Spooky Indie Reads

The mysteries of a remote estate lead a young woman down a twisted path in this gripping gothic thriller from the Edgar Award–winning author of Or Else.

After a car accident took the lives of both her parents, Mira Caine’s transition to adulthood was hard and fast. Solely responsible for the welfare of her intellectually disabled younger brother, she’s searching for a better life for them both when she’s approached by an enigmatic woman with an offer that seems like the answer to their problems. Allison Wyndclyffe, the young heir to an enormous fortune who’s suffered her own trauma, is in need of a mentor and companion.

Isolated on an island in the St. Lawrence River lies the Wyndclyffe estate—beautiful but possessing a dark and complicated legacy. As Mira settles in and befriends her troubled charge, she quickly learns her new home is full of questions that no one wants to answer. What caused Allison’s father to murder his wife and almost kill his daughter? How is the tragedy connected to the arcane writings Mira stumbles across? And why do parts of the island feel strangely familiar to her?

As more of the sprawling manor’s secrets are revealed through Allison’s damaged psyche, Mira’s sense of time and self begin to erode. Before long she will come face-to-face with the unspeakable truth at the heart of Wyndclyffe, and not everyone will make it off the island alive.

Perfect for fans of Karen M. McManus’s The Cousins and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Edgar Award–winning and Wall Street Journal–bestselling author Joe Hart’s Wyndclyffe is a taut, multilayered mystery that pulls you in and won’t let go.

“Skip Yellowstone for this rawer version of the West.”—The New York Times Book Review

“This taut, compelling novel explores the great outdoors—and a realm of moral uncertainty. . . . A ferociously gripping book.”—The Economist 

Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival in this taut, propulsive novel reminiscent of the works of C.J. Box, Donald Ray Pollock, and Larry McMurtry.

Observed in Mexico and parts of the United States, El Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a celebratory holiday. Los Muertos is the first anthology of fiction relating to or inspired by this bicultural tradition. Each of the two dozen Mexican and Mexican American writers featured here has a unique affinity for the myriad ideas connected closely to the El Día de Muertos—some in less obvious ways. The stories connect to the metaphors and connotations related to memorializing the dead, some reflecting on the ritualized and religious aspects of what has become a commercialized holiday and others reacting to such cultural appropriations.

In Lies of a Toymaker, a retelling of the classic Pinocchio, Paige, a queer teen and wooden toymaker’s daughter, is slowly turning into wood, and must cross the demonic Land of Toys to stop the evil Deathsprites before they destroy her world.

Award-winning author Kelly Jacobson (Tink and Wendy, Robin and Her Misfits) delivers her latest fairytale retelling in this cross between the classic Pinocchio and a Stephen King novel like The Gunslinger, Paige (a queer eighteen-year-old girl) is a wooden toymaker’s daughter dragged from state to state as her mother, Petta Vitaly, hawks her creations from their caravan. When they finally return to Petta’s hometown, Paige discovers Toy Palace, her family’s animatronic toy business, but she keeps the discovery from her mother—only to find that she has begun to turn into a wooden marionette.

With the help of two girls who use Paige’s interest in them to pull off the heist, Paige breaks into Toy Palace and finds out some of the family history her mother has been hiding from her. Though Paige is abandoned by the two girls, she discovers a captive fairy in one of the upper rooms of Toy Palace, Prince Alexio, who shows her that an entire realm, the Land of Toys, has been destroyed by fairies called the Deathsprites—and that her family has been using Prince Alexio’s powers to help the evil fairies gain power through the animatronic toys they have been selling for the last eighteen years.

Unable to cope with this new information, Paige runs away from Toy Palace and the captive prince, but her mother and a Toy Palace manager end up rescuing Prince Alexio instead. He finds Paige and takes her to the Land of Toys, where the Deathsprites have been turning sweet toys into terrible monsters determined to kill everything in their path. With the help of the talking cricket and Paige’s newfound strength as a marionette, the two must cross the realm of piled toy parts and frightful creations to stop the Deathsprites from making a portal to Earth that will bring destruction on that planet, too.

Lies of a Toymaker is a queer feminist YA retelling of the classic that reexamines what it means to “lie” for the benefit of others, and how the lines between truth and fiction are not always as clear as they seem. The book is told from several different perspectives, but follows Paige’s journey most centrally. Many classics from the original story make an appearance, such as the whale, the talking cricket, the fox and the cat, and the Fairy with Azure Hair.

Read 22 chilling stories, written by two paranormal investigators, about reportedly true encounters with monsters in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

A pastor’s afternoon hike takes a horrifying turn when a creature follows him home and terrorizes his family. A woman’s routine drive becomes a heart-pounding encounter when a Sasquatch chases a deer into the path of her car. A child’s innocent night games go from sporty to sinister when a Wendigo stalks him from the shadows. The Pacific Northwest’s history includes several unimaginable encounters with legendary creatures. This collection of “ghost stories” presents the creepiest, most surprising tales of monsters in the states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

Authors Jessica Freeburg and Natalie Fowler are active paranormal investigators with a shared fascination for things that go bump in the night. The professional writers spent countless hours combing the region for the strangest and scariest run-ins with the unexplained.

Horror fans and history buffs will delight in these 22 terrifying tales. They’re based on reportedly true accounts, proving that the Pacific Northwest is the setting for some of the most unsettling monster tales ever told. The short stories are ideal for quick reading, and they are sure to captivate even the most reluctant of readers. Share them with friends around a campfire, or try them alone at home—if you dare.

Read 28 chilling ghost stories, from two paranormal investigators, about reportedly true encounters with the supernatural in Ohio.

Ghostly inmates stalk the darkened corridors of the Ohio State Reformatory. The chilling cries of children echo from the shadows, near the remains of Gore Orphanage. Ohio is among the most haunted states in America. This collection of ghost stories presents the creepiest, most surprising tales of the Buckeye State!

Authors Jessica Freeburg and Natalie Fowler are active paranormal investigators with a shared fascination for things that go bump in the night. The professional writers spent countless hours combing the region for the strangest and scariest run-ins with the unexplained.

Horror fans and history buffs will delight in these 28 terrifying tales. They’re based on reportedly true accounts, proving that Ohio is the setting for some of the most compelling ghostly tales ever told. The short stories are ideal for quick reading, and they are sure to captivate anyone who enjoys a good scare. Share them with friends around a campfire, or try them alone at home—if you dare.

Hamlet (1601) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. Inspired by Danish historian Saxo Grammatica’s legend of Amleth, which Shakespeare likely encountered in a retelling by French scholar Francois de Belleforest, Hamlet was written sometime between 1599 and 1601. Alongside Romeo and Juliet, it is one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays and has served as source material for countless film and television adaptations. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” For his wit and wordplay alone, William Shakespeare is often considered the greatest writer to ever work in the English language. Where he truly triumphs, however, is in his ability to portray complex human emotions, how these emotions contribute to relationships, and how these relationships interact with politics, culture, and religion. Hamlet is a story of things seen and unseen. Ghosts, assassins, shadowy plots, a play within a play, lengthy asides—its universe swirls with paranoia and fear, allowing us to enter the mind of its troubled protagonist. When the ghost of his father appears on the castle rampart, Danish prince Hamlet grows increasingly suspicious of his uncle Polonius’ role in the former king’s death. As his relationships with Ophelia, his lover, and Gertrude, his mother, begin to sour, Hamlet loses sight of his duties as a leader.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Weird and Horrific Stories (2021) collects some of H. P. Lovecraft’s finest early work. Although his reputation as one of the world’s greatest writers of horror and weird fiction remains undisputed, much of his writing was published in such pulp literary magazines as Argosy, the United Amateur, and Weird Tales, making it difficult to find proper collections. Weird and Horrific Stories attempts to bridge this gap for modern readers, bringing them face to face with some of Lovecraft’s most terrifying creations.

“The Alchemist,” originally written in 1908 and published in 1916, is the story of Count Antoine, whose ancestors were cursed after killing a fearsome dark wizard named Michel Mauvais. Every generation since has seen the death of its male members at the age of thirty-two, an age fast approaching for Antoine. Lonely and terrified, he sets out to put an end to the cycle of death and suffering. “Dagon,” which appeared in The Vagrant in 1919, is a story told by a morphine-addicted man who survived a terrible shipwreck during the First World War. In “The Cats of Ulthar,” published in 1920, an unnamed narrator recounts the legal history of the town of Ulthar, which once was the home to a sadistic couple known for their obsession with torturing and killing housecats. Weird and Horrific Stories collects over thirty stories written at the height of Lovecraft’s career.

This edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s Weird and Horrific Stories is a classic work of American horror reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

The Phantom of the Opera (1910) is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. Originally serialized in Le Galois, the novel was inspired by legends revolving around the Paris Opera from the early nineteenth century. Originally a journalist, Leroux turned to fiction after reading the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. Despite its lack of success relative to Leroux’s other novels, The Phantom of the Opera has become legendary through several adaptations for film, theater, and television, including Andrew Lloyd Webber’s celebrated 1886 Broadway musical of the same name.

In 1880s Paris, the legendary Palais Garnier Opera House is rumored to be haunted by a malignant entity. Known as the Phantom of the Opera, he has been linked to the hanging death of a stagehand in addition to several strange and mysterious occurrences. Just before a gala performance, a young Swedish soprano named Christine is called on to replace the opera’s lead, who is suffering from a last-minute illness. From the audience, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny recognizes Christine, his childhood sweetheart, and goes backstage after the opera has ended to reintroduce himself. While waiting by her dressing room, he hears her talking to an unknown man, but upon entering finds himself alone with Christine. Pressing her for information, she reveals that she has been receiving lessons from a figure she calls the Angel of Music, prompting suspicion and terror in Raoul, who is familiar with the legend of the Phantom. As Raoul makes his feelings for Christine known, the Phantom professes his love for his protégé, and a battle for her affection ensues. Caught in this love triangle, threatened on all sides by jealousy and pursuit, Christine struggles to hold on as her star in the Paris Opera rises.

This edition of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera is a classic of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

This ingenious series is a spin on the current urban craze for 'Escape Rooms', in which participants are locked in rooms, and must solve the puzzles they find there to make good their escape. Here, the book becomes the locked room, the pages become the path, and the reader can take on a challenge every bit as brain-teasing from the comfort of their own home. Visual clues are hidden among the intriguing illustrations; fiendish riddles, logic puzzles, and timed challenges unlock hidden doors and reveal the direction of travel; and mathematical problems provide the codes required to follow the correct path. There are maps and mazes to explore; references to the original Sherlock Holmes adventures to unravel; and a code-wheel that holds the key to unlocking the next page. Solve the puzzles correctly to escape. Get them wrong, and you will find yourself further and further along the path to your own demise.

Community journalism has long been a part of the lifeblood of America, but never have the stakes been so high for the people behind it. 

In Beacons in the Darkness, award-winning journalist Dave Hoekstra interviews the people trying to keep the lights on at community newspapers across the country amid buyouts, declining revenues, fake news, and a pandemic. This book is not another account of the death of local journalism—but rather a celebration of the community ties, perseverance, and empathy that’s demonstrated in community newsrooms from Hillsboro, Illinois, to Charleston, South Carolina, to Marfa, Texas. 

Hoekstra recounts the sometimes-scandalous but always-industrious stories of the families who built these newspapers and passed them down through generations. Modern publishers and owners describe in their own words their struggles and experiments to stay alive in the digital age, not just for their businesses and their families but also for the communities they serve and the neighbors whose stories they tell in their reporting. Beacons in the Darkness provides an intimate view inside the organizations that still publish photos of the local bowling league and the outlandishly large mushrooms on the edge of town, leaving you with a rekindled fondness for your own community paper—and a renewed appreciation of what we all stand to lose without one.

Since 2015—through a proliferation of forms including sculpture, regalia, film, photography, poetry, painting, and installation—acclaimed multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger has been weaving together strands of a new myth. Collectively referred to as Future Ancestral Technologies, this sprawling series of interrelated works seeks to reimagine Indigenous life and culture in a postcolonial world where space exploration has reduced and reconfigured the earth’s population.

Part graphic novel, part art book, SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide offers readers a view beneath, beyond, and between the lines of Luger's ever-expanding artistic universe. In this ecstatically hybrid work, Luger transforms a 1970s military survival guide through poetic redaction, speculative fiction, and iterative line drawing—deftly surfacing and disrupting the colonial subconscious that haunts this vexed source text. An epic and timely meditation on planetary life in the midst of transformation, SURVIVA boldly presents an earth-based, demilitarized futuredream that foregrounds Indigenous knowledge as critical to humanity’s survival.

SURVIVA is the first title from Aora Books, a publishing imprint dedicated to exploring transformational thought and culture that transcends borders, disciplines, and traditions. Rooted in an ethos of polyvocality and planetary consciousness, Aora publishes works that forge bold connections across time, place, ideas, and beings often seen as separate. 

“An imaginative debut” – Sharma Taylor

“Damion Spencer is a voice to look out for” – Irenosen Okojie

A Barbican First debut

The Devil's Horsewhip is a startlingly fine novel-in-stories about Caribbean folklore, superstitions and legends surrounding death by a writer whose prose judges at Wasafiri have described as vivid and with a spectacular voice.

At the pinnacle of the pandemic—a year already punctuated with daily funeral processions—a Jamaican expat gets an envelope covered in red writing from his doctor. It sends him into a mad tumble between bad omen days and fever dream nights until all that he thinks about is that bitter day in the Jamaican White River Valley, where he and other teenagers escaped a double-cutlass-wielding madman out for blood. But death is not one to give up easily. The years are not long enough, neither is fleeing across continents too far for death's spite and all the worse duppies not to come knocking.

Who will cheat death a second time?

A Christian woman who decides to sleep with an obeah man's monkey. The man with the answer to whether Haitian voodoo is stronger than obeah. A woman who knows how to mourn a dead baby. Or the ones who know how to trap a rolling calf, outrun a three-foot horse, and battle a Chinese duppy and win.

If you're superstitious or wary of those who are, come read these sticky tales spun in barbwire.

A woman disappears after a beach party, and the search for her reveals Croatia's complex history well beyond the fall of Communism.

Silva is beautiful and cheeky, she has many admirers; but the police investigation reveals a more complex young woman than her family knew—a  high school student who dabbles in drugs and deals in heroin. But Silva’s brother loves her and stubbornly continues the search for her amid the upheavals of Croatian society. The following years will see the fall of communism and five long years of war. It will be almost 30 years till Silva’s fate is revealed. 

"This finely engineered, haunting novel has been deservedly garlanded with awards.” ---Financial Times

“A brilliant cocktail of mystery and recent history, compellingly told."--Kirkus

“The best crime fiction of 2025 so far: In this outstanding novel, Jurica Pavicic uses the unsolved disappearance of a teenage girl, Silva, to document the impact of the Yugoslav civil war." --Times/Sunday Times

Selected by NYT as one of MOST NOTABLE BOOKS of 2020.   

On a stormy summer day the Aosawas, owners of a prominent local hospital, host a large birthday party. The occasion turns into tragedy when 17 people die from cyanide in their drinks. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. 

But the youth who emerges as the prime suspect commits suicide that October, effectively sealing his guilt while consigning his motives to mystery. The police are convinced that Hisako had a role in the crime, as are many in the town, including the author of a bestselling book about the murders written a decade after the incident, who was herself a childhood friend of Hisako’ and witness to the discovery of the murders.  The truth is revealed through a skilful juggling of testimony by different voices: family members, witnesses and neighbours, police investigators and of course the mesmerizing Hisako herself.

With a cover by renowned comic book artist Lisa Sterle, the poems in Jessica Traynor’s New Arcana explore grief, bad boyfriends and the power of female friendship through readings of the Tarot and Tim Burton movies. 

Moving from teenage friendship and destructive relationships towards a tangling with the realities of family life, domesticity, and desire, this highly inventive collection builds into a heartbroken letter to a dear friend (personified in the poems as ‘lydia deetz’) who died by suicide. Interwoven with numbered poems from a newly imagined Major Arcana, New Arcana celebrates both the holding on, and the letting go. 

Among other awards, Jessica Traynor has received Hennessy New Writer of the Year and the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry 2023. New Arcana is her fourth collection, following Liffey Swim (2014) and The Quick (2019) from Dedalus and Pit Lullabies (2022) from Bloodaxe.

Moving to Mars is an illustrated book that uses science, technology and imagination to present what the future of space travel to the Red Planet might look like and exploration of the lives of its first settlers.

The human race’s desire to explore the boundaries of the known world drove our ancestors to climb the tallest mountains, conquer the poles and cross vast uncharted oceans before ultimately reaching out into space in the 1960s. Huge rockets were built to allow our space pioneers to travel beyond Earth’s orbit and land on the Moon.

But there is another frontier that we have yet to set foot on – Mars. The Red Planet is our next destination; it will be a long process, starting with small scientific bases hidden among craters and ending with enormous self-sustaining cities. But what will the journey from Earth to Mars be like? What will we find when we land? Where will we get oxygen and food? In this book, you will find answers to all these questions about day-to-day life in a Martian city. Mars offers us the opportunity to start anew – are you ready for lift-off? 

Lambda Literary Award-winning author, Ann Aptaker's Cantor Gold faces the questions of who are her real friends, and how far would she go to avenge their deaths.

Early November, 1958

New York City

Art thief and smuggler Cantor Gold's latest underworld caper begins when she arrives at big-time bookie Nick Fortunato's apartment to celebrate his birthday, a ritual the two friends have enjoyed for years. But Nick is missing, and there’s blood on the living room carpet. It’s not Nick’s blood, though. Nick’s death still awaits him. Despite crime lord Sig Loreale’s best plans to protect Nick, with whom Sig has financial dealings, a killer finds Nick hidden away in a cheap hotel owned by Loreale.

Among the players in this tale of friendship, betrayal, and the competition for power between the young and the aging, is the beautiful and possibly deadly Abbey O’Brien. She was Nick’s right hand in his bookie operation, and now that he’s dead, she stands to either gain big or lose even bigger.

The operatives and bettors in Nick’s bookmaking business have a stake in Nick’s death, too…and motives to either solve his murder or get him out of the way: there’s Freddie Holmes, who sizes you up before you’re allowed entry into the betting parlor; Mike Leandro, leader of the crew that takes phoned-in bets; Chickie D’Andrea, who posts the odds from every track and sporting event; Harry “Horsehide” Lanz, a major gambler and trackside aficionado; Sylvia Georgiadis, an aging grand dame of the gambling world; and others.

Assisting Cantor, as always, are her young Guy Friday Judson Zane; cabbie, sometime getaway driver and sometime friend with benefits Rosie Bliss; and Cantor’s criminal mentor Esther “Mom” Sheinbaum.

And always circling are the cops.

Jim Brennan is flying high. Against all odds, he is tipped for the head job at Glasgow's prestigious university; an office at the top of the ivory tower. Not bad for the son of a hardman who grew up in a room and kitchen.

When Jim's son Elliot is arrested on drugs charges, he is approached by men he thought he had left safely in his past. Their demands threaten his family, students and reputation. The question is, how far will Professor Jim Brennan go to save the life he built?

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST NEW DEBUT

'This is a party I'm glad I was invited to' EILEEN MYLES
'Fizzing with ideas' OBSERVER

*

Isn't every family home a monument? The provocative debut novel from the award-winning author.


Olga Pavic's house has been requisitioned.
The council will bulldoze it.
Her home will become a monument to a massacre.

But Olga cannot ascertain which massacre. Three different architects visit, each with a proposal to construct a different monument, to memorialise a different horror.

Within an atmosphere of razor-sharp political surreality, Lara Haworth spins a tender, magical story of familial love and loss. Via a panoply of perspectives Monumenta compellingly and playfully explores remembrance and how tragedy can be the catalyst for remarkable transformation.

By acclaimed author-illustrator of The Grand Hotel of Feelings, this fantastical adventure takes children on an uplifting journey of reflection and self-acceptance.

Lika has never given much thought to her shadow. Sometimes it’s long, sometimes it’s short… but it's never anything more than a shadow. That is until the day it starts acting strangely. When Lika waves a hand, Shadow raises a foot. When Lika sits down, Shadow stands up. Lika tries to hide, but the smaller she makes herself, the bigger Shadow becomes. When Shadow whisks Lika off to a curious land of shadows – and right into a spooky shadow circus – she must look deep inside herself to find her way back home.

A poignant and uplifting book about exploring and acknowledging the parts of ourselves that we try to hide from and embracing the shadows within.

Ten years have passed since their first kiss, and fate has waited long enough.

Verbena Bay has built a successful life on her own terms as a talented realtor, powerful house witch, and alchemist. But despite her magical abilities, she’s been keeping her soulmate at a distance with the help of morally ambigious spell work. But when fate intervenes, her carefully controlled world unravels fast. Now, a violent ghost is after her, a family of witches and warlocks is hunting the Bay sisters, and Verbena must face her past mistakes if she hopes to survive.

Luke Karnes has always sought sanctuary on Star Island, far from the painful memories of his past. He’s rebuilt his life and hoped that one day, it would include Verbena. But when she confesses years of deception, forgiveness feels impossible. Just when things seem at their darkest, Luke’s foster brother arrives, and with him, the voice of their long-dead guardian, pulling Luke deeper into the world of magic—and toward an unexpected future with Verbena.

With deep scars and tangled emotions between them, Verbena and Luke must rely on each other to survive the growing threats from ghosts, warlocks, and dark secrets that refuse to stay buried.

In this high-stakes paranormal romance, love, betrayal, and powerful magic collide, leaving them with no choice but to face their fates together.

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.

A speculative avant-garde queer horror novel that reads like an erotic vampiric nightmare directed by Jodorowsky playing at a '50s drive-in.

Beyond the Planet of the Vampires is a gay pulp horror novel of chance. The narrative erratically loses and regains consciousness during an apocalyptic space invasion of psychic vampires, reaching across intergalactic fathoms in search of future victims.

Smoldering in a social alienation reminiscent of Genet's outlaw anti-heroes, and screaming with Joycean word play in an entirely new and unique idiom, where theories of Kant are situated with reckonings of identity and postulations on the nature of evil.

On each page, Ulrich Baer creates an enigmatic performance of both philosophical and queer thought, exercised through the rich aesthetic experience of a retro horror film. Beyond the Planet of the Vampires redefines avant-garde in a relentless, generation-defining voice.

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.

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.

CBC BOOKS' "CANADIAN POETRY COLLECTIONS TO WATCH FOR IN FALL 2024"

Imagining a vast blue expanse of what a poem might be

The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky is a laboratory of poetic approaches and experiments. It mines the personal and imaginary lives of Stuart Ross and portraits of his grief and internal torment, while paying homage to many of the poet’s literary heroes. It contains new entries in Ross’s ongoing Razovsky poems, prose poems, a remix of an entire poetry book by dear friend Nelson Ball, a couple of collaborative poems, some one-line poems, and lots more. In an era of thematic poetry and conceptual poetry books, this collection is a celebration of possibilities and miscellany.

"Stuart Ross doesn’t hold back, happily for us. In letting his poems go where they want to go, sometimes by leaps and bounds, he reminds us that poetic rules are meant to be broken and that the results, in the hands of a skillful poet, can be moving, or amusing, or subversive, or exhilarating, or all of the above. His work brims with surprises. From start to finish, The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky is a delightful and thoroughly engaging book." – Charles North, author of News, Poetry and Poplars: Poems/Selected Prose

"Here, we’re invited to gawk at horror and kick it in the pants, but also to notice the horror within us, because we all have it, and Ross doesn’t shy away from the odd and uncomfortable. He’s easy with sentiment, honest about grief, clear about death being our final destination, and behooves us mightily to enjoy it while we can. This book contains some of Ross’s greatest love songs for the dead as well as some sideways laments for the living – in these poems we can see ourselves and our friendships, our future losses, and present mysteries examined with no preference or perfunctory reverence. Each time I read Stuart Ross’s work I feel grateful, hopeful, reminded to lift my skeleton up and enjoy the abundant wonders the world holds." – Gillian Wigmore, author of Orient

"Stuart Ross is one of the most important poets to have found himself somehow on planet Earth, where readers have been rejoicing in his work for nearly six decades. He makes it seem easy: open your eyes, your ears, your heart; look into the world and write. However, to do so with such unflinching candour, many-layered humour, the deepest emotional intelligence, and rarest lyric acumen? No, you have to be Stuart Ross to bring all of everything to bear upon being alive in one’s time. To rejoice is also to mourn, of course, and these poems are afraid to do neither. Ross trusts poetry more than any of us, so poetry trusts him back: this book dazzles the very sunlight with what it knows, including of the estrangements of the self upon which poetry so often insists, and the fictitiousness of borders between the present and the past, dream and not-dream, hilarity and grief. Whoever you are, including the laws of physics, you will be startled and moved by The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky. At times a momentarily posthumous point of view propels the poems, but do not grieve (or do): the book is immortal." – Lisa Fishman, author of Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition

W. B. Yeats meets Gregg Araki at a gay bar.

The Tower is a "translation" of W. B. Yeats's The Tower—an homage and reinvention of the poet’s greatest work. Whereas Yeats’s book contended with his mortality as an aging spiritualist Irish Senator, this version contends with a new mortality: ours.

The poems in this collection crystallize the transition from Legault’s late twenties to his early thirties, situated in North America during a time of political upheaval. It takes each of Yeats’s poems as a starting point and queers them. It translates Yeats’s modernist urge, on the other side of a long century.

In her review of The Tower, Virginia Woolf says Yeats has “never written more exactly and more passionately.” One might imagine she’d conclude the same here. You can’t fault these poems for lacking passion.

Yeats used to talk to ghosts. His wife would let ghosts talk through her. They would talk to Yeats, and he would write down what they say. Another way you could put it is that Yeats talked to his wife. Ghosts are much closer than you think. They like to live in books. So Legault spent some time talking to Yeats’s ghost. Or, Yeats’s ghost talked to him. This is him talking back.

"Through Legault, the opening of Yeats’ words in the title poem shift and turn from absurdity to one of anxieties around ageing" —rob mclennan's Blog

"If you've never cared about poetry, you will after reading these modern-day renderings..." —Maria-Claire

An intimate and kaleidoscopic entry in the Multiverse series that excavates survival, storytelling, and coming to terms with an unruly mind.

In A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close, the stakes of writing are also the stakes of living. “Though I no longer wanted to die,” writes Lauren Russell, “our first years together were not easy … because I also did not want to live.” From this enigmatic in-between, Russell dives into multitudes: cats and questions; compulsion and devotion; narrative and diagnosis; language and loneliness; scrupulosity and stasis; suicidality and love.

Resisting the neurotypical expectation to choose any one answer arising from her explorations, she invites readers to engage: a pop quiz, a twelve-sided die, an abecedarian confession, a box of mirrors, several idiosyncratic diagnostic tools, and a suite of obsidian waiting rooms. Holding binaries in suspense, Russell seamlessly unfolds and enfolds the various operations of language, moving through forms with the restless brilliance of an architect turned ethicist turned collagist turned origamist. And everything, it seems, finds some way to turn back into poetry.

From psychological evaluation to clickbait, Russell transforms the world’s furious search for explanations into open inquiry. “How flat is the silence in your pocket?” she asks. “Is the inside of a wish an ossuary?” “Do questions stick you to the wall of sociability?” “Did I say I am making my own bestiary?” “What kind of cascade is this?” In a book dedicated to knowing, to not-knowing, and to its readers, Russell pulls back the curtain and invites us in.

From “an important writer in every sense” (David Foster Wallace), a novel that imagines a future in which sweeping civil conflict has forced America’s young people to flee its borders, into an unwelcoming world.

One such American is Ron Patterson, who finds himself on distant shores, working as a repairman and sharing a room with other refugees. In an unnamed city wedged between ocean and lush mountainous forest, Ron can almost imagine a stable life for himself. Especially when he makes the first friend he has had in years—a mysterious migrant named Marlise, who bears a striking resemblance to a onetime classmate.

Nearly a decade later—after anti-migrant sentiment has put their whirlwind intimacy and asylum to an end—Ron is living in “Little America,” an enclave of migrants in one of the few countries still willing to accept them. Here, among reminders of his past life, he again begins to feel that he may have found a home. Ron adopts a stray dog, observes his neighbors, and lands a repairman job that allows him to move through the city quietly. But this newfound security, too, is quickly jeopardized, as resurgent political divisions threaten the fabric of Little America. Tapped as an informant against the rise of militant gangs and contending with the appearance of a strangely familiar woman, Ron is suddenly on dangerous and uncertain ground.

Brimming with mystery, suspense, and Kalfus’s distinctive comic irony, 2 A.M. in Little America poses several questions vital to the current moment: What happens when privilege is reversed? Who is watching and why? How do tribalized politics disrupt our ability to distinguish what is true and what is not? This is a story for our time—gripping, unsettling, prescient—by one of our most acclaimed novelists.

“In villages where women bore most of the weight of a constricted life, witches flew by night on broomsticks,” said Italo Calvino of the way imagination bridges the gap between everyday existence and an idealized alternative. The fifteen stories of Animal Wife are unified by girls and women who cross this threshold seeking liberation from family responsibilities, from societal expectations, from their own minds. A girl born with feathers undertakes a quest for the mother who abandoned her. An indecisive woman drinks Foresight, only to become stymied by the futures branching before her. A proofreader cultivates a cage-fighting alter ego. A woman becomes psychologically trapped in her car. A girl acts on her desire for a childhood friend as a monster draws closer to the shore. A widow invites a bear to hibernate in her den. Animal Wife was selected as the winner of the Red Hen Fiction Award by New York Times bestselling author Ann Hood, who says, “From the first sentence Animal Wife grabbed me and never let go. Sensual and intelligent, with gorgeous prose, it made me dizzy with its exploration and illumination of the inner and outer lives of girls and women.”

SYDNEY, 1959. Billy Glasheen is flogging mailorder schemes out of a seedy back room in Chinatown. Want to play guitar in 14 days? Learn Italian in your spare time? Win big with an infallible betting system? Master the love secrets of the ancients? Bill’s your man.

But there are unsettled accounts in Billy’s past, and they’re coming due. As shadowy factions line up around him, he can’t be sure if he’s the target or caught in someone else’s crossfire. Or is he imagining the whole thing? Finally an ultimatum is delivered: come up with a small fortune in hush money, or cop a bullet and a shallow grave. Six months, and the clock is ticking.

It’s time to call in all debts and favours, but right when he needs them most, Bill’s old gang of beatniks, bandits, and hoochie coochie girls seem to have made themselves strangely scarce. He’s on his own.

Amaze Your Friends is a dark, wild ride through a city of easy money and sudden falls, of high times and hangovers, of jukebox rock’n’roll and the lowdown flophouse blues.

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically confined to a psychiatric ward and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, resulting in the loss of memories. This is the story of her struggle against mental illness and isolation

"(Boström Knausgård's) first openly autobiographical book becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband’s."—The Guardian

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this “factory” progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear. What good is a writer without her memory? This book, based on the author’s experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the past, to create a story, to make sense, and to keep alive ties to family, friends, and even oneself. Moments from childhood, youth, marriage, parenting, and divorce flicker across the pages of October Child. This is the story of one woman’s struggle against mental illness and isolation. It is a raw testimony of how writing can preserve and heal.