Book picks similar to
The Different Kinds Of Monsters by Seth Chambers
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The Darwin Effect
Mark Lukens - 2016
They are all suffering from short-term memory loss and they can't remember why or how they got on this ship. The onboard computer (MAC) tells them that it was programmed to wake them up early. They believe MAC woke them up by mistake. They can't re-enter suspended animation, there's only enough food for a few months, and they are too far away to return to Earth ... but even if they could return, MAC tells them that the Earth has been destroyed by nuclear war. They realize that they are all going to die on this ship.Cromartie, the unelected leader of their group, tries his best to keep the others calm, but soon they are at each other's throats. After one of them is found murdered, Cromartie and Sanders form an alliance. Cromartie tells Sanders that pieces of his memories are beginning to come back to him in his dreams; he believes he's seeing clues to their survival.But after the next murder, Cromartie and Sanders must work fast to find the mind-blowing key to their survival and figure out which one of them is the killer before it's too late.
The Bone Clocks
David Mitchell - 2014
But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
Carmen Maria Machado - 2017
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
The Last Werewolf
Glen Duncan - 2011
For two hundred years he has wandered the world, enslaved by his lunatic appetites and tormented by the memory of his first and most monstrous crime. Now, the last of his kind, he knows he cannot go on.But as Jake counts down to suicide, a violent murder and an extraordinary meeting plunge him straight back into the desperate pursuit of life — and love.Sexy, smart, bloody and heartbreaking, The Last Werewolf takes literature by the throat.
Under the Skin
Michel Faber - 2000
She, herself, is tiny—like a kid peering up over the steering wheel. She has a remarkable face and wears the thickest corrective lenses anyone has ever seen. Her posture is suggestive of some spinal problem. Her breasts are perfect; perhaps implants. She is strangely erotic yet somehow grotesque, vulnerable yet threatening. Her hitchhikers are a mixed bunch of men—trailer trash and travelling postgrads, thugs and philosophers. But Isserley is only interested in whether they have families and whether they have muscles. Then, it's only a question of how long she can endure her pain—physical and spiritual—and their conversation. Michel Faber's work has been described as a combination of Roald Dahl and Franz Kafka, as Somerset Maugham shacking up with Ian McEwan. At once humane and horrifying, Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory—our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion.
The Chronicles of Engella Rhys
Paul Ian Cross - 2018
The first few chapters are available as 'The Chronicles of Engella Rhys (Preview).'
Would you sacrifice your future to save your past?
Engella Rhys is alone, adrift and on the run. Pursued by a secret agency, known only as the Hunters, she must stay ahead to stay alive. As she travels through space-time using dangerously experimental technology, she only has one wish: to be reunited with her lost parents. After a close shave with a Hunter on the streets of New Shanghai, Engella escapes to find herself on a deserted beach. When she meets a kind stranger, who offers her food and shelter, Engella feels safe and protected for the first time in years. But who is this woman? And why did their paths cross at the most convenient of times? Engella soon discovers their lives are intertwined in more ways than she could ever imagine.
The Raw Shark Texts
Steven Hall - 2007
A note instructs him to see a Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of acute memory loss that is a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric's been in Dr. Randle's care for two years -- since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while the two vacationed in the Greek islands.But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by "the first Eric Sanderson," a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him.The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time.
Touch
Claire North - 2015
But when reaching out to the murderer for salvation in those last dying moments, a sudden switch takes place.Now Kepler is looking out through the eyes of the killer himself, staring down at a broken and ruined body lying in the dirt of the alley.Instead of dying, Kepler has gained the ability to roam from one body to another, to jump into another person’s skin and see through their eyes, live their life — be it for a few minutes, a few months or a lifetime.Kepler means these host bodies no harm — and even comes to cherish them intimately like lovers. But when one host, Josephine Cebula, is brutally assassinated, Kepler embarks on a mission to seek the truth — and avenge Josephine’s death.
The Mere Wife
Maria Dahvana Headley - 2018
From the perspective of those who live in Herot Hall, the suburb is a paradise. Picket fences divide buildings—high and gabled—and the community is entirely self-sustaining. Each house has its own fireplace, each fireplace is fitted with a container of lighter fluid, and outside—in lawns and on playgrounds—wildflowers seed themselves in neat rows. But for those who live surreptitiously along Herot Hall’s periphery, the subdivision is a fortress guarded by an intense network of gates, surveillance cameras, and motion-activated lights. For Willa, the wife of Roger Herot (heir of Herot Hall), life moves at a charmingly slow pace. She flits between mommy groups, playdates, cocktail hour, and dinner parties, always with her son, Dylan, in tow. Meanwhile, in a cave in the mountains just beyond the limits of Herot Hall lives Gren, short for Grendel, as well as his mother, Dana, a former soldier who gave birth as if by chance. Dana didn’t want Gren, didn’t plan Gren, and doesn’t know how she got Gren, but when she returned from war, there he was. When Gren, unaware of the borders erected to keep him at bay, ventures into Herot Hall and runs off with Dylan, Dana’s and Willa’s worlds collide.
Awakened
James S. Murray - 2018
The shining jewel of this state-of-the-art line is a breathtaking visitors’ pavilion beneath the river. Major dignitaries, including New York City’s Mayor and the President of the United States, are in attendance for the inaugural run, as the first train slowly pulls in. Under the station’s bright ceiling lights, the shiny silver cars gleam. But as the train comes closer into view, a far different scene becomes visible. All the train’s cars are empty. All the cars’ interiors are drenched in blood. As chaos descends, all those in the pavilion scramble to get out. But the horror is only beginning. High levels of deadly methane fill the tunnels. The structure begins to flood. For those who don’t drown, choke, or spark an explosion, another terrifying danger awaits — the thing that killed all those people on the train. There's something living beneath New York City, and it's not happy we've woken it up.
Elsewhere
Dean Koontz - 2020
It’s a quiet life, until a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed shows up on their doorstep.Ed entrusts Jeffy with hiding a strange and dangerous object—something he calls “the key to everything”—and tells Jeffy that he must never use the device. But after a visit from a group of ominous men, Jeffy and Amity find themselves accidentally activating the key and discovering an extraordinary truth. The device allows them to jump between parallel planes at once familiar and bizarre, wondrous and terrifying. And Jeffy and Amity can’t help but wonder, could Michelle be just a click away?Jeffy and Amity aren’t the only ones interested in the device. A man with a dark purpose is in pursuit, determined to use its grand potential for profound evil. Unless Amity and Jeffy can outwit him, the place they call home may never be safe again.
AntiBio
Jake Bible - 2014
They have failed. All that's left are the Strains- bacteria so strong they have brought the world to its knees. But humanity has fought on, carving out pockets of civilization in a wasteland known as the Sicklands, creating the super high-tech Clean Nation cities. And from the cities GenSOF has been born- Genetic Special Forces Operations. An elite military branch of the government that enlists men and women with specific genetic anomalies that allow them to be hosts to bacteria that even the Strains cannot defeat. Under the watchful eye of Control, GenSOF protects the Clean Nation cities from the ever encroaching Strains and the diseased inhabitants of the Sicklands. But now Control has other plans for GenSOF, and possibly the Clean Nation cities themselves, and it is up to the operators of GenSOF Zebra Squad, and their cloned Canine Units known as bug hounds, to find out what those plans are. Or die trying.
Reprieve
C.R. Daems - 2021
What price would you be willing to pay for a cure? Any price? Are you sure?Would it be worth agreeing to join an alien nation offering a cure but without any of the messy details?* who and what are the aliens,* proof they can cure you,* why they want people from Earth,* the alien's specific needs,* what they expect from those they cure,* but knowing they will never see Earth again.Kayla, a seventeen-year-old teenager, and others with an assortment of lethal medical conditions are about to find out the price of life.
Never Trust A Rabbit: Stories With a Twist
Jeremy Dyson - 2000
This is a collection of surreal literary short stories by Jeremy Dyson where the metaphysical meets the mundane in the dark secret of the London Underground, the seemingly harmless auction of electrical goods, a flatmate born to save all mankind, and the strange phenomenon of the Cornish seabed.
Tales of the Apocalypse Volume 1: A Duck & Cover Collection
Benjamin Wallace - 2016
From the pages of the best-selling Duck & Cover Adventures comes thirteen stories of those who survived the apocalypse. Some would go on to be heroes, others villains, some were dogs and will stay dogs, but they all must contend with the horrors of the new world and find a way to survive in the wasteland that was America. HOW TO HOST AN INTERVENTION Long before he was a knight in the apocalypse, Tommy was preparing for the end of the world. His friends grew concerned for his well-being and planned to intervene. It wasn’t so much that he was preparing, it was what he was preparing for. GONE TO THE DOGS Fidget and Sasquatch were loyal companions to the end. Now that the end has arrived, they must say goodbye to the only home they’ve ever known. If they can figure out how to open the door. BUNKED UP They took refuge in a homemade bomb shelter when the end of the world began. There they were safe from the bombs and the fallout. But they were never safe from each other. PACK HUNTERS Fidget and Sasquatch are on their own, a situation neither of them are really comfortable with. They decide to join a pack for safety, for food and for friends. Now all they have to do is find one. ANIMAL’S CALLING Before the world ended, Jackson drifted from job to job, never settling on anything that could be called a career path. But with the new world comes new opportunities. This is what he was born to do. LAST BAND OF THE APOCALYPSE Caught between county fair gigs during the apocalypse, the members of a cover band find themselves the last band left in the world. Getting gigs should be easy. Should be. PRISONER’S DILEMMA The Librarian has seen his fair share of “wasteland justice.” Now he’s chained to the floor of a grocery store with a man he must face in court. In a battle to the death. Naturally. ALPHA DOG Sergeant Satan was genetically enhanced to be the world’s best military scout. He was designed to be smarter, faster and more than a match for any dog this side of the apocalypse. Of course, his creators had never met Fidget. THE TRIAL OF HARMEGGEDON They’ve got a new name. They’ve got a new act. And they are ready to rock your face off. Now all the last band in the world needs is a gig. WILLIE AND COY RIDE AGAIN Willie and Coy aren’t the brightest. Or the best looking. Or very likeable. No one would ever accuse them of being hard workers. But the pair have found a way to make an honest living in the apocalypse. If they can get enough people to watch. IN A PERSON PACK Tired of looking for a pack to join, Sasquatch and Fidget reminisce about the joys and delights of life in a people pack. NO QUARTER Deep in the swamp of New Orleans awaits a terror many refuse to believe exists. It’s a monster of myth and rumor so horrible that it could not possibly be real. On the trail of a kidnapped woman, The Librarian must seek out and confront this monster of myth. EVE OF THE APOCALYPSE Man is the true monster. Unless there is a man who is a monster that also makes monsters. Then he’s the truest monster and only a post-apocalyptic nomadic warrior can bring this monster’s monster-making to an end.