Download or read book The Shapeless Unease written by Samantha Harvey and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Sleeplessness gets the Susan Sontag illness-as-metaphor treatment in this pensive, compact, lyrical inquiry into the author’s nighttime demons.” —Kirkus Reviews In 2016, Samantha Harvey began to lose sleep. She tried everything to appease her wakefulness: from medication to therapy, changes in her diet to changes in her living arrangements. Nothing seemed to help. The Shapeless Unease is Harvey’s darkly funny and deeply intelligent anatomy of her insomnia, an immersive interior monologue of a year without one of the most basic human needs. Original and profound, and narrated with a lucid breathlessness, this is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and the will to survive, from “this generation’s Virginia Woolf” (Telegraph). “Captures the essence of fractious emotions—anxiety, fear, grief, rage—in prose so elegant, so luminous, it practically shines from the page. Harvey is a hugely talented writer, and this is a book to relish.” —Sarah Waters, New York Times–bestselling author “Harvey writes with hypnotic power and poetic precision about—well, about everything: grief, pain, memory, family, the night sky, a lake at sunset, what it means to dream and what it means to suffer and survive . . . The big surprise is that this book about ‘shapeless unease’ is, in the end, a glittering, playful and, yes, joyful celebration of that glorious gift of glorious life.” —Daily Mail “What a spectacularly good book. It is so controlled and yet so wild . . . easily one of the truest and best books I’ve read about what it’s like to be alive now, in this country.” —Max Porter, award-winning author of Lanny

Download or read book Fictions of Unease written by Andrew Smith and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Tales of Unease written by Arthur Conan Doyle and published by Wordsworth Editions. This book was released on 2000 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HORROR & GHOST STORIES. Selected and with an introduction by David Stuart Davies, this gripping set of tales by the master storyteller Arthur Conan Doyle is bound to thrill and unnerve you. In these twilight excursions, Doyle's vivid imagination for the strange, the grotesque and the frightening is given full rein. We move from the mysteries of Egypt and the strange powers granted by "The Ring of Thoth" to the isolated ghostlands of the Arctic in "The Captain of the Polestar", we encounter a monstrous creature in "The Terror of Blue John Cap" and the beings that live above our heads in "The Brazilian Cat" and "The Leather Funnel"; and we shudder at the thing in the next room in Lot 249. Sit down in your uneasy chair and enjoy this unique collection of chillers.

Download or read book The Lonely Man A Religious Tract written by and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The New Uncanny written by Sarah Eyre and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together 15 specially commissioned stories by internationally acclaimed writers and filmmakers, to explore and update Freud's classic theory of 'The Uncanny' - his piercing and all-encompassing dissection of what gives us the creeps.

Download or read book The New Abject written by Ramsey Campbell and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SOMETHING HAS FALLEN AWAY. We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject. Following the success of Comma’s award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject – Julia Kristeva’s theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Georges Bataille’s societal equivalent – with visceral stories of modern unease. As we become ever-more isolated by social media bubbles, or the demands for social distancing, our moral gag-reflex is increasingly sensitised, and our ability to tolerate difference, or ‘the other’, atrophies. Like all good horror writing, these stories remind us that exposure to what unsettles us, even in small doses, is always better than pretending it doesn’t exist. After all, we can never be wholly free of that which belongs to us.

Download or read book Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty written by Ramona Ausubel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A timely, sophisticated tale [that] explores what happens when a charmed life loses its luster.” –O Magazine From the award-winning author of the new collection Awayland, an imaginative novel about a wealthy New England family in the 1960s and '70s that suddenly loses its fortune—and its bearings. An NPR Best Book of the Year Labor Day, 1976, Martha's Vineyard. Summering at the family beach house along this moneyed coast of New England, Fern and Edgar—married with three children—are happily preparing for a family birthday celebration when they learn that the unimaginable has occurred: There is no more money. More specifically, there's no more money in the estate of Fern's recently deceased parents, which, as the sole source of Fern and Edgar's income, had allowed them to live this beautiful, comfortable life despite their professed anti-money ideals. Quickly, the once-charmed family unravels. In distress and confusion, Fern and Edgar are each tempted away on separate adventures: she on a road trip with a stranger, he on an ill-advised sailing voyage with another woman. The three children are left for days with no guardian whatsoever, in an improvised Neverland helmed by the tender, witty, and resourceful Cricket, age nine. Brimming with humanity and wisdom, humor and bite, and imbued with both the whimsical and the profound, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty is a story of American wealth, class, family, and mobility, approached by award-winner Ramona Ausubel with a breadth of imagination and understanding that is fresh, surprising, and exciting.

Download or read book Only If You Dare written by Josh Allen and published by Holiday House. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen chilling short stories to keep you up at night--but only if you dare. You never know what's out to get you. Though you might think you're safe from monsters and menaces, everyday objects can turn against you, too. A mysterious microwave. A threatening board game. A snowman that refuses to melt. Even your own heartbeat has its secrets. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. When you stop to listen, each beat sounds more menacing than the last. Master storyteller Josh Allen brings thirteen nightmare scenarios to life in this page-turning collection that's perfect for budding horror junkies. In his wondrous world, danger waits behind every doorway . . . even in the most ordinary places. Eerie illustrations by award-winning artist Sarah Coleman accompany the stories, packaged in a stunning hardcover edition complete with glow-in-the-dark jacket. Readers will sleep with one eye open!

Download or read book Thirteen Ways of Looking written by Colum McCann and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Los Angeles Times • The Boston Globe • The Seattle Times • The Independent In such acclaimed novels as Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic, National Book Award–winning author Colum McCann has transfixed readers with his precision, tenderness, and authority. Now, in his first collection of short fiction in more than a decade, McCann charts the territory of chance, and the profound and intimate consequences of even our smallest moments. “As it was, it was like being set down in the best of poems, carried into a cold landscape, blindfolded, turned around, unblindfolded, forced, then, to invent new ways of seeing.” In the exuberant title novella, a retired judge reflects on his life’s work, unaware as he goes about his daily routines that this particular morning will be his last. In “Sh’khol,” a mother spending Christmas alone with her son confronts the unthinkable when he disappears while swimming off the coast near their home in Ireland. In “Treaty,” an elderly nun catches a snippet of a news report in which it is revealed that the man who once kidnapped and brutalized her is alive, masquerading as an agent of peace. And in “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” a writer constructs a story about a Marine in Afghanistan calling home on New Year’s Eve. Deeply personal, subtly subversive, at times harrowing, and indeed funny, yet also full of comfort, Thirteen Ways of Looking is a striking achievement. With unsurpassed empathy for his characters and their inner lives, Colum McCann forges from their stories a profound tribute to our search for meaning and grace. The collection is a rumination on the power of storytelling in a world where language and memory can sometimes falter, but in the end do not fail us, and a contemplation of the healing power of literature. Praise for Thirteen Ways of Looking “Extraordinary . . . incandescent.”—Chicago Tribune “The irreducible mystery of human experience ties this small collection together, and in each of these stories McCann explores that theme in some strikingly effective ways. . . . [The first story] is as fascinating as it is poignant. . . . [The second] captures the mundane and mysterious aspects of shaping characters from the gray clay of words, placing them in realistic settings and breathing life into their lungs. . . . That he makes the story so emotionally compelling is a sign of his genius. . . . The most remarkable [piece] is Sh’khol. . . . Caught in the rushing currents of this drama, you know you’re reading a little masterpiece.”—The Washington Post “McCann is a writer of power and subtlety and beauty. . . . The powerful title story loiters in the mind long after you’ve read it.”—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times “[McCann] unspools complex and unforgettable stories in this, his first collection in more than a decade.”—The Boston Globe “McCann is a passionate writer whose impulse is always toward a generous understanding of his diverse characters.”—The Wall Street Journal “Powerful, profound, and deeply empathetic, McCann’s beautifully wrought writing in Thirteen Ways of Looking glides off the page.”—BuzzFeed “McCann weaves the magic that made Let the Great World Spin so acclaimed.”—The Huffington Post

Download or read book Fever Dream written by Samanta Schweblin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A wonderful nightmare of a book: tender and frightening, disturbing but compassionate. Fever Dream is a triumph of Schweblin’s outlandish imagination.” –Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling and Reputations A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.

Download or read book They written by Kay Dick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression—“queer, English, a masterpiece.” (Hilton Als) Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing “They” creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick’s They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.

Download or read book The Soho Press Book of 80s Short Fiction written by Dale Peck and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction, editor Dale Peck offers readers a fresh take on a seminal period in American history, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Cold War was rushing to its conclusion, and literature was searching for ways to move beyond the postmodern unease of the 1970s. Morally charged by newly politicized notions of identity but fraught with anxiety about a body whose fragility had been freshly emphasized by the AIDS epidemic, the 34 works gathered here are individually vivid, but taken as a body of work, they challenge the prevailing notion of the ’80s as a time of aesthetic as well as financial maximalism. Formally inventive yet tightly controlled, they offer a more expansive, inclusive view of the era’s literary accomplishments. The anthology blends early stories from writers like Denis Johnson, Jamaica Kincaid, Mary Gaitskill, and Raymond Carver, which have gone on to become part of the American canon, with remarkable and often transgressive work from some of the most celebrated writers of the underground, including Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, and Gary Indiana. Peck has also included powerful work by writers such as Gil Cuadros, Essex Hemphill, and Sam D’Allesandro, whose untimely deaths from AIDS ended their careers almost before they had begun. Almost a third of the stories are out of print and unavailable elsewhere. The Soho Press Book of ’80s Short Fiction is a daring reappraisal of a decade that is increasingly central to our culture.

Download or read book Horizontal Vertigo written by Juan Villoro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city. Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city ’s cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today—one of the world’s leading cultural and financial centers. In this deeply iconoclastic book, Villoro organizes his text around a recurring series of topics: “Living in the City,” “City Characters,” “Shocks,” “Crossings,” and “Ceremonies.” What he achieves, miraculously, is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City’s genius loci, its spirit of place.

Download or read book The Emotion Thesaurus A Writer s Guide to Character Expression 2nd Edition written by Becca Puglisi and published by JADD Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling Emotion Thesaurus, often hailed as “the gold standard for writers” and credited with transforming how writers craft emotion, has now been expanded to include 56 new entries! One of the biggest struggles for writers is how to convey emotion to readers in a unique and compelling way. When showing our characters’ feelings, we often use the first idea that comes to mind, and they end up smiling, nodding, and frowning too much. If you need inspiration for creating characters’ emotional responses that are personalized and evocative, this ultimate show-don’t-tell guide for emotion can help. It includes: • Body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for over 130 emotions that cover a range of intensity from mild to severe, providing innumerable options for individualizing a character’s reactions • A breakdown of the biggest emotion-related writing problems and how to overcome them • Advice on what should be done before drafting to make sure your characters’ emotions will be realistic and consistent • Instruction for how to show hidden feelings and emotional subtext through dialogue and nonverbal cues • And much more! The Emotion Thesaurus, in its easy-to-navigate list format, will inspire you to create stronger, fresher character expressions and engage readers from your first page to your last.

Download or read book The Nest written by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives. Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest’s value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems. Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can’t seem to finish her overdue novel. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they’ve envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives. This is a story about the power of family, the possibilities of friendship, the ways we depend upon one another and the ways we let one another down. In this tender, entertaining, and deftly written debut, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney brings a remarkable cast of characters to life to illuminate what money does to relationships, what happens to our ambitions over the course of time, and the fraught yet unbreakable ties we share with those we love.

Download or read book Unwinding Anxiety written by Judson Brewer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller A step-by-step plan clinically proven to break the cycle of worry and fear that drives anxiety and addictive habits We are living through one of the most anxious periods any of us can remember. Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for the wine bottle every night, we are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. But in this timely book, Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone. We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full-blown panic. But it's also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope (e.g. stress eating, procrastination, doom scrolling and social media). Plus, anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought. So we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can't think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us to map our brains to discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices that his lab has proven can work. Distilling more than 20 years of research and hands-on work with thousands of patients, including Olympic athletes and coaches, and leaders in government and business, Dr. Brewer has created a clear, solution-oriented program that anyone can use to feel better - no matter how anxious they feel.

Download or read book The Last House on Needless Street written by Catriona Ward and published by Tor Nightfire. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The buzz...is real. I've read it and was blown away. It's a true nerve-shredder that keeps its mind-blowing secrets to the very end." —Stephen King Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel! A World Fantasy Award Finalist! An Indie Next Pick! A LibraryReads Top 10 Pick! A Library Journal Editors' Pick! STARRED reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly! Named one of the "50 Best Horror Books of All Time" by Esquire! "Brilliant....[a] deeply frightening deconstruction of the illusion of the self." —The New York Times Catriona Ward's The Last House on Needless Street is a shocking and immersive read perfect for fans of Gone Girl and The Haunting of Hill House. In a boarded-up house on a dead-end street at the edge of the wild Washington woods lives a family of three. A teenage girl who isn’t allowed outside, not after last time. A man who drinks alone in front of his TV, trying to ignore the gaps in his memory. And a house cat who loves napping and reading the Bible. An unspeakable secret binds them together, but when a new neighbor moves in next door, what is buried out among the birch trees may come back to haunt them all. “The new face of literary dark fiction.” —Sarah Pinborough At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.