Showing results for "Stories" in Absurdist

The long-awaited sequel to Jasper Fforde's cult bestseller Shades of Grey, set in world where social hierarchy revolves entirely around visual colour. Imagine a world where your position in society depended on what bit of the colour spectrum you could see. This is the world inhabited by Eddie...

A woman metamorphoses into a giant slug; another quite literally eats her heart out; a wasp falls in love with an orchid; and hair starts sprouting from the walls. These stories slip and slide between genres - from video games to fan fiction, body horror to choose-your-own-adventure - as characters cycle through giddying changes in gender, physiology, species, and identity. Collapsing boundaries between bodies and forms, these fictions interrogate the visceral, gross, and absurd.

When electricity hangs in the air so thick the moon and stars fizzle and drown in a sea of light, the people living within it, breathing it in, can never be “normal”. From disfigured mutants accidentally murdering god to a man falling madly in love with a bloodthirsty VCR, we promise you’ve never listened to anything as bizarre as this! In these six tales, Pauley explores the lives of those living in the darkest corners of the world, those living electric: Goddamn Electric Nights.

At turns nonchalantly hip and charmingly deranged, Suzuki's singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Margaret Atwood and Harumi Murakami, to Black Mirror and Ex Machina. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always earthed by the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.

From one of the preeminent literary voices in Israel comes a darkly funny collection of surrealist stories exploring the increasingly complex relationship between humans and technology. Set in our world, alternate realities, distant futures, and the immortal realm, the stories in Autocorrect...

'Profoundly surreal, intensely melancholic and boldly exploratory.' - DAMODAR MAUZO 'N. Prabhakaran's tales restore our sense of delight, not just in this literary form but in the crying human need for retrieving, remembering, retelling experience.' - ANJUM HASAN 'Vividly imagined and narrated...

Greg Host is a normal guy. Or at least he was 6'2", mid-level retail manager, owner of one judgmental cat. But when he notices he’s a fraction shorter one morning, his ordinary life begins to unravel one inch at a time. No one believes him. Doctors shrug. His mom blames dehydration. And the universe? It just keeps laughing.

The Collected Stories of Diane Williams brings together over 300 new and previously published short fictions - distilled works of "unsettling brilliance" (Vanity Fair) that have rewritten the rules of the American short story. 

"These immersive linked stories grapple with Ukrainian history through the waning years of the USSR and birth pangs of democracy ... Reva's characters spark off the page as they confront a brutal bureaucratic past with the only tool they possess—hope."—O, The Oprah Magazine A brilliant and...

What if the end of the world were postponed because the invading aliens got overbooked? What if artificial intelligence suddenly began answering every question exactly the way a cat would? What if Death quietly took a well-earned vacation…and nobody on Earth could die anymore? What if the Second Coming returned to Earth only to discover that miracles are no substitute for proper paperwork? And what if the most frightening thing in the Book of Revelations wasn’t the Beast……but the Standards and Practices department?

Cementing her mastery across genres, Catherine Lacey returns with a new collection of visceral and absurdist short fiction. Across the nine stories in My Stalkers, Catherine Lacey’s second collection of short fiction, women are constantly confronted with the thrill, banality, and horror of...

A collection of brand-new short stories written by prize-winning, bestselling writers and inspired by Kafka - published to commemorate the centenary of his death *Chosen as a 2024 highlight in the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, New Statesman, Esquire and the New European* Franz...

Welcome to the chaotic kingdom of Fantasmagoria, where an inquisition for absolute equity rages and the masses combat all forms of social injustice by any means necessary. Elves are burned at the stake for suggesting there is a biological difference between mermaids and goblins. Djinns are executed for granting capitalistic wishes. Vampires are tortured to death for insensitive jokes made five hundred years ago.

Crushed by agoraphobia and desperate to reclaim her life, Jenna agrees to an experimental retreat that claims to cure fear itself. Three days in an isolated lakeside cabin. Cutting edge augmented reality therapy. A chance to finally feel free.

The excoriating stories in Mark Doten's brilliant first collection dissect the pathological narratives that shape our culture and country. Narrated by a crosscutting array of White people, Doten's stories spotlight the self-serving logic through which their characters struggle to make sense of, and take control of, the narrative of our time.

Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows is widely hailed as one of the greatest works of supernatural fiction ever written. Blending breathtaking descriptions of nature with an atmosphere of mounting unease, Blackwood creates a tale where the boundary between the real and the unknown grows dangerously thin.

When ordinary lives meet extraordinary moments, magic happens. Take a journey through An Author's Dozen where vivid characters share their compelling adventures. Each of the thirteen tales offers a unique glimpse into the human experience, making the collection a treasure trove for anyone who loves the art of storytelling.

In this expanded reissue of her electric debut collection, Madeline Cash, the author of the international bestseller Lost Lambs, synthesizes the godlessness of a digital age into a glimmering, life-affirming collage of stories. Life is absurd; so is Earth Angel. Tales of rebellious schoolgirls...

A couple's cat leaves offerings of dead birds freighted with mysterious import. A foreign worker helps construct a concert hall that reawakens his musical longings. A young diver hunts venomous cone snails for a lovelorn researcher. With disarming simplicity, Barrie Sherwood charts how the...

In a dystopian world with no men, women are “rehabilitated” at an erotic amusement park. Climate change has caused massive flooding and warming in the Balkans, where one programmer builds a time machine. And a devious reimagining of The Sorrows of Young Werther refocuses to center a sexually adventurous Charlotte.