For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] There’s a scene very early in Andy Weir’s The Martian where a storm threatens the astronauts’ rocket, kicking off the rest of the plot. Well and good. But Weir—in a novel praised for its science to the exclusion of any other literary aspect—also included the wind speed, and it is, spoiler, not remotely strong … Read more
[ad_1] Whenever I meet writers who are from my home state of Texas, I have an immediate desire to grasp their hands and talk for long hours about thunderstorms and cicadas and BBQ. And how these elements overwhelm the writing brain and find their way onto the page, regardless of any attempts otherwise. This is … Read more
[ad_1] To follow SJ Sindu’s work over the past few years is to admire diversity of form. From novels (Marriage of a Thousand Lies, Blue-Skinned Gods) to children’s literature (Shakti) to chapbooks (Dominant Genes) to short stories, Sindu proves there are so many ways interpret modern life—through fairy tale tropes, literary parallels, and tightly framed … Read more
[ad_1] Kelsey Norris’s debut collection of stories, House Gone Quiet, tackles everything from being ostracized by one’s community, a square peg amongst round holes, to being part of communities held together by suffering, wonder, fear, and outrage. Each story’s setting is rarely explicitly stated, yet the environs feel familiar, perhaps because the experiences of the characters … Read more
[ad_1] In a recent interview with fellow author Lindsay Hunter, John Milas insists that terror is more specific than horror. Horror, he argues, is a reaction to something,, whereas terror relies on the the anticipation of something yet to happen, something unspecified. Terror relies on the intimacy of imagination. It’s a highly personal experience, one … Read more
[ad_1] A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames… Author’s note: This story contains fictional depictions of suicide and mention of harm to children. There was nothing remarkable about the photograph, no reason it should be the first to catch my … Read more
[ad_1] How well can we ever know the people we love? Are there limits to healthy affection? Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya makes literal in her fiction the questions we might be afraid to ask. With her debut novelette, Helen House, these questions take a sinister turn. The story’s narrator and her girlfriend, Amber, share an intense … Read more
[ad_1] The ghosts of Dennis Mombauer’s The House of Drought are many, as many as there are allegories. The established fact of extraction, the ritual of sacrifice, the deviance of the unknown—these are its themes. None of these beasts are as powerful as the global narrative that has already been spinning: the irreversibility of climate … Read more
[ad_1] At the end of the world, Kate is Bertie’s best friend. In the aftermath of a world war, after enduring terror and loss together, they still have each other. Until Kate decides to move away—and Bertie is left to grapple with her own personal apocalypse. In End of the World House, Adrienne Celt delivers … Read more
[ad_1] If you take the Amtrak from Chicago to Springfield, you run smack into time as you enter Illinois’s capital city. The train crawls along bricked roads and Springfield’s history-soaked downtown, the Capitol itself just blocks from the tracks. That journey in time and space is also taken by Ray Long in The House That … Read more