Book picks similar to
Slowly Downward by Stanley Donwood


horror
short-stories
existentialism
modern-fiction

Mostly Void, Partially Stars


Joseph Fink - 2016
    By the anniversary show a year later, the fanbase had exploded, vaulting the podcast into the #1 spot on iTunes. Since then, its popularity has grown by epic proportions, hitting more than 100 million downloads, and Night Vale has expanded to a successful live multi-cast international touring stage show and a New York Times bestselling novel. Now the first two seasons are available as books, offering an entertaining reading experience and a valuable reference guide to past episodes.Mostly Void, Partially Stars introduces us to Night Vale, a town in the American Southwest where every conspiracy theory is true, and to the strange but friendly people who live there.Mostly Void, Partially Stars features an introduction by creator and co-writer Joseph Fink, a foreword by Cory Doctorow, and behind-the-scenes commentary and guest introductions by performers from the podcast and notable fans, including Cecil Baldwin (Cecil), Dylan Marron (Carlos), and Kevin R. Free (Kevin) among others. Also included is the full script from the first Welcome to Night Vale live show, Condos. Beautiful illustrations by series artist Jessica Hayworth accompany each episode.Mostly Void, Partially Stars is an absolute must-have whether you’re a fan of the podcast or discovering for the first time the wonderful world of Night Vale.

All My Friends are Superheroes


Andrew Kaufman - 2003
    Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding, the Perfectionist was hypnotized (by ex-boyfriend Hypno, of course) to believe that Tom is invisible. Nothing he does can make her see him. Six months later, she's sure that Tom has abandoned her.So she's moving to Vancouver. She'll use her superpower to make Vancouver perfect and leave all the heartbreak in Toronto. With no idea Tom's beside her, she boards an airplane in Toronto. Tom has until the wheels touch the ground in Vancouver to convince her he's visible, or he loses her forever.

Spontaneous


Aaron Starmer - 2016
    Mara Carlyle’s senior year is going as normally as could be expected, until—wa-bam!—fellow senior Katelyn Ogden explodes during third period pre-calc.Katelyn is the first, but she won’t be the last teenager to blow up without warning or explanation. As the seniors continue to pop like balloons and the national eye turns to Mara’s suburban New Jersey hometown, the FBI rolls in and the search for a reason is on.Whip-smart and blunt, Mara narrates the end of their world as she knows it while trying to make it to graduation in one piece. It's an explosive year punctuated by romance, quarantine, lifelong friendship, hallucinogenic mushrooms, bloggers, ice cream trucks, “Snooze Button™,” Bon Jovi, and the filthiest language you’ve ever heard from the President of the United States.Aaron Starmer rewrites the rulebook with Spontaneous. But beneath the outrageous is a ridiculously funny, super honest, and truly moving exemplar of the absurd and raw truths of being a teenager in the 21st century . . . and the heartache of saying goodbye.

Class of 1989: A Post Viral Apocalyptic Story


Jack Hunt - 2020
     A group of estranged friends, now in their forties, reunite in Gerlach, Nevada for their 30-year high school reunion at the time of the annual Burning Man Festival. They soon find themselves at the heart of a viral apocalypse and are forced to rely on the very people they were at odds with to survive.

The Murder Complex


Lindsay Cummings - 2014
    For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?Action-packed, blood-soaked, and chilling, this is a dark and compelling debut novel by Lindsay Cummings.

Shades of Grey


Jasper Fforde - 2009
    In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means. Eddie's world wasn't always like this. There's evidence of a never-discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion. Eddie, who works for the Color Control Agency, might well have lived out his rose-tinted life without a hitch. But that changes when he becomes smitten with Jane, a Grey, which is low-caste in this color-centric world. She shows Eddie that all is not well with the world he thinks is just and good. Together, they engage in dangerous revolutionary talk.

The Marbury Lens


Andrew Smith - 2010
    He is kidnapped. He escapes, narrowly. The only person he tells is his best friend, Conner. When they arrive in London as planned for summer break, a stranger hands Jack a pair of glasses. Through the lenses, he sees another world called Marbury.There is war in Marbury. It is a desolate and murderous place where Jack is responsible for the survival of two younger boys. Conner is there, too. But he’s trying to kill them.Meanwhile, Jack is falling in love with an English girl, and afraid he’s losing his mind.Conner tells Jack it’s going to be okay.But it’s not.Andrew Smith has written his most beautiful and personal novel yet, as he explores the nightmarish outer limits of what trauma can do to our bodies and our minds.

Pastoralia


George Saunders - 2000
    Whether he writes a gothic morality tale in which a male exotic dancer is haunted by his maiden aunt from beyond the grave, or about a self-help guru who tells his followers his mission is to discover who's been "crapping in your oatmeal," Saunders's stories are both indelibly strange and vividly real.

The Gospel According to Luke


Emily Maguire - 2007
    Pastor Luke Butler is young, idealistic and out to capture the hearts and minds of Sydney's disaffected youth; his first order of business is to shut down Aggie Grey's clinic.Caught in the crossfire is 16-year-old Honey – pregnant, battered and ready to cling to whatever hope is offered. As Aggie and Luke fight over the fate of Honey's unborn child, they discover a deep and surprising connection. But as the war between the secular and religious intensifies, Aggie, Luke and Honey find themselves in moral and physical danger. Against a backdrop of religious terrorism and social decay, The Gospel According to Luke is a contemporary love story about belief, family, grief and hope.

Stranger


Satyajit Ray - 2001
    * New Edition. * Includes a new translation of 'Fotikchand'.

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.

Lullaby


Chuck Palahniuk - 2002
    After responding to several calls with paramedics, he notices that all the dead children were read the same poem from the same library book the night before they died. It's a 'culling song' - an ancient African spell for euthanising sick or old people. Researching it, he meets a woman who killed her own child with it accidentally. He himself accidentally killed his own wife and child with the same poem twenty years earlier. Together, the man and the woman must find and destroy all copies of this book, and try not to kill every rude sonofabitch that gets in their way. Lullaby is a comedy/drama/tragedy. In that order. It may also be Chuck Palahniuk's best book yet.

Zombies Vs. Unicorns


Holly BlackScott Westerfeld - 2010
    Half of the stories portray the strengths--for good and evil--of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies. Contributors include many bestselling teen authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan. This anthology will have everyone asking: Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

Heroes and Villains


Angela Carter - 1969
    Rational civilization rests with the Professors in their steel and concrete villages; marauding tribes of Barbarians roam the surrounding jungles; mutilated Out People inhabit the burnt scars of cities. But Marianne, a Professor's daughter, is carried away into the jungle--a grotesque vegetable paradise--where she will become the captive bride of Jewel, the proud and beautiful Barbarian. There she will witness the savage rituals of the snake worshippers, indulge her voluptuous, virginal fantasies, taste the forbidden fruit of chaos... Erotic, exotic, and bizarre, HEROES AND VILLAINS is a post-apocalyptic romance, a gripping adventure story, a colourful embroidery of religion and magic and, not least, a dispassionate vision of life beyond our brave nuclear world.

Cloud Atlas


David Mitchell - 2004
    Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profund as it is playful. Now in his new novel, David Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.