Download or read book Universal Harvester written by John Darnielle and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller "A moving, beautifully etched picture of America’s lost and profoundly lonely." —Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature “Brilliant . . . Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent; it’s nearly impossible to stop reading . . . [Universal Harvester is] beyond worthwhile; it’s a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction.” —Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times “Grows in menace as the pages stack up . . . [But] more sensitive than one would expect from a more traditional tale of dread.” —Joe Hill, New York Times Book Review Life in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut. So begins Universal Harvester, the haunting and masterfully unsettling new novel from John Darnielle, author of the New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award Nominee Wolf in White Van Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It’s a small town in the center of the state—the first a in Nevada pronounced ay. This is the late 1990s, and even if the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It’s good enough for Jeremy: it’s a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck. But when a local schoolteacher comes in to return her copy of Targets—an old movie, starring Boris Karloff, one Jeremy himself had ordered for the store—she has an odd complaint: “There’s something on it,” she says, but doesn’t elaborate. Two days later, a different customer returns a different tape, a new release, and says it’s not defective, exactly, but altered: “There’s another movie on this tape.” Jeremy doesn’t want to be curious, but he brings the movies home to take a look. And, indeed, in the middle of each movie, the screen blinks dark for a moment and the movie is replaced by a few minutes of jagged, poorly lit home video. The scenes are odd and sometimes violent, dark, and deeply disquieting. There are no identifiable faces, no dialogue or explanation—the first video has just the faint sound of someone breathing— but there are some recognizable landmarks. These have been shot just outside of town. In Universal Harvester, the once placid Iowa fields and farmhouses now sinister and imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding. The novel will take Jeremy and those around him deeper into this landscape than they have ever expected to go. They will become part of a story that unfolds years into the past and years into the future, part of an impossible search for something someone once lost that they would do anything to regain. “This chilling literary thriller follows a video store clerk as he deciphers a macabre mystery through clues scattered among the tapes his customers rent. A page-tuning homage to In Cold Blood and The Ring.” —O: The Oprah Magazine “[Universal Harvester is] so wonderfully strange, almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the banal and the creepy, that my urge to know what the hell was going on caused me to go full throttle . . . [But] Darnielle hides so much beautiful commentary in the book’s quieter moments that you would be remiss not to slow down.” —Abram Scharf, MTV News “Universal Harvester is a novel about noticing hidden things, particularly the hurt and desperation that people bear under their exterior of polite reserve . . . Mr. Darnielle possesses the clairvoyant’s gift for looking beneath the surface.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal “[Universal Harvester is] constantly unnerving, wrapped in a depressed dread that haunts every passage. But it all pays off with surprising emotionality.” —Kevin Nguyen, GQ.com
Download or read book Wolf in White Van written by John Darnielle and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle's audacious and gripping debut novel Wolf in White Van is a marvel of storytelling and genuine literary delicacy. Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move. Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. His primary creation, Trace Italian, is an intricate text-role playing game that enables participants far and wide to explore a dystopian America, seeking refuge amidst the ruin. However, when two high school players, Lance and Carrie, extend the game into their reality, the consequences are horrifying, leaving Sean to account for it. Darnielle’s Wolf in White Van invites us to comprehend the depth and intricacy of Sean's life. Told in reverse, the story draws us back to the moment that fundamentally altered Sean’s life as he knows it.
Download or read book Devil House written by John Darnielle and published by MCD. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It’s never quite the book you think it is. It’s better.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times From John Darnielle, the New York Times bestselling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling. Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success—and a movie adaptation—to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell––his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected—back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is. Devil House is John Darnielle’s most ambitious work yet, a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a spellbinding tale of crime, writing, memory, and artistic obsession.
Download or read book Black Sabbath s Master of Reality written by John Darnielle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Sabbath's Master of Reality has maintained remarkable historical status over several generations; it's a touchstone for the directionless, and common coin for young men and women who've felt excluded from the broader cultural economy. John Darnielle hears it through the ears of Roger Painter, a young adult locked in a southern California adolescent psychiatric center in 1985; deprived of his Walkman and hungry for comfort, he explains Black Sabbath as one might describe air to a fish, or love to an android, hoping to convince his captors to give him back his tapes.
Download or read book Beecher s Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1872 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Black Sabbath s Master of Reality written by John Darnielle and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Darnielle describesMaster of Reality in the voice of a fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric center in southern California in 1985. The narrator explains Black Sabbath like an emissary from an alien race describing his culture to his captors: passionately, patiently, and lovingly.
Download or read book The Town written by Shaun Prescott and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A powerfully doomy debut" (The Guardian), Shaun Prescott’s The Town is a novel of a rural Australian community besieged by modern day anxieties and threatened by a supernatural force seeking to consume the dying town. This is Australia, an unnamed, dead-end town in the heart of the outback—a desolate place of gas stations, fast-food franchises, and labyrinthine streets: flat and nearly abandoned. When a young writer arrives to research just such depressing middles-of-nowhere as they are choked into oblivion, he finds something more sinister than economic depression: the ghost towns of Australia appear to be literally disappearing. An epidemic of mysterious holes is threatening his new home’s very existence, and this discovery plunges the researcher into an abyss of weirdness from which he may never escape. Dark, slippery and unsettling, Shaun Prescott’s debut resurrects the existential novel for the age of sprawl and blight, excavates a nation’s buried history of colonial genocide, and tells a love story that asks if outsiders can ever truly belong anywhere. The result is a disquieting classic that vibrates with an occult power.
Download or read book Red Harvest written by Dashiell Hammett and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2010-12-29 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The steadfast and sturdy Continental Op has been summoned to the town of Personville—known as Poisonville—a dusty mining community splintered by competing factions of gangsters and petty criminals. The Op has been hired by Donald Willsson, publisher of the local newspaper, who gave little indication about the reason for the visit. No sooner does the Op arrive, than the body count begins to climb . . . starting with his client. With this last honest citizen of Poisonville murdered, the Op decides to stay on and force a reckoning—even if that means taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.
Download or read book Help for the Haunted written by John Searles and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Part ghost story, part coming-of-age story, John Searles’ Help for the Haunted is a dazzling, dark portrait of a troubled family beset by the supernatural. Searles ratchets up the tension with every passing chapter, and delivers authentic and well-earned scares--all written through the lens of a lonely teenager searching for answers. The result is a novel both frightening and beautiful.” — Gillian Flynn An unforgettable story of a most unusual family, their deep secrets, their harrowing tragedy, and ultimately, a daughter’s discovery of a dark and unexpected mystery. Sylvie Mason’s parents have an unusual occupation—helping “haunted souls” find peace. After receiving a strange phone call one winter’s night, they leave the house and are later murdered in an old church in a horrifying act of violence. A year later, Sylvie is living in the care of her older sister, who may be to blame for what happened to their parents. Now, the inquisitive teenager pursues the mystery, moving closer to the knowledge of what occurred that night—and to the truth about her family’s past and the secrets that have haunted them for years. Capturing the vivid eeriness of Stephen King’s works with the compelling quirkiness of John Irving’s beloved novels, Help for the Haunted is that rare story that brings to life a richly imagined and wholly original world. From the very first page, it takes readers on a captivating journey, told in the heartbreakingly resonant voice of a young heroine who is determined to discover the truth about her family and what went wrong one snowy winter night.
Download or read book The Supernatural Enhancements written by Edgar Cantero and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mesmerizing novel...what begins as a gothic ghost story soon evolves into a wickedly twisted treasure hunt in The Supernatural Enhancements, Edgar Cantero's wholly original, modern-day adventure. When twentysomething A., the European relative of the Wells family, inherits a beautiful, yet eerie, estate set deep in the woods of Point Bless, Virginia, it comes as a surprise to everyone—including A. himself. After all, he never knew he had a "second cousin, twice removed" in America, much less that his eccentric relative had recently committed suicide by jumping out of the third floor bedroom window—at the same age and in the same way as his father had before him . . . Together with A.’s companion, Niamh, a mute teenage punk girl from Ireland, they arrive in Virginia and quickly come to feel as if they have inherited much more than just a rambling home and an opulent lifestyle. Axton House is haunted... they know it...but the presence of a ghost is just the first of a series of disturbing secrets they slowly uncover. What led to the suicides? What became of the Axton House butler who fled shortly after his master died? What lurks in the garden maze – and what does the basement vault keep? Even more troubling, what of the rumors in town about a mysterious yearly gathering at Axton House on the night of the winter solstice? Told vividly through a series of journal entries, cryptic ciphers, recovered security footage, and letters to a distant Aunt Liza, Edgar Cantero has written an absorbing, kinetic and highly original supernatural adventure with classic horror elements that introduces readers to a deviously sly and powerful new voice.
Download or read book The Seven Laws of the Harvest written by John W. Lawrence and published by Kregel Publications. This book was released on with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A popular presentation of God's basic laws of Christian growth that produce an abundant and effective spiritual life.
Download or read book Safe as Houses written by Marie-Helene Bertino and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The titular story revolves around an aging English professor who, mourning the loss of his wife, robs other people's homes of their sentimental knick-knacks. In "Free Ham," a young dropout wins a ham after her house burns down and refuses to accept it. "Has my ham done anything wrong?" she asks when the grocery store manager demands that she claim it. In "Carry Me Home, Sisters of Saint Joseph," a failed commercial writer moves into the basement of a convent and inadvertently discovers the secrets of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. A girl, hoping to talk her brother out of enlisting in the army, brings Bob Dylan home for Thanksgiving dinner in the quiet, dreamy "North Of." In "The Idea of Marcel," Emily, a conservative, elegant girl, has dinner with the idea of her ex-boyfriend, Marcel. In a night filled with baffling coincidences, including Marcel having dinner with his idea of Emily, she wonders why we tend to be more in love with ideas than with reality. In and out of the rooms of these gritty, whimsical stories roam troubled, funny people struggling to reconcile their circumstances to some kind of American Ideal and failing, over and over.
Download or read book Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls written by Nigel Kerner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-01-19 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposes the agenda behind the bio-robotic grey aliens’ genetic manipulation of certain human races • Reveals the Grey’s nature as sophisticated self-aware machines created by a long vanished extraterrestrial civilization • Explains how their quest to capture human souls appears in the historical record from biblical times • Explains how the phenomenon of racism is a by-product of their genetic tampering In 1997 Nigel Kerner first introduced the notion of aliens known as Greys coming to Earth, explaining that Greys are sophisticated biological robots created by an extraterrestrial civilization they have long since outlived. In this new book Kerner reveals that the Greys are seeking to master death by obtaining something humans possess that they do not: souls. Through the manipulation of human DNA, these aliens hope to create their own souls and, thereby, escape the entropic grip of the material universe in favor of the timeless realm of spirit. Kerner explains that genetic manipulation by the Greys has occurred since biblical times and has led to numerous negative qualities that plague humanity, such as violence, greed, and maliciousness. Racism, he contends, was developed by the aliens to prevent their genetic experiments from being compromised by breeding with others outside their influence. Examining historical records, Kerner shows that Jesus, who represented an uncorrupted genetic line, warned his disciples about the threat posed by these alien interlopers, while Hitler, a pure product of this alien intelligence, waged genocide in an attempt to rid Earth of all those untouched by this genetic tampering. Despite the powerful grip the Greys have on humanity, Kerner says that all hope is not lost. Greys exist wholly in the material world, so if we follow the spiritual laws of reincarnation and karma, aiming for enlightenment and rising above the material--a state the Greys are unable to reach--we can free ourselves from their grasp.
Download or read book A Voice in the Stillness written by Terri-Lynn Ledger and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fact that you were born, that you were created, is enough. Terri-Lynn Ledger seemed to have it all-a husband and two children, a strong faith, and a successful career-but, after almost two decades in the demanding corporate world, her job was made redundant. Her busy lifestyle terminated abruptly. Her world shaken-yet she was inexplicably calm-and from this came the inspiration for what is written in these pages. This soothing, yet thought-provoking book is a compilation of real-life experiences of finding balance between responsibilities and being true to your self. The stories are woven together with the deeper guidance that Ledger discovered when she embraced 'slowing down and listening up'. A Voice in the Stillness is for those of us who have come to the point in our lives where we feel that something is missing, that something is wrong, that there must be something bigger and deeper going on. It is for those of us who are eager and intrigued to learn how to quiet and train the mind to listen, to trust the wisdom of our soul, to remember the fullness and completeness of who we are, and to look at the future with joyful expectation. A Voice in the Stillness is a vulnerable and honest account of self-discovery and realization, and a practical guide to transformation and evolution. The author's reawakening is raw and profoundly universal....
Download or read book Slice Harvester written by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Over the course of two years, a twenty-something punk rocker eats a cheese slice from every pizzeria in New York City, gets sober, falls in love, and starts a blog that captures headlines around the world--he is the Slice Harvester, and this is his story. Since its arrival on US shores in 1905, pizza has risen from an obscure ethnic food to an iconic symbol of American culture. It has visited us in our dorm rooms and apartments, sometimes before we'd even unpacked or painted. It has nourished us during our jobs, consoled us during break-ups, and celebrated our triumphs right alongside us. In August 2009, Colin Hagendorf set out to review every regular slice of pizza in Manhattan, and his blog, Slice Harvester, was born. Two years and nearly 400 slices later, he'd been featured in The Wall Street Journal, the Daily News (New York), and on radio shows all over the country. Suddenly, this self-proclaimed punk who was barely making a living doing burrito delivery and selling handmade zines had a following. But at the same time Colin was stepping up his game for the masses (grabbing slices with Phoebe Cates and her teenage daughter, reviewing kosher pizza so you don't have to), his personal life was falling apart. A problem drinker and chronic bad boyfriend, he started out using the blog as a way to escape--the hangovers, the midnight arguments, the hangovers again--until finally realizing that by taking steps to reach a goal day by day, he'd actually put himself in a place to finally take control of his life for good"--
Download or read book We Have Never Been Modern written by Bruno Latour and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the rise of science, we moderns believe, the world changed irrevocably, separating us forever from our primitive, premodern ancestors. But if we were to let go of this fond conviction, Bruno Latour asks, what would the world look like? His book, an anthropology of science, shows us how much of modernity is actually a matter of faith. What does it mean to be modern? What difference does the scientific method make? The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour’s analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming—and rather than try, Latour suggests, we should rethink our distinctions, rethink the definition and constitution of modernity itself. His book offers a new explanation of science that finally recognizes the connections between nature and culture—and so, between our culture and others, past and present. Nothing short of a reworking of our mental landscape, We Have Never Been Modern blurs the boundaries among science, the humanities, and the social sciences to enhance understanding on all sides. A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and replacing the rest with a broader, fairer, and finer sense of possibility.
Download or read book A Touch of Jen written by Beth Morgan and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young couple's toxic Instagram crush spins out of control and unleashes a sinister creature in this twisted, viciously funny, "bananas good" story (Carmen Maria Machado). "Um, holy shit...This novel will be the most fun you'll have this summer." —Emily Temple, Literary Hub Remy and Alicia, a couple of insecure service workers, are not particularly happy together. But they are bound by a shared obsession with Jen, a beautiful former co-worker of Remy’s who now seems to be following her bliss as a globe-trotting jewelry designer. In and outside the bedroom, Remy and Alicia's entire relationship revolves around fantasies of Jen, whose every Instagram caption, outfit, and new age mantra they know by heart. Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, in the flesh, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her wealthy boyfriend and their group. Once there, Remy and Alicia try (a little too hard) to fit into Jen’s exalted social circle, but violent desire and class resentment bubble beneath the surface of this beachside paradise, threatening to erupt. As small disturbances escalate into outright horror, we find ourselves tumbling with Remy and Alicia into an uncanny alternate reality, one shaped by their most unspeakable, deviant, and intoxicating fantasies. Is this what “self-actualization” looks like? Part millennial social comedy, part psychedelic horror, and all wildly entertaining, A Touch of Jen is a sly, unflinching examination of the hidden drives that lurk just outside the frame of our carefully curated selves.
