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by Don Marquis
don marquis first introduced archy the cockroach and mehitable, a cat in her ninth life, in his newspaper column, the sun dial, in 1916. in a previous incarnation, archy was a free-verse poet, while mehitabel claims to be a reincarnation of cleopatra and other regal ladies. she is toujours gai, but archy is more philosophical. it is he who records their experiences and observations on the boss's typewriter late at night. but since he must throw himself headfirst onto each key to operate the typewriter, he can't make capital letters. But as archy writes —
"they are always interest in the technical details when the main question is whether the stuff is
literature or not"
it is.
by Paul Lake
Among the Immortals is a fast-paced thriller rooted in the Faustian dangers of literary ambition. Set in San Francisco — with poets both alive and dead — author Paul Lake weaves an ingenious story rich with brilliant minds, rare manuscripts, poetics, sexual tension, and vampirism.
"Not since Ken Russell's film Gothic has so enthusiastic an eye been cast toward the mythopoetic relationship among the Romantic poets and their role in the evolution of our horrific imagination... readers will thrill to the plot's literary intrigue and author's elegant skewering of the dark side of the poetic sensibility."
— Publishers Weekly
"Among the Immortals is an absolute delight... one of the best reads of this or any other year. Don't miss it."
— Jack Butler
Another Form of Travel
by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
In Madrid, in 1868, fencing master and man of honor Don Jaime is approached by a mysterious woman who seeks to learn the secret of the unstoppable thrust, an arcane technique known only to him. All too soon he finds himself in the vortex of a plot that includes seduction, secret political documents, and more than one murder. Rich with the historical detail of a decaying world that agonizes — as does fencing itself — over the ideals of honor and chivalry, The Fencing Master is superb literature and a true page-turner.
"Pérez-Reverte's best book to date... For a smart, literate novel with suspense and a great puzzle, this is hard to beat."
— The Toronto Globe & Mail
The Seville Communion
The Club Dumas
The Flanders Panel
by David Lindsey
Somewhere in the sprawling city of Houston, a psychopath is stalking his victims. Each is a high-priced call girl trained and groomed for the pleasure of high-powered gentlemen. Each is found murdered, her body twisted in a climax of agony, defying medical explanation. But most chilling of all is that the killer is coldly efficient, leaving behind no clues, no motives, no evidence.
Homicide detective Stuart Haydon has seen his share of dangerous passions that lead to murder, but he's never seen anything like this before. From its luxury condos to its rolling wharves and mean back streets, Haydon is sucked into the seedy sexual underbelly of the city... into a secret slave trade in flesh and lust... into the cold mind of a killer in love with death.
In the Lake of the Moon
Mercy
Heat From Another Sun
by Michael Moorcock
This second volume in Michael Moorcock's classic sequence introduces the soldier of fortune Captain Graf Ulrich von Bek, his relatives, and his family's quest — the protection of the Holy Grail.
On Earth, in Heaven and hell, and at the City of the Autumn Stars where all the worlds meet — thus continues the sequence of which
Tad Williams has said:
"If you are at all interested in fantastic fiction, you must read Michael Moorcock. He changed the field single-handedly: he is a giant. He has kept me entertained, shocked and fascinated for as long as I have been reading."
The Eternal Champion
Dancers at the End of Time
Hawkmoon
by Jonathan Lethem
Seven stories from the author of Amnesia Moon and As She Climbed Across the Table. Genre-bending, acid, extravagant, funny, surreal, and above all brilliant, Jonathan Lethem is the "hottest young author in the science fiction field."
— The Washington Post
"It is the less decernable minglings of the everyday with the strange futurity that gives Lethem's commonplace themes their awful power and lend his best stories an epic, lyrical power that makes them memorable."
— Los Angeles Times
Gun, With Occasional Music
Girl in Landscape
Motherless Brooklyn
by Gardner McKay
"Gardner McKay's brilliantly intricate novel, Toyer, is frightening, fascinating, and wonderfully well written. There were times reading it when I had to put it down to collect myself before picking it up again."
— Dominick Dunne
"The most effective, exciting, bizarre tale possible. In Toyer, McKay has given us an array of victims who fall into the Venus's-flytrap of villains as cunning as Richard III and as maniacal as Hannibal Lecter."
— Jimmy Buffett
"Toyer is a novel where Los Angeles stars as itself, the city of masks, where relationships peel the onion of dark revelation, as two adversaries couple in a seductive death-lock. Gardner McKay has woven a chilling and disturbing descent into the catacomb of the mind."
— James Cameron
by Christopher Moore
Jody never asked to be a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching neck, superhuman strength, and distinctly Nosfeatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her. Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful, undead redhead walks through the door... and proceeds to rock Tommy's life — and afterlife — in ways he never imagined possible.
Coyote Blue
Practical Demonkeeping
by Haruki Murakami
In this hyperkinetic and relentlessly inventive novel, Japan's most popular (and controversial) fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is simultaneously cooler than zero and unaffectedly affecting, a hilariously funny and deeply serious meditation on the nature and use of the mind.
A Wild Sheep Chase
The Elephant Vanishes
by James Morrow
God is dead. "Died and fell into the sea." That's what Raphael, a despondent angel with luminous white wings and a blinking halo, tells Anthony Van Hoorne on his fiftieth birthday.
Soon Van Hoorne is charged with captaining the supertanker Carpco Valparaiso (flying the colors of the Vatican) as it tows the two-mile long corpse through the Atlantic toward the Arctic, in order to preserve Him from sharks and decomposition. Van Hoorne must also contend with ecological guilt, a militant girlfriend, an estranged father, sabotage both natural and spiritual, a crew on (and sometimes past) the brink of mutiny, and greedy hucksters of oil, condoms, and doubtful ideas.
As he rings his wild, Vonnegutian changes on everything from male chauvinism to the Catholic Church, James Morrow once again proves himself to be one of the premier satirists of our time...
City of Truth
Only Begotten Daughter
The Wine of Violence
by Mo Hayder
Some crimes shock. Some crimes horrify. And some defy the imagination. In her mesmerizing novel, Mo Hayder steers into a nightmarish world of victims and their victimizer... and of a cop crashing up against his own limits as a man.
Detective Jack Caffery can stare down hardened criminals — but can't say good-bye to the woman he no longer loves. Still haunted by the decages-old murder case of five mutilated women, whose corpses, found on the outskirts of London, yield a treasure trove of abominations... including the little present found inside their bodies. Caffery knows his department is looking in the wrong place. But he cannot guess at the forces he's up against, the true darkness of a killer's heart, or the worst revelation of all... for as the manhunt builds to a furious crescendo, a killer is cornered. For a terrified city, the nightmare is finally over. Or is it?
Milk and Blood
The Treatment
(sequel to Birdman)
by Thomas Ligotti
"The ultimate in subtle horror... Ligotti tells these stories with an eerie, elegant style whose words emphasize the strange as much as the events do."
— Denver Post
"...Filled with short, lurid vignettes — snapshots of horror that demonstrate Ligotti's command of language and rich imagination. Starkly colored images keep the reader gasping."
— Library Journal
"Richly evocative tales... which slowly inundate the reader with dread. For those willing to immerse themselves in Ligotti's world, the rewards are great."
— Booklist
"Ligotti is probably the genre's most committed purist. He perfectly expresses the 'disorientating strangeness' that is the hallmark of the weird... Noctuary reads with the intense conviction of an author who writes what he does because he has little choice."
— New York Review of Science Fiction
Nightmare Factory
of H.P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft's unique contribution to American literature was a melding of traditional supernaturalism (derived from Edgar Allan Poe) with the emerging genre of science fiction in the early 1920's. This edition brings together a dozen of the Master's tales — from his early short stories"Under the Pyramids" (originally ghostwritten for Harry Houdini) and "The Music of Erich Zann" (which Lovecraft ranked second among his own favorites) through his more fully developed works "The Dunwich Horror," "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," and "At the Mountains of Madness."
***FIND TITLE***
by Pat Murphy
The stories in this groundbreaking collection — including the Nebula Award-winning "Rachel in Love" — effortlessly cross the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, blending visionary storytelling with uncompromising realism. They reveal the extraordinary range, depth, and insight that imbue all of Murphy's work, confirming her as one of the most gifted author's of short fiction writing today.
"In Ms. Murphy's skillful hands, the showdown between art and power takes on mythic dimensions. ...No one comes out of this confrontation unchanged, including the reader."
— The New York Times Book Review
There and Back Again
by Geoff Ryman
This haunting, magical, wildly original novel explores the lives of several characters entwined by The Wizard of Oz — both the novel written by L. Frank Baum and the iconic, strangely resonant 1939 film. It is the story of the "real" Dorothy Gael, an orphan living a hardscrabble life with abusive relatives on a Kansas frontier settlement, and of the kindly substitute teacher who decides to write the story of Judy Garland and her unhappy fame. It's about Jonathan, an actor now dying of AIDS, whose intense attachment to Oz dates back to his troubled childhood. And it's the story of Jonathan's therapist, whose work at an asylum also unwittingly intersects the path of the Yellow Brick Road.
From the Great Plains to glittering Hollywood, Was traverses the American landscape to reveal the whirling funnel cloud at the core of our personal and cultural fantasies. It is a powerful, moving story about survival, and about the power of human imagination to transcend the bleakest circumstances.
The Warrior Who
Carried Life
The Child Garden
253
by Patrick McGrath
This tale of mystery, murder, and intrigue is chock-full of eccentric dreams, ironic fates, and a uniquely gothic form of sexuality. Our narrator is Sir Hugo Coal, country squire, gentleman naturalist... and vegetable. Sir Hugo has suffered a "cerebral accident" that has left him in a wheelchair, unable to move or speak, but by no means unable to think — about Fledge, his new butler, whose devious schemings have already subverted the status quo at Crook Manor; about Fledge's wife, her nasty drinking habit and nocturnal accidents; about his own wife, who seems to be warming too much to Fledge's insinuating smile; and about his poor haunted daughter, Cleo, lost in mourning for her fiancé, Sidney.
Young Sidney mysteriously disappeared one October night and turned up again weeks later as a bag of bones buried in the Ceck Marsh. What happened that violent night? As Sir Hugo speculates, his account of events becomes more and more suspect. Is he lying to us? Or does there lurk within his immobile form, indeed within every room of Crook Manor, so much violence and sexuality, repressed in such dark and nasty ways, that only something grotesque could result?
Blood & Water
Dr. Haggard's Disease
Asylum
by Phillip Kerr
Welcome to the most ingenious building ever designed. Now try to get out alive...
In downtown Los Angeles it stands as a monument to man's genius — a glittering, high-tech office tower that washes its own windows, purifies its own air, and even knows which employees is using drugs. But now, the building known as the Gridiron, has turned malevolent. And its first victim is about to die.
From its hardware-jammed computer room on the fourth floor to the 300-foot-high tree that rises in its atrium, the Gridiron is thinking for itself — and turning into a house of horrors. And for the men and women trapped inside, there is only one way out: through the raw, human will to survive.
A Five Year Plan
March Violets
The Pale Criminal
by Daniel Keyes
First appearing as a short story which was rapidly and widely anthologized and translated internationally, Flowers for Algernon then received further acclaim as a memorable television drama, and as a motion picture production. Now, full-bodied and richly-peopled, Flowers for Algernon is the daring novel of a startling human experiment.
"A tale that is convincing, suspenseful and touching..."
— The New York Times
"Strikingly original;..."
— Publisher's Weekly
"Absorbing... Immensely original... Going to be read for a long time to come."
— Library Journal
The Touch
The Minds of Billy Milligan (nonfiction)
by Ursula Le Guin
The story of George Orr — a man who dreams things into being, for better or worse. It is a dark vision and a warning, a fable of power uncontrolled and uncontrollable, a truly prescient and startling view of humanity and the consequences of God-playing. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.
"Profound... beautifully wrought.. her perceptions of such matters as geopolitics, race, socialized medicine, and the patient/shrink relationship are razor sharp and more than a little cutting."
— National Review
The Wizard of Earth Sea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
The Left Hand of Darkness
by Simon Harding
A phone call in the early hours, and I'm back on the streamskelter all over again. But no jumping off this time, I'm going all the way, slipstreaming, all the way back to HER. Back sixteen years to when me and Rupert were toughing out trying to be teenagers with enough mischief for three and SHE noticed us. All the way back to when we found the picture of HER that we loved without knowing why. Even though a sad old man called Solomon who knew better — much good it did him in the end — warned us off.
So — you're asking — what's HER name, this dream bitch who keeps dragging me over the sheets?
Glaistig, the Beast Beneath, misty murder. The Green Nymph of the deep woods, the Pale Lady of the tumbling stream.
Sound like a fairy tale? Do I look like I lived Happily Ever After? Let me tell you a story...
by Greg Kihn
Manhattan psychiatrist Jukes Wahler has his hands full trying to track down his sister, Cathy. She's disappeared with her abusive boyfriend, a fashion photographer who pals around with Padraic O'Connor, a known Irish terrorist.
The police have no leads and matters get worse when one of Wahler's patients, a delusional man who thought the Banshee was pursuing him, is found dead.
Convinced O'Connor must know where Cathy is, Wahler sets out after him alone on the streets of New York. But he begins to hear the mournful cry of the mythic Banshee, and by the time he finds O'Connor, he's ready to beg for help instead of demand information.
When Wahler and O'Connor face the Banshee -- an ancient and deadly beauty — it's not without a price. They find it costs more than any man can afford.
Horror Show
Big Rock Beat
by Thomas Harris
In the realm of psychological suspense, Thomas Harris stands alone. Exploring both the nature of human evil and the nerve-racking anatomy of a forensic investigation, Harris unleashes a frightening vision of the dark side of our well-lighted world. In this extraordinary novel, which preceded The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, Harris introduced the unforgettable character Dr. Hannibal Lecter. And in it, Will Graham — the FBI man who hunted Lecter down — risks his sanity and his life to duel a killer called the Red Dragon...
"A gruesome, graphic, gripping thriller... extraordinarily harrowing."
— The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Warning! If you are subject to nightmares, do NOT read it!"
— Colorado Springs Sun
"An unforgettable thriller."
— New York Daily News
The Silence of the Lambs
Hannibal
Black Sunday
