Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids

Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids PDF

Author: Leyna Krow

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2025-01-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0593299647

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

What do we owe our family and friends in times of wild uncertainty? That’s the question the women of Leyna Krow’s beguiling, darkly fabulist, story collection grapple with as they strive to be good mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, wives, and companions in a world that is constantly shifting around them. Set in the Pacific Northwest, these stories blend high concept magic with the sometimes subtle, other times glaring, realities of climate change. As protagonists contend with doppelgänger babies, hordes of time travelers, mysterious portals, and supernatural siblings, there lurks in the background the effects of the region’s rapidly shifting environment. There are wildfires, wind storms, unrelenting heat, disrupted butterfly migration patterns, a new plague, and a catastrophe on the slopes of Mount Rainier that reverberates through three generations of a single family over the course of a half dozen linked stories. With Krow’s signature blend of sardonic whimsy and unsettling insight, Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids imagines the rules to be broken, choices to be made, and even crimes to be had, for the sake of the people, and places, we love.

I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking

I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking PDF

Author: Leyna Krow

Publisher: featherproof books

Published: 2017-02-14

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1943888124

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking the strange and the mundane collide. These are stories of strange experiences set in familiar places, and of familiar experiences set in strange places. Many of the pieces in I’m Fine take place close to home, in suburban neighborhoods, or rural communities. The settings are conventional, yet something unexpected, or even magical, is occurring. In one piece, a couple speculates about random objects that appear without reason in their backyard. In another, neighbors try to figure out if a local meth dealer is keeping a live tiger captive on his property. In other pieces, it’s the setting that’s fantastical, but the characters’ reactions that remain ordinary, like in the titular story where a journalist lost at sea and hunted by a mythical ocean creature admits to struggling with loneliness and isolation in much the same way he does even when he’s safe at home. Although they are not directly linked by any specific character, the pieces in this collection are bound through reoccurring imagery and a shared theme of protagonists in emotional peril. There are unexpected appearances and disappearances, movement of inanimate objects, the search for something lost, the finding of something unusual. There are prophesies, dreams, unidentifiable creatures, and environmental catastrophes on a scale both large and small. There are action figures and octopuses, sullen teenagers and missing cats. At their core, these stories are imbued with mystery, oddity, humor, and empathy. They each stand on their own, but mean considerably more when read together.

Fire Season

Fire Season PDF

Author: Leyna Krow

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2023-07-11

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0593299620

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"Devilishly funny and endlessly inventive." —Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author Beautiful Ruins A Publisher’s Weekly Summer Reads Staff Pick One of Lit Hub’s “35 Novels You Need to Read This Summer” "An arresting take on magic, science, disaster, and salvation that’s eerily resonant with the fire seasons we find ourselves living through today." —Anna North, author of New York Times bestseller Outlawed "Darkly funny, deliciously devious and hugely inventive, a magical twist on the allure of the American West." —Good Housekeeping The propulsive story of three scheming opportunists—a banker, a conman, and a woman with an extraordinary gift—whose lives collide in the wake of a devastating fire in the American West For the citizens of Spokane Falls, the fire of 1889 that destroyed their frontier boomtown was no disaster; it was an opportunity. Barton Heydale, manager of the only bank in Spokane Falls, is on the verge of ending his short, unpopular life. But when his city goes up in flames, he sees an ember of hope shimmering on the horizon, headed right for him. As citizens flock to the bank to cash out insurance policies and take out loans, he realizes he can command the power he craves—and it’s not by following the rules. Here is his reason to live. When Quake Auchenbaucher, a career con man hired to investigate the cause of the fire, arrives in Spokane Falls, he employs his usual shady tactics. But this time, with Washington Territory vying for statehood, the sudden attention to due process jeopardizes Quake’s methods of manipulation. And then there’s Roslyn Beck, whose uncanny ability to see the future has long driven her to drink, and with whom both Barton and Quake have fallen madly and dangerously in love. She is known as a “certain kind of woman,” in possession of unique talents and influence, if only she can find the right ways to wield them. As their paths collide, diverge, and collide again, Barton, Quake, and Roslyn come to terms with their own needs for power, greed, and control, leading one to total ruin, one to heartbreak, and one, ultimately, to redemption. With masterful precision, devious originality, and dark whimsy, Fire Season freshly imagines the greed and misogyny of the American West to tell a rollicking, bewitching story about finding purpose in the face of injustice.

The Sea Came in at Midnight

The Sea Came in at Midnight PDF

Author: Steve Erickson

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2013-04-30

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 1480409979

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

DIVDIV“If you read one philosophical-doomsday kinky-sex road-trip novel this year, make it this one.” —Salon/divDIV It’s New Year’s Eve 1999, and the members of a powerful cult are about to commit ritual suicide. Fleeing their ranks at the final moment, teenager Kristin lands in Tokyo, where she gains employment listening to clients’ stories in a “memory hotel” designed to address the decay of Japanese collective memory after the Second World War. But Kristin herself has a startling odyssey: Among other things, it involves answering a personal ad only to wind up imprisoned, naked, in an empty house presided over by a man known as the Occupant, hard at work on a millennial calendar that has serious implications for the future. The Sea Came in at Midnight is a breathtaking fable of redemption and one of Erickson’s most impressive visions to date. /div/div

Starflight to Destiny

Starflight to Destiny PDF

Author: Patrick Dearen

Publisher: Speaking Volumes

Published:

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1645408337

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A deep-space archaeological dig shrouded in mystery . . . Clues to the location of a legendary power in the reaches of the galaxy . . . A man and a woman, each holding half the answers, both defying a totalitarian government. Together, Blake Sharrel and Rhonda Gregory embark on a starship quest to find the Leijan, an enigma that holds the fate of the cosmos. It's an epic journey filled with peril: a crew of pirates ready to slit their throats, a planet where intruders are crucified upside down, and a chase across countless light years of unexplored space. From one planet's Valley of the Skull to another planet's City of the Skull, and on to a derelict spacecraft orbiting a black world, it will be a Starflight to Destiny. “A genuine thrilling and utterly entertaining read. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys classic science fiction.”—Shaun Raymond Hoadley, illustrator for books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

First Person

First Person PDF

Author: Richard Flanagan

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0525520031

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Kif Kehlmann, a young, penniless writer, thinks he’s finally caught a break when he’s offered $10,000 to ghostwrite the memoir of Siegfried “Ziggy” Heidl, the notorious con man and corporate criminal. Ziggy is about to go to trial for defrauding banks for $700 million; they have six weeks to write the book. But Ziggy swiftly proves almost impossible to work with: evasive, contradictory, and easily distracted by his still-running “business concerns”—which Kif worries may involve hiring hitmen from their shared office. Worse, Kif finds himself being pulled into an odd, hypnotic, and ever-closer orbit of all things Ziggy. As the deadline draws near, Kif becomes increasingly unsure if he is ghostwriting a memoir, or if Ziggy is rewriting him—his life, his future, and the very nature of the truth. By turns comic, compelling, and finally chilling, First Person is a haunting look at an age where fact is indistinguishable from fiction, and freedom is traded for a false idea of progress.

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams PDF

Author: Richard Flanagan

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0593319613

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

From the acclaimed Booker Prize-winning author comes a dazzling novel of family, love and love's disappointments Anna's aged mother is dying. Condemned by her children's pity to living, subjected to increasingly desperate medical interventions, she turns her focus to her hospital window, through which she escapes into visions of horror and delight. When Anna's finger vanishes and a few months later her knee disappears, Anna too feels the pull of the window. She begins to see that all around her, others are similarly vanishing, yet no one else notices. All Anna can do is keep her mother alive. But the window keeps opening wider, taking Anna and the reader ever deeper into an eerily beautiful story of grief and possibility, of loss and love and orange-bellied parrots. Hailed on publication in Australia as Richard Flanagan's greatest novel yet, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is a rising ember storm illuminating what remains when the inferno beckons: one part elegy, one part dream, one part hope.

Slave Species of the Gods

Slave Species of the Gods PDF

Author: Michael Tellinger

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-09-10

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 1591438071

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Our origins as a slave species and the Anunnaki legacy in our DNA • Reveals compelling new archaeological and genetic evidence for the engineered origins of the human species, first proposed by Zecharia Sitchin in The 12th Planet • Shows how the Anunnaki created us using pieces of their own DNA, controlling our physical and mental capabilities by inactivating their more advanced DNA • Identifies a recently discovered complex of sophisticated ruins in South Africa as the city of the Anunnaki leader Enki Scholars have long believed that the first civilization on Earth emerged in Sumer some 6,000 years ago. However, as Michael Tellinger reveals, the Sumerians and Egyptians inherited their knowledge from an earlier civilization that lived at the southern tip of Africa and began with the arrival of the Anunnaki more than 200,000 years ago. Sent to Earth in search of life-saving gold, these ancient Anunnaki astronauts from the planet Nibiru created the first humans as a slave race to mine gold--thus beginning our global traditions of gold obsession, slavery, and god as dominating master. Revealing new archaeological and genetic evidence in support of Zecharia Sitchin’s revolutionary work with pre-biblical clay tablets, Tellinger shows how the Anunnaki created us using pieces of their own DNA, controlling our physical and mental capabilities by inactivating their more advanced DNA--which explains why less than 3 percent of our DNA is active. He identifies a recently discovered complex of sophisticated ruins in South Africa, complete with thousands of mines, as the city of Anunnaki leader Enki and explains their lost technologies that used the power of sound as a source of energy. Matching key mythologies of the world’s religions to the Sumerian clay tablet stories on which they are based, he details the actual events behind these tales of direct physical interactions with “god,” concluding with the epic flood--a perennial theme of ancient myth--that wiped out the Anunnaki mining operations. Tellinger shows that, as humanity awakens to the truth about our origins, we can overcome our programmed animalistic and slave-like nature, tap in to our dormant Anunnaki DNA, and realize the longevity and intelligence of our creators as well as learn the difference between the gods of myth and the true loving God of our universe.

The Resonance of Unseen Things

The Resonance of Unseen Things PDF

Author: Susan Lepselter

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0472052942

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An interdisciplinary study of how conspiracy theories and stories persist and resonate among different Americans

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories PDF

Author: Jamil Jan Kochai

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2023-07-11

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0593297210

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE 2023 ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE, AND THE 2023 O. HENRY PRIZE NAMED ONE OF THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2022 "An endlessly inventive and moving collection from a thrilling and capacious young talent." —Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins. A luminous new collection of stories from a young writer who “has brought his culture’s rich history, mythology, and lyricism to American letters.” —Sandra Cisneros Pen/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai ​breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness, Kochai once again captures “a singular, resonant voice, an American teenager raised by Old World Afghan storytellers.”* In “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain," a young man's video game experience turns into a surreal exploration on his own father's memories of war and occupation. Set in Kabul, "Return to Sender" follows two married doctors driven by guilt to leave the US and care for their fellow Afghans, even when their own son disappears. A college student in the US in "Hungry Ricky Daddy" starves himself in protest of Israeli violence against Palestine. And in the title story, "The Haunting of Hajji Hotak," we learn the story of a man codenamed Hajji, from the perspective of a government surveillance worker, who becomes entrenched in the immigrant family's life. The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement—and one that speaks to the immediate political landscape we reckon with today. *The New York Times Book Review