Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Genre Fiction

In his Locus review of Two Worlds and in Between - the first volume of The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan - Gary K. Wolfe wrote, “...it makes you wish the second volume were here now.” Well, the long wait is over. This second volume completes this ambitious undertaking, collecting the finest of Kiernan’s stories from 2004 to 2012, selected by the author herself. The book includes 25 short stories and one poem, plus the short novel Black Helicopters - more than 200,000 words of fiction, including the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of 90 Cats”.

Buying into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself, gets on welfare rolls, and talks her way into college. But once she's there, phallocratic narratives permeate every subject, and creative writing professors depend heavily on Freytag's pyramid to analyze life. So Ariel turns to a rich subcultural canon of resistance and failure, populated by writers like Audre Lorde, Tillie Olsen, and Kathy Acker. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single mother.

In January, 1965, the growing town of Ballycrea has four new residents. The O’Leary siblings arrive in their new village under suspicious circumstances. Desperate to make a new start and leave their troubled life behind, the O’Learys offer few, contradicting details about their past. As they slowly settle in to town, the siblings are taken under the wing of Betty and Bill Nevan, a wealthy couple in their forties who have always wanted children. However, as one O’Leary sister grows close to Betty, lines are crossed and their intense relationship becomes difficult to define.

Sarah never admits that she’s his mother, but the beautiful boy has watched her survive as a “lot lizard”: a prostitute working the West Virginia truck stops. Desperate to win her love, he decides to surpass her as the best and most famous lot lizard ever.

Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow is going undercover to infiltrate the gang, armed with a shotgun and a device that measures sorcerous energy. His job is to gain knowledge of Rook’s power and unlock its secrets. But there is someone else who has Rook in her sights: the Lady of Traps and Snares, a bloodthirsty Mayan goddess who will stop at nothing to satisfy her own desires. Caught between the good, the bad, and the unholy, Morrow will have to ride out a storm of magical mayhem to survive.

Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries? Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina’s death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone.

Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower. Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow. If Olivia’s going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she’ll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower.

Chaotic bisexual Wendy is trying to find her place in the queer community of San Lazaro, Arizona, after a bad breakup—which is particularly difficult because her ex is hooking up with some of her friends. And when the people around them start turning into violent, terrifying mindless husks, well, that makes things harder. Especially since the infection seems to be spreading.

Fueled by tomato sandwiches and green milkshakes, and obsessed with cars, Philbet struggles with life and love as a gay boy in rural Georgia. He’s happiest when helping Grandaddy dig potatoes from the vegetable garden that connects their houses. But Philbet’s world is shattered and his resilience shaken by events that crush his innocence and sense of security; expose his misshapen chest skillfully hidden behind shirts Mama makes at home; and convince him that he’s not fit to be loved by Knox, the older boy he idolizes to distraction.

At 19, almost 20, Ron Bancroft is newly out as transgender and finds himself adrift: kicked out by his family, jilted by his girlfriend, and unable to afford to return to college in the fall. So he heads out to Wyoming for a new start, a chance to prove that - even though he was raised as a girl, even though everyone in Boston thinks of him as transgender - he can live as a man. A real man. In Wyoming, he finds what he was looking for: rugged terrain, wranglers, and a clean slate. He also stumbles into a world more dangerous than he imagined, one of bigotry and violence.

Two young women attending college decide to have a summer adventure canoeing the rapids-strewn Thelon River that runs 450 miles through the uninhabited Barren Lands of subarctic Canada. Holly made the trip once before with a group of skilled paddlers she trained with at camp, and she wants to share that experience with her friend and lover, Lee, believing it will draw them closer. But a week in, Holly, the risk-taker, falls while taking a selfie near the edge of a cliff. She is left injured and comatose, and soon dies.

Patrick O’Neil is a travel agent who never goes anywhere. His closest confidante, Sharon, is chain-smoking her way to singles hell, passing up man after man. His parents, proprietors of a suburban men’s store whose fortunes are sagging more visibly than its customers, can’t agree how best to interfere in their sons’ lives. And his lover, Arthur (a nice golden retriever of a guy to whom Patrick can’t quite commit), wants to cement their relationship by buying a house. Then a call comes in the middle of another sleepless night.

Amelia Cole—Lia for short—is one of the first women studying abroad at Oxford University in the 1920s. Finally free from her overbearing Brooklyn parents, she finds a welcome sense of independence in British college life. Lia quickly falls for Scarlett Daniels, an aspiring actress and hardheaded protester. Scarlett introduces her to an exciting gender-equality movement with high stakes. But when their secret love clashes with political uprising, their relationship is one of the casualties. 

Sam Brandt is a long-term denizen of Connecticut’s renowned Leverett School. As an English teacher, he has dedicated his life to providing his students with the same challenges, encouragement, and sense of possibility that helped him and his friends become themselves here half a lifetime ago.

Satellite Street is woven through with the theme of transitions. Paul Marden is grappling with the way that a sudden, devastating illness and his slow recovery have made him reevaluate what "normal" is for a man in his 60s who grew up in a time of change that promised better days than the ones he is now living through. Another character's transition involves both gender and spirit; Lelee was born male and wanted to transition to female, but the process has been hindered by heart issues. Lelee also believes that she can speak to the dead, although she is skeptical.

It’s 2007, and while 43-year-old Leanne Spencer’s career is building up steam, her love life is a trainwreck. She’s always believed her addiction to bad boys stems from her flawless father dying when she was a child, but it turns out Mom’s a liar, Dad’s not dead, and her childhood was a well-crafted illusion.