Displaying books 1-48 of 136 in total

Beautiful Ugly

2025

by Alice Feeney

The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage...
... and revenge.

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge, the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there... but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible – a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.

The Boyfriend

2024

by Freida McFadden

She's looking for the perfect man. He's looking for the perfect victim.

Sydney Shaw, like every single woman in New York, has terrible luck with dating. She’s seen it all—men who lie in their dating profile, men who stick her with the dinner bill, and worst of all, men who can't shut up about their mothers. But finally, she hits the jackpot.

Her new boyfriend is utterly perfect. He's charming, handsome, and works as a doctor at a local hospital. Sydney is swept off her feet.

Then the brutal murder of a young woman—the latest in a string of deaths across the coast—confounds police. The primary suspect? A mystery man who dates his victims before he kills them.

Sydney should feel safe. After all, she is dating the guy of her dreams. But she can’t shake her own suspicions that the perfect man may not be as perfect as he seems. Because someone is watching her every move, and if she doesn’t get to the truth, she’ll be the killer’s next victim...

A dark story about obsession and the things we’ll do for love, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden proves that crimes of passion are often the bloodiest…

Colored Television

2024

by Danzy Senna

Colored Television presents a brilliant dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex. Jane harbors high hopes that her life is on the brink of transformation. After a prolonged period of precarious existence, Jane, her artist husband Lenny, and their two children embark on a journey as house sitters in a friend's opulent abode nestled in the Los Angeles hills—a fortuitous arrangement that aligns perfectly with Jane's sabbatical.

If she can complete her latest work of literature, Nusu Nusu—a sweeping epic that Lenny playfully dubs her 'mulatto War and Peace'—she'll secure tenure, along with a semblance of stability and achievement. However, reality fails to meet expectations. Desperate for an alternative, Jane, like many authors before her, casts a hopeful eye towards Hollywood. A chance encounter with an up-and-coming producer, eager to craft 'diverse content' for a streaming platform, brings a glimmer of hope. He is keen to collaborate with a 'real writer' to produce what he imagines will be the ultimate biracial comedy for television.

Just as things begin to look up for Jane, they take a drastic turn for the worse. Colored Television is not only humorous and incisive but also a compelling read, marking Senna's most timely and insightful novel to date.

We Were The Universe

A young mother, in denial after the death of her sister, navigates the dizzying landscapes of desire, guilt, and grief in this darkly comic, highly anticipated debut novel from Kimberly King Parsons, author of the story collection, Black Light.

The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.

When she returns to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle into her routine—long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother’s phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit’s mind, she’s reminiscing about the band she used to be in—and how they’d go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She’s imagining an impossible threesome with her kid’s pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone?

We Were the Universe is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction—a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take.

O Caledonia

In the tradition of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, this is a darkly humorous modern classic of Scottish literature about a doomed adolescent growing up in the mid-20th century.

Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, attired in her mother’s black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw…

Author Elspeth Barker masterfully evokes the harsh climate of Scotland in this atmospheric gothic tale. It has been compared to the works of the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. Immersed in a world of isolation and loneliness, Barker’s ill-fated young heroine, Janet, turns to literature, nature, and her Aunt Lila, who offers brief flashes of respite in an otherwise foreboding life. People, birds, and beasts move through the background in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant. The family’s motto—Moriens sed Invictus (Dying but Unconquered)—is a well-suited epitaph for wild and courageous Janet, whose fierce determination to remain steadfastly herself makes her one of the most unforgettable protagonists in contemporary literature.

Listen for the Lie

2024

by Amy Tintera

What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.

But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.

BOAT SHOES – SOLILOQUY OF A USELESS EATER: Book Two

2023

by Daire Feeney

Ever wonder what really goes on behind the scenes at one of the most prestigious residential buildings in New York City—a multiple dwelling Upper East Side building located on Fifth Avenue, where the 0.01% of society pretends to commingle with the meager 1%—and jaw-droppingly told through the introspective eyes of an intelligent, browbeaten, misanthropic, self-medicating doorman?

“Never give in to psychiatry when in pursuit of the American Dream.” – Daire Feeney.

In his debut series of novels, Daire Feeney has been loosely described as Frank McCourt meets Chuck Palahniuk as he tells an unbelievable transgressive story of a Fifth Avenue doorman. BOAT SHOES – SOLILOQUY OF A USELESS EATER tells the story of a first-generation son of Irish immigrants who, after falling on hard financial times, and a subsequent failed suicide attempt, finds himself seeking employment at his old high school job as a Fifth Avenue doorman.

The reader follows the NYC native throughout a grueling 16-hour doorman shift as he is ridiculed by his employers, plied with narcotics by the old guard, sexually assaulted by residents, and becomes witness—and participant—to a wide range of inconceivable acts of moral turpitude; all in the pursuit of his specious American Dream.

The Possessed

From "a master of verbal burlesque [and] a connoisseur of psychological blackmail" (John Updike), Witold Gombrowicz's harrowing and hilarious pastiche of the Gothic novel, now in a new, authoritative English translation.

Witold Gombrowicz is considered by many to be Poland's greatest modernist, and in The Possessed, he demonstrates his playful brilliance and astonishing range by using the familiar tropes of the Gothic novel to produce a darkly funny and lively subversion of the form.

With dreams of escaping his small-town existence and the limitations of his class, a young tennis coach travels to the heart of the Polish countryside to train Maja Ocholowska, a beautiful and promising player whose bourgeois family has fallen upon difficult circumstances. Yet as Maja and the young man are alternately drawn to and repulsed by the other, they find themselves embroiled in the fantastic happenings taking place at the dilapidated castle nearby, where a mad prince haunts the halls, and bewitched towels, conniving secretaries, famous clairvoyants, and uncanny doubles conspire to determine the fate of the lovers.

Serialized first in Poland in the days preceding the Nazi invasion, and now translated directly into English for the first time by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, The Possessed is a comic jewel, a hair-raising thriller, and a provocative early masterpiece from the acclaimed author of classics like Pornografia and Cosmos.

Death Valley

2023

by Melissa Broder

In Melissa Broder’s astonishingly profound new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening.

What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path discovered on a nearby hike. Out along the sun-scorched trail, the narrator encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it.

What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious, and poignant. Death Valley is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative and universal.

Crook Manifesto

Crook Manifesto continues the Harlem saga by the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Colson Whitehead. Set in a 1970s New York that is both seedy and glittering, the novel follows furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney as he navigates a city on the brink of bankruptcy.

It's 1971, and Carney is trying to keep his head down and his business afloat amidst rampant crime and a citywide nervous breakdown. His criminal past is behind him—or so he believes—until a quest for Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May entangles him with his old police contact Munson, a fixer with his own dangerous agenda.

By 1973, as the counter-culture ushers in a new generation and the old ways are being cast aside, Carney's partner in crime, Pepper, is caught up in the world of Blaxploitation films. It's a bizarre mix of Hollywood stars, comedians on the rise, and the usual underworld figures, all underestimating Pepper's cunning and resourcefulness.

In the lead-up to the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976, Harlem itself is ablaze, and Carney must reconcile his advertising ambitions with his wife Elizabeth's political aspirations as she campaigns for her friend, the ambitious Alexander Oakes. When tragedy strikes close to home, Carney and Pepper must confront the city's shady and violent forces to uncover the truth.

Crook Manifesto is not only a darkly humorous tale of a city under siege but also a profound exploration of family and survival. Colson Whitehead's vivid depiction of Harlem stands as a testament to one of history's most dynamic places and times.

The Rachel Incident

The Rachel Incident, brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.

Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.

The Survivalists

2023

by Kashana Cauley

A single Black lawyer puts her career and personal moral code at risk when she moves in with her coffee entrepreneur boyfriend and his doomsday-prepping roommates in a novel that’s packed with tension, curiosity, humor, and wit from a writer with serious comedy credentials.


In the wake of her parents’ death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life—success—until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy-traumatized, illegal-gun-stockpiling, optimized-soy-protein-eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world, one of selling guns and training for a doomsday that’s maybe just around the corner.


For readers of Victor LaValle’s The Changeling, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, and Zakiya Harris’s The Other Black Girl, The Survivalists is a darkly humorous novel from a smart and relevant new literary voice that’s packed with tension, curiosity and wit, and unafraid to ask the questions most relevant to a new generation of Americans: Does it make sense to climb the corporate ladder? What exactly are the politics of gun ownership? And in a world where it’s nearly impossible for young people to earn enough money to afford stable housing, what does it take in order to survive?

Dead Souls

2021

by Nikolai Gogol

Dead Souls, a seminal work in Russian literature, offers a vivid portrayal of provincial Russian life. It is celebrated for its realistic depiction as well as for its exaggerated narrative, serving both as a tribute to the Russian spirit and a scathing satire of the imperial Russian flaws of venality, vulgarity, and pomp. At the heart of the story is Gogol's cunning antihero, Chichikov, who traverses the countryside engaging in transactions for "dead souls" - deceased serfs who still represent value to those astute enough to trade in them. This journey introduces us to a cast reminiscent of Dickens, filled with peasants, landowners, and scheming officials, all drawn into Chichikov's elaborate scheme. Through this narrative, Gogol masterfully explores themes of human oddity and error, making Dead Souls a masterpiece of both humor and insight.

Der Schrecksenmeister

2020

by Walter Moers

In Sledwaya, der Stadt, in der das Gesunde krank und das Kranke gesund ist, spielt der neue Roman des zamonischen Großschriftstellers Hildegunst von Mythenmetz. Er handelt von der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Echo, dem hochbegabten Krätzchen, und Succubius Eißpin, dem furchtbaren Schrecksenmeister Sledwayas, der Faust und Mephisto in einer Person zu verkörpern scheint. Dieser lässt nichts unversucht, um sich mittels der Alchimie zum Herrn über Leben und Tod aufzuschwingen – und dazu braucht er nichts notwendiger als das Fett von Echo, der gezwungen ist, einen teuflischen Vertrag mit Eißpin abzuschließen.

Echo, das hochbegabte Krätzchen, ist nach dem Tod seines Frauchens in allergrößte Schwierigkeiten geraten. Er ist gezwungen, mit dem Schrecksenmeister Succubius Eißpin einen verhängnisvollen Vertrag zu schließen. Dieser gibt Eißpin das Recht, die Kratze beim nächsten Vollmond zu töten und ihr das Fett auszukochen. Als Gegenleistung muss Eißpin Echo bis dahin auf höchstem kulinarischen Niveau durchfüttern.

Doch der Schrecksenmeister Eißpin hat nicht mit dem Überlebenswillen und dem Erfindungsreichtum des Krätzchens gerechnet – vor allem nicht mit dessen neuen Freunden, den Grübelnden Eiern und dem Goldenen Eichhörnchen, Fjodor F. Fjodor, dem Einäugigen Schuhu und dem Gekochten Gespenst und vor allem Inazea Anazazi, der letzten Schreckse von Sledwaya.

The Village Narcissist

2020

by Glenis Kellet

A body is found hanging from a noose made from a bell rope! Is this just the start of things to come?

The deceptively quiet remote village is shattered after a brazen obnoxious outsider purchases The Old Vicarage - strange disappearances occur. It wasn’t until the gruesome village history was revealed - that the baffled police could solve the chilling mysteries connected to the bell tower.

The fictitious villager's characters play a colourful and humorous part in this book - bringing the small village to life. It's a gripping murder mystery, injecting the gruesome, spine-chilling history of this remote village into its final sinister twists and turns.

My Sister, the Serial Killer

When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel, and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, self-defence, and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away.

She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister, and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...

My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water...

Baby Teeth

2018

by Zoje Stage

Meet Hanna: She’s the sweet-but-silent angel in the adoring eyes of her Daddy. He’s the only person who understands her, and all Hanna wants is to live happily ever after with him. But Mommy stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think of to get rid of her. Ideally for good.

Meet Suzette: She loves her daughter, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette's husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all.

Baby Teeth is a tense novel of psychological suspense by award-winning playwright and filmmaker Zoje Stage, revealing the frailty and falsehood of familial bonds.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman’s efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes.

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva.

It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be.

Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

Dead Men's Trousers

2018

by Irvine Welsh

Mark Renton is finally a success. An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms, and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life.

He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist and – much to Mark’s astonishment – doesn't seem interested in revenge.

Sick Boy and Spud, who have agendas of their own, are intrigued to learn that their old friends are back in town. But when they enter the bleak world of organ-harvesting, things start to go so badly wrong.

Lurching from crisis to crisis, the four men circle each other, driven by their personal histories and addictions, confused, angry – so desperate that even Hibs winning the Scottish Cup doesn’t really help.

One of these four will not survive to the end of this book. Which one of them is wearing Dead Men's Trousers?

Fast and furious, scabrously funny and weirdly moving, this is a spectacular return of the crew from Trainspotting.

Adjustment Day

2018

by Chuck Palahniuk

The author of Fight Club takes America beyond our darkest dreams in this timely satire. People pass the word only to those they trust most: Adjustment Day is coming. They’ve been reading a mysterious book and memorizing its directives. They are ready for the reckoning.

Adjustment Day, the author’s first novel in four years, is an ingeniously comic work in which Chuck Palahniuk does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society. Smug, geriatric politicians bring the nation to the brink of a third world war in an effort to control the burgeoning population of young males; working-class men dream of burying the elites; and professors propound theories that offer students only the bleakest future.

When Adjustment Day arrives, it fearlessly makes real the logical conclusion of every separatist fantasy, alternative fact, and conspiracy theory lurking in the American psyche.

Invisible Monsters

2018

by Chuck Palahniuk

She's a catwalk model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden motor 'accident' leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful centre of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists.

Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from being a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better, and that salvation hides in the last place you'll ever want to look.

The narrator must exact revenge upon Evie, her best friend and fellow model; kidnap Manus, her two-timing ex-boyfriend; and hit the road with Brandy in search of a brand-new past, present and future.

Survivor

2018

by Chuck Palahniuk

From the author of the underground sensation Fight Club comes this wickedly incisive second novel, a mesmerizing, unnerving, and hilarious vision of cult and post-cult life.

Tender Branson—last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult—is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. Before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah, author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the even better selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms). He'll reveal the truth of his tortured romance with the elusive and prescient Fertility Hollis, share his insight that "the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage," and deny responsibility for the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, a 20,000-acre repository for the nation's outdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant.

Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night and Jerzy Kosinski's Being There has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Unpredictable, compelling, and unforgettable, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak; and it cements his place as one of the most original writers in fiction today.

The Girl Who Lived

Ten years ago, four people were brutally murdered. One girl lived. No one believes her story. The police think she’s crazy. Her therapist thinks she’s suicidal. Everyone else thinks she’s a dangerous drunk. They’re all right—but did she see the killer?

As the anniversary of the murders approaches, Faith Winters is released from the psychiatric hospital and yanked back to the last spot on earth she wants to be—her hometown where the slayings took place. Wracked by the lingering echoes of survivor’s guilt, Faith spirals into a black hole of alcoholism and wanton self-destruction.

Finding no solace at the bottom of a bottle, Faith decides to track down her sister’s killer—and then discovers that she’s the one being hunted. How can one woman uncover the truth when everyone’s a suspect—including herself?

From the mind of Wall Street Journal bestselling author Christopher Greyson comes a story with twists and turns that take the reader on a journey of light and dark, good and evil, to the edge of madness.

Colombiano

2017

by Rusty Young

In Colombia, you have to pick a side. Or one will be picked for you...

All Pedro Gutiérrez cares about is fishing, playing pool, and his girlfriend Camila’s promise to sleep with him on his sixteenth birthday. But his life is ripped apart when Guerrilla soldiers callously execute his father in front of him, and he and his mother are banished from their farm.

Swearing vengeance against the five men responsible, Pedro, with his best friend Palillo, joins an illegal Paramilitary group, where he is trained to fight, kill, and crush any sign of weakness.

But as he descends into a world of unspeakable violence, Pedro must decide how far he is willing to go. Can he stop himself before he becomes just as ruthless as those he is hunting? Or will his dark obsession cost him all he loves?

Colombiano is an epic tale of rural villages held to ransom, of jungle drug labs, cocaine supermarkets, witch doctors, and buried millions. It tells of innocent teenage love, barbaric torture, and meticulously planned revenge.

Superbly told and by turns gripping, poignant, and darkly comic, Colombiano is the remarkable story of a boy whose moral descent becomes a metaphor for the corruption of an entire nation. Both blockbuster thriller and electrifying coming-of-age story, Rusty Young’s powerful novel is also a meditation on the redeeming power of love.

The Fourth Monkey

2017

by J.D. Barker

For over five years, the Four Monkey Killer has terrorized the residents of Chicago. When his body is found, the police quickly realize he was on his way to deliver one final message, one which proves he has taken another victim who may still be alive.

As the lead investigator on the 4MK task force, Detective Sam Porter knows even in death, the killer is far from finished. When he discovers a personal diary in the jacket pocket of the body, Porter finds himself caught up in the mind of a psychopath, unraveling a twisted history in hopes of finding one last girl, all while struggling with personal demons of his own.

With only a handful of clues, the elusive killer’s identity remains a mystery. Time is running out and the Four Monkey Killer taunts from beyond the grave in this masterfully written fast-paced thriller.

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

2017

by Emilie Autumn

Two young women, living centuries apart, both accused of madness, communicate across time to fight a common enemy... their doctors.

"It was the dog who found me." Such is the stark confession launching the harrowing scene that begins The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls as Emilie Autumn, a young musician on the verge of a bright career, attempts suicide by overdosing on the antipsychotics prescribed to treat her bipolar disorder. Upon being discovered, Emilie is revived and immediately incarcerated in a maximum-security psych ward, despite her protestations that she is not crazy, and can provide valid reasons for her actions if someone would only listen.

Treated as a criminal, heavily medicated, and stripped of all freedoms, Emilie is denied communication with the outside world, and falls prey to the unwelcome attentions of Dr. Sharp, head of the hospital's psychiatry department. As Dr. Sharp grows more predatory by the day, Emilie begins a secret diary to document her terrifying experience, and to maintain her sanity in this environment that could surely drive anyone mad. But when Emilie opens her notebook to find a desperate letter from a young woman imprisoned within an insane asylum in Victorian England, and bearing her own name and description, a portal to another world is blasted wide open.

As these letters from the past continue to appear, Emilie escapes further into this mysterious alternate reality where sisterhoods are formed, romance between female inmates blossoms, striped wallpaper writhes with ghosts, and highly intellectual rats speak the Queen's English.

But is it real? Or is Emilie truly as mad as she is constantly told she is? The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls blurs harsh reality and magical historical fantasy whilst issuing a scathing critique of society's treatment of women and the mental health care industry's treatment of its patients, showing in the process that little has changed throughout the ages.

Welcome to the Asylum. Are you committed?

Finders Keepers

2017

by Stephen King

Wake up, genius. The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel.

Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he’s released from prison after thirty-five years.

The Loved One

2017

by Evelyn Waugh

"The Loved One" is a delightful and dark satire that swirls together the cultural nuances of America and Britain. The story follows Dennis Barlow, a British expatriate and aspiring poet, who finds himself in the peculiar world of Hollywood.

After a failed stint as a screenwriter, Dennis takes up a job at a pet cemetery, much to the surprise of his fellow British expats. However, the community is soon distracted by the suicide of one of their own, and Dennis is tasked with arranging the funeral.

As the plot unfolds, Dennis enters the artificial paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park, where he meets the beautiful AimĂŠe Thanatogenos, a junior cosmetician, and the master embalmer, Mr. Joyboy. Can Dennis navigate the bizarre world of American-style death rituals and maintain his reputation among his countrymen?

This novel is a savage critique of the Anglo-American cultural divide, depicting a world where love, reputation, and death come at a very high cost. Join Dennis on this hilarious journey through the surreal landscape of Hollywood's funeral industry.

The Dying of the Light

2017

by Derek Landy

The final shocking, heart-wrenching book in the jaw-droppingly stupendous Skulduggery Pleasant series.

Valkyrie. Darquesse. Stephanie. The world ain’t big enough for the three of them. The end will come…

The War of the Sanctuaries has been won, but it was not without its casualties. Following the loss of Valkyrie Cain, Skulduggery Pleasant must use any and all means to track down and stop Darquesse before she turns the world into a charred, lifeless cinder.

And so he draws together a team of soldiers, monster hunters, killers, criminals… and Valkyrie’s own murderous reflection.

The war may be over, but the final battle is about to begin. And not everyone gets out of here alive…

Psycho Sitter

Cassandra, a 17-year-old girl, dreams of becoming a therapist for troubled children one day. Her parents' job takes them away from their children, leading to an unexpected adventure.

Cassie's father receives a call for him and his wife to take a trip to Australia, thousands of miles away. They accept the offer but realize they can't leave their seventeen and eight-year-old alone for a week, so they call a sitter.

Little did they know, they hired a dangerous psychopath killer. Will Cassandra and Ben escape the harmful hands of their psychotic sitter? Or has he already set his eyes on the young and pure Cassandra?

A Modest Proposal

2016

by Jonathan Swift

A Modest Proposal is a renowned satirical essay by Jonathan Swift, which offers a chilling solution to the dire poverty and overpopulation plaguing Ireland in the 18th century. Swift presents a shockingly calculated and seemingly rational argument for using the children of the poor as a food source, thereby addressing both the economic burden on society and the issue of hunger.

This provocative piece is a masterful example of irony and social criticism, as it exposes the cruel attitudes and policies of the British ruling class towards the Irish populace. Swift's incisive critique not only underscores the absurdity of the proposed solution but also serves as a profound commentary on the exploitation and mistreatment of the oppressed.

A Modest Proposal remains a quintessential example of satirical literature, its biting wit and moral indignation as relevant today as it was at the time of its publication. Swift's deadpan satire led to the coining of the term "Swiftian", describing satire of similarly ironic writing style.

Fight Club 2

2016

by Chuck Palahniuk

Some imaginary friends never go away . . .

Ten years after starting Project Mayhem, he lives a mundane life. A kid, a wife. Pills to keep his destiny at bay. But it won’t last long—the wife has seen to that. He’s back where he started, but this go-round he’s got more at stake than his own life.

The time has arrived . . .

The Blade Artist

2016

by Irvine Welsh

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary.

But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmally, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas.

When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly.

The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel – ultra violent but curiously redemptive – and it marks the return of one of modern fiction’s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.

The Library at Mount Char

2016

by Scott Hawkins

A missing God.
A library with the secrets to the universe.
A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.

Carolyn's not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts. After all, she was a normal American herself once. That was a long time ago, of course. Before her parents died. Before she and the others were taken in by the man they called Father.

In the years since then, Carolyn hasn't had a chance to get out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father's ancient customs. They've studied the books in his Library and learned some of the secrets of his power. And sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God.

Now, Father is missing—perhaps even dead—and the Library that holds his secrets stands unguarded. And with it, control over all of creation. As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her, all of them with powers that far exceed her own. But Carolyn has accounted for this. And Carolyn has a plan.

The only trouble is that in the war to make a new God, she's forgotten to protect the things that make her human.

Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters and propelled by a plot that will shock you again and again, The Library at Mount Char is at once horrifying and hilarious, mind-blowingly alien and heartbreakingly human, sweepingly visionary and nail-bitingly thrilling.

The Sweetest Kill

2015

by Amber Lee

Why didn’t you kill me like I asked?

I didn’t feel like it.

Twenty-two year old Shoshanna has suffered from depression since she was a child. Once, she actually tried to end it all, but failed miserably. Since then, she has been struggling to keep a promise she made to her parents... one that she has regretted making ever since.

One day though, she sees news about a killer on the loose, who appears to be targeting girls around her age. Then an idea pops into her head: What if I could end it all? Why does an innocent girl have to lose her life when she doesn’t want to? When I am stuck here living a life that I don’t want to live.

So she decides to go on the hunt, find the predator, and… offer herself as willing prey. But is she going to get what she wants, or is she going to get more than she bargained for?

Monster Hunter International

2014

by Larry Correia

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a fourteenth story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer. It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows.

Officially secret, some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. On the other side are the people who kill monsters for a living. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit. It’s actually a pretty sweet gig, except for one little problem.

An ancient entity known as the Cursed One has returned to settle a centuries-old vendetta. Should the Cursed One succeed, it means the end of the world, and MHI is the only thing standing in his way. With the clock ticking towards Armageddon, Owen finds himself trapped between legions of undead minions, belligerent federal agents, a cryptic ghost who has taken up residence inside his head, and the cursed family of the woman he loves.

Business is good... Welcome to Monster Hunter International.

The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

2014

by Irvine Welsh

When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms an apparently crazed gunman, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind. Within hours, Lucy becomes a hero. The solitary eye-witness, the depressed and overweight Lena Sorensen, thrilled by Lucy's heroism and decisiveness, becomes obsessed with the trainer and enrolls as a client at her Bodysculpt gym. It quickly becomes clear that Lena is more interested in Lucy's body than her own, and a budding fatal attraction takes hold. However, it's when Lucy imprisons Lena, and can't stop thinking about the sex lives of Siamese twins, that the real problems start.

In Lucy and Lena, Irvine Welsh has created two of his most memorable female protagonists, and one of the most bizarre, sadomasochistic folie Ă  deux in contemporary fiction. The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins taps into two great obsessions of our time--how we look and where we live--and tells a story so subversive and dark it blacks out the Florida sun.

Tampa

2014

by Alissa Nutting

In Alissa Nutting's novel Tampa, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student. Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship—car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom.

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. Tampa is a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical, American Psycho–esque rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire. Laced with black humor and crackling sexualized prose, Tampa is a grand, seriocomic examination of the want behind student / teacher affairs and a scorching literary debut.

Plague of Angels

Nyx is Queen of Hell and ruler of the Angels who were banished there – the Descended. When the rest of the Angels are called home, Nyx finds herself stuck on Earth with the Son of God. To her surprise, she learns that he is no happier than she is. God's son thought he was sent down to judge humanity. Instead, he becomes a sacrifice for a cause he does not believe in – their redemption.

After his mortal body dies, the Son of God makes Nyx an offer: a new paradise on Earth if she will help him destroy humanity. With two of her fellow Angels by her side, Nyx launches a thousand-year campaign of violence, sex, betrayal, and intrigue to bring down God's people and have them worship her instead.

From the back streets of Jerusalem to the palaces of Rome, from the temples of Egypt to the Pope's bedchamber, Nyx and her companions work to destroy the worshippers of God. But not all is as it seems. And the Son of God has bigger plans than any of them imagine...

The Dinner

2013

by Herman Koch

An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives - all over the course of one meal.

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, "The Dinner" promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates.

Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories

2013

by Karen Russell

From the author of the novel Swamplandia! comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best.

Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution. A group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate they used to torment. A family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences.

In the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.

A Handful of Dust

2012

by Evelyn Waugh

Laced with cynicism and truth, A Handful of Dust satirizes a certain stratum of English life where all the characters have wealth, but lack practically every other credential. Murderously urbane, it depicts the breakup of a marriage in the London gentry, where the errant wife suffers from terminal boredom, and becomes enamoured of a social parasite and professional luncheon-goer.

After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last is bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. Brilliantly combining tragedy, comedy and savage irony, A Handful of Dust captures the irresponsible mood of the 'crazy and sterile generation' between the wars. This breakdown of the Last marriage is a painful, comic re-working of Waugh's own divorce, and a symbol of the disintegration of society.

The Stolen: Two Short Stories

2012

by Michelle Browne

In "The Fields", Clarice is a governess on a small, remote backwater colony. Her previous misdemeanours in a nightmarishly controlling world have caught up to her, and she is taken in with other felons for re-education. Little does she know what this re-education will include...or its price.

In "WordThieves", Sarah White is trapped in a nightmarishly bureaucratic peacenik paradise on Io. Spending her days daydreaming about untranslatable words and craving candy, her world is mostly idyllic. Until, that is, she runs into an old familiar face, and breaks the fragile tension holding her life together.

What crimes are committed in the name of peace, control, and harmony? In a world where public violence is a distant memory and peer pressure is a mandated punishment, Clarice and Sarah are about to find out.

The Nightlife: New York

2012

by Travis Luedke

Vampires, strippers, escorts, night clubs, gangs, pimps and corrupt cops, the nightlife of New York is never boring.

Is she a beautiful blond guardian angel as he imagined, or something else entirely? When Michelle saves Aaron's life, she shares the benefits of her blood (after getting him shot accidentally). He awakes a changed man, living in a purgatory of eternal night, never to see the sunrise again.

Michelle drags Aaron through a hardcore learning curve of vampiric slavery. Forced to adapt to servitude, Aaron is subject to her authority of compulsion. She orders him around like a puppet on a string, a dog on a very short leash. First things first, he must learn to feed properly without creating bloodslaves (humans addicted to the powerful drug-like effect of their venomous bite).

And then she puts him to work—a male escort in the sex trade—same as Michelle. Aaron walks a tightrope of strictly controlled feeding regimens and intensely erotic sexual adventures while catering to the neurotic control-freak tendencies of his new master. It's do or die, Michelle vows to eliminate him if he proves too difficult to control.

The real kicker—amidst all these shocking and degrading adjustments, Aaron finds he's falling in love. Can he maintain and keep a sliver of his humanity intact? Innocence is a luxury few can afford in the decadent nightlife of New York.

In a world where sex, blood, and power over women is so readily accessible, Aaron struggles against the predatory instincts deeply rooted in his new psyche. He must find his way quickly, practicing rigid self-control, or risk the consequences of Michelle's wrath.

Great Granny Webster

Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood’s masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer.

This macabre, mordantly funny, partly auto-biographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives.

I Hunt Killers

2012

by Barry Lyga

What if the world's worst serial killer...was your dad?

Jasper "Jazz" Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say. But he's also the son of the world's most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could—from the criminal's point of view.

And now bodies are piling up in Lobo's Nod.

In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret—could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

The Sisters Brothers

2012

by Patrick deWitt

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and whom he does it for.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters - losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life - and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West, and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

The Marbled Swarm

2011

by Dennis Cooper

The Marbled Swarm is Dennis Cooper’s most haunting work to date. Within its secret passageways, hidden rooms, and the troubled mind of our narrator, a mystery perpetually takes shape. The most compelling clue to its final nature is “the marbled swarm” itself, a complex amalgam of language passed down from father to son.

Cooper ensnares the reader in a world of appearances, where the trappings of high art, old money, and haute cuisine obscure an unspeakable system of coercion and surrender. As the narrator stalks an elusive truth, traveling from the French countryside to Paris and back again, the reader will be seduced by a voice only Dennis Cooper could create.

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