A Gorgeous Excitement
Cynthia Weiner
A dazzling debut novel set in 1980s New York, when cocaine is as easy to get as ice cream, about one young woman's summer of infinite possibility--and looming danger.
It was the summer of 1986, when the girl was found dead in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum--half-naked, legs splayed, arms flung over her head. Larynx crushed.
There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother's depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible--when her mother isn't lying in bed for days, she's lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan's, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn't help that she's Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents' medicine cabinet.
Flanagan's is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed, whom every girl wants to sleep with and every guy wants to be. After she's introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?
Sigmund Freud called a cocaine high "a gorgeous excitement" and, as Nina Jacobs is about to learn, New York City is a deadly place to be gorgeous.
The Poorly Made
Sam Rebelein
An unsettling and creepy story collection of literary horror set in the Renfield universe from "major new talent" (R.L. Stine) Sam Rebelein, author of Edenville.
"I hope I get to go back to Renfield County again, before too long." --LitHub on Edenville
There's something wrong in Renfield County.
It's in the water, the soil, the wood. But worst of all, it's in the minds of the residents, slowly driving them mad. When Lawrence Renfield massacred his family and drew The Giant in his farmhouse with their blood, no one imagined the repercussions. At the very least, the bloodstained wood should have been set aflame, not chopped down and repurposed as furniture, décor, and heirlooms across the county. But that's exactly what happened. Now regular people--like you and me--are sitting on... eating with... admiring... the cursed wood and reaping the consequences.
These are their stories.
In "My Name Is Ellie" a young girl uncovers disturbing secrets hiding in the walls of her beloved grandmother's home. An unassuming box, built with reclaimed wood, connects a grieving widower with his late wife's lingering spirit in "Hector Brim." In "Detour" a father, desperate to return home, finds himself trapped in a dizzying maze, haunted by stories of lurking monsters that live off the remains of weary travelers.
Playing with the uncanny to explore themes of loneliness and grief, Sam Rebelein returns upstate to unravel the mysteries of Renfield. But regardless of what started the trouble, there's one thing of which we can be certain: for those living here, the nightmare is far from over.
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
Clay McLeod Chapman
"Clay McLeod Chapman is one of my favorite horror storytellers working today."--Jordan Peele
"Surreal, hypnotic, unrelenting, profoundly claustrophobic, and an absolutely scathing send-up of the pitfalls of American divisiveness."--Keith Rosson, author of Fever House
From master of horror Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media.
Noah has been losing his polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the "Great Reawakening" is here, he assumes it's related to one of her many conspiracy theories. But when his phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles and his parents locked in a terrifying trancelike state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it.
Then Noah's mother brutally attacks him.
But Noah isn't the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart--literally--as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend glued to a screen. In Noah's Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn--but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?
This ambitious, searing novel from one of horror's modern masters holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.