We’re pleased to present an excerpt from Darrin Doyle’s new book Let Gravity Seize the Dead. This book follows a family who, in 2007, move into a secluded cabin and begin to detect evidence of another presence there — one with a connection to the cabin’s inhabitants a century earlier. Sara Lippman called the book “a moody, pitch dark novella that will linger in my nightmares for quite some time.” Read on for a glimpse inside.
I met Joan Leegant the first time I attended a writer’s residency—in 2017—at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I was excited to read Leegant’s new short story collection, Displaced Persons, winner of the New American Fiction Prize, set half in Israel and half in America. Aside from elegant and accomplished writing, what grabbed me about these stories, especially the ones set in Israel, especially now, is the window into ordinary life. Israel has a large immigrant and refugee population; many people who live there have been displaced at one point or another. Meeting the characters in these stories, finding their humor and humanity on the page, was uplifting.
An ongoing Kickstarter campaign seeks to collect the full scope of a stunning work of science fiction comics.Beginning in 1989, writer/artist Caza has been telling the story of Arkadi and the Lost Titan. Publisher Humanoids describes it as “a visually stunning tableaux that blends imaginative landscapes with intricate detail, and classic sci-fi adventure with spiritual and metaphysical exploration.” Regarding the book, Mark Russell called it “the sort of imagination-bending science fiction comic you rarely see.”
Chapter 24
While Joselyn and Morgen have been away on business Everhet and I have been able to read a lot in the cabin.
He needs some time to forest bathe his bad vibes off.
Turns out he’d been chewing gum before I’d ever met him and I really didn’t know how bad it was.
Did we ever chew gum together?
Did he introduce me to it?
It’s always daunting to talk with a writer who’s made a significant impact on you. Given that John Freeman’s How to Read a Novelist had a seismic effect on the way that I write about books, the opportunity to talk with Freeman about his new novella Hit and Run was both enticing and imposing. Thankfully, Freeman was a warm and engaging conversationalist, and I was happy to talk to him about this new book, which follows a character not unlike Freeman who witnesses a horrific incident and finds his life shifting in its aftermath.
Teddy Wayne drops two clues in his novel The Winner’s epigraphs. First, “A little water clears us of this deed” from Macbeth. A sinister sign for what’s ahead. And then, from Allen Fox’s Think to Win: The Strategic Dimension of Tennis, “The true defensive player (or ‘dinker,’ as he is unaffectionately called in recreational circles) is prepared to hit ten, twenty, or more balls in the court per point…Dinkers understand the facts of life at the recreational level of tennis.” Both choices shed light on the narrative arc: dark, bloody waters ahead and defensive court volleys to score recreational points in a game. That’s our direction in this novel. The Winner transports us into wealthy, elitist Wasp America, and it sets up its social satire through tennis lessons and dark relationship triangles of sex, violence, lies, and concealment. It’s an entertaining, and darkly brutal twisting of the “rags to riches” tale, as it pokes at the dark heart of the American story of success at all costs.
Hello, friends. It’s June now. We’re baffled by it, too. Perhaps the only up side to the sixth month of the year beginning is the fact that a new month brings new books, and this month has a lot to offer. As always, some writers we’ve long admired have new books out, whether fiction or nonfiction. Read on for some reading recommendations for the month we’re in.
Chapter 23
I kept my walking pace at brisk. Everhet, dope sick, keeps saying he has to piss. Which evolved into needing to take a shit after several refusals.
“Can’t we just stop and chew a little gum?” Everhet says, “I’ll share.”
I ignored him until the next phase—when he became silent, walking with an expressionless face, almost tired.