SERIES TWO: 2016-2017 BACKLIST
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Cardinal and Other Stories, by Alex HigleyA man returning a tuxedo suddenly follows a parking lot attendant home; a volunteer recovery worker finds himself re-enacting a deadly fire; a husband parses the meaning of his wife's online banking password; a hack musician travels to a German math institute. Post-Facebook, post-subprime crisis, and post-prosperity, the fearlessly deadpan characters in Alex Higley’s debut collection navigate the bleak and surreal suburbs from Phoenix to Chicago with minimal instincts for self-preservation--and with quietly explosive results. Stylish, perfectly controlled, and pleasurably shocking, Higley’s brilliantly subversive portraits of a lost generation reconfigure and reinvent the increasingly complex relationships between art, life, and the people we love. Longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for for Debut Fiction. ISBN: 9780996717526 (Print), 9780996717533 (eBook);
$14.00 (Print), $9.99 (eBook). |
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The Love Life of an Assistant Animator & Other Stories, by Katherine VazIn Katherine Vaz’s new collection of short fiction, beauty is continually and painfully present in all places--in a Thanksgiving dinner assembled by a widowed DMV worker being stalked by an irate customer; in a middle-aged Hollywood actress who captivates a young studio animator for decades; in the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy; and in a daughter’s memories of the ethereal, melting ice sculptures made by a woman embroiled in an affair with a wealthy lawyer. Amid their complex, turbulent relationships in a chronic state of crisis, Vaz’s wise and restless protagonists carry within them the seeds of a vanished, gracious world of urbane dinner parties and passionate affairs--a humane and cultured civilization whose flawed inhabitants are redeemed by their ability to blend the aesthetic imperative with the power to love. ISBN: 9780996717564 (Print), 9780996717571 (eBook);
$14.99 (Print), $9.99 (eBook). |
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Luck: Stories, by Ed MeekA young bartender in the North End finds himself complicit in the breakdown of his housemate’s relationship with his girlfriend; a married, middle-aged professor of composition abjectly crumbles under the stress of his affair with a beautiful student. In his debut fiction collection, poet Ed Meek vividly reimagines a gritty, freewheeling 1970s Boston whose cynical, impulsive inhabitants--torn between the longing for human connection and the fear of domesticity--negotiate the blurry boundaries of personal responsibility. With these deceptively mundane accounts of ordinary lives in transition, Meek paints a humane, subtle portrait of ordinary people grasping at explanations for the things they do. ISBN: 9780996717588 (Print), 9780996717595 (eBook); $14.00 (Print), $9.99 (eBook).
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Come Tomorrow You'll Regret Today: Collected Stories, by Patrick Trotti A high-school dropout struggles through the labyrinthine college admissions process as he is reluctantly drawn into the breakdown of his parents’ toxic marriage. A recovering addict finds out on Facebook that his best friend is dead; a college freshman accidentally comes across his high-school girlfriend on a porn site. Set against a backdrop of abandoned factories, faceless strip malls, and suburban alienation, these unsettling and deceptively simple stories capture the ambivalence and innocence of a generation coming to terms with a fundamentally stagnant world where the disappointments of everyday life are matched, surreally, with a pathological sense of failure. Praised for their “sentences of perfect economy” and “concise, unadorned prose,” these “taut” and “truly frightening” visions of post-industrial despair showcase the startling maturity of a talented writer who is, according to one contemporary, “in full command of his craft.” ISBN: 9780990454625 (Print), 9780990454632 (eBook); $14.00 (Print) $9.99 (eBook).
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Bewilderment, by Michael OnofreyAfter three decades of an over-extended youth abroad, fifty-six-year-old Wade Ricky returns home to the Los Angeles suburbs to care for his dying mother and come to terms with his memories of an awkwardly sensual affair with Herta, a German woman he meets while biking across India; a two-year stint in Peshawar as an assistant to a blind British expat; and a cheerfully surreal world of drugs and sexual voyeurism in which Wade is continually a complicit outsider. As months turn into years, Wade finds companionship with a landscape painter grieving for her son killed in Iraq and slowly rebuilds his life in America--even as he begins to understand, finally, why he must be alone. In pared-down, richly evocative prose that captures the hidden complexities of social and geopolitical relations, Michael Onofrey’s debut novel is a loving, even joyful meditation about the transience of human connection and the experience of solitude. ISBN: 9780997574203 (Print), 9780997574210 (eBook); $14.99 (Print), $9.99 (eBook).
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