Book picks similar to
Newspaper Diapers by M.T. Johnson


fiction
short-stories
horror
disturbing

Tampa


Alissa Nutting - 2013
    In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure.

Sarah


J.T. LeRoy - 2000
    Desperate to win her love, he decides to surpass her as the best and most famous lot lizard ever. With his own leather mini-skirt and a makeup bag that closes with Velcro, the young “Cherry Vanilla” embarks on a journey through the Appalachian wilds, dining on transcendental cuisine, supplicating to the mystical Jackalope, encountering the most terrifying of pimps, walking on water, being venerated as an innocent girl saint—and then being denounced as the devil. By turns exhilarating and shocking, magical and realistic, Sarah brings urgency, wit, and imagination to an unknown and unforgettable world.

The Average American Male


Chad Kultgen - 2007
    I suspect it may be both.” --Toby Young, New York Times bestselling author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate PeopleAn offensive, in-your-face, brutally honest and completely hilarious look at male inner life and sexual fantasy. In the course of this hilariously honest book, our narrator suffers through a relationship with his vapid wannabe-actress girlfriend until he finds the perfect girl. But when he moves into the new relationship, he slowly learns that all women are pretty much the same, that man's true desires will never be fulfilled, and the decision between living life alone or biting the marriage bullet must be made.

Push


Sapphire - 1996
    But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as Precious learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it her own for the first time.

Legend of a Suicide


David Vann - 2008
    It features the story 'Ichthyology', where a young boy watches his father spiral from divorce to suicide.

The Memory of Running


Ron McLarty - 2004
    By all accounts, especially his own, Smithson "Smithy" Ide is a loser. An overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, Smithy's life becomes completely unhinged when he loses his parents and long-lost sister within the span of one week.Rolling down the driveway of his parents' house in Rhode Island on his old Raleigh bicycle to escape his grief, the emotionally bereft Smithy embarks on an epic, hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary journey of discovery and redemption. (From the publisher.)

Tiger, Tiger


Margaux Fragoso - 2011
    She is seven; he is fifty-one. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child's paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice. In time, he insidiously takes on the role of Margaux's playmate, father, and lover. Charming and manipulative, Peter burrows into every aspect of Margaux's life and transforms her from a child fizzing with imagination and affection into a brainwashed young woman on the verge of suicide. But when she is twenty-two, it is Peter -- ill, and wracked with guilt -- who kills himself, at the age of sixty-six. Told with lyricism, depth, and mesmerizing clarity, Tiger, Tiger vividly illustrates the healing power of memory and disclosure. This extraordinary memoir is an unprecedented glimpse into the psyche of a young girl in free fall and conveys to readers -- including parents and survivors of abuse -- just how completely a pedophile enchants his victim and binds her to him.

You Know When the Men Are Gone


Siobhan Fallon - 2011
    You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain. You also know when the men are gone. No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high, and, best of all, no more front doors slamming before dawn as they trudge out for their early formation, sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to throw them down their gloves on cold desert mornings. Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life. There is an army of women waiting for their men to return in Fort Hood, Texas. Through a series of loosely interconnected stories, Siobhan Fallon takes readers onto the base, inside the homes, into the marriages and families-intimate places not seen in newspaper articles or politicians' speeches. When you leave Fort Hood, the sign above the gate warns, You've Survived the War, Now Survive the Homecoming. It is eerily prescient.

Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child


Cathy Glass - 2007
    Her last hope is Cathy Glass. At the Social Services office, Cathy (an experienced foster carer) is pressured into taking Jodie as a new placement. Jodie's challenging behaviour has seen off five carers in four months. Despite her reservations, Cathy decides to accept Jodie to protect her from being placed in an institution. Jodie arrives, and her first act is to soil herself, and then wipe it on her face, grinning wickedly. Jodie meets Cathy's teenage children, and greets them with a sharp kick to the shins. That night, Cathy finds Jodie covered in blood, having cut her own wrist, and smeared the blood over her face. As Jodie begins to trust Cathy her behaviour improves. Over time, with childish honesty, she reveals details of her abuse at the hands of her parents and others. It becomes clear that Jodie's parents were involved in a sickening paedophile ring, with neighbours and Social Services not seeing what should have been obvious signs. Unfortunately Jodie becomes increasingly withdrawn, and it's clear she needs psychiatric therapy. Cathy urges the Social Services to provide funding, but instead they decide to take Jodie away from her, and place her in a residential unit. Although the paedophile ring is investigated and brought to justice, Jodie's future is still up in the air. Cathy promises that she will stand by her no matter what -- her love for the abandoned Jodie is unbreakable.

A Child Called "It"


Dave Pelzer - 1995
    It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games—games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it." Dave's bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing or no one to turn to, but his dreams kept him alive—dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son.

The Torture Garden


Octave Mirbeau - 1899
    Entranced by a resolute Englishwoman whose capacity for debauchery knows no bounds, he capitulates to her every whim amid an ecstatic yet tormenting incursion of visions, scents, caresses, pleasures, horrors, and fantastic atrocities.

The Acid House


Irvine Welsh - 1994
    Using a range of approaches from bitter realism to demented fantasy, Irvine Welsh is able to evoke the essential humanity, well hidden as it is, of his generally depraved, lazy, manipulative, and vicious characters. He specializes particularly in cosmic reversals--God turns a hapless footballer into a fly; an acid head and a newborn infant exchange consciousnesses with sardonically unexpected results--always displaying a corrosive wit and a telling accuracy of language and detail. Irvine Welsh is one hilariously dangerous writer and he is bound to create a sensation. Includes the following stories: "The Shooter""Eurotrash""Stoke Newington Blues""Vat '96""A Soft Touch""The Last Resort on the Adriatic""Sexual Disaster Quartet""Snuff""A Blockage in the System""Wayne Foster""Where the Debris Meets the Sea""Granny's Old Junk""The House of John Deaf""Across the Hall""Lisa's Mum Meets the Queen Mum""The Two Philosophers""Disnae Matter""The Granton Star Cause""Snowman Building Parts for Rico the Squirrel""Sport for All""The Acid House"A Smart Cunt: a novella

Thirty Girls


Susan Minot - 2014
    Jane is an American journalist who has traveled to Africa, hoping to give a voice to children like Esther and to find her center after a series of failed relationships. In unflinching prose, Minot interweaves their stories, giving us razor-sharp portraits of two extraordinary young women confronting displacement, heartbreak, and the struggle to wrest meaning from events that test them both in unimaginable ways.  With mesmerizing emotional intensity and stunning evocations of Africa's beauty and its horror, Minot gives us her most brilliant and ambitious novel yet.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers


Max Porter - 2015
    Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal.In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

Trafficked: The Diary of a Sex Slave


Sibel Hodge - 2011
    Now I am a sex slave.If you are reading this diary then I am either dead or I have managed to escape...****Trafficked: The Diary of a Sex Slave is a gritty, gripping, and tear-jerking novella, inspired by real victims' accounts and research into the sex trafficking underworld. It's been listed as one of the Top 40 Books About Human Rights by Accredited Online Colleges.It is estimated that 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year - 80% of these are women and girls. (Source: U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report: 2007)