Download or read book The New and Improved Romie Futch written by Julia Elliott and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Wilds, which Publishers Weekly called “a brilliant combination of emotion and grime, wit and horror,” comes a debut novel that is part dystopian satire, part Southern Gothic tall tale: a disturbing yet hilarious romp through a surreal New South where newfangled medical technologies change the structure of the human brain and genetically modified feral animals ravage the blighted landscape. Down on his luck and still pining for his ex-wife, South Carolina taxidermist Romie Futch spends his evenings drunkenly surfing the Internet before passing out on his couch. In a last-ditch attempt to pay his mortgage, he replies to an ad and becomes a research subject in an experiment conducted by the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta, Georgia. After “scientists” download hifalutin humanities disciplines into their brains, Romie and his fellow guinea pigs start debating the works of Foucault and hashing out the intricacies of postmodern subjectivity. The enhanced taxidermist, who once aspired to be an artist, returns to his hometown ready to revolutionize his work and revive his failed marriage. As Romie tracks down specimens for his elaborate animatronic taxidermy dioramas, he develops an Ahab-caliber obsession with bagging “Hogzilla,” a thousand-pound feral hog that has been terrorizing Hampton County. Cruising hog-hunting websites, he learns that this lab-spawned monster possesses peculiar traits. Pulled into an absurd and murky underworld of biotech operatives, FDA agents, and environmental activists, Romie becomes entangled in the enigma of Hogzilla’s origins. Exploring the interplay between nature and culture, biology and technology, reality and art, The New and Improved Romie Futch probes the mysteries of memory and consciousness, offering a darkly comic yet heartfelt take on the contemporary human predicament.
Download or read book The Wilds written by Julia Elliott and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At an obscure South Carolina nursing home, a lost world reemerges as a disabled elderly woman undergoes newfangled brain-restoration procedures and begins to explore her environment with the assistance of strap-on robot legs. At a deluxe medical spa on a nameless Caribbean island, a middle-aged woman hopes to revitalize her fading youth with grotesque rejuvenating therapies that combine cutting-edge medical technologies with holistic approaches and the pseudo-religious dogma of Zen-infused self-help. And in a rinky-dink mill town, an adolescent girl is unexpectedly inspired by the ravings and miraculous levitation of her fundamentalist friend's weird grandmother. These are only a few of the scenarios readers encounter in Julia Elliott's debut collection, The Wilds. In these genre-bending stories, teetering between the ridiculous and the sublime, Elliott's language-driven fiction uses outlandish tropes to capture poignant moments in her humble characters' lives. Without abandoning the tenets of classic storytelling, Elliott revels in lush lyricism, dark humor, and experimental play. "--
Download or read book Gutshot written by Amelia Gray and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing new collection from the inimitable Amelia Gray. A woman creeps through the ductwork of a quiet home. A medical procedure reveals an object of worship. A carnivorous reptile divides and cauterizes a town. Amelia Gray's curio cabinet expands in Gutshot, where isolation and coupling are pushed to their dark and outrageous edges. These singular stories live and breathe on their own, pulsating with energy and humanness and a glorious sense of humor. Hers are stories that you will read and reread—raw gems that burrow into your brain, reminders of just how strange and beautiful our world is. These collected stories come to us like a vivisected body, the whole that is all the more elegant and breathtaking for exploring its most grotesque and intimate lightless viscera.
Download or read book Empress of Forever written by Max Gladstone and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST! “A classic space opera...a universe we’ve never seen before.” —Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author From Hugo Award finalist Max Gladstone comes a smart, swashbuckling, wildly imaginative adventure; the saga of a rag-tag team of brilliant misfits, dangerous renegades, and enhanced outlaws in a war-torn future. A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she tries to outrun people who are trying to steal her success. In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine. The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider--until Vivian Liao arrives. Trapped between the Pride—a ravening horde of sentient machines—and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind. A magnificent work of vivid imagination and universe-spanning action, Empress of Forever is a feminist Guardians of the Galaxy crossed with Star Wars and spiced with the sensibility and spirit of Iain M. Banks and William Gibson. “Empress of Forever is tense and vast, complex and twisty, a space opera epic that’s a lot faster on the draw than Star Wars or Star Trek ever dreamed of being. But at its core, it’s an epic about the value of empathy and the importance of compassion. It’s amazingly good.”—Locus “With Empress of Forever, Max Gladstone’s remarkable talent is operating at full stretch, demonstrating the strength, power, and originality at his command. This unique and propulsive novel yields a deep, cellular-level enchantment filled at every turn with curiosity and delight.”—Peter Straub “Empress of Forever is a story that will make you weep with wonder. The whole book is filled with the kind of snark that I love and an endless majesty of stars. It broke me to pieces and then stitched me back together with golden thread. Simply glorious.”—K.B. Wagers, author of Behind the Throne “Galaxy-saving space opera with cool original settings and a unique band of adventurers that change each other for the better. It was a wild ride and I really enjoyed it.”—Martha Wells, Hugo Award-winning author of The Murderbot Diaries “Incorporates wonder and wit to create a feminist, humanist playground. Introduces one mind-blowing concept after another, capitalizing on the concept of personal power while candidly addressing personal failure. This feast for the imagination intelligently captures the complexities of a variety of relationships in an adrenaline-fueled series of escapades and will leave readers both exhausted and elated.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “A fantastic tale of adventure on the grandest scale of epic space opera, spanning galaxies full of battles and traps as well as trade and negotiation, all told with humor as the crew seeks allies, weapons, and ships to fight back against The Empress to save the galaxy—and so Viv can find her way home.”—Booklist, starred review “Vivian is an amazing woman: with no more than her sharp wit in a universe of AIs and enhanced beings, she still ends up being the key to the truth. Gladstone's epic space opera and fast-paced adventure will thrill readers.”—Library Journal, starred review At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Feral Animals in the American South written by Abraham Gibson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book retells American southern history from feral animals' perspective, examining social, cultural, and evolutionary consequences of domestication and feralization.
Download or read book The Sun Collective written by Charles Baxter and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2020 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A timely and unsettling new novel about the people drawn to and unmoored by a local activist group more dangerous than it appears ... Once a promising actor, Tim Brettigan has gone missing. His father thinks he may have seen him among some homeless people. And though she knows he left on purpose, his mother has been searching for him all over the city. She checks the usual places--churches, storefronts, benches--and stumbles upon a local community group with lofty goals and an enigmatic leader who will alter all of their lives. Christina, a young woman rapidly becoming addicted to a boutique drug that gives her a feeling of blessedness, is inexplicably drawn to the same collective by a man who's convinced he may start a revolution. As the lives of these four characters intertwine, a story of guilt, anxiety, and feverish hope unfolds in the city of Minneapolis"--
Download or read book The Best American Short Stories 2019 written by Anthony Doerr and published by Best American Series (R). This book was released on 2019-10 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr brings his"stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. #1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr brings his"stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. Doerr and the series editor, Heidi Pitlor, winnow down twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.
Download or read book Revelator written by Daryl Gregory and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • The dark, gripping tale of a 1930’s family in the remote hills of the Smoky Mountains, their secret religion, and the daughter who turns her back on their mysterious god—from the acclaimed author of Spoonbenders. “Gods and moonshine in the Great Depression, written with a tenderness and brutality … this is as good as novels get.” —Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians In 1933, nine-year-old Stella is left in the care of her grandmother, Motty, in the backwoods of Tennessee. The mountains are home to dangerous secrets, and soon after she arrives, Stella wanders into a dark cavern where she encounters the family's personal god, an entity known as the Ghostdaddy. Years later, after a tragic incident that caused her to flee, Stella—now a professional bootlegger—returns for Motty's funeral, and to check on the mysterious ten-year-old girl named Sunny that Motty adopted. Sunny appears innocent enough, but she is more powerful than Stella could imagine—and she’s a direct link to Stella's buried past and her family's destructive faith. Haunting and wholly engrossing, summoning mesmerizing voices and giving shape to the dark, Revelator is a southern gothic tale for the ages.
Download or read book Dark Eden written by Chris Beckett and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the alien, sunless planet they call Eden, the 532 members of the Family shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest’s lantern trees. Beyond the Forest lie the mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it. The Oldest among the Family recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross the stars. These ships brought us here, the Oldest say—and the Family must only wait for the travelers to return. But young John Redlantern will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. He will abandon the old ways, venture into the Dark…and discover the truth about their world. Already remarkably acclaimed in the UK, Dark Eden is science fiction as literature; part parable, part powerful coming-of-age story, set in a truly original alien world of dark, sinister beauty--rendered in prose that is at once strikingly simple and stunningly inventive.
Download or read book The Virgins written by Pamela Erens and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s 1979, and Aviva Rossner and Seung Jung are notorious at Auburn Academy. They’re an unlikely pair at an elite East Coast boarding school (she’s Jewish; he’s Korean American) and hardly shy when it comes to their sexuality. Aviva is a formerly bookish girl looking for liberation from an unhappy childhood; Seung is an enthusiastic dabbler in drugs and a covert rebel against his demanding immigrant parents. In the minds of their titillated classmates—particularly that of Bruce Bennett-Jones—the couple lives in a realm of pure, indulgent pleasure. But, as is often the case, their fabled relationship is more complicated than it seems: despite their lust and urgency, their virginity remains intact, and as they struggle to understand each other, the relationship spirals into disaster. The Virgins is the story of Aviva and Seung’s descent into confusion and shame, as re-imagined in richly detailed episodes by their classmate Bruce, a once-embittered voyeur turned repentant narrator. With unflinching honesty and breathtaking prose, Pamela Erens brings a fresh voice to the tradition of the great boarding school novel.
Download or read book Man V Nature written by Diane Cook and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A refreshingly imaginative, daring debut collection of stories that illuminates with audacious wit the complexity of human behavior, and the veneer of civilization over our darkest urges. Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive, but survive. In "Girl on Girl," a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can't have in "Meteorologist Dave Santana." And in the title story, a long-fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. Below the quotidian surface of Diane Cook's worlds lurks an unexpected surreality that reveals our most curious, troubling, and bewildering behavior. Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world: a pack of "not-needed" boys takes refuge in a murky forest where they compete against one another for their next meal; an alpha male is pursued through city streets by murderous rivals and desirous women; helpless newborns are snatched from their suburban yards by a man who stalks them. Through these characters Cook asks: What is at the root of our most heartless, selfish impulses? Why are people drawn together in such messy, needful ways? When the unexpected intrudes upon the routine, what do we discover about ourselves? As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.
Download or read book Do You Dream of Terra Two written by Temi Oh and published by Simon & Schuster UK. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A major new voice. Read Temi Oh today. Everybody will be reading her tomorrow' Stephen Baxter. author of World Engines 'A brilliant, beautiful debut. Reading it will change your heart' Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms * The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet meets The 100 in this unforgettable debut by a brilliant new voice. * A century ago, scientists theorised that a habitable planet existed in a nearby solar system. Today, ten astronauts will leave a dying Earth to find it. Four are decorated veterans of the 20th century’s space-race. And six are teenagers, graduates of the exclusive Dalton Academy, who’ve been in training for this mission for most of their lives. It will take the team twenty-three years to reach Terra-Two. Twenty-three years spent in close quarters. Twenty-three years with no one to rely on but each other. Twenty-three years with no rescue possible, should something go wrong. And something always goes wrong. * Don't miss one of Cosmopolitans books by people of colour to get excited about in 2019, called 'a tightly wound epic' that 'will change your heart' by Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms. * WHY READERS DREAM OF TERRA-TWO . . . 'An ambitious 500-page coming-of-age blockbuster . . .Oh is excellent at portraying the aching sense of loss on a one-way trip to the stars' Guardian 'A tightly wound, emotional epic that asks important questions about humanity, goodness, belief, technology, love, friendship, and duty. At what point is grabbing hold of one’s destiny ultimately an attempt to escape some other? Like all great writers, Temi Oh refuses the easy answer, instead ruminating upon the question itself. This novel is a brilliant, beautiful debut. Reading it will change your heart.' Christian Kiefer, author of Phantoms 'One of the most absorbing books I have ever read' 'This book seemed to take over my life whilst I was reading it - if I wasn't actually reading, I was thinking about it' 'I'm in love with this book . . . It is a beautiful, sprawling, literary delight with an unforgettable cast undertaking an unforgettable journey.' 'For fans of the character-driven The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet series, Terra-Two is perfect . . . A strong, haunting, character-driven story . . . This book and its characters will stay with you for a long time.' 'Do You Dream of Terra-Two succeeds both as a great sci-fi story and a brilliant drama . . . Even though you expect things to go wrong in this story, they still wrong foot you when they do. 5*. 'Beautifully written . . . It's inspirational to read' 'I would love to be able to write like Temi Oh. I should start taking notes . . . Highly recommended!'
Download or read book Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart written by J. D. Greear and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If there were a Guinness Book of World Records entry for ‘amount of times having prayed the sinner’s prayer,’ I’m pretty sure I’d be a top contender,” says pastor and author J. D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. “Lack of assurance” is epidemic among evangelical Christians. In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J. D. shows that faulty ways of present- ing the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of “asking Jesus into your heart” or “giving your life to Jesus” often gives false assurance to those who are not saved—and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality. Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation? Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults.
Download or read book Poetry in a Global Age written by Jahan Ramazani and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideas, culture, and capital flow across national borders with unprecedented speed, but we tend not to think of poems as taking part in globalization. Jahan Ramazani shows that poetry has much to contribute to understanding literature in an extra-national frame. Indeed, the globality of poetry, he argues, stands to energize the transnational turn in the humanities. Poetry in a Global Age builds on Ramazani’s award-winning A Transnational Poetics, a book that had a catalytic effect on literary studies. Ramazani broadens his lens to discuss modern and contemporary poems not only in relation to world literature, war, and questions of orientalism but also in light of current debates over ecocriticism, translation studies, tourism, and cultural geography. He offers brilliant readings of postcolonial poets like Agha Shahid Ali, Lorna Goodison, and Daljit Nagra, as well as canonical modernists such as W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, and Marianne Moore. Ramazani shows that even when poetry seems locally rooted, its long memory of forms and words, its connections across centuries, continents, and languages, make it a powerful imaginative resource for a global age. This book makes a strong case for poetry in the future development of world literature and global studies.
Download or read book Rupetta written by N. A. Sulway and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four hundred years ago, in a small town in rural France, a young woman creates the future in the shape of Rupetta. Part mechanical, part human, Rupetta's consciousness is tied to the women who wind her. In the years that follow she is bought and sold, borrowed, forgotten and revered. By the twentieth century, the Rupettan four-fold law rules everyone's lives, but Rupetta--the immortal being on whose existence and history those laws are based--is the keeper of a secret that will tear apart the world her followers have built in her name. The closeness between women is mirrored in the relationship between Henri and Miri, a woman at the college with whom she fall in love, and also between mothers and daughters and grandmothers and granddaughters - a heritage of affection that loops down over the centuries.
Download or read book The Cruft of Fiction written by David Letzler and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2017-06 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title What is the strange appeal of big books? The mega-novel, a genre of erudite tomes with encyclopedic scope, has attracted wildly varied responses, from fanatical devotion to trenchant criticism. Looking at intimidating mega-novel masterpieces from The Making of Americans to 2666, David Letzler explores reader responses to all the seemingly random, irrelevant, pointless, and derailing elements that comprise these mega-novels, elements that he labels "cruft" after the computer science term for junk code. In The Cruft of Fiction, Letzler suggests that these books are useful tools to help us understand the relationship between reading and attention. While mega-novel text is often intricately meaningful or experimental, sometimes it is just excessive and pointless. On the other hand, mega-novels also contain text that, though appearing to be cruft, turns out to be quite important. Letzler posits that this cruft requires readers to develop a sophisticated method of attentional modulation, allowing one to subtly distinguish between text requiring focused attention and text that must be skimmed or even skipped to avoid processing failures. The Cruft of Fiction shows how the attentional maturation prompted by reading mega-novels can help manage the information overload that increasingly characterizes contemporary life.
Download or read book The Empress written by S. J. Kincaid and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrilling sequel to S.J. Kincaid’s New York Times bestselling novel, The Diabolic, which TeenVogue.com called “the perfect kind of high-pressure adventure.” It’s a new day in the Empire. Tyrus has ascended to the throne with Nemesis by his side and now they can find a new way forward—one where they don’t have to hide or scheme or kill. One where creatures like Nemesis will be given worth and recognition, where science and information can be shared with everyone and not just the elite. But having power isn’t the same thing as keeping it, and change isn’t always welcome. The ruling class, the Grandiloquy, has held control over planets and systems for centuries—and they are plotting to stop this teenage Emperor and Nemesis, who is considered nothing more than a creature and certainly not worthy of being Empress. Nemesis will protect Tyrus at any cost. He is the love of her life, and they are partners in this new beginning. But she cannot protect him by being the killing machine she once was. She will have to prove the humanity that she’s found inside herself to the whole Empire—or she and Tyrus may lose more than just the throne. But if proving her humanity means that she and Tyrus must do inhuman things, is the fight worth the cost of winning it?
