Alice Knott

Alice Knott
Author: Blake Butler
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525535233

Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by Refinery29 A hypnotic, wildly inventive novel about art, violence, and endurance Alice Knott lives alone, a reclusive heiress haunted by memories of her deceased parents and mysterious near-identical brother. Much of her family’s fortune has been spent on a world-class collection of artwork, which she stores in a vault in her lonely, cavernous house. One day, she awakens to find the artwork destroyed, the act of vandalism captured in a viral video that soon triggers a rash of copycat incidents. As more videos follow and the world’s most priceless works of art are destroyed one by one, Alice finds that she has become the chief suspect in an international conspiracy—even as her psyche becomes a shadowed landscape of childhood demons and cognitive disorder. Unsettling, almost physically immersive, Alice Knott is a virtuoso exploration of the meaning of art and the lasting afterlife of trauma, as well as a deeply humane portrait of a woman whose trials feel both apocalyptic and universal.

Sky Saw

Sky Saw
Author: Blake Butler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Dystopias
ISBN: 9780985023508

Another disturber from the author of Nothing and There Is No Year.

The Office

The Office
Author: Alice Munro
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 31
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101912405

A short story from Nobel Prize–winning Alice Munro’s first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades “It is no exaggeration to state that Munro’s short stories are among the finest that have ever been written.”—The Dallas Morning News The solution came to the writer one evening: she should have an office. From Nobel Laureate Alice Munro, a brilliantly executed and revelatory story—one of the earliest published works of her career—in which simply finding a place to write turns out to be the hardest act of all. In “The Office,” a selection from her first short story collection, Alice Munro demonstrates the precise observation, straightforward prose style, and masterful technique hailed by John Updike, who wrote in the New York Times Book Review that “one must go back to Tolstoy and Chekhov . . . for comparable largeness.” “What a stunning, subtle and sympathetic explorer of the heart Munro is.”—Ron Hansen, The Washington Post A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection

Imagine a Death

Imagine a Death
Author: Janice Lee
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1680032569

In the face of a slow but impending apocalypse, what binds three seemingly divergent lives (a writer, a photographer, an old man), isn’t the commonality of a perceived future death, but the layered and complex fabric of how loss, abuse, trauma, and death have shaped their pasts, and how these pasts continue to haunt their present moments, a moment in which time seems to be running out. The writer, traumatized by the violent death of her mother when she was a child, lives alone with her dog and struggles to finish her book. The photographer, stunted by the death of his grandmother and caretaker, struggles to take a single picture and enters into a complicated relationship with the writer. The old man, facing his past in small doses, spends his time watching television and reorganizing the objects in his apartment to stay distracted from the deterioration around him. A depiction of the cycles of abuse and trauma in a prolonged end-time, Imagine a Death examines the ways in which our pasts envelop us, the ways in which we justify horrible things in the name of survival, all of the horrible and beautiful things we are capable of when we are hurt and broken, and the animal (and plant) companions that ground us. ​ Innovative Prose

300,000,000

300,000,000
Author: Blake Butler
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2014-10-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062271865

An unforgettable novel of an American suburb devastated by a fiendish madman—the most ambitious and important work yet by “the 21st century answer to William Burroughs” (Publishers Weekly). Blake Butler’s fiction has dazzled readers with its dystopian dreamscapes and swaggering command of language. Now, in his most topical and visceral novel yet, he ushers us into the consciousness of two men in the shadow of a bloodbath: Gretch Gravey, a cryptic psychopath with a small army of burnout followers, and E. N. Flood, the troubled police detective tasked with unpacking and understanding his mind. A mingled simulacrum of Charles Manson, David Koresh, and Thomas Harris’s Buffalo Bill, Gravey is a sinister yet alluring God figure who enlists young metal head followers to kidnap neighboring women and bring them to his house—where he murders them and buries their bodies in a basement crypt. Through parallel narratives, Three Hundred Million lures readers into the cloven mind of Gravey—and Darrel, his sinister alter ego—even as Flood’s secret journal chronicles his own descent into his own, eerily similar psychosis. A portrait of American violence that conjures the shadows of Ariel Castro, David Koresh, and Adam Lanza, Three Hundred Million is a brutal and mesmerizing masterwork, a portrait of contemporary America that is difficult to turn away from, or to forget.

Infinite Resignation

Infinite Resignation
Author: Eugene Thacker
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1912248204

“Scholarly advice for dark times.” —The New Yorker “Provides a metric ton of misery and a lot of company.” —New York Times “Probably philosophy’s only beach read.” —Vice A ‘nihilist’s devotional,’ this collection aphorisms, fragments, and observations on philosophy and pessimism offer a raw look at the human condition Dark times lie around us and ahead of us, and what better way to survive the coming Apocolypse than by immersing yourself in some of the greatest thinkers on pessimism, brought together with his own thoughts on the subject by Eugene Thacker, author of the contemporary classic, In the Dust of This Planet. Comprised of aphorisms, fragments, and observations both philosophical and personal, Infinite Resignation traces the contours of pessimism, caught as it often is between a philosophical position and a bad attitude. Reflecting on the universe’s “looming abyss of indifference,” Thacker explores the pessimism of a range of philosophers, from the well-known (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Camus), to the lesser-known (E.M. Cioran, Lev Shestov, Miguel de Unamuno). Readers will find food for thought in Thacker’s handling of a range of themes in Christianity and Buddhism, as well as his engagement with literary figures (from Dostoevsky to Thomas Bernhard, Osamu Dazai, and Fernando Pessoa), whose pessimism about the world both inspires and depresses Thacker. By turns melancholic, misanthropic, and darkly funny, Infinite Resignation is a welcome antidote to the exuberant imbecility of our times.

The Psychic Soviet

The Psychic Soviet
Author: Ian F. Svenonius
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1617757845

A reissue of Ian F. Svenonius’s cult-classic debut essay collection, including brand-new writing in this expanded edition. “Everything author-slash-punk-icon Ian Svenonius says is interesting, and this book of satirical essays—originally published in 2006, now back in print—proves it . . . You’ll laugh until you cry.” —Washington Post A new, expanded collection of essays and articles from one of the mainstays of the Washington, DC, underground rock and roll scene, The Psychic Soviet is Ian F. Svenonius’s groundbreaking first book of writings. The selections are written in a lettered yet engaging style, filled with parody and biting humor that subvert capitalist culture, and cover such topics as the ascent of the DJ as a star, the “cosmic depression” that followed the defeat of the USSR, how Seinfeld caused the bankruptcy of modern pop culture, and the status of rock and roll as a religion. The pocket-sized book is bound with a durable bright-pink plastic cover, recalling the aesthetics of Mao’s Little Red Book, and perfect for carrying into the fray of street battle, classroom, or lunch-counter argument.

The Last Town

The Last Town
Author: Blake Crouch
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2022-10-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593598512

The final book of the smash-hit Wayward Pines trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter, Recursion, and Upgrade What’s inside was a nightmare. What’s outside is a thousand times worse. Welcome to Wayward Pines, the last town. Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrived in Wayward Pines, Idaho, three weeks ago. In this town, people are told who to marry, where to live, where to work. No one is allowed to leave; even asking questions can get you killed. But Ethan has discovered the astonishing secret of what lies beyond the electrified fence that surrounds Wayward Pines and protects it from the terrifying world beyond. And now that secret is about to come storming through the fence to wipe out this last, fragile remnant of humanity. The Last Town at last pitches Ethan Burke and his fellow residents into all-out war against the forces outside the town’s gates—and in doing so delivers every bit the riotously horrific, breathlessly action-packed conclusion that the Wayward Pines trilogy deserves.

The Mother Knot

The Mother Knot
Author: Jane Lazarre
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780822320395

A feminist classic and a valuable testimonial to the experience of mothering. Originally published in 1976 but still relevant today, this is a fierce, often funny, often painful description of Lazarre's first few years of motherhood.