Book picks similar to
Jesus and John by Adam McOmber
horror
fantasy
lgbtq
magical-realism
Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow
Christina Henry - 2021
Not even Ben Van Brunt's grandfather, Brom Bones, who was there when it was said the Horseman chased the upstart Crane out of town. Brom says that's just legend, the village gossips talking.Twenty years after those storied events, the village is a quiet place. Fourteen-year-old Ben loves to play Sleepy Hollow boys, reenacting the events Brom once lived through. But then Ben and a friend stumble across the headless body of a child in the woods near the village, and the sinister discovery makes Ben question everything the adults in Sleepy Hollow have ever said. Could the Horseman be real after all? Or does something even more sinister stalk the woods?
Death by Silver
Melissa Scott - 2013
But the latest Londoner to seek Ned’s magical aid gives him pause: Mr Edgar Nevett, an arrogant banker, is the father of the bully who made Ned’s life hell at boarding school. Nevertheless, Ned accepts the commission to ensure the Nevett family silver bears no ancient or modern curses, and then prepares to banish the Nevett family to unpleasant memory again. Until Edgar Nevett is killed by an enchanted silver candlestick—one of the pieces Ned declared magically harmless.Calling on his old school friend Julian Lynes—private detective and another victim of the younger Nevett—Ned races to solve the murder, clear the stain on his professional reputation, and lay to rest the ghosts of his past.Assisted by Ned’s able secretary Miss Frost, who has unexpected metaphysical skills of her own, Ned and Julian explore London’s criminal underworld and sodomitical demimonde, uncover secrets and scandals, confront the unexpected murderer and the mysteries of their own relationship.In Death by Silver veteran authors Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold introduce a Victorian London where magic works, influencing every aspect of civilized life, and two very appealing detectives.
Briarley
Aster Glenn Gray - 2018
During a chance summer shower, an English country parson takes refuge in a country house. The house seems deserted, yet the table is laid with a sumptuous banquet such as the parson has not seen since before war rationing. Unnerved by the uncanny house, he flees, but stops to pluck a single perfect rose from the garden for his daughter - only for the master of the house to appear, breathing fire with rage. Literally. At first, the parson can't stand this dragon-man. But slowly, he begins to feel the injustice of the curse that holds the dragon captive. What can break this vengeful curse?
Lovecraft Country
Matt Ruff - 2016
When his father Montrose goes missing, twenty-two year old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George—publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide—and his childhood friend Letitia. On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite—heir to the estate that owned Atticus’s great grandmother—they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal named the Order of the Ancient Dawn—led by Samuel Braithwhite and his son Caleb—which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that shockingly centers on Atticus. And his one hope of salvation may be the seed of his—and the whole Turner clan’s—destruction.A chimerical blend of magic, power, hope, and freedom that stretches across time, touching diverse members of one black family, Lovecraft Country is a devastating kaleidoscopic portrait of racism—the terrifying specter that continues to haunt us today.
She Who Became the Sun Sneak Peek
Shelley Parker-Chan - 2021
Download a FREE sneak peek today!To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything“I refuse to be nothing…”In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Totempole
Sanford Friedman - 1965
In eight discrete chapters, which trace Stephen’s evolution from a two-year-old boy to a twenty-two-year-old man, Friedman describes with psychological acuity and great empathy Stephen’s intellectual, moral, and sexual maturation. Taught to abhor his body for the sake of his soul, Stephen finds salvation in the eventual unification of the two, the recognition that body and soul should not be partitioned but treated as one being, one complete man.Quotes:Totempole is the most audacious affirmation of the homosexual experience by an American writer I have seen, and its success is the more remarkable because nearly all the materials of this novel are not only familiar but fashionable…[Friedman] explores a recognizable terrain and leaves it deeply illumined.—Hilton Kramer, The New LeaderIt proves to be the most candid, and least pornographic, of studies of the genesis of a homosexual; paradoxically, by close concentration on the agonies of a young man searching for sexual fulfillment…This was a dangerous book to write…Its impact as a document of great honesty will, without doubt, be considerable.—Anthony Burgess, The ListenerI think Totempole an extraordinarily courageous and highly moral work. The author tells us exactly what it was like to be himself at a certain time and place and, uniquely, I believed him. Truth is rare; he seems to have it.—Gore VidalAn extraordinary book, vivid and utterly convincing…The truth of Mr. Friedman’s book is not the truth of autobiography, but the truth-making that the best fiction is.—James DickeyI do not know of any piece of fiction that deals more perceptively with preadolescent sex…Wholly honest…Friedman treats the homosexual theme, as he does the theme of infant sexuality, with great candor and no lubricity…There are episodes developed with unusual imaginative power.—Granville Hicks, Saturday Review
A Thin Bright Line
Lucy Jane Bledsoe - 2016
However, there are risks. Her scientific knowledge and editorial skills are unparalleled, but her personal life might not withstand government scrutiny.Leaving behind the wreckage of a relationship, Lucybelle finds solace in working for the visionary scientist who is extracting the first-ever polar ice cores. The lucidity of ice is calming and beautiful. But the joyful pangs of a new love clash with the impossible compromises of queer life. If exposed, she could lose everything she holds dear.Based on the hidden life of the author’s aunt and namesake, A Thin Bright Line is a love story set amid Cold War intrigue, the origins of climate research, and the nascent civil rights movement. Poignant, brilliant, and moving, it reminds us to act on what we love, not just wish for it.
The Living One
Lewis Gannett - 1992
The invitation to spend some time with his dad - the Baron Malcolm Spoor - comes as a surprise. But what awaits Torrance at his father's windswept estate is far worse than he could ever imagine. Welcome to the world of The Living One, one of the most frightening, clever, and suspenseful novels of the year. In this tour-de-force debut, Lewis Gannett spins a spellbinding story that summons up magic, body thievery, killer dogs, ESP wars, and lusty, genre-defying sex - straight, gay, and forms yet unnamed. The Spoors are the ultimate dysfunctional family. Wealthy, shamelessly extravagant, and impossibly attractive, they are also cursed. The curse has been handed down from father to son for seven hundred years, ever since the Crusades, when a bizarre and mystifying event created a recurring pattern of madness and death. As Baron Malcolm Spoor prepares for his demise, he must pass on the family riches - and its traditions - to his estranged son. But Malcolm and Torrance both have secrets they would rather keep to themselves, secrets that are nearly revealed when a shadowy government scientist picks up psychic readings from the Spoor estate and a bohemian teacher becomes personally involved with Torrance. These two begin an investigation into the extraordinary life of Baron Malcolm Spoor, and their findings are truly horrifying. Updating elements of the epistolary novel popularized in Dracula, Lewis Gannett tells his gothic story through the inventive use of videotape transcripts, diary entries, and historical records. Vivid, scary, mythic, and engrossing, The Living One explores the terrifying dimensions of family guilt, aging, and the murderous tensions between fathers and sons. Lewis Gannett has written a startling and thrilling novel that marks the debut of an original new voice in fiction.
The Wicked Cometh
Laura Carlin - 2018
But whispers from her past slowly begin to poison her new life and both she and Rebekah are lured into the most sinister of investigations.Hester and Rebekah find themselves crossing every boundary they've ever known in pursuit of truth, redemption and passion. But their trust in each other will be tested as a web of deceit begins to unspool, dragging them into the blackest heart of a city where something more depraved than either of them could ever imagine is lurking . . .
Burn
Patrick Ness - 2020
Sarah can’t help but be curious about him, an animal who supposedly doesn’t have a soul, but who is seemingly intent on keeping her safe.Because the dragon knows something she doesn’t. He has arrived at the farm with a prophecy on his mind. A prophecy that involves a deadly assassin, a cult of dragon worshippers, two FBI agents in hot pursuit—and somehow, Sarah Dewhurst herself.
You Feel It Just Below the Ribs
Jeffrey Cranor - 2021
Devastated by grief and loneliness, she emotionally exiles herself, avoiding relationships or allegiances, and throws herself into her work—disengagement that serves her when the war finally ends, and The New Society arises.To ensure a lasting peace, The New Society forbids anything that may cause tribal loyalties, including traditional families. Suddenly, everyone must live as Miriam has chosen to—disconnected and unattached. A researcher at heart, Miriam becomes involved in implementing this detachment process. She does not know it is the beginning of a darkly sinister program that will transform this new world and the lives of everyone in it. Eventually, the harmful effects of her research become too much for Miriam, and she devises a secret plan to destroy the system from within, endangering her own life.But is her “confession” honest—or is it a fabrication riddled with lies meant to concealthe truth?
This Town Sleeps
Dennis E. Staples - 2020
Staples’s work is emotional without being sentimental. Dennis unmakes something in us, then remakes it, a quilt of characters that embody this town, this place, which sleeps but doesn’t dream, or it is all a dream we want to wake up from with its characters.” —Tommy Orange, author of There, ThereOn an Ojibwe reservation called Languille Lake, within the small town of Geshig at the hub of the rez, two men enter into a secret romance. Marion Lafournier, a midtwenties gay Ojibwe man, begins a relationship with his former classmate Shannon, a heavily closeted white man. While Marion is far more open about his sexuality, neither is immune to the realities of the lives of gay men in small towns and closed societies.Then one night, while roaming the dark streets of Geshig, Marion unknowingly brings to life the spirit of a dog from beneath the elementary school playground. The mysterious revenant leads him to the grave of Kayden Kelliher, an Ojibwe basketball star who was murdered at the age of seventeen and whose presence still lingers in the memories of the townsfolk. While investigating the fallen hero’s death, Marion discovers family connections and an old Ojibwe legend that may be the secret to unraveling the mystery he has found himself in.Set on a reservation in far northern Minnesota, This Town Sleeps explores the many ways history, culture, landscape, and lineage shape our lives, our understanding of the world we inhabit, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of it all.