"An extraordinary, deftly crafted novel, impressively original, and unreservedly recommended." -Midwest Book ReviewMaddie has everything the way she likes it. Her start-up, Mindful Management, is the work of her heart, and her business partner, Joe, the ideal complement to her talents. Of course she''d like to see her younger brother move past his barista stage and get serious, but brotherly obligation means she can work on him during their weekly diner dates. She doesn''t like to think about her ex, the perfect Jane, but even if their breakup was painful, it was grown-up. The boxes are getting checked. Things are humming.But then everything is turned upside down when Maddie survives a vicious attack by an unknown predator. The moment she opens her eyes in the hospital, it''s as if her life starts up all over again on a brand-new day one-except this new timeline reveals that nothing in her old life was what it seemed. Everything Maddie thought she needed isn''t turning out how she planned, and honestly, wasn''t how she really liked it after all.
In the year 2171, in the aftermath of a great war between the Kingdom of East and the Republic of West, a dark nuclear winter devastates the planet, blotting out the sun and stars. Ilana is a child scavenger in the war-torn East, struggling for survival. As she seeks revenge and salvation, her journey will lead her first to a place among rebel soldiers, where her loving bond with a fellow rebel hints at their shared destiny. Ilana’s dissatisfaction with the violence of the resistance ultimately leads to her defection and assimilation into the surveillance state of the West, and finally beyond the wall that encircles the world and into an ancient and forbidden borderland. There, she will face down spirits, monsters, and the truth about herself and her legacy to bring light back to her world.Mihka Emani’s layered and visionary debut recalls the dystopian fantasy fiction of Sabaa Tahir and Sofia Samatar and considers how the alienation of emigration and war can be confronted with nonviolence, reconciliation, deep understanding, and self-acceptance. Readers searching for heroic characters with beautiful, singular, and speculative worldbuilding will be carried away by The Meadow and its epic journey into the very heart of peace and magic.
Fenella has done a Very Bad Thing. She keeps the decapitated head in her freezer to prove it.Stefanie Moers introduces the remarkable Fenella, an unsettling and seductive deviant whose command of witchcraft is either a delusion or dangerous. As the evidence against her piles up, she compels everyone — her attorney, her sister, the courts — to go along with her, even as they try to resist the power of her chaotic charm.Readers of Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, and Shirley Jackson will devour this darkly charismatic debut novella.
Hell's not so scary when you've been there twice already…It's been three years since she lost her sister, Abby, to the Division, and Hettie Alabama has gone rogue. Roaming the West with an outlaw posse, robbing banks and stealing magic, she's broken every rule she once believed in. Nothing matters anymore but finding Abby.Meanwhile, the world is on fire. Hungry for power, the Division leaches magic from the vulnerable, with dire consequences that set Hettie's pursuit of her sister on a collision course with dangerous monsters and even more dangerous men. It's up to Hettie and her cursed revolver, Diablo, to find a way to save the world-or end it.The Legend of Diablo delivers an action-packed conclusion to the Devil's Revolver series steeped in violent history, dark magic, and hope that demands an accounting.
“We are witnessing the birth of an extraordinary voice in these poems” —Roy G. Guzmán, author of Restored Mural for OrlandoA truly incomparable collection, The Rise of Genderqueer constructs a voice with unmitigated and authentic yearning. Its poems soak ink into page from margin to margin, pressing into the reader’s assumptions about gender unmercifully. These poems demand, carry authentic wisdom, deliver keen argument, and disarm with sly wit. Wren Hanks challenges the status quo as neatly as a flower slid into the barrel of a rifle. These are utterly convincing prose forms studded with rhetoric he’s deftly remastered and sampled from our culture and conversations right now.“I’ll never be denatured, // I am nature,” Hanks’s poems insist, as the reader bears witness to a bigger world, light flooding into every corner, revealing what has always been true, vigorous, and expansive.
“A terrific genre-crossing tale with a deft touch of the macabre.”—Donna Thorland, writer on Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of SabrinaHold on to your hats — the Devil’s Revolver series is back with an evil twin, deep magic, zombies, menacing grand balls, a train heist, hand-to-hand high-stakes battles, and two sisters who have grown in their power to face and fight the end of the Weird West.If Hettie Alabama could do what she was told and stand down . . . she might not anyway. Especially when the letters her sister sends from her place of hiding don’t seem quite right, and Hettie’s posse is tying her hands tighter by the day. She’s itching to take the safety off her cursed mage gun, the Devil’s Revolver, and walk through the fire to end the reign of evil that’s choking the magic out of the West—not to mention save her sister once and for all.The only problem? Hettie’s name is in the headlines and on every wanted poster in the nation—but she’s not the one robbing banks and killing innocents, even if the pictures look just like her. She’s up to her chin in high-necked gowns and beauty glamors, charged with fulfilling her word to the influential Favreau family of New Orleans, even as it becomes increasingly clear that they want only to consolidate the world’s waning magic in the hands of the rich and powerful. The politics get more personal as the most loyal of Hettie’s gang uncover the threat of an immoderate technology that steals magic from the unwitting innocent and transfers it to the nefarious elite.Hettie has no choice but to go rogue, and when she drops a black hat over her brow, the Devil’s Revolver’s trigger glows hot. The Devil’s Pact stampedes from San Francisco’s Chinatown tongs through the glittering high society of Chicago to the hidden swamps of the Deep South in its search for truth, genuine justice, and an end to a world that refuses to recognize the power and change wrought by girls.
"There were little sins and big sins, and if you committed too many little sins you were more likely to go on to the big ones. Some sins you did in your mind and then, sometimes, you went on to let yourself fall into them."Darkly witty and compulsively readable, Barbara de la Cuesta's novella lets us into the private life and secret thoughts of Rosa, an undocumented home health aide grappling with menopause and her unruly body, unexpected romance, grown children who alternately worry her and fill her with pride, and how life is confronting her with everything she has ever denied herself or hidden away from. Rosa is a natural storyteller, insightful in hindsight about her own motivations and unflinching in her willingness to look at the girl she was and the woman she has become. Rosa is a daring, funny, and emotional story about a woman moving her life out of the margins and into the sun with the power of confession.
Welcome to the birthplace of the Devil's Revolver, where untold danger lurks for Hettie Alabama and her companions…The second book in the epic, magic-clad Devil's Revolver series follows Hettie and her sister south of the Wall into Mexico, where they must unmake Hettie's infernal mage gun while confronting a magic- and land-hungry army and a monster from hell drawn to the powers of the weapon. Hettie wants nothing more than to break her bond to the cursed Devil's Revolver and find a way to keep her sister safe - but Abby's indigo powers are growing stronger, and in the gated, walled village where they take refuge, nothing is exactly as it seems. Pursued by the Pinkertons, left without allies or guardians, Hettie has to rely on her own grit and determination to do the right thing, no matter the cost.This second installment of V. S. McGrath's sweeping and high-stakes saga draws its truly unforgettable gunslinger heroine to her limits and ends with a satisfying bang.Praise for The Devil's Revolver"The feminist western you've been waiting for: The Devil's Revolver has heart and grit. A terrific genre-crossing tale with a deft touch of the macabre."-Donna Thorland, author of The Turncoat, writer on the TV series Salem and the upcoming Netflix series Sabrina "A fantastically readable female-focused story . . . A really terrific riff on the Western, told with huge verve."-KJ Charles, author of the Charm of Magpies series
Isaac Rubinstein has no choice but to kill himself.He’s in love with Rudolf Valentino, and now Valentino is dead. His acolytes are committing suicide all over the city. The window to definitively display his devotion is closing, and for once the New York tenement apartment he shares with his mother, his grandmother, and his siblings is quiet. It has to be now.Unless he doesn’t, because his grandmother calls out for him right before the blade touches his skin. Unless he does, and the cuts bleed away his heart’s blood.In Karen M. Vaughn’s romantic and darkly funny melodrama, Isaac Rubinstein does both. Dies, and is united with his beautiful Valentino. Lives, and finds a reason to live.A Kiss for a Dead Film Star is an astonishing debut collection of stories that inspire weird love and uncover surprising caches of eroticism. A museum T-Rex fossil awakens and contemplates his existential crisis. A devoted and loving wife copes with the inevitable loss of her handsome husband with an unusual provenance when he grows scales and a tail before her desperate eyes. A woman at the nadir of a breakup hears a song in a dingy bar and becomes rapturously, gloriously pregnant with a child made from song. A lemon grove that has sheltered a family of migrant workers reveals their secrets when their small daughter removes her own arm. Polyamory, the cosmos, and the end of the world serve as the angel of death for a wry scientist at the end of her life.Psycho-medical-magical realism intertwines with old and new New York City, epic love stories, and tales best told in the smoky alleys behind bars or beneath the covers. Karen Vaughn’s capacious imagination and remarkable voice glitter—this collection is a comet that comes around rarely.
The heartwarming and romantic conclusion to the duology celebrated by Teen Vogue as “a nuanced and sexy take on growing up and learning to accept who you are.” Nick Melnikov has finally done it — he’s come out. To himself. To his sister. And to Dex, who listens, hears him, and understands. To Dex, who leads him on a sensual journey and shows him all that they could be, if Nick could only find the courage. It’s one thing to let yourself be open thousands of miles away from your family, but exchange student Nick is uncomfortably aware that his time with Dex is running out. Who will he be when he goes home again? Dex Cartwell is as happy with Nick as he’s ever been, but he can’t ignore the shadow of Nick’s inevitable departure from London, back to his life in Michigan. Is it worth it for Dex to expose his heart to another doomed relationship with a predetermined expiration date? What does Dex really want for the beginning of the next chapter in his life, post-graduation?Dex wants to turn to his best friend in the struggle to find a way forward, but Izzy Jones has her own problems. She’s got one friend in love with her, and when she turns to another for help things get twice as complicated. Izzy never wanted complicated, but life just keeps getting in the way — and sweeping her off her feet.Then Nick’s mom and sister come for a visit, and he is forced to decide between living his truth and protecting himself from fear and change. It’s going to take a lot of courage and a few leaps in the dark if Nick, Dex, and Izzy are to find a way to live and love on their own terms.
She is Hettie Alabama — unlikely, scarred, single-minded, and blood bound to a revolver inhabited by a demon. The first book in an epic, magic-clad series featuring the Wild West reimagined as a crosscultural stereoscope of interdimensional magic and hardship, The Devil’s Revolver opens with a shooting competition and takes off across the landscape after a brutal double murder and kidnapping — to which revenge is the only answer. Hettie Alabama, only seventeen years old, leads her crew of underdogs with her father’s cursed revolver, magicked to take a year off her life each time she fires it. It’s no way for a ranch girl to grow up, but grow up she does, her scars and determination to rescue her vulnerable younger sister deepening with every year of life she loses. A sweeping and high-stakes saga that gilds familiar Western adventure with powerful magic and panoramic fantasy, The Devil’s Revolver is the last word and the blackest hat in the Weird West.
If you look for yourself in the past and see nothing, how do you know who you are? How do you know that you are supposed to be here?When Wyatt brings an unidentified photograph to the local historical society, he hopes staff historian Grayson will tell him more about the people in the picture. The subjects in the mysterious photograph sit side by side, their hands close but not touching. One is dark, the other fair. Both wear men’s suits.Were they friends? Lovers? Business partners? Curiosity drives Grayson and Wyatt to dig deep for information, and the more they learn, the more they begin to wonder — about the photograph, and about themselves.Grayson has lost his way. He misses the family and friends who anchored him before his transition and the confidence that drove him as a high-achieving graduate student. Wyatt lives in a similar limbo, caring for an ill mother, worrying about money, unsure how and when he might be able to express his nonbinary gender publicly. The growing attraction between Wyatt and Grayson is terrifying — and incredibly exciting.As Grayson and Wyatt discover the power of love to provide them with safety and comfort in the present, they find new ways to write the unwritten history of their own lives and the lives of people like them. With sympathy and cutting insight, Ottoman offers a tour de force exploration of contemporary trans identity.
Victoria G. Smith, named an outstanding writer by the Chicago Filipino Asian American Hall of Fame, explores the Filipino diaspora with magic, lyricism, and humor.Ousted years ago from the Malacañang Palace in Manila, where he healed the people’s ailments with the power God sent through his hands, Victor Mariano has made a peaceful, if lonely and uncertain, life for himself as the caregiver “Tita Vee” in a California long-term care facility.Victor is no stranger to living as neither one thing or another—not a man or a woman, not a fraud or a miracle, not black or white or Filipino. Like the sacred mountain that chose a penniless intersex bastard to receive the gift of healing, Victor lives on the very edge of where any other human could travel.Faced with crisis and deportation, tormented by the loss of his unbelievable gifts, Victor has nothing left but memories and a remarkable story of multiple abandonments, faith and disbelief, palaces and poverty. Hair graying, with no hope even of escape, his own tale might be the only way to save the twisted heart of a cruel racist who threatens the small peace he has forged.Faith Healer is a book of tremendous depth and tenderness, a fearless exploration of how small and ordinary tragedies twist a life into a cruelty of social injustice, loss of faith, yearning for love, and literal exile.
When the cutie-pie was opened, the birds began to sing, and what they sang was glittery and savage and fearless and dangerous—be careful with this book.—Catherine Wagner, author of Nervous DeviceThe fanged fairy of Emily Corwin’s forest-mud-stained collection asserts and sings with short rhymes and glitter-spells, and just as you’ve followed her into the deepest and darkest part of the woods, terrified, you’re asked to run away together / and promise to never / do this heart-skipping thing / with anyone else.Don’t be surprised when you find yourself answering yes, yes, yes.Confronting and darling, every word a perfect warm circlet of pink blood, My Tall Handsome raids every crystal jar on the lace-topped vanity for truth, poison, and song until you can’t remember why you ever thought pretty was better than powerful, sugar was better than bitter medicine, or dancing needed more music than your own voice.I sip the goblet down, tip it upside down / wear it as / a hat / I am a new shiny thing / and I steal you away from the hoopla hullabaloo rumpusYou won’t resist this kidnapping into the orchard, into the crabapple abracadabra—it is too crystalline a taking, and there are too many delicious chants to chant along the way.
“As with the best writing, I found myself simultaneously devastated and soothed, satiated and hungry for more.”--Susanna Childress, author of Entering the House of Awe TANKA & ME is a visceral, pleading, and fierce collection of poems, underpinned with thudding vessels and satisfying wreckage. Kaethe Schwehn externalizes the overlooked power of women into a multidimensional character who hunts both the speaker and the reader. Our wild Tanka engages down deep with role-play, sex, prayer, and refusal until we can’t look away or stay quiet. These are love poems, but they love with claws and whiskey, bolt cutters and saws. You can love someone for a long time without knowing how, our speaker realizes, and Tanka prowls and preens and breaks us down until we know how to love ourselves, how to know ourselves, how to free ourselves. TANKA & ME is feminist poetry with muscle, bones, and heart. “Meet Tanka, the girlish/ghoulish spirit at the heart of Kaethe Schwehn’s marvelous TANKA & ME. She’s ‘all ears and a liver,’' knows extraordinary things, has a boyfriend named Briar and poignant adventures in grief, but her penchant for detail, at once hilarious and harrowing, is all Kaethe Schwehn.”--Leslie Adrienne Miller, author of Y
My Seaborgium sings songs of loss and growth, motherhood and viscera, elements and experience, with love and relatable grace. “I'll tell you the story,” the opening poem coos, “of how / I rolled around in a mail truck full of other / people's letters, I was that happy / to be your mother.” This speaker guides us into her expectant waiting, calling on insight from what she knows of her parents, what she thought she knew about her body, fables and gods. She asks all of these potential sources of wisdom to attend to her as forty weeks go by and she tries to detach because “it makes birth manageable,” even as she tests her nipples “to see if they lift / away from the breast” while “standing on a mountain / and trying to spot a suitcase on the ground below.” My Seaborgium travels toward motherhood from before, during, and after the experiences of pregnancy and birth, as the speaker imagines the thickening of her infant’s fur and readies “for the bloody show.” The only wisdom she gleans from her passage is the live and atomic feeling that arrives for a child whom she tells to “be your element’s namesake / and alive, know it. My Seaborgium.” This is a book fat with heavy and wild love. Named a 2015 Best New Poet, Alicia Rebecca Myers is multiply published in prominent journals and magazines and has been the recipient of a Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts residency. “The poems of My Seaborgium utilize metaphor in an attempt to account for the beauty that emerges from our moments of greatest grief. . . . Even through the pain, Myers’s speaker struggles to pay attention, to unfold that pain in ways that feel particular and personal.”--Kiki Petrosino, author of Hymn for the Black Terrific
Jetzt zum Newsletter anmelden und tolle Angebote und Anregungen für Ihre nächste Lektüre erhalten.
Mit Ihrer Newsletter-Anmeldung erklären Sie sich mit unseren Datenschutzbestimmungen einverstanden.
