distress by the name of Abysinnia who is in desperate need of the services of Daddy Hoodoo. This tale leads from Between the Sheets to the Streets to the Boardroom Suites— and Beyond.

We all know horror. It’s in our face every day. You can try to negotiate the nightmare but total chaos and destruction is just one button-push away. Horror legend John Skipp walks you through the light and the dark with an unflinching eye. Revealing both the best and worst of us, one laugh and scream at a time.  

 It ain’t pretty. But it’s beautiful. Once you go all the way.

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, author of La Belle Ajar, brings you a horror death themed collection with mortality, murder, and muerte oozing from every one of these terrifying verses.

Inspired by NightWorms, Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties & Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads, get ready to be haunted by serial killers, fatal femmes, poisoners, as these premeditated murderesses that slay you in terrifying poems. One step inside these grave inspired verses, you will want to re-experience We Are the Ones until the very end.

Embrace the terror and prepare to be Possessed, Cepeda’s poems will mesmerize you with his bone-chilling death rhymes from the other side.

They’ve never been close, but now they have to live together—and it gets more difficult when one discovers a strange creature, vomited from the body of a dead cat. A creature that eats human pain. It feels good: too good. Soon he wants to hurt himself more, just so the pain can be taken away. But the more the creature becomes a part of his life, the more he damages everything around him. Some wounds are too deep to ever heal.

Those who are dead can still speak. A witch can be burned, but not silenced. When the abattoir is opened, the dead will rise. Burials is the narrative of those whose voices have been taken away— murdered women, witches, ghosts. It’s about speaking one’s truth, and using magic to heal or to banish, even from beyond the grave.

Dubbed a 2018 Debut Writer to Watch by Publisher’s Weekly

Nudes on Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021 and an SPD Best Seller

Through diaristic ellipses, Nash crafts an origin story of obsessional masochism.

Drawing on the nostalgia of a nascent digital age and grappling with an eating disorder, indie cult author Elle Nash paints a realistic and poignant portrait of a teenager’s quest for self-identification on both sides of the computer screen. Using Livejournal entries, we meet our protagonist, in her messy transition into adulthood in the midst of grappling with calorie counts, boys, and being honest with who she is only online. Following up her cult fiction debut Animals Eat Each Other, Nash shows she belongs in the same camp along with exciting feminist literary disrupters the likes of Melissa Broder and Alissa Nutting.

It’s 2005. Lucy shambles through the last weeks of her senior year of high school, jonesing for a thinner body, desperate to connect with another human. Who is reflected back at her when she is sleeping with someone, when she is puking into the toilet bowl? Who is reflected back when she’s alone? Only the internet knows, where she muses on the concept of her “self” through her Livejournal, with a cadre of online friends who are definitely NOT pro-anorexic. Everyone's sick here, but at least they understand.

Through the eyes of Nereid, daughter of this angry sea god, we witness the evolution of this primal waterfall into a powerful symbol of beauty, danger, and sacrifice. Through Nereid, we witness the stories of women and girls who commit suicide by waterfall, beginning with Nereid herself, and the waterfall otherworld into which they awaken. Unfolding in spiral rather than linear fashion, this bible of shifting realities and portals between life and death shines light and dark into a world never before imagined. An afterlife which is neither heaven or hell, it is as uncertain as it is beautiful. Intertwined with the tales of Nereid and others in her world is the commonality of the Waterfall, whose elemental/diselemental voice adds its own layers to Nereid's bible. When the Waterfall speaks, we taste the purity of the first waterfall, we catch the scent of primal element, we are enchanted by the face of magnificent beauty, and we feel the very heartbeat of water as we drown in the roar of the falls. From Nereid's lifetime of water, through the hidden pools and passages of her watery world, Waterfall Girls is but a small sampling of legends inspired by waterfalls, woven into the heartbreak of suicide.

My thoughts are inside of you as you read this.  Therefore, I am inside of you now. Living inside you. Walking around in my boxer briefs. Scratching my balls. Rearranging the mental furniture inside your head. Opening the space up in case I feel like entertaining.  I plan on entertaining.  Thank you for letting me live inside your head.  Thank you for giving me a warm place to stay.  At least for now. I am Homeless. Hello. Hello…

Pushcart Prize Award-winning author Elizabeth Ellen’s American Thighs tells the darkly comedic story of a thirty-one-year-old former child star’s journey from Hollywood to Elkheart, Indiana, experiencing for the first time the off-screen life of a high school sophomore.

Tatum Grant spent the first years of her life on various film sets and locations in Hollywood, never knowing a real childhood, before becoming impregnated by an older, award-winning actor. Fifteen years after his death, experiencing an existential crisis, Tatum leaves Hollywood, her mother and her daughter behind, on a quest to find herself. Posing as a 16-year-old student with the help of her daughter’s stolen identification, Tatum uses the talents she learned portraying various film characters to earn a spot on the cheer team, date a football player, and befriend the most popular girl at school.

Like Tom Perrota’s Election, the novel is told through the voices of students and teachers at Dobson High, as well as social media influencers, actors, and celebrity children back in Hollywood, readers follow as Tatum’s past catches up with her amidst a cross-country road trip turned police chase.

Elizabeth Ellen manifests typical teenage woes into a breathtaking, rib-breaking story of love, loss, and media. American Thighs strikes the same chord as Heathers but for the TikTok generation.

The author of home invasion horror hit, Anybody Home?, brings murder to the publishing sphere in On Submission, where Scream meets Yellowface when an A-List agent’s top clients all end up dead.

Hotshot literary agent Henry Richmond Pendel knows how to find the next big thing and is even better at selling them. But a perfect career becomes increasingly disconcerting as he begins to feel like he’s being watched. There are rumors of a boogeyman in publishing, a rejected writer who has cracked and started killing off writers.

When Pendel’s star clients turn up brutally murdered and unsolicited queries become more and more frantic, Pendel must decide whether to act out of safety for himself and his clients or to capitalize on the attention. Is it worth a few more casualties if it means inking a few seven-figure deals?

Part slasher and part scream at the publishing industry, Michael J. Seidlinger, the master of psychological terror, offers a brutal new take on the relationship between art and commerce. On Submission is full of villains, where some harm with a pen and others with a knife.

In this debut crime-horror story collection, David Simmons drags you into a phantasmagoric Baltimore where the dead refuse to stay dead and the living claw for meaning.

Hallucinatory and darkly comic love stories are set against the gritty backdrop of the city, where guns and drugs collide with tales of paranoia, pursuit, and revenge. Here, a middle school biology class spirals into a surreal vivisection. A man returns home each night to chew the freshly grown fingers off a corpse to avoid going into withdrawal. A monster in an upstairs apartment kills people, records songs about it, and retweets his victims postmortem.

In these stories, love arrives wearing the mask of addiction and absurdity. If Brian Evenson and Ottessa Moshfegh wrote for The Wire you'd get the unique style of David Simmons. Fans of body horror, transgressive fiction, and literary surrealism will find themselves unable to look away as Simmons explores the intersections of violence and dark humor with a razor-sharp voice.

From British Fantasy award-winning writer and editor Dan Coxon, Come Sing for the Harrowing is an uncanny folk horror collection for fans of John Langan and Robert Aickman.

A young man working at a tourist attraction is singled out for unholy transformation, a gang of burglars are ambushed with something unworldly when they attempt to rob a local farm, and a daughter seeks revenge on her abusive father after his death. Invoking the sense of natural surreal found in Midsommar, these stories are always a little to the left of what’s expected.

Weaving macabre contingencies into realities, Dan Coxon crafts unsettling and eerie worlds through hauntingly literary prose. Including a featured story from Ellen Datlow’s “Best of Horror” round-up and a foreword from Brian Evenson, Come Sing for the Harrowing will haunt your dreams and gnaw at you during the daylight.

The page-turning, definitive guide to beloved ska musician Mike Park and his iconic indie label Asian Man Records.

Sourced from over a hundred hours of interviews with musicians, producers, booking agents, label owners, writers, fans, employees, volunteers, friends and family, Elvis is Dead, I’m Still Alive tells the singular story of Asian Man Records.

In its first thirty years, Asian Man Records released over 400 albums, all from the garage at Mike Park’s parents’ house. Founded when Park was in his early twenties, the label has started and supported the careers of musicians across many generations, all free from the pressures of the larger music industry. It seemed things could even stay that way forever, until an unexpected email arrived…

Spanning early releases by breakout artists like Less Than Jake and Alkaline Trio, to albums that went viral on TikTok, every record has its own story. All of them connect back to Mike Park, the record label founder, who went from struggling with racism as a Korean American in an overwhelmingly white town, to his current status as international underground inspiration.

Written by Mike Huguenor, a musician who has seen the label from inside and out, this music biography documents thirty years in the life of a record label unlike any other—the one and only Asian Man Records

Lesbian vixens from another dead world thread through moon-drenched cornfields and opulent drawing rooms in this literary horror remix of iconic gothic sagas.

Agnes is wasting away. In a bed of velvet and silk, she dreams of death—and Mary.

Mary—a wraith with bloodstained gown and mouth—drips mystery and menace. She materializes beside a lake, beneath a pear tree, outside the window. She turns servants feral and plunges the manor into anarchy. Since her arrival, nothing is right. The maids snarl. The nights grow strange. Agnes swoons.

Her brother, Arthur, calls it a sickness. A curse. He stalks the halls with scissors in his fist. He wants purity and order. He’ll strike out the unintelligible. He is not the only one. Others have begun to stir—jilted lovers, disgraced doctors, moralists with sharpened knives. The disorder is spreading. It’s riotous. Contagious. They’ll purify the world in flame.

Written partially through footnotes and with a mystery of interwoven red text, Agnes, We’re Not Murderers! is an atmospheric gothic vampire journey for fans of Kathe Koja and Mark Z. Danielewski.

His girlfriend is horror famous, his own writing and acting is floundering, and he is drinking to make sense of it all.

Kyle Kouri’s debut non-fiction collection is full of ‘whiskey courage’ staring at the abyss of family, writing rejection, relationships, and his own drinking. From hijinks at AWP to hustling in the movie business, Kouri bridges the gap in drama between indie and horror.

At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, The Problem Drinker is the story of an artist living with another artist, yearning to move the needle in his career, amidst a sea of personal tragedies and comedies. If F. Scott Fitzgerald had one foot in the 2020s horror scene, that’s the spirit of Kouri’s caustic and big-hearted, lush and refreshingly candid debut.

From Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award-nominated author, Philip Fracassi, comes a historical horror novel where three brothers go AWOL during one of the most violent battles of the Civil War, but find something much worse waiting in the woods.

Choosing to risk execution rather than be killed in a losing war, three brothers desert their posts and begin a long, arduous journey back home. After weeks of dealing with rough terrain while evading bandits and home guard soldiers—starving, injured, and exhausted—the brothers find a miracle deep in the dark woods. A home.

Living in a remote cabin is a beautiful woman, Sarafina, and her young son, Titus. Sarafina takes the soldiers in, cares for them, feeds them, offers them a place to rest. But the youngest of the brothers is wary—something is not what it seems. After discovering a mysterious creek and a strange underground cavern, he gets a strong sense that the cabin, and the fertile land surrounding it, might be harboring something nefarious, terrifying, and dangerous.

What ensues is a nightmare beyond imagination, an escalation of horrors that the brothers must somehow fight to survive. With tensions high, the country divided, and loyalties put to the test, Sarafina spotlights that Fracassi is a star of modern horror.

A feminist slasher novel fueled by female rage and haunted by gruesome murders, in this contemporary reimagining of Tess of the D’Urbervilles there can only be one final girl.

Darcy and her high school friends haven’t gathered together in seven years. After a tragic murder on prom night, the group graduated and never looked back. But when the lakeside cabin they spent their summers at is put up for sale, they reunite for one last hurrah.

Darcy hopes it will be an inspiring weekend that will help them all move on from their shared trauma. But Ashley, her biggest tormentor and the group’s manipulative self-appointed leader, is sure to stir up trouble. After a first day filled with jealousy, heartbreak, and unexpected guests, tensions are bursting, and the feud between Darcy and Ashley resurfaces.

The reunion takes a sinister turn when a masked killer slaughters one of their own. Cut off from the outside world with the death toll rising fast, the terrified friends turn on each other and uncover long buried secrets. Someone is seeking justice for their past betrayals and with friends like these no one is safe in this dark-femme slasher for fans of Maeve Fly by CJ Leede and The Indian Lake Trilogy by Stephen Graham Jones.

From Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award-nominated author, Philip Fracassi, back by popular demand comes a new edition of his cult-classic, Gothic, in which a washed-up horror novelist is gifted an antique desk that channels an ancient darkness, one that flows onto the page and strangles his life.

Horror author Tyson Parks thinks his best days are behind him. He misses the heydays of the 1980s and 90s, when he was ruling the horror fiction charts, and now finds himself scrambling to remain a relevant author. He hasn’t had a hit in years, his agent won’t take his calls, and he’s never felt older.

Then, on his 59th birthday, his girlfriend gives him the gift of a lifetime: a monstrous antique desk. Rejuvenated by the desk’s mysterious energy, he begins writing with an all-consuming passion—and a savage darkness—he hasn’t felt in decades, and is eager to get his career back on track. Unfortunately, the desk, and the evil spirit that harbors within, has other plans. It won’t stop until it gets what it wants—even if it must destroy Tyson, and everyone he holds dear, in the process.

In this terrifying novel of art, obsession, and the horror of creation, Fracassi shows why he’s become a fan favorite among contemporary horror authors. Now in a brand-new edition, which includes a never-before-seen excerpt, Gothic is a dread-fueled dive into what a writer is willing to do to serve the muse, and his own desires.

What if he wasn’t one of the good ones? Was his suicide another cruelty? Her grief and rage are expressed through increasingly violent sexual encounters with strangers, acquaintances, and past lovers. How many deaths does he deserve? And why did he love death more than her?

8114 is a terrifying horror novel investigating the mysterious death of a high school friend through an embattled podcast and hallucinatory hauntings at the abandoned house of his childhood.

After returning to his hometown, Paul, the beleaguered host of a small-time podcast, discovers a longtime friend committed suicide in the dilapidated ruins of Paul’s childhood home. Desperate to find answers, Paul interviews friends and locals hoping to find closure. He finds himself in a chilling downward spiral of his memories and the land he grew up on. Has his past caught up with him or is there something far more sinister at play?

Joshua Hull, screenwriter of Glorious, brings an edge of horror film expertise to this story of small-town haunting, trauma, and grief that just won’t let go. 8114 roots out the rot of a small town’s past and unravels the memories we must face to survive the present.

From the author of the viral phenomenon The Roommate comes a literary horror novel following a young playwright who conjures up a true tragedy through a Machiavellian curse when spurned by her mentor.

Enter COREY, a passionate young nobody, and her professor, MAXINE, an award-winning playwright and living legend of the American theatre. When Maxine shatters Corey's dreams of artistic collaboration after graduation, Corey seeks revenge. At a clairvoyant's den in a violet-lit Dallas strip mall, the young playwright unleashes a life-altering curse on Maxine.

Possessed by dark powers and even darker ambitions, Corey follows Maxine to a prestigious playwriting residency in Chicago where the women become fatally entwined. Through three acts, two interludes, and one curse, Corey pushes her mentor toward theatre's haunted margins, where reality begins to crumble.

Caroline Macon Fleischer's A Play About A Curse reads like an A24 film. Part psychological horror and part theatrical fever dream, Curse shadows a heroine-turned-villain as she confronts the supernatural power struggle between mentor and protégé, learning that to achieve our dreams, someone else must suffer a nightmare.

The tragic and mysterious death of Hazel Drew that inspired the cult hit TV show Twin Peaks, is finally solved by Dr. Jerry C. Drake.

The legend of Hazel Drew spread through stories of her ghost haunting the woods where her body was found. It was a hot summer day in July 1908 when the body of a young woman was found floating in a mill pond in Upstate New York. Hazel Irene Drew was murdered. Her death captured headlines across the nation and around the world, but after a whirlwind investigation lasting less than thirty days, the District Attorney abruptly closed the case.

Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, with clippings and photographs from local Troy and Albany newspapers from 1908, Dr. Jerry C. Drake parses out the facts from the legend through back alleys and dark mountain forests, in pursuit of Hazel Drew’s killer, in this engaging, historical investigation of a tragic American story.

With firsthand accounts from locals dreaming of clues, tabloid journalists, railroad Robber Barons and political bosses, psychic investigators, and even a mysterious hypnotist, the tabloid sensation is debunked and the real woman is finally revealed. This is the definitive story of Hazel Drew, whose ghost can finally rest, knowing that her killer has been exposed.

Humorous, heartfelt, and endearing, My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor is the story of a young man (as empty as the Big Mac container itself) facing depression head on, and learning to find beauty and hope in a life mired by mental illness.

Daniel has been stalked by six-foot-tall sad-looking blue whales since childhood. Exhausted and ravaged by their miserable company (and excessive crying), 31-year-old Daniel can’t take it anymore. After breaking up with his girlfriend, Daniel, ever the fast food junkie, vows to end it all by burying his heart in an empty Big Mac container beneath the ocean floor—the only way, he feels, to responsibly end his life and keep his poisonous heart as far away from others as possible.

With the help of a wayward sad-looking blue whale, Daniel steals his ex's boat and he and the whale set off into the ocean. But once out on the water, things don't go as planned and they soon become stranded. Fighting heat stroke and delirium, surreal events unfold around them, forcing Daniel to not only confront the sad-looking blue whales and the troubled life they've forced him to live, but also his choice as to whether he truly wants to live or die.

Pulsating like an epic album by Daniel Johnston, Homeless shares a moving story about love, authenticity, and listening to the whale calls in your heart.

Little Lazarus is the story of two clairvoyant tortoises who bear witness to centuries of human suffering.

Teenagers Francois and Eleanor are lonely and wild in the small Southern town of Harmony that promises them nothing but more of the same: nothing. They attempt to escape their mundane existence and dysfunctional families but succeed only in finding each other. And that seems to be enough. Until one drunken night driving down a country road changes the course of their lives.

As Francois and Eleanor tell their stories in parallel sections, another larger story unfolds, told through the lives of two tortoises, Lazarus and Little Lazarus. Their respective journeys across continents constitute a tour of the human heart itself in all its manifestations. Their caretakers range from a billionaire intent on achieving immortality, to a series of mute men passing down the same seersucker suit through generations, to a dog named Pony at the end of the world.

With the deep longing of Carson McCullers's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and the narrative lyricism of Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar, New York City writer Michael Bible proves why he's a cult sensation to European readers. Little Lazarus is an unforgettable ballad of devastating love and spectacular sorrow.

Two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, V. Castro dims the lights in a collection where you might devour your next lover or meet your next meal.

Readers are invited to The Pink Agave Motel,where brutality and intimacy ooze across the pages, exploring the depths of the unhinged imagination and how human desire unlocks the impulse to bite. Castro’s voice, influenced by Mexican folklore and a feminist perspective, illuminates a deeper view of how unrequited love affects every type of being alike.

The titular story focuses on Valentina, the proclaimed leader of a creature cohort, who manages hotel guests, until she is enlightened to a carnivorous death on the property. To avoid exposure that threatens her existence, she partners with (the hauntingly handsome) grieving friend of the dearly departed to solve the murder. Further within these tales, discover a woman who is a fish out of water drinking at a seaside honky tonk, the trapped guests who undergo sexual liberation, and aliens who find the sexiest of disguises.

These short stories evoke an alluring voice, sure to make the reader shiver in arousal and horror, never quite knowing what could happen next. Castro pushes past the limits of gothic terror and fantasy to carve a dangerous path of lust and violence, all throughout the reader’s charming stay at The Pink Agave Motel.

With the humor of millennial Samantha Irby, Khaholi Bailey’s debut essay collection about the 90s and beyond will invoke the not-so-nostalgic nostalgia.

90s kids were raised on sparse and slow internet, cable TV and adults who said the darndest things. Some learned that weed was the gateway to insanity, that people of the cloth would never disrobe you, or to hope for inconspicuous, tiny tits. 

Khaholi Bailey was taught as much and more, only to discover that the dank green does God’s work, and a well-timed catcall could make her day. Through her family, as much as from MTV and New York City, Khaholi discovers that right from wrong is a matter of time, place and whoever’s asking. 

In frank and comedic essays, Khaholi shares the vulnerability (and sometimes grace) that comes from aging in a rapidly changing world. The Miseducation of a 90s Baby will give you all the lols and feels, and she might even teach you something along the way.

The Great Gatsby meets Hellraiser.

Mabel Rose Dixon will do anything to become a Ziegfeld girl—including picking the pockets of the wealthy NYC elite to fund her way to stardom. When she picks the wrong pocket, Mabel loses her soul to a hotel run by demons and tumbles into the world of The Grand Hotel, a place where any artist can make it big.

Mabel’s greatest wish to be famous is granted. Every night, she performs as the starring act to a crowded theater and finds she is never without patrons. But Mabel quickly learns that losing her soul to get everything she ever wanted comes at a much steeper cost than what she bargained for. She must steal her soul back before the Grand’s annual May’s Eve Ball or become a demon herself forever.

With stylish art deco design and beautiful illustrations by the author, this stunning debut novel by renowned New England artist Cat Scully is a crown jewel for the dark gothic horror lover’s collection. Welcome to The Grand Hotel. We hope you enjoy your stay.

A Black nerd coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Boston about a boy who struggles to learn the truth behind his mother’s claims of otherworldly origins in the smoldering aftermath of the Civil Rights era and COINTELPRO's dying breaths.

Sean’s mother, Sojourner, consistently claims otherworldly origins—Saturn, specifically. A story he’s heard his entire life and never considered that it might be true until strange men intrude on his family’s lives. Complicating matters, his father, David, and his mother, were part of a Civil Rights era Black power group that captured the attention of the FBI.

A literal bombing put an exclamation point to the end of the organization. But as soon as Sean could read on his own, he immersed himself in science fiction, fantasy, and comic books, while largely ignoring the history of his people. That ignorance morphs into a disturbing proposition and learning the truth of his parents’ pasts could prove deadly.

Sean’s exploration introduces him to music, girls, delusions of privilege, and the thrills of revolution, all while becoming an adult. The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile marries golden age sci-fi with the nostalgia of roller skates, funk, and first love.

J.G. Ballard’s Crash meets Albert Camus’s The Plague in a transgressive horror novel for the TikTok generation.

Will is a fraud. Olivia is a wreck. They meet at a grief share group and quickly bond over their brokenness. They also have a peculiar hobby; they seek out sickness. Will hunts for the latest strain of flu. Olivia doesn’t feel comfortable in her body if she isn’t suffering from a fever. They become virus chasers, finding confidence in their ability to conquer every affliction they come across.

They soon discover an online community of chasers called The Source and realize that their hobby isn’t all that odd when seen from the right distance. And then the mysterious Zaff literally walks into their life, claiming that he has the goods, knows where the latest outbreak will drop. Intrigued, Will and Olivia decide to take their hobby to the point of obsession, believing that if they can conquer the newest strain, nobody can hurt them.

While collecting the scattered stories of his parents’ entangled passages to the United States, the narrator begins to record the material onto videocassettes through a series of cutting and grafting, splicing footage of his present dislocation and overlaying on the audio track the polyphonic voices of his inherited exiles.

VHS reminds us, in its narrative’s insistence on mediation, that the slippage between speaker and listener, experience and memory, is also a fault line that can reveal our own prior movements.

From T.J. Martinson, author of The Reign of the Kingfisher, comes a poignant odyssey of aging, stardom, and memory explored through the literal eyes of Marilyn Monroe.

Susan Jackson’s serene life as a sixty-eight-year-old florist living in Indiana shatters following a groundbreaking eye transplant that comes with an unexpected side-effect—visions of the life of Marilyn Monroe. Initially a harmless oddity, the invasive visions swiftly escalate as she starts morphing into the iconic actress. As Susan’s transformation becomes undeniable, a battle of wills ensues between the long-dead Hollywood icon and the woman whose body she’s seized.

Her New Eyes is an evocative literary novel, playing out against the bittersweet stage of eternal Americana-icon worship. With a dreamy atmosphere and unforgettable characters, Martinson crafts a story that will provoke introspection while entertaining.

Horse Girl Fever is a hilariously weird collection, part autofiction, part outlandish daydream, that celebrates the horse girl within all of us.

From cult author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim, Kevin Maloney delivers a vision of the world that is hysterical, terrifying, and true. A cuckolded husband finds a new identity as a ghost. A homeowner has a nervous breakdown while building a pergola. An angst-ridden teenager finds his spiritual equal in the mosh pit of an Alice in Chains concert. 

In fourteen brutally funny stories, Horse Girl Fever plunges the reader into a world of misfits—inept drug smugglers, tattooed office workers, and philosophical strip club bouncers—who fumble toward the light but often end up flailing. Maloney’s writing conjures a dazzling spectrum of pain, joy, and humanity, peeking into the darkest corners of reality while high on Whippets.

In the first installment of Victoria Dalpe’s new dark fantasy series, we meet Selene Shade, a resurrectionist for hire who might just have taken on the wrong case.

With the ability to restore life to the dead, “Zombie Queen” Selene Shade has earned quite a reputation. Not that it helps her get dates. Her bed may be empty but business is booming. That is until her life is thrown into disarray when a brutal killer comes to town and all signs point to her being the next victim.

Enlisted by the police department due to her unique craft, she must make new alliances, deal with old rivals, and maybe even save the world—whether she wants to or not—all the while avoiding the gruesome allure of dark magic and the sacrificial ritual of a mad cultist. 

In Resurrectionist for Hire, Dalpe weaves a dire tale of magic, murder, and romance. To survive, Selene will have to harness her power of the dead and overcome her struggle to connect with the living.

Cult authors Edward Lee and Mary SanGiovanni’s novel follows an insufferable horror-con lurker as he spurns the wrong woman and is cursed to a monstrous dimension full of Lovecraftian creations.

Professor Everard, weird fiction scholar and proclaimed critic of H.P Lovecraft's works, is no stranger to making people mad. Giving convention presentations on the triteness and melodrama of Lovecraft's work pays the bills, though. Sometimes he even gets laid. 

When he angers a beautiful but dangerous witch and devotee of Lovecraft's work, she casts a spell on him, sending him to a dimension where Lovecraft's works are very real—and very deadly. Everard must find a way through this alternate dimension to get home, before the worst of Lovecraft's horrors prove what a master of monstrosities he really was.

Edward lee’s humorous transgressive style meets Mary SanGiovanni’s literary touch to carve out the Lovecraftian dimensions that is Strange Stones.

Arnold Palmer has just died and The King of Video Poker is about to lose everything he loves.

In Paolo Iacovelli’s debut novel, we follow a nameless narrator. He is a normative, upper-middle-class American who commutes to Las Vegas to play high-stakes video poker. He seems to have everything: a son, a loving wife, a beautiful home in Mesquite, Nevada.

But aimless and depressed, he must face emptiness in both spirit and body. His relationships deteriorate and our narrator is left attempting the deplorable to fill the void. He latches onto an excessive road trip as he fixates on Arnold Palmer’s death, trying to chase a high that will never come. Falling deep into the throes of darkness, he finds himself planning one of the greatest atrocities the U.S. has ever seen.

In this debut story collection, Gianni Washington opens portals bridging the strange and the lonely to the gruesome and the intimate.

Thirteen dark tales are told through the lenses of Black, female, and queer narrators, among others, which burrow deep into the heart of the gothic to challenge the conventional nightmare. Flowers from the Void unburies a haunted labyrinth of chilling alternate realities eerily similar to our own.

A high school freshman is lured into a sinister pact with a classmate that will cost him more than he could ever imagine. A grieving African witch prepares for initiation into a 17th century Salem coven of white women. A girl with no shadow befriends one. 

Empathy and horrors collide to create a grimy discomfort that will never quite wash off. Otherworldly creatures, malevolent acts, and devastation consume these pages as Gianni Washington resurrects the skeletons in our closets and commands them to run amuck with a new zest for the macabre.

A debut collection of stories from author Daisuke Shen, wherein divine beings and humans alike must rely on omens to navigate the unpredictable lives they find themselves inhabiting.

A couple employs exact clones of their partners, but then slowly begin losing their memories. Four boys with cruel intentions come across a field of statuesque women, unaware of the vengeance that awaits them. Paranoia leads a brilliant engineer into creating a language-processing machine that will tell her the truth of others' emotions.

Vague Predictions and Prophecies explores the myriad ways in which desire structures (and destroys) the self, language, and love, questioning the very nature of human connection. Through beautifully written prose, Shen invokes the surreal to create gigantic worlds packed inside deceptively small packages, emphasizing a resounding truth: that our fractured understandings of each other may yet be enough.

From award-winning author, Jose Elvin Bueno, comes a Filipino horror shrouded by an unspeakable presence that is intent on slashing through the divides between influencer and the influenced.

THE GAME is called The Summoning. “We say a prayer to the Dark Lord. Then He, in His infinite malevolence, sends an evil spirit to visit us. And hopefully, hilarity will ensue.”

THE PLAYERS are the young and the beautiful looking for a kick this Friday night. Rafa, a corporate professional/loyal wingman. Basti, a financial wizard/unrivaled scenester. Vicente, a video gamer/early adopter. Pia, a fashion model/revered influencer. Mitzi, a free spirit/porn star.

THE STAKES are their very own perfectly Instagrammable lives. One by one, they realize that someone malevolent is indeed summoned, singularly focused on killing all of them.

WHO WILL LIVE TO TELL THE TALE?

A24’s Bodies, Bodies, Bodies meets Talk To Me in these pages full of drugs and blood that summon Gigantvm Penisivm: A Tale of Demonic Possession. 

What came first in this Gothic Western, the ghosts or The Black Tree Atop the Hill?

Set in an alternate American old-west that is hauntingly familiar yet strangely off-putting, Marisol is the first to see the tree on the hill, but that’s only to be expected. As the witch of Jack Boyd’s ranch, her job is to notice threats, even amid a most disastrous calving season.

From Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kathe Koja comes a fiercely poetic homage to Emily Brontë’s supernatural masterpiece Wuthering Heights, where love is relentless and the dead are never gone. 

Cathy Earnshaw. Catherine Linton. Mother. Daughter. They never saw each other alive. In Catherine the Ghost these two young women confront loss, captivity, and the dark edge of eternity itself, to claim their full existence and share their power. With hauntings that escape the page and passion that bleeds them red, Koja crafts a tale that transcends the material plane as an eerie comfort that ghosts keep loving long past the grave.

This modern gothic punk remix of Emily Bronte’s classic Wuthering Heights is a ghost story told from the POV of Catherine Earnshaw’s restless spirit from beyond the grave. With artful interior illustrations and classy French flaps, this short novel is a collector’s edition that is sure to delight fans of ghost stories, feminist retellings of classics and the cult fan base of Kathe Koja, who has built a legacy with her intense speculative and horror fiction ever since her award-winning debut, The Cipher.

Jonas Williker is considered one of the most sadistic serial murderers of the modern era. This epistolary novel explores the aftermath of his arrest and the psychological trauma of those who lived through it.

The Pennsylvania native brutalized his way into the zeitgeist during the early part of the new millennium, leaving a trail of corpses across five states before his eventual arrest. All told, Williker was responsible for the rape and murder of 23 women, and is suspected in the deaths of dozens more. His calling card—a torn piece of fabric found on or inside the bodies of his victims—helped popularize his now ubiquitous nickname.

The Purple Satin Killer. 

In the years following his arrest, Jonas Williker received hundreds of letters in prison. Collected here, these letters offer a unique glimpse into a depraved mind through a human lens, including contributions from family, the bereaved, and self-professed “fans.” They represent a chilling portrait of the American psyche, skewering a media obsessed culture where murderers are celebrities to revere. What you learn about the man from these letters will shock you, but not as much as what you learn about yourself.

The Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author returns with a new collection of literary horror and weird fiction that glitters with startling prose and tortured souls. 

Invaginies is an invasion, it is a perception that is bodily and transcendent creating holes, paths, or pockets of alternate truth—and not always voluntary—enlightenment.

Every line sings and strikes like grotesque poetry of the possessed. With 17 disturbing tales exploring plagues, possessions, gender & corruption, set in apocalyptic eras not much unlike our own, Joe Koch brings the terrors of a postmodern world into vivid focus. 

Haunting and beautiful, Koch takes their place among the great names of the weird like Brian Evenson, exploring the queer perspective in horror as Billy Martin and Clive Barker, and contemporary rising voice, Eric LaRocca.

Literary prose meets the grotesque in this collection of stories to galvanize lovers of horror and weird fiction. With a growing cult audience, this collection is sure to shoot to the top of readers' tbr piles.

The Last Night to Kill Nazis is an emotional rollercoaster of adventure, terror and revenge that explores one of the world's most evil events through the lens of a horror novel. An entertaining and enlightening novel that is Inglorious Basterds meets Dracula. 

April 30th, 1945. The Fuhrer has shot himself. Goebbels is drafting a surrender and the slow process for justice begins. This starts a clock ticking for Noah Sammovich, a former army ranger turned OSS secret agent. Only a month earlier he helped to liberate a death camp in central Germany. The trauma of seeing the final solution enacted on his people has convinced him that he must act before the surrender. His mission -- kill as many of the top Nazi leadership as he can before peace becomes official. 

The SS hatches a plan for 150 top leaders to escape from a secret airstrip in the alps and form a New Fatherland in occupied Manchuria. Noah has a plan and a secret weapon, a creature of the night with a thirst for blood and the ability to manipulate the psychic trauma of the pain they caused.

How to Get Along Without Me is a collection that summons the perversity and poignance of twentysomething dating lives from a bracingly wry and honest new literary voice. In a world designed for couples, the protagonists of these interconnected stories have easy access to acquaintances with benefits but no paths to emotional intimacy.

“Surprising, funny, and painfully true. How to Get Along Without Me is an anthropological account of dating, a catalogue of shitheads, a love letter to grandparents, and a reminder that those years of flailing in love and failing to launch are ‘taut with possibility.’”  —Christine Smallwood, author of The Life of the Mind 

“Viciously funny and unashamedly sexy stories that plumb the loneliness of desire from first swipe to coupledom."  —Danielle Lazarin, author of Back Talk

“The stories in How to Get Along Without Me are wary and beautiful, savage and true. Kate Axelrod has given us a book that is both modern and timeless.” —Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive

“The perfect stories for reanimating your soul when you’ve gone numb online but still yearn to engage with the human condition.” —Elisa Albert, Author of Human Blues

“Axelrod’s prose is careful, intelligent, and contemplative...” —Publishers Weekly

Finalist, 2025 Locus Award for science fiction book of the year (winner TBD)

Finalist, Foreword Reviews for best thriller of 2024 (winner TBD)

Winner, CIBA Mark Twain grand prize winner for best satire of 2024

Finalist, Eric Hoffer Award

Locus Magazine Best Science Fiction of 2024

"10 for 2024" Year-End Best Books List

Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future.

Otherwise, he lives an ordinary life. But when a confrontation with a cop on a New York City subway goes tragically wrong, those seconds give Preble the chance to dodge a bullet—causing another man to die in his place.

Government agencies become aware of Preble’s gift, a manhunt ensues, and their ambitions shift from law enforcement to military. Preble will do whatever it takes to protect his family, but as events spiral out of control, he must weigh the cost of his gift against the loss of his humanity.

A breathless thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page, The Man Who Saw Seconds explores the nature of time, the brain as a prediction machine, and the tension between the individual and the systems we create. Alexander Boldizar provides an adrenaline-pumping read that will leave you contemplating love, fear and the abyss.

In each of these stories, the reader is lured into a sinister shadow space, one both familiar and uncanny.

Life is strange, beautiful, and terrible in the world of Victoria Dalpe's debut short story collection. Her characters run the gamut from nosy neighbors to boomtown prostitutes, sentient moss to ghouls with a taste for artist’s flesh. The stories contain chance encounters with truck stop mystics, haunted reality show renovations, and cat people roaming the western plains. In Dalpe's writing, horror mixes with humor, and the ordinary with the macabre. Les Femmes Grotesques is a unique and lush reading experience. Tragic and transformative—an unabashed exploration of the dark feminine.

One of Pitchfork’s 11 Best Music Books of 2021

Recommended book in Rolling Stones June 2021 Issue

With an additional 30,000 words of compelling stories, research, and analysis, music journalist and In Defense of Ska podcast creator/host Aaron Carnes presents the case that ska never died, by jumping headfirst into ska’s “lost years,” i.e., the period after the ’90s third-wave ska boom.

New topics covered include LA’s ongoing vibrant traditional ska scene and how young Latinos are keeping the ska torch aflame, how the devastation of Hurricane Katrina inadvertently kicked off a thriving scene focused on keeping community alive in New Orleans, a deep review of Christian ska group Five Iron Frenzy, who broke a Kickstarter record in the ’10s while making progressive activists out of their fan base, a close inspection of a hipster rocksteady scene in Brooklyn that grew so popular it nearly kicked off a nationwide revival, and more secret ska past revelations with none other than Fall Out Boy lead singer Patrick Stump—who has a story that, up until recently, was carefully guarded.

Plus, the book re-explores several bands featured in the first edition, revealing new layers and more details about all the bands fans love, like Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Operation Ivy, the Slackers, Hepcat, Mephiskapheles, and Reel Big Fish. With 30,000 additional words, this is the complete ska package.

The famous bi-sexual libertine who would be more at home on Tinder than at a Roman Cathedral, gallivants through the streets like brush strokes to become a Baroque 16th century icon.

The year is 1604 and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is a superstar, his blockbuster paintings packing the pews of Rome. Caravaggio should be reveling in prosperity, but the artistic trailblazer and nefarious street-brawler is his own worst enemy. While the genius paints masterpieces, the ruffian in him can’t stay out of jail. Caravaggio is a man at existential odds with himself until falling in love with Lena Antognetti, the prostitute modeling his newest Virgin pictures. Caravaggio paints Lena into a life of wealth and celebrity, but the power couple’s provocative fame earns them a horde of resentful and jealous enemies.

 I, Caravaggio dramatizes the superstar’s psychological unraveling under the sexual and political pressures of the Catholic Reformation.