AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 "I'm Thinking of Ending Things is one of the best debut novels I've ever read. Iain Reid has crafted a tight, ferocious little book, with a persistent tenor of suspense that tightens and mounts toward its visionary, harrowing final pages" (Scott Heim, award-winning author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear) . You will be scared. But you won't know why ... I'm thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It's always there. Always.Jake once said, "Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can't fake a thought."And here's what I'm thinking: I don't want to be here. In this smart, suspenseful, and intense literary thriller, debut novelist Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago's early work, Michel Faber's cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin, I'm Thinking of Ending Things is an edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, this novel pulls you in from the very first page ... and never lets you go.
Publisher: n/a
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9781501126925
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Hardcover
Bellweather Rhapsody
By Racculia, Kate
"For its darkness and its glee, I loved this novel." - Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore A high school music festival goes awry when a young prodigy disappears from the most infamous room in the Bellweather Hotel, in a whip-smart novel sparkling with dark and giddy humor Fifteen years ago, a murder-suicide in room 712 rocked the grand old Bellweather Hotel and the young bridesmaid who witnessed it, Minnie Graves. Now hundreds of high school musicians, including quiet bassoonist Rabbit Hatmaker and his brassy diva twin, Alice, have gathered in its cavernous, crumbling halls for the annual Statewide festival; Minnie has returned to face her demons; and a colossal snowstorm is threatening to trap them all in the hotel.
Publisher: n/a
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9780544129917
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Print book
Universal Harvester
By Darnielle, John
New York Times Bestseller"A moving, beautifully etched picture of America's lost and profoundly lonely." -- Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature"Brilliant . . . Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent; it's nearly impossible to stop reading . . . [Universal Harvester is] beyond worthwhile; it's a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction." -- Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times"Grows in menace as the pages stack up . . . [But] more sensitive than one would expect from a more traditional tale of dread." -- Joe Hill, New York Times Book ReviewLife in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut. So begins Universal Harvester, the haunting and masterfully unsettling new novel from John Darnielle, author of the New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award Nominee Wolf in White VanJeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It's a small town in the center of the state -- the first a in Nevada pronounced ay. This is the late 1990s, and even if the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It's good enough for Jeremy: it's a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck.But when a local schoolteacher comes in to return her copy of Targets -- an old movie, starring Boris Karloff, one Jeremy himself had ordered for the store -- she has an odd complaint: "There's something on it," she says, but doesn't elaborate. Two days later, a different customer returns a different tape, a new release, and says it's not defective, exactly, but altered: "There's another movie on this tape."Jeremy doesn't want to be curious, but he brings the movies home to take a look. And, indeed, in the middle of each movie, the screen blinks dark for a moment and the movie is replaced by a few minutes of jagged, poorly lit home video. The scenes are odd and sometimes violent, dark, and deeply disquieting. There are no identifiable faces, no dialogue or explanation -- the first video has just the faint sound of someone breathing -- but there are some recognizable landmarks. These have been shot just outside of town.In Universal Harvester, the once placid Iowa fields and farmhouses now sinister and imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding. The novel will take Jeremy and those around him deeper into this landscape than they have ever expected to go. They will become part of a story that unfolds years into the past and years into the future, part of an impossible search for something someone once lost that they would do anything to regain."This chilling literary thriller follows a video store clerk as he deciphers a macabre mystery through clues scattered among the tapes his customers rent. A page-tuning homage to In Cold Blood and The Ring." -- O: The Oprah Magazine"[Universal Harvester is] so wonderfully strange, almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the banal and the creepy, that my urge to know what the hell was going on caused me to go full throttle . . . [But] Darnielle hides so much beautiful commentary in the book's quieter moments that you would be remiss not to slow down." -- Abram Scharf, MTV News"Universal Harvester is a novel about noticing hidden things, particularly the hurt and desperation that people bear under their exterior of polite reserve . . . Mr. Darnielle possesses the clairvoyant's gift for looking beneath the surface." -- Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "[Universal Harvester is] constantly unnerving, wrapped in a depressed dread that haunts every passage. But it all pays off with surprising emotionality." -- Kevin Nguyen, GQ.com
Publisher: n/a
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9780374282103
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Hardcover
My Best Friend's Exorcism
By Hendrix, Grady
An unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist that blends teen angst, adolescent drama, unspeakable horrors, and a mix of '80s pop songs into a pulse-pounding supernatural thrillerThe year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act ... different. She's moody. She's irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she's nearby. Abby's investigation leads her to some startling discoveries - and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?
Publisher: n/a
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9781594749766
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Paperback
The Vine That Ate the South
By Wilkes, J.d.
Wilkes debut is a rich and heartfelt yarn that resonates as deeply as his music." - Kirkus ReviewsWith the energy, wit, and singularity of vision that have earned him a reputation as a celebrated and charismatic musician, The Vine That Ate the South announces J.D. Wilkes as an accomplished storyteller on a surreal, Homeric voyage that strikes at the very heart of American mythology.In a forgotten corner of western Kentucky lies a haunted forest referred to locally as "The Deadening," where vampire cults roam wild and time is immaterial. Our protagonist and his accomplice - the one and only, Carver Canute - set out down the Old Spur Line in search of the legendary Kudzu House, where an old couple is purported to have been swallowed whole by a hungry vine. Their quest leads them face to face with albino panthers, Great Dane-riding girls, protective property owners, and just about every American folk-demon ever, while forcing the protagonist to finally take stock of his relationship with his father and the mans mysterious disappearance.The Vine That Ate the South is a mesmerizing fantasia where Wilkes ambitiously grapples with the contradictions of the contemporary American South while subversively considering how well we know our own family and friends."Its a relentlessly fun novel, the literary equivalent of a country-punk album that grabs you and refuses to let go. Wilkes has a perfect ear for the dialect of Kentucky, and his writing is so bright, you can almost see every abandoned shack, every kudzu-covered tree. Sure, its bizarre, and at points almost gleefully obscene, but its undeniably one of the smartest, most original Southern Gothic novels to come along in years." - NPR
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
By Reid, Iain
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 "I'm Thinking of Ending Things is one of the best debut novels I've ever read. Iain Reid has crafted a tight, ferocious little book, with a persistent tenor of suspense that tightens and mounts toward its visionary, harrowing final pages" (Scott Heim, award-winning author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear) . You will be scared. But you won't know why ... I'm thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It's always there. Always. Jake once said, "Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can't fake a thought." And here's what I'm thinking: I don't want to be here. In this smart, suspenseful, and intense literary thriller, debut novelist Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of Jose Saramago's early work, Michel Faber's cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin, I'm Thinking of Ending Things is an edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, this novel pulls you in from the very first page ... and never lets you go.
Bellweather Rhapsody
By Racculia, Kate
"For its darkness and its glee, I loved this novel." - Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore A high school music festival goes awry when a young prodigy disappears from the most infamous room in the Bellweather Hotel, in a whip-smart novel sparkling with dark and giddy humor Fifteen years ago, a murder-suicide in room 712 rocked the grand old Bellweather Hotel and the young bridesmaid who witnessed it, Minnie Graves. Now hundreds of high school musicians, including quiet bassoonist Rabbit Hatmaker and his brassy diva twin, Alice, have gathered in its cavernous, crumbling halls for the annual Statewide festival; Minnie has returned to face her demons; and a colossal snowstorm is threatening to trap them all in the hotel.
Universal Harvester
By Darnielle, John
New York Times Bestseller"A moving, beautifully etched picture of America's lost and profoundly lonely." -- Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature"Brilliant . . . Darnielle is a master at building suspense, and his writing is propulsive and urgent; it's nearly impossible to stop reading . . . [Universal Harvester is] beyond worthwhile; it's a major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction." -- Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times"Grows in menace as the pages stack up . . . [But] more sensitive than one would expect from a more traditional tale of dread." -- Joe Hill, New York Times Book ReviewLife in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut. So begins Universal Harvester, the haunting and masterfully unsettling new novel from John Darnielle, author of the New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award Nominee Wolf in White VanJeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa. It's a small town in the center of the state -- the first a in Nevada pronounced ay. This is the late 1990s, and even if the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It's good enough for Jeremy: it's a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck.But when a local schoolteacher comes in to return her copy of Targets -- an old movie, starring Boris Karloff, one Jeremy himself had ordered for the store -- she has an odd complaint: "There's something on it," she says, but doesn't elaborate. Two days later, a different customer returns a different tape, a new release, and says it's not defective, exactly, but altered: "There's another movie on this tape."Jeremy doesn't want to be curious, but he brings the movies home to take a look. And, indeed, in the middle of each movie, the screen blinks dark for a moment and the movie is replaced by a few minutes of jagged, poorly lit home video. The scenes are odd and sometimes violent, dark, and deeply disquieting. There are no identifiable faces, no dialogue or explanation -- the first video has just the faint sound of someone breathing -- but there are some recognizable landmarks. These have been shot just outside of town.In Universal Harvester, the once placid Iowa fields and farmhouses now sinister and imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding. The novel will take Jeremy and those around him deeper into this landscape than they have ever expected to go. They will become part of a story that unfolds years into the past and years into the future, part of an impossible search for something someone once lost that they would do anything to regain."This chilling literary thriller follows a video store clerk as he deciphers a macabre mystery through clues scattered among the tapes his customers rent. A page-tuning homage to In Cold Blood and The Ring." -- O: The Oprah Magazine"[Universal Harvester is] so wonderfully strange, almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the banal and the creepy, that my urge to know what the hell was going on caused me to go full throttle . . . [But] Darnielle hides so much beautiful commentary in the book's quieter moments that you would be remiss not to slow down." -- Abram Scharf, MTV News"Universal Harvester is a novel about noticing hidden things, particularly the hurt and desperation that people bear under their exterior of polite reserve . . . Mr. Darnielle possesses the clairvoyant's gift for looking beneath the surface." -- Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "[Universal Harvester is] constantly unnerving, wrapped in a depressed dread that haunts every passage. But it all pays off with surprising emotionality." -- Kevin Nguyen, GQ.com
My Best Friend's Exorcism
By Hendrix, Grady
An unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist that blends teen angst, adolescent drama, unspeakable horrors, and a mix of '80s pop songs into a pulse-pounding supernatural thrillerThe year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act ... different. She's moody. She's irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she's nearby. Abby's investigation leads her to some startling discoveries - and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?
The Vine That Ate the South
By Wilkes, J.d.
Wilkes debut is a rich and heartfelt yarn that resonates as deeply as his music." - Kirkus ReviewsWith the energy, wit, and singularity of vision that have earned him a reputation as a celebrated and charismatic musician, The Vine That Ate the South announces J.D. Wilkes as an accomplished storyteller on a surreal, Homeric voyage that strikes at the very heart of American mythology.In a forgotten corner of western Kentucky lies a haunted forest referred to locally as "The Deadening," where vampire cults roam wild and time is immaterial. Our protagonist and his accomplice - the one and only, Carver Canute - set out down the Old Spur Line in search of the legendary Kudzu House, where an old couple is purported to have been swallowed whole by a hungry vine. Their quest leads them face to face with albino panthers, Great Dane-riding girls, protective property owners, and just about every American folk-demon ever, while forcing the protagonist to finally take stock of his relationship with his father and the mans mysterious disappearance.The Vine That Ate the South is a mesmerizing fantasia where Wilkes ambitiously grapples with the contradictions of the contemporary American South while subversively considering how well we know our own family and friends."Its a relentlessly fun novel, the literary equivalent of a country-punk album that grabs you and refuses to let go. Wilkes has a perfect ear for the dialect of Kentucky, and his writing is so bright, you can almost see every abandoned shack, every kudzu-covered tree. Sure, its bizarre, and at points almost gleefully obscene, but its undeniably one of the smartest, most original Southern Gothic novels to come along in years." - NPR