Hana Sasaki will introduce you to many things—among them, an oracular toaster, a woman who grows a tail, and an extraordinary sex-change operation. Set in Japan, these stories tip into the fantastical, plumb the power of memory, and measure the human capacity to love.

    Her story "Pleiades" was called "a masterpiece" by Dave Eggers. Sachdeva has a talent for creating moving and poignant scenes, following her highly imaginative plots to their logical ends, and depicting how one small miracle can affect everyone in its wake.The world by night --Glass-lung --Logging lake --Killer of kings --All the names for God --Robert Greenman and the mermaid --Anything you might want --Manus --Pleiades

    There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime - Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day" - sent to her publisher shortly before her death - is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.Contents:The geranium -- The barber -- Wildcat -- The crop -- The turkey -- The train -- The peeler -- The heart of the park -- A stoke of good fortune -- Enoch and the gorilla -- A good man is hard to find -- A late encounter with the enemy -- The life you save may be your own -- The river -- A circle in the fire -- The displaced person -- A temple of the Holy Ghost -- The artificial nigger -- Good country people -- You can't be any poorer than dead -- Greenleaf -- A view of the woods -- The enduring chill -- The comforts of home -- Everything that rises must converge -- The partridge festival -- The lame shall enter first -- Why do the heathen rage? -- Revelation -- Parker's back -- Judgement Day.

    While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.The husband stitch --Inventory --Mothers --Especially heinous --Real women have bodies --Eight bites --The resident --Difficult at parties

    Snyder, Tim Curran, Pete Rawlik, Sam Gafford, Christine Morgan, Cody Goodfellow and many more, Return of the Old Ones: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror continues the Dark Regions Weird Fiction line with 19 original stories from some of the best authors in Lovecraftian horror and weird fiction today. Return of the Old Ones will only have one signed edition (deluxe slipcased hardcover) and will feature a similar stamp design to the popular Cthulhu head stamping featured on the World War Cthulhu hardcovers. It will be signed by all contributors and will feature the original color cover artwork by Vincent Chong as color end sheets.

    Major literary talent Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, coming Summer 2016, combines the otherworldly wisdom of her much-loved debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, with the precision of the short-story form. A Guide toBeing Born is organized around the stages of life—love, conception, gestation, birth—and the transformations that happen as people experience deeply altering life events, falling in love, becoming parents, looking toward the end of life. In each of these eleven stories Ausubel’s stunning imagination and humor are moving, entertaining, and provocative, leading readers to see the familiar world in a new way.In “Atria” a pregnant teenager believes she will give birth to any number of strange animals rather than a human baby; in “Catch and Release” a girl discovers the ghost of a Civil War hero living in the woods behind her house; and in “Tributaries” people grow a new arm each time they fall in love. Funny, surprising, and delightfully strange—all the stories have a strong emotional core; Ausubel’s primary concern is always love, in all its manifestations.

    (The paperback versions total about 680 pages). Mad wizards wrenched open a gateway to hell on Eotrus land. A gateway that's determined to stay open. What is the young knight, Claradon Eotrus, to do when he discovers that the man he recruited to help him close that gateway is either the greatest hero the world has ever known or the devil himself, thrown down from the heavens by the gods in olden days? Is he out to save Midgaard or destroy it? Does he serve the Norse gods: Odin, Thor, and the rest, or did he slay them? And if he's truly the harbinger of doom, how can Claradon stop him? How can he even survive him? Claradon's Midgaard is a world filled of valiant knights, mysterious sorcerers, ruthless bounty hunters, complex political intrigues, monsters of myth and legend: the undead of this variety and that, gods and demons, and otherworldly evils so frightening you dare not read these books before sleep. But most of all, it's filled with stories that you will always remember, and characters that you will never forget. PRAISE FOR GLENN G. THATER'S HARBINGER OF DOOM SAGA “Thater is one of the most talented and exciting authors of our time. He is right up there with Tolkien, maybe even better. His unique writing technique leaves you pondering what is going to happen next and yearning for more.” — a Google Play reviewer "…a masterfully crafted epic fantasy about the ages old struggle between good and evil." --- Carol Marrs Phipps, author of Elf Killers "…a must read for all fans of classic sword and sorcery. A blend of Howard, Moorcock, Wagner, with a twist of Lovecraft. Well written and hugely entertaining." --- An Amazon reviewer "For a long time I have searched for a fantasy worthy of Lord of The Rings and I have found it!" --- An Amazon Reviewer "The Harbinger of Doom Series is a masterfully written story with Epic Heroic Battles, Adventure and great characters." --- An Amazon Reviewer "From page to page Thater weaves a tale so thoroughly explicit you feel like you're more than an observer." --- An Amazon Reviewer "Heroes, Wizards, and Demons - oh my!" "A fantastic mix of Norse and Middle eastern mythology held together by an epic tale." "Absolutely the best action medieval books that I have read since the Lord of the Rings series..." "Stylishly written epic fantasy tale with a Norse slant" "The action is fast and furious," "the story sucks you in and doesn't let go." "Pulls no punches in describing the horror of war..." "By far, the best epic fantasy I have read." "One of the best book series ever!!!" "Epic Tolkien-esque fantasy" "Masterful storytelling." "Fantastic," "Enthralling," "Brilliant" "One of those gems" "Am astounded that such a good book is free!" BOOKS BY GLENN G. THATER THE HARBINGER OF DOOM SAGA VOLUME 1: GATEWAY TO NIFLEHEIM VOLUME 2: THE FALLEN ANGLE VOLUME 3: KNIGHT ETERNAL VOLUME 4: DWELLERS OF THE DEEP VOLUME 5: BLOOD, FIRE, AND THORN VOLUME 6: GODS OF THE SWORD VOLUME 7: THE SHAMBLING DEAD VOLUME 8: MASTER OF THE DEAD VOLUME 9: SHADOW OF DOOM VOLUME 10: WIZAR

    Lovecraft and his circle. Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends--or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it's suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn't believe them.A tour-de-force of storytelling, The Night Ocean follows the lives of some extraordinary people: Lovecraft, the most influential American horror writer of the 20th century, whose stories continue to win new acolytes, even as his racist views provoke new critics; Barlow, a seminal scholar of Mexican culture who killed himself after being blackmailed for his homosexuality (and who collaborated with Lovecraft on the beautiful story The Night Ocean); his student, future Beat writer William S. Burroughs; and L.C. Spinks, a kindly Canadian appliance salesman and science-fiction fan -- the only person who knows the origins of The Erotonomicon, purported to be the intimate diary of Lovecraft himself.As a heartbroken Marina follows her missing husband's trail in an attempt to learn the truth, the novel moves across the decades and along the length of the continent, from a remote Ontario town, through New York and Florida to Mexico City.The Night Ocean is about love and deception -- about the way that stories earn our trust, and betray it.

     Contents: Loveliness Like a Shadow An Infestation of Stars Corporautolysis No One is Sleeping in this World Making Snakes The Ocean is Eating Our Graves This Fragmented Body Tellurian Façade Film Maudit A Plague of Naked Movie Stars Scarcely Have They Been Planted Intaglios Alectryomancer

    Buildings breathe, cars attack, angels patrol, and hyper-intelligent pets rebel.With unbridled invention and breakneck adventure, Hannu Rajaniemi is on the cutting-edge of science fiction. His post-apocalyptic, post-cyberpunk, and post-human tales are full of exhilarating energy and unpredictable optimism.How will human nature react when the only limit to desire is creativity? When the distinction between humans and gods is as small as nanomachines—or as large as the universe? Whether the next big step in technology is 3D printing, genetic alteration, or unlimited space travel, Rajaniemi writes about what happens after.

    Twenty-five or so outstanding writers have been asked by Zadie Smith to make up a fictional character. By any measure, creating character is at the heart of the fictional enterprise, and this book concentrates on writers who share a talent for making something recognizably human out of words (and, in the case of the graphic novelists, pictures). But the purpose of the book is variety: straight "realism"-if such a thing exists-is not the point. There are as many ways to create character as there are writers, and this anthology features a rich assortment of exceptional examples. The writers featured in The Book of Other People include: Aleksandar Hemon Nick Hornby Hari Kunzru Toby Litt David Mitchell George Saunders Colm Tóibín Chris Ware, and more

    St John is everything Henry isn't: Brilliant, graceful, rich, universally respected. And as if that wasn't enough, St John is also the leader of the Blithe Company, the clique of Natural Philosophy majors who rule Wadham with style. But when being St John's protege ends up becoming a weirder experience than Henry anticipated -- and the Blithe Company doesn't quite turn out to be the decadent, debauched crew he dreamed of -- Henry has some big decisons to make. Should he beg the forgiveness of his only friend, naive underclassman John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, or should he ride it out with St John and try to come out on top?Tangling with a Calipash is an invariably risky endeavor. From antiquity to the modern era, few who have encountered members of that family have benefited from the acquaintance. If only Henry knew the that Calipashes are notorious for their history of sinister schemes, lewd larks, and eldritch experiments, he would realize there are way worse things than being unpopular...

    A young woman visits her father following his nervous breakdown, and a devoted sister is profoundly unsettled by the sermon her brother insists on reciting. Whether in childhood or Vietnam, in memory or the eternal present, these people are revealed in the extenuating, sometimes extreme circumstances of everyday life, and in the complex consequences of their decisions—that, for instance, can bring together an innocent inner-city youth and a little girl attacked, months earlier, by a dog in a wintry park. Yet each story, however crucial, is marked by Mr. Wolff’s compassionate understanding and humor.In short, fiction of dazzling emotional range and absolute authority.

    Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England and Exley, among other novels, now offers up bite-sized morsels of his trademark social satire that will have readers laughing, and perhaps shifting uncomfortably in their seats. The title story delivers a cringingly biting dissection of racial attitudes in contemporary America, and Clarke also turns his eagle eye to subjects like PTSD, the fate of child actors, and, most especially, marital discord in stories like “Considering Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife” and “The Misunderstandings.” In “The Pity Palace,” a masterful study in self-absorption and self-delusion, a reclusive husband in Florence, Italy, who believes his wife has left him for a famous novelist, sells tickets to tourists anxious to meet someone more miserable than they. It’s a distinctly Clarkean world, in which readers find themselves reflected back with the distortion of funhouse mirrors—and swept up on a wild ride of heart-wrenching insight and self-discovery.

    Specifically designed to challenge the creative boundaries of some of the most famed and respected horror writers working today—such as A. S. Byatt, Christopher Priest, Hanif Kureishi, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Matthew Holness, and the indomitable Ramsey Campbell—this anatomically precise experiment encapsulates what the uncanny represents in the 21st century. Masterfully narrated with the benefit of unique perspectives on what exactly it is that goes bump in the night, this chilling modern collective is not only an essential read for fans of horror but also an insightful and intriguing introduction to the greats of the genre at their gruesome best.