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Episodes
Saturday Jun 23, 2018
Saturday Jun 23, 2018
Lee Cuddy is seventeen years old and on the run, alone on the streets of Philadelphia. After taking the fall for a rich friend, Lee reluctantly accepts refuge in the Crystal Castle--a cooperative of homeless kids squatting in an austere, derelict building. But homeless kids are disappearing from the streets in suspicious numbers, and Lee quickly discovers that the secret society's charitable facade is too good to be true. She finds an unexpected ally in Tomi, a young artist and hacker whose knowledge of the Internet's black market is rivaled only by his ability to break into and out of buildings. From abandoned aquariums to highly patrolled museums to the homes of vacationing Philadelphians, Tomi and Lee can always chart a way to the next, perfect hide-out.
But the harder Lee tries to escape into the unmapped corners of the city, the closer she unwittingly gets to uncovering the disturbing agenda of the very men who pull the strings of the secret society she's hoped to elude, a group of fanatics obsessed with the secrets encoded in the work of early-twentieth-century artist Marcel Duchamp. What these men want is more twisted than anything Lee could've imagined, and they believe Lee holds the key to it all. Augustus Rose's The Readymade Thief heralds the arrival of an astoundingly imaginative and propulsive new voice in fiction for fans of Marisha Pessl and Ernest Cline.
Rose is in conversation with Tom Bissell, author of Apostle: Travel Among the Tombs of the Twelve.
Monday Jun 18, 2018
Monday Jun 18, 2018
Eleanor Henderson’s bestselling debut novel Ten Thousand Saints was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. It was deemed “fierce, devoted and elegiac,” and Ann Patchett said, “Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination.” In her forthcoming novel, The Twelve-Mile Straight, Henderson boldly returns to the page with a story inspired by those she heard about the small town in South Georgia her father grew up in, and combines the emotional acuity of her earlier work with a fresh take on big, important themes.
Henderson is joined by Edan Lepucki, author of the novels California and Woman No. 17.
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
What happens when your own government turns against you? The Equality Team continues to round up and subject The Ones—the 1% of the American population who were genetically engineered in vitro—to a vaccine that will level the playing field. Desperate to save her boyfriend James from this fate, Cody flees into the wild to seek
assistance from a shadowy rebel group dedicated to equal rights for the Ones at any cost.
But when she grows closer to a radical named Kai, she's brought deeper into the fold, only to realize the group's leader has a secret plan more dangerous than Cody could have imagined—something that could change the course of the Ones' future.
In The Equals, themes of justice, discrimination and terrorism mix with actual science to create a frightening version of our near future in Daniel Sweren-Becker's action-packed sequel to The Ones.
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
“I know nothing about death, absolutely nothing,” asserts the narrator of Alistair McCartney's inventive autobiographical novel. Yet he can’t stop thinking about it. Detached from life in Los Angeles and his past in Australia, uncomfortable around other humans, he researches death on the Internet; mulls over distant and intimate stories of suicides, serial killers, and “natural deaths”; and wanders about LA’s Holy Cross Cemetery. He’s looking for answers, all the while formulating his own disquieting philosophies.
Within this dizzying investigation into the mystery of death is another mystery: who is the companion igniting these memories? This enigmatic novel blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction, story and eulogy, poetry and obituary. Wry yet somber, astringent yet tender, The Disintegrations confronts both the impossibility of understanding death and the timeless longing for immortality.
Mr. McCartney is joined by David Francis, author of Agapanthus Tango, Stray Dog Winter, and Wedding Bush Road.
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
It’s been two years since the events of Gangsterland, when legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the guise of Las Vegas Rabbi David Cohen. Now, in September of 2001, everything’s coming up gold for David—but Sal wants out. He only needs to make it through the High Holidays, and he’ll have enough money to slip away, grab his wife and kid, and start fresh.
Across the country, former FBI agent Matthew Drew is now running security for an Indian Casino outside of Milwaukee, spending his off-time stalking members of The Family, looking for vengeance for the murder of his former partner. So when Sal’s cousin stumbles into the casino one night, Matthew takes the law into his own hands— again—touching off a series of events that will have Rabbi Cohen running for his life, trapped in Las Vegas, with the law, society, and the post-9/11 world closing in around him.
With the wit and gritty glamour that defines his writing, Tod Goldberg traces how the things we most value in our lives—home, health, even our spiritual lives—have been built on the enterprises of criminals.
Mr. Goldberg is joined by David L. Ulin, author of Ear to the Ground.
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
Sunday Jun 17, 2018
Attica Locke considers herself a Texan-in-exile, one with a complicated relationship to the truck-stop towns up and down Highway 59 in East Texas, where she sets Bluebird, Bluebird. It also happens to be where Attica’s entire family, on both sides, can trace their roots back to slavery. It’s a place that gave Attica’s family the values that mattered, even as it consistently broke their hearts. Many black Americans left towns just like those where Attica’s family lived to move north. But Attica will tell you that her family and their lives, then and now, are defined by the very fact that they stayed.
Everything that staying in East Texas meant for Attica and her family—and the intersection of that meaning with the current political climate—was the inspiration for Bluebird, Bluebird. Darren Mathews, a Texas Ranger with a tarnished badge, faces the issues that plague every black American who encounters law enforcement, never knowing quite when it’s safe to follow the rules. Mathews soon finds himself in the center of a murder mystery that turns the classic southern script about race inside out.
Saturday Jun 02, 2018
Saturday Jun 02, 2018
Ben Loory returns with a second collection of timeless tales, inviting us to enter his worlds of whimsical fantasy, deep empathy, and playful humor, in the signature voice that drew readers to his highly praised first collection. In stories that eschew literary realism, Loory's characters demonstrate richly imagined and surprising perspectives, whether they be dragons or swordsmen, star-crossed lovers or long-lost twins, restaurateurs dreaming of Paris or cephalopods fixated on space travel. In propulsive language that brilliantly showcases Loory's vast imagination, Tales of Falling and Flying expands our understanding of how fiction can work.
Appealing to the fans of fantasy, horror, and sci-fi writers like Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, and Philip Pullman, as well as contemporary literary powerhouses like George Saunders, Karen Russell, and Helen Oyeyemi, Tales of Falling and Flying expands our understanding of how fiction can work and is sure to cement Loory’s reputation as one of the most innovative short-story writers working today.
Praise for Tales of Falling and Flying
“Ben Loory’s stories are little gifts, strange and moving and wonderfully human. I devoured this book in one sitting.” —Ransom Riggs, author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
“Russell Edson’s new protégé, or Steven Millhauser, distilled into tea. Meet, or re-meet Ben Loory, whose preposterous, friendly stories can’t help but charm. They are so bizarrely readable they don’t even feel like they’re made of words.”—Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
“Parables, dark fables, quirky flash fictions—call them what you will, Ben Loory has perfected the form and in Tales of Falling and Flying proves once again he can disturb a little and entertain a lot. Easily read, not easily forgotten.”—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Borne and The Southern Reach Trilogy
“To read a Ben Loory story is to slip through a portal into an adjacent dimension. To learn—with brevity and clarity—the laws of this universe next door, new rules of logic and contradiction and truth. And, in the end, to be left with the disturbing and wondrous feeling of having never left home at all.” —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
“Ben Loory is a wonder. I'd like to curl up inside his marvelous head and canoodle with a besotted squid, swallow a tiny dragon, levitate with Death and fall in love with the Eiffel Tower, and after reading these sublime stories-- slyly funny, melancholy and deeply weird-- I suppose I have, and it was fantastic.”—Elissa Schappell
“Equal parts Beckett and Twilight Zone . . . Perfect for reading on strange beaches and by oddly shaped swimming pools. Fits right in your pocket or purse for emergency doses of the charming and weird.” —Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
Ben Loory is the author of the collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, and a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, READ Magazine, and Fairy Tale Review, been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts, and performed live at WordTheatre in Los Angeles and London. A graduate of Harvard University and the American Film Institute MFA program in screenwriting, Loory lives in Los Angeles, where he is an Instructor for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
Tuesday May 29, 2018
Tuesday May 29, 2018
Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy
From writer Cecil Castellucci and artist Marley Zarcone, Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy—a bold new reimagining of one of comics’ maddest and most memorable characters and part of the DC’s Young Animal imprint led by rock-star Gerard Way.
Loma Shade may be from another planet, but she’s still like every other twentysomething who feels that their life is going nowhere fast. Bored out of her mind, her solution is to drop out of school, dump her boyfriend and leave her homeworld of Meta behind—courtesy of the infamous “madness coat” of renegade poet Rac Shade, which is not so much a garment as it is a multidimensional gateway.
After stealing the coat and astrally projecting herself across space, Loma ends up in the body of Megan Boyer, an Earth girl who seems to have it all: youth, beauty and a conveniently damaged brain. Following her “miraculous” recovery, however, Loma finds there’s just one problem with being Megan: Everyone hates her. She was a bully who terrorized her enemies and her friends alike, and now Loma’s stuck with the consequences.To make matters worse, back on Meta there are dark forces that want Rac’s dangerously valuable coat for their own nefarious purposes, and they’re closing in on Loma’s vulnerable physical body. At the same time, the primal madness that the coat channels is slowly, irresistibly eroding Loma’s equally vulnerable soul.
With two new lives to live, can this Changing Girl survive either one without losing her mind?
Cecil Castellucci is the author of books and graphic novels for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, First Day on Earth and the Eisner-nominated Odd Duck. She is currently writing Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy, an ongoing comic on Gerard Way's DC Young Animal imprint. Her picture book, Grandma's Gloves, won the California Book Award Gold Medal. She lives in Los Angeles.
Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye Vol. 1: Going Underground
DC’s classic Silver Age hero is revived in Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye Vol. 1: Going Underground, the first chapter of a trailblazing new saga from artist Michael Avon Oeming (Powers) and writers Jonathan Rivera and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, the visionary founder of DC’s Young Animal imprint!
Cave Carson was once the world’s greatest underground adventurer—but that was a long time ago. When he settled down with his wife, Eileen, to raise their daughter, Chloe, he traded the controls of his vehicle, the Mighty Mole Mark 1, for a desk and keyboard. Since then, Cave has led a quiet life—even with the constant distraction of his otherworldly cybernetic eye. But when a sudden illness claims Eileen’s life, Cave’s tranquil existence is shattered—and he and Chloe soon find themselves hurtling down a terrifying tunnel of danger, discovery, mayhem and madness. At the bottom of that tunnel lie secrets buried for decades—secrets that hold the key to thwarting a conspiracy that threatens to consume the surface and subterranean worlds alike. But will Cave and his intrepid team of super-spelunkers be able to overcome this new generation of evil—or is there less to this hero than meets the eye? Collects issues #1-6.
Gerard Way is the Eisner Award-winning writer of The Umbrella Academy and the comics miniseries The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. He is the creative mind behind the new grassroots imprint, DC's Young Animal, whose retro-inspired lineup bridges the gap between the DC Universe and Vertigo. Way is also widely known for his former role as the lead vocalist and co-founder of the alternative rock band My Chemical Romance.
Jon Rivera is a writer of comic books and graphic novels, best known for his work on DC's Young Animal. Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, co-written by imprint founder Gerard Way, is one of the line's inaugural titles.
Doom Patrol Vol. 1: Brick by Brick
The spirit of Grant Morrison's groundbreaking Doom Patrol is captured in this debut series starring the cult-favorite misfits as a part of Gerard Way's new Young Animal imprint.
Flex Mentallo, Robotman, Rebis, Crazy Jane, and more are back to twist minds and take control. This new take on a classic embraces and reimagines the Morrison run's signature surrealism and irreverence. Incorporating bold, experimental art and a brash tone to match a new generation of readers, Gerard Way's Doom Patrolestablishes radical new beginnings, breaks new ground, and honors the warped team dynamic of the world's strangest heroes. This abstract and unexpected ensemble series nods at the Doom Patrol's roots by continuing to break the barriers of the traditional superhero genre. Collects issues #1-6.
Doom Patrol is the flagship title of Young Animal--a four-book grassroots mature reader imprint, creatively spearheaded by Gerard Way, bridging the gap between the DCU and Vertigo, and focusing on the juxtaposition between visual and thematic storytelling.
Gerard Way is the Eisner Award-winning writer of The Umbrella Academy and the comics miniseries The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. He is the creative mind behind the new grassroots imprint, DC's Young Animal, whose retro-inspired lineup bridges the gap between the DC Universe and Vertigo. Way is also widely known for his former role as the lead vocalist and co-founder of the alternative rock band My Chemical Romance.
Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress
As part of the new DC’s Young Animal imprint, a bold new take on the world of the Batman comes from writer Jody Houser, artists Tommy Lee Edwards andShawn Crystal and DC’s Young Animal mastermind Gerard Way—Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress.
The shadow of the Bat falls over all of Gotham City, from its dark alleys to its glittering high-rises. But a new vigilante has just stepped away from that shadow, and she has her own brand of violent retribution to deal out to the city’s corrupt elites.
Meet Violet Paige, a rich young celebutante with a bad attitude and a worse reputation. No one would ever suspect that this tabloid-fodder wild child has a secret hidden beneath her spoiled heiress exterior—a secret that has driven her to become the terrifying force of vengeance against her privileged peers known as Mother Panic! But even as Violet launches her all-out assault on the rich and twisted, her shaky allies threaten to betray her, and every one of Gotham’s guardians—from Batwoman to the Dark Knight himself—is hot on her trail. Will Mother Panic continue to strike terror into her enemies’ hearts? Or will her violent quest for justice reach an equally violent end? Collects Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress #1-6.
Jody Houser is the creator behind the webcomic Cupcake POW! Houser has written Faith for Valiant Comics, Max Ride: Ultimate Flight and Agent May for Marvel, and Orphan Black for IDW. She has been a contributing writer to numerous comics anthologies, including Avengers: No More Bullying, Vertigo CMYK: Magenta, and both Womanthology series. Houser contributed to Justice League of America: Road to Rebirth and is currently writing Mother Panic for DC.
Thursday May 24, 2018
Thursday May 24, 2018
(Podcast editor's note: The Q&A segment for this event took place off-mic for the most part and, despite our best efforts, the audio is difficult to hear at times.)
A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker’s disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever
Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan’s renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband (the perfectly awful Whit Ghiscolmbe) is stalking her, a workplace romance with “a fascinating, hyper-rational narcissist” is in freefall, and a beloved colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Strange things are afoot: CeMArt’s current exhibit is sponsored by a Belgian multinational that wants to take over the world’s water supply, she unwittingly stars in a viral video that’s making the rounds, and her mother–the imperious, impossibly glamorous Caro–wants to have lunch. It’s almost more than she can overanalyze.
But the appearance of a mysterious map, depicting a 19th-century utopian settlement, sends Stella–a dogged expert in American graphics and fluidomanie (don’t ask)–on an all-consuming research mission. As she teases out the links between a haunting poem, several unusual novels, a counterfeiting scheme, and one of the museum’s colorful early benefactors, she discovers the unbearable secret that Paul’s been keeping, and charts a course out of the chaos of her own life. Pulsing with neurotic humor and dagger-sharp prose, Impossible Views of the World is a dazzling debut novel about how to make it through your early thirties with your brain and heart intact.
Praise for Impossible Views of the World
“An art historical mystery that will interest fans of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, with a narrator equal parts intellectual, ironic, and cool…Scintillating…A diversion and a pleasure, this novel leaves you feeling smarter and hipper than you were before.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Stella is like Hannah Horvath from Girls—smart, with an equal tendency toward snark and introspection—living in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The novel sends up the museum world, with pretentious art folks courting corporate dollars and the usual office politics, but maintains a sense of something larger, even magical, working in the background.”—Booklist
“The charm and energy of Impossible Views of the World rest in Ives’s uncanny eye for the subtle tells of romance, the idiosyncrasies of the NYC young, and the details of 19th-century furniture and art…A clever curatorial mystery, a love-gone-wrong rom-com or a sharp-witted story of a young New York woman, Impossible Views of the World is way more fun than a rainy afternoon in the American Objects wing of a cavernous museum.” —Shelf Awareness
“[A] smart and singular debut novel…Ives maximizes her story’s humor with subtlety; a line here and there is enough to call attention to the absurdity of, for instance, the museum’s corporate benefactor’s attempt to secure the world’s water rights. She also isn’t afraid to make her heroine unlikable, which works in the novel’s favor…odd and thoroughly satisfying.” — Publishers Weekly
“I first knew Lucy Ives’s work as a poet, and to have her prose is a gift, too. The detailed novel she’s built with such authenticity, wit, and feeling is remarkable for its vitality, insights, and lyrical view of a changing world.” — Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of White Girls
“This book was written by a rampaging, mirthful genius. It stands before me like a runestone, magical, mysterious—an esoteric juggernaut masquerading as a ‘debut novel.’ During the days I spent reading it, I said goodbye to all else.” — Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen
“There are abundant pleasures to be found in Lucy Ives’s debut novel about art curation, corporate control, and utopia (among many other subjects and digressions), but the best is the poetic, elegant intelligence of its narration, vocalized by Stella Krakus, whose every sentence wryly climbs from the ridiculous to the sublime.” — Teddy Wayne, author of Loner and The Love Song of Jonny Valentine
“Lucy Ives, a deeply smart and painstakingly elegant writer, wins the prize with this intricate, droll, stylish book—at once a mystery novel, a romantic comedy, a tricky essay on aesthetics, an exposé of art-world foibles, and a diary of emotional distress. With sharp phrases, uncanny plot-turns, and mise-en-abymes galore, this mesmerizing tale radiates the haute irreality of Last Year at Marienbad and the dreamy claustrophobia of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, this time for adults only.” —Wayne Koestenbaum, author of My 1980s and Other Essays
Lucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at newyorker.com. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins.
Amina Cain is the author of the short story collection Creature, out with Dorothy, a Publishing Project. Her stories and essays have appeared in BOMB, n+1, The Paris Review Daily, and Full Stop, among other places. She lives in Los Angeles
Wednesday May 23, 2018
Wednesday May 23, 2018
Join us for release party for Issue 50 of TIMOTHY McSWEENEY’S QUARTERLY CONCERN. To celebrate our 50th issue, we’ve put together a guaranteed show stopper, with stories, essays, treatises, manifestos, letters, comics, and illustrated travel diaries from fifty different contributors. There’s stunning new work from writers who we’ve long published — Jonathan Lethem, Lydia Davis, Sherman Alexie, Etgar Keret, Sheila Heti, Diane Williams, Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman, Steven Millhauser (among many others) — and fantastic new writing from authors who we’ve long admired, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Thomas McGuane, Kevin Young, and Carrie Brownstein. The physical object that will contain all this great work will be a sturdy and beautiful hardcover book— something to behold and something to keep. Plus, the dust jacket folds out into a poster by Tucker Nichols that can gaze down at you from above your breakfast nook, bathtub, gift wrapping station, or wherever you’d like to be reminded of 50 glorious issues of the McSweeney’s Quarterly.
Readers include:
Kevin Moffett
Corinna Vallianatos
Sarah Walker
Carson Mell
Brian Evenson
Event date:
Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - 7:30pm
Tuesday May 22, 2018
Tuesday May 22, 2018
When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she isn’t sure if she’ll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (along with her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support.
But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new . . . the same girl her brother is in love with. When Lionel’s disorder spirals out of control, Suzette is forced to confront her past mistakes and find a way to help her brother before he hurts himself—or worse.
When I Am Through with You (Dutton Books for Young Readers)
“This isn’t meant to be a confession. Not in any spiritual sense of the word. Yes, I’m in jail at the moment. I imagine I’ll be here for a long time, considering. But I’m not writing this down for absolution and I’m not seeking forgiveness, not even from myself. Because I’m not sorry for what I did to Rose. I’m just not. Not for any of it.”
Ben Gibson is many things, but he’s not sorry and he’s not a liar. He will tell you exactly about what happened on what started as a simple school camping trip in the mountains. About who lived and who died. About who killed and who had the best of intentions. But he’s going to tell you in his own time. Because after what happened on that mountain, time is the one thing he has plenty of.
When I Am Through With You is a gripping story of survival and the razor’s-edge difference between perfect cruelty and perfect love.
Brandy Colbert is the author of the young adult novel Pointe, which was named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly, Book Riot, the Chicago and Los Angeles public libraries, and Bank Street, as well as a Popular Paperback by the American Library Association. Her short fiction and essays have been published in several critically acclaimed anthologies, and her next novel, Little & Lion, will be published in August 2017. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.
Stephanie Kuehn is the critically acclaimed author of four young adult novels, including Charm & Strange, which won the ALA's William C. Morris Award for best debut novel, and Complicit, which was named to YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list. She was also awarded the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for her most recent novel, The Smaller Evil. Booklist has praised her work as "Intelligent, compulsively readable literary fiction with a dark twist." Stephanie lives in Northern California and is a post-doctoral fellow in clinical psychology.
Sunday May 20, 2018
Sunday May 20, 2018
The year is 1999, and thirteen-year-old Elliot is a self-appointed "diet coach" who teaches her classmates how to survive on one stick of gum a day to get heroin-chic, Kate Moss thin. Elliot is obsessed with her best friend and former "client" Lisa, who is fresh out of inpatient treatment and dating a nineteen-year-old drug dealer. Meanwhile, Elliot's mother Anna, a capricious poetry professor, has a drug addiction and eating disorder of her own. When Lisa transfers her fixation from food to sex with her boyfriend, Elliot's fragile grip on reality begins to falter, at the same that time that Anna's fascination with the object of her own blind lust, the student who relinquishes his cocaine to her during office hours begins to consume her. I Must Have You is the story of what happens one three-day weekend in an explosion of desire, hunger, and lost innocence.
JoAnna Novak's kaleidoscope of 1990s America, filled with vibrant imagery from riot grrl graffiti to Michael Jordan posters, offers a vision of the complexities of womanhood and the culture that keeps the modern girl sick. I Must Have You is a provocative debut of rare honesty from a daring new voice. Similar to the works of Miranda July, Novak's novel will appeal to a new generation of readers who hunger for raw female protagonists.
Praise for I Must Have You
"I Must Have You is a book about girls―their secret languages and private codes, their painful preoccupations and complex compulsions, and their scary tendency, when caught in the gazes of society, men, (and worst, each other), to diminish themselves―sometimes to the point of disappearing completely. With risky, confident prose and brazen psychological renderings―not to mention a knack for getting the 90's just right―Novak takes us on a seductive, uncharted journey through modern womanhood, obsession and illness. I can honestly say I have never read anything like this book." ―Molly Pretiss, author of Tuesday Nights in 1980 "I Must Have You is a devastating novel about loving and trying to destroy one’s own body."―Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
"I Must Have You showcases JoAnna Novak's raw, real, and vivid voice in the character of Elliott, a sharp-tongued, sharp-witted, and complex young heroine unlike any we've met. Novak's intelligent, funny, frightening, and deeply felt novel bravely goes where this genre has not gone before: into the darker reaches of a culture that casts a long shadow across the lives of girls and women today. Novak explores the extent of our longing, and—ultimately—the source of our strength."—Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Bestselling Author of Madness, Wasted, and others.
"JoAnna Novak's voice is unforgettable and her irreverent, addictive debut is sure to position her as one of the great stylists of her generation. I Must Have You is a brilliant and candid look at what it means to be a girl in this world; it's a meditation on hunger, on wanting, on the things and people that consume us, and on the things and people that we long to consume. A truly exciting, beautiful novel."—Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire and Skinny
“I Must Have You presents a harrowing and immersive story of compulsion and disorder, addiction and obsession, with frequent detours through the teenage cultural wasteland of the late nineties, all rendered in JoAnna Novak’s crazed, slang-stilted, glinting prose.”—Teddy Wayne, author of Loner
"JoAnna Novak's I Must Have You is a rhapsodic, tumbling, yet rigorously controlled excavation of the secret worlds within us all. Her characters hurtle toward the painful pleasure of self-destruction, uninterested in stopping themselves, determined to find the next prick to make them feel alive. It's a visceral process, like picking off a scab. This is a necessary book."—Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star
"I Must Have You is a tragic, funny, and moving coming-of-age story. It was impossible not to be swept up in JoAnna Novak's gorgeous, inventive prose, or to stop yourself from falling in love with her irreverent, wild, and ultimately human characters. I loved every word."—Anton DiSclafani, New York Times Bestselling author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls and The After Party
"Novak looks unflinchingly at the precarious attachments between female peers, mother and daughters, during some dangerous, inchoate transitions. With exacting prose she explores the the shadow terrain of female attachment, one that is uncertain at best, dangerous at worst. This is a book you'll want to look away from for its familiarity and its honesty, but you won't be able to. This story is nothing if not a disorienting mediation on the tangle of self-loathing, loneliness, and a desire for oblivion that so many women privately hold."—Rebecca Rotert, author of Last Night at the Blue Angel
JoAnna Novak's debut novel I Must Have You will be published in May 2017 and a book-length poem, Noirmania, will be published in 2018. She has written fiction, essays, poetry, and criticism for publications including Salon, Guernica, BOMB, The Rumpus, Conjunctions, and Joyland. She received her MFA in fiction from Washington University and her MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy. She lives in Los Angeles.
Wednesday May 16, 2018
Wednesday May 16, 2018
Jarett Kobek published his first novel, I Hate the Internet, last year with a small indie publisher and it immediately took on cult status. Kobek received a rave review from Dwight Garner in The New York Times, who described the novel “as a glimpse at a lively mind at full boil.” Jonathan Lethem declared Kobek “as riotous as Houellebecq,” and Bret Easton Ellis was photographed reading it in bed. Viking is thrilled to be publishing Kobek’s brilliant and epic follow-up novel, The Future Won't Be Long, a provocative, ecstatic story of friendship, sex, art, and ambition in the twilight days of New York City’s East Village (1986-1996).
The Future Won't Be Long centers on Adeline—featured years later in I Hate the Internet—a wealthy art student in New York City who chances upon a young man from the Midwest known only as Baby in a shady East Village squat. The two begin a fiery friendship which propels them through a decade of New York life punctuated by the deaths of Warhol, Basquiat, Wojnarowicz, by the Tompkins Square Park riots, and by the rise of club kid culture. Adeline is fiercely protective of Baby, but he soon takes over his own education. Once just a kid off the bus from Wisconsin, Baby soon finds himself at the center of the club kid social scene, cavorting with Michael Alig and James St. James at The Tunnel, Limelight, and Alig’s infamous “Outlaw Party” at a midtown McDonald’s. As Adeline and Baby both develop into the artists they never expected to become, Kobek pays tribute to the last gasps of the gritty, drug-fueled scene of the East Village as gentrifiers begin to trickle in. Kobek, himself a graduate of NYU, writes with a native’s sensitivity to New York, especially about those who come here with hope and those who come to escape their pasts. Riotously funny and wise, The Future Won't Be Long is a euphoric, propulsive novel coursing with a rare vitality, an elegy to New York and to the relationships that have the power to change—and save—our lives.
Jarett Kobek is a Turkish American writer living in California. He is the author of the novel I Hate the Internet (2016) and the novella Atta (2011)
James St. James who was once dubbed a "celebutante" by Newsweek magazine, now leads a quiet, sedate existence in Los Angeles, far from the madness that he writes about.
Thursday May 03, 2018
Thursday May 03, 2018
A provocative and wildly funny look at parenthood, the empty nest, and sex in the suburbs.
Eve (the eponymous Mrs. Fletcher) is a single mother, divorced and raising her amiable but clueless son Brendan in the suburbs. When he heads off to college, they must both contend with life on their own. Eve takes a gender studies class, braves the local dating pool, and vastly expands her social–and sexual – circles. Brendan discovers that what impressed high school girls (being a jock, being popular) might not be so enticing to college women.
Along with Eve and Brendan, Perrotta introduces us to a cast of flawed but deeply sympathetic characters, many of whom are stretching themselves and enjoying it. There’s Amanda, Eve’s employee at the local senior center, beleaguered but doing her best to provide the seniors with stimulating programming (at times, a little too stimulating). There’s Margo, Eve’s transgender professor, whose dark personal history is belied by her ebullient nature. Amber, Brendan’s college girlfriend, is a softball-playing social justice warrior whose romantic impulses conflict with her politics. And then there’s Julian, a smart but troubled kid from Brendan’s class, whose life becomes entangled with both Brendan’s and Eve’s. Perrotta brings all these characters vividly to life with great generosity and compassion.
Most of all, though, Mrs. Fletcher is all about Eve. This is a coming of age novel in which the character who grows and changes is (refreshingly!) not an eighteen-year-old but a forty-six- year-old. Eve comes a long way, and her journey is a brilliant, funny story of sexual awakening in unexpected places.
Praise for Mrs. Fletcher
“From the thrill of learning of its existence, to the feverish turning of pages, to the contemplative afterglow that comes from having finished: there’s nothing like a new Tom Perrotta novel. Mrs. Fletcher is all you dream it will be: hilarious, provocative, (a little too), relatable and every moment a joy ride.”— Maria Semple, bestselling author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Today Will Be Different
“Tom Perrotta has always been a smart, fearless writer, a wet-your- pants funny satirist who will in the very next sentence ambush you with genuine emotion. Buckle your seat belt and surrender your dignity, because Mrs. Fletcher is a romp.”— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofEmpire Falls
Tom Perrotta is the bestselling author of eight works of fiction, including Election and Little Children, both of which were made into critically acclaimed movies, and The Leftovers, which was adapted into an HBO series. He lives outside Boston.