Book picks similar to
Bio Melt by Carlton Mellick III
horror
bizarro
bizarro-fiction
eraserhead-press
The Living Dead
John Joseph AdamsHarlan Ellison - 2008
They have become the monsters that best express the anxieties and fears of the modern west. This collection gathers together zombie works by Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, George R. R. Martin, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Poppy Z. Brite, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Joe R. Lansdale. These brilliant minds, and The Living Dead, cover the many types of zombie fiction. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
Jeff VanderMeerWilliam Gibson - 2010
Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here... but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.
The Gone World
Tom Sweterlitsch - 2018
In western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family--and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can't share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra—a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL's experience with the future has triggered this violence.Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence to crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it's not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time's horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself.Luminous and unsettling, The Gone World bristles with world-shattering ideas yet remains at its heart an intensely human story.
The Water Knife
Paolo Bacigalupi - 2015
In a fragmenting United States, the cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas skirmish for a dwindling share of the Colorado River. But it is the Las Vegas water knives - assassins, terrorists and spies - who are legendary for protecting Las Vegas' water supplies, and for ensuring Phoenix's ruin.When rumours of a game-changing water source surface, Las Vegas dispatches elite water knife Angel Velasquez to Phoenix to investigate. There, he discovers hardened journalist Lucy Monroe, who holds the secret to the water source Angel seeks. But Angel isn't the only one hunting for water, Lucy is no pushover, and the death of a despised water knife is a small price to pay in return for the life-giving flow of a river.
The Salt Line
Holly Goddard Jones - 2017
Those within the zone live safe, if limited, lives in a society controlled by a common fear. Few have any reason to venture out of zone, except for the adrenaline junkies who pay a fortune to tour what's left of nature. Those among the latest expedition include a popstar and his girlfriend, Edie; the tech giant Wes; and Marta; a seemingly simple housewife. Once out of zone, the group find themselves at the mercy of deadly ticks--and at the center of a murderous plot. They become captives in Ruby City, a community made up of outer-zone survivors determined to protect their hardscrabble existence. As alliances and friendships shift amongst the hostages, Edie, Wes, and Marta must decide how far they are willing to go to get to the right side of the salt line.
Windigo Soul
Robert Brumm - 2012
As a citizen of the United Federation of Nations that means a mandatory death sentence simply because he turned sixty years old. Referred to as "retirement," it's one of the desperate steps the government has taken to curb overpopulation. Retirement is a widely accepted fact of life on a dying planet ruled by a tyrannical government. Hank's execution goes ahead as planned but state sponsored euthanasia isn't what it seems. The Reed family learns what really happens to retirees when secrets the UFN keep from the public start to unravel.This book is intended to be read by adults and may be unsuitable for children under 17. Contains indecent language and descriptions of graphic violence.
Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls
Alissa Nutting - 2010
One is the main course of dinner, another the porn star contracted to copulate in space for a reality TV show. They become futuristic ant farms, get knocked up by the star high school quarterback and have secret abortions, use parakeets to reverse amputations, make love to garden gnomes, go into air conditioning ducts to confront their mother’s ghost, and do so in settings that range from Hell to the local white-supremacist bowling alley.
Jennifer Government
Max Barry - 2002
It's a globalised, ultra-capitalist free market paradise! Hack Nike is a lowly merchandising officer who's not very good at negotiating his salary. So when John Nike and John Nike, executives from the promised land of Marketing, offer him a contract, he signs without reading it. Unfortunately, Hack's new contract involves shooting teenagers to build up street cred for Nike's new line of $2,500 trainers. Hack goes to the police—but they assume that he's asking for a subcontracting deal and lease the assassination to the more experienced NRA. Enter Jennifer Government, a tough-talking agent with a barcode tattoo under her eye and a personal problem with John Nike (the boss of the other John Nike). And a gun. Hack is about to find out what it really means to mess with market forces.
Beer Run of the Dead
D.F. Noble - 2012
Follow Kip, Rock and Steady, as they struggle to survive and stay completely shit-faced in the face of certain undead doom. These three unlikely heroes hold the key to humanity's salvation, but will they succeed being inebriated as they are? Not everyone who saves the world is a rocket scientist, a super hero, or a handsome actor turned politician. Sometimes people who save the world... they're fucking idiots.
The Atrocity Archives
Charles Stross - 2004
While his colleagues are out saving the world, Bob's under a desk restoring lost data. His world was dull and safe - but then he went and got Noticed. Now, Bob is up to his neck in spycraft, parallel universes, dimension-hopping terrorists, monstrous elder gods and the end of the world. Only one thing is certain: it will take more than a full system reboot to sort this mess out ...This is the first novel in the Laundry Files.
Pines
Blake Crouch - 2012
Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in search of two missing federal agents, yet soon is facing much more than he bargained for. After a violent accident lands him in the hospital, Ethan comes to with no ID and no cell phone. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but sometimes feels...off. As days pass, Ethan's investigation into his colleagues' disappearance turns up more questions than answersWHY CAN'T HE MAKE CONTACT WITH HIS FAMILY IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD? WHY DOESN'T ANYONE BELIEVE HE IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS? AND WHAT'S THE PURPOSE OF THE ELECTRIFIED FENCES ENCIRCLING THE TOWN? ARE THEY KEEPING THE RESIDENTS IN? OR SOMETHING ELSE OUT?Each step toward the truth takes Ethan further from the world he knows, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.....
Clown Tear Junkies
Douglas Hackle - 2013
A deadbeat dad gains employment as a lady-in-waiting in a fairytale bromance where every character looks exactly like someone else from John Carpenter’s The Thing. The unknowing victim of a cruel prank, a simpleton spends his entire life waiting on a park bench for the hottest girl in school. Using only his twenty-sided die and good old-fashioned D&D magic, a man must continually resurrect the neighborhood kid regularly murdered on his own front lawn. An aging slaughterhouse worker and the iconic figure from Edvard Munch’s The Scream hit the clubs every weekend in a vain attempt to get laid.These and many more absurdities await in Clown Tear Junkies, the debut collection from Douglas Hackle.
The End of the World
Don Hertzfeldt - 2013
His work has the ability to transcend its singular nature and tap into universal themes like mortality, nature, isolation, parenthood, and, naturally, the mutant apocalypse.In his first and only book to date, written and drawn entirely on post-it notes, he uses deceptively simple, charming characters to bring to life a post-apocalyptic earth. This picaresque traipse through the end times is a visually striking work that includes a chase by mutants, a macabre human display in a modern art museum, and a hoped-for visit from the Easter Eel.This is the perfect book for anyone who knows the apocalypse is imminent, and wants to laugh at it.
Radicalized
Cory Doctorow - 2019
Radicalized is the story of a desperate husband, a darknet forum and the birth of a violent uprising against the US health care system.The final story, The Masque of the Red Death, tracks an uber-wealthy survivalist and his followers as they hole up and attempt to ride out the collapse of society.
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Harlan Ellison - 1967
This edition contains the original introduction by Theodore Sturgeon and the original foreword by Harlan Ellison, along with a brief update comment by Ellison that was added in the 1983 edition. Among Ellison's more famous stories, two consistently noted as among his very best ever are the title story and the volume's concluding one, Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we won't call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are sui generis. They could only have been written by Harlan Ellison and they are incomparably original.CONTENTS"I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream""Big Sam Was My Friend""Eyes of Dust""World of the Myth""Lonelyache""Delusion for Dragonslayer""Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes"