Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Absurdist

Deep in the woods of western Finland, a bear hunter has raised his seven daughters to live off the land and steer clear of the trappings of life in town, like cell phones and a social life outside their family. When on his youngest Elga’s twelfth birthday the hunter is killed by his prey, and their mother dies soon thereafter, the sisters are left with unpaid bills and a leaky house.

Das war's dann mit dem Jünger, Vasallen und Eiferer Der fast schon ernste viertletzte Teil der Daswarsdann-Trilogie »Welchen der beiden viertletzten Teile der Daswarsdann-Trilogie soll man zuerst lesen? Den vollkommen wahnsinnigen oder den fast schon ernsten?« Endlich eine hilfreiche Frage, liebe Kritik. Ich fürchte nur, meine Antwort wird euch nicht gefallen. »Warum nicht?« Na, ja. Ich kann nur sagen, was andere sagen. »Was sagen die denn?« Die einen sagen so, die anderen so. »Scheint egal zu sein, in welcher Reihenfolge wir die Teile abarbeiten«, sagen die Kritiker zu sich.

In this new collection of short stories, Dactyl Literary Award winner Tom Newton once again playfully transmutes base reality into startlingly novel shapes and forms, shifting paradigms from beneath the listener's feet by deftly metamorphosing quotidian banality with whimsical, illusory invention.

En esta colonia, un antiguo comandante ha implementado una máquina de tortura y ejecución extremadamente cruel y elaborada, que graba en la piel del prisionero el motivo de su castigo antes de matarlo. A medida que el oficial observa horrorizado el funcionamiento de la máquina, se ve envuelto en un conflicto moral sobre la justicia, la crueldad y el poder.

El grito del muerto de H. P. Lovecraft, narra los resultados de las investigaciones del Dr. Herbert West sobre la muerte y la reanimación de los cuerpos, desde sus tiempos de estudiante en la ficticia Universidad Miskatonic hasta poco después de la Primera Guerra Mundial.

Was wäre, wenn du plötzlich eine Banknote im Wert von einer Million Pfund in der Tasche hättest – und sie nicht ausgeben dürftest? Doch statt Reichtum folgt eine schräge Achterbahnfahrt durch Gesellschaft, Gier und den Irrsinn des Anscheins. In bester Twain-Manier entfaltet sich eine humorvolle, clevere und zeitlose Satire, die zeigt, dass Geld nicht immer das ist, was es scheint.

Do Trees Know When They Fall? is a short fiction collection by Damon Stone. These "psi-fi" stories explore the strange, horrific, beautiful, and often ridiculous nature of consciousness — how it can warp and twist in ways that seem unimaginable when it isn't warping or twisting. The collection asks us to question the nature of "the human condition" by viewing it through strange lenses, in the hopes of uncovering whatever insights our "normal" lenses are unable to capture.

One dark, windy supermoon night in the near future, a woman's ill-timed tarot question rips open a portal between dimensions, unleashing cosmic chaos. Step right up to Venice Peach, a flamboyantly freakish circus on the gritty Venice Beach boardwalk, where bizarre talents and mind-bending spectacles are just the beginning. Get lost in a funhouse maze of reality-shattering events and untamed, sex-fueled showdowns.

Robot Justice is a sweeping bittersweet parable about injustice and how man’s instinct for self-preservation fuels his cruel treatment of everything and everyone, even if it results in his own species’ self-eliminating extinction. Framed as a series of offbeat, fractured legal cases by the world’s first artificial intelligence judge, the stories draw upon cultural philosophy, neuroscience, literary criticism, evolutionary biology, panpsychism, political and social theory, linguistics, legal arrogance, speculative fiction and popular psychology to expose the underbelly of humanity.

Dr. Eden Draco lives in “The Cone” shaped sanctuary in the middle of Derinkegel. Only young and healthy people roam the Cone. She doesn’t have to pay for food and drinks, education, housing, medical care or anything having to do with her upkeep. With assigned partners, the government made sure all the workers have nothing to want for. She lives in total bliss and happiness but feels like something is missing.

Before Derek Christian became the confused hero, pawn of the universe, and reluctant cosmic adventurer of the Intergalactic novels, he was a simple copywriter at a radio station in Atlanta, WRFA: Radio Free America. This story tells how his writer's block set off a domino effect of murder and cosmic intrigue as The Fear chases him to his breaking point, and how he manages to escape into a world not of his own making.

Size matters. Or at least it does to Ed, nitpicking quantity surveyor and captain of his local pub football team who has faked a business trip abroad to get some cheap plastic surgery. Ed intends to be even more of a man upon his return. But has he managed to keep this as secret as he thinks? Will this really be such a wonderful surprise for Fiona on their wedding night? And just who is this operation for anyway?

Due anni, otto mesi e ventotto notti. Il tempo in cui le regole del mondo si rovesciano e strani, inspiegabili fenomeni iniziano ad accadere sulla terra: un giardiniere dal passato tormentato si alza una mattina levitando, un disegnatore di fumetti si trova obbligato allo scontro con il suo personaggio più riuscito, in una sala del municipio viene trovata una neonata dai poteri soprannaturali, un compositore lancia inquietanti profezie, e una giovane e seducente cacciatrice d'oro viene assoldata per una guerra al di là di ogni immaginazione.

Benjamin was never the sharpest tool in the shed. For as long as he can remember, he’s longed for adventure in far-away lands. But every day he wakes up in the same boring suburb, where nothing ever happens.

Yang Wei wakes to find himself still a patient at the hospital. Somehow, he’s aged decades overnight and is confined to the geriatric ward on a massive Hospital ship as it floats along a bloodred sea full of unsightly things. But human remains and sea nymphs are perhaps nothing compared to the goings-on belowdecks.

Protagonisti di questo romanzo sono due grandi amici, l'inglese Archie e il bengalese Samad. In una Londra dove l'estremismo è all'ordine del giorno, i due danno vita a una strana quanto improbabile coppia: Archie ha sempre seguito la corrente, Samad, invece, è un musulmano convinto, che mal sopporta la decadenza della società occidentale. Ad aggravare la già inquieta atmosfera arrivano i Chalfen, agiati intellettuali inglesi carichi di tutti i tic e le illusioni della Generazione dei Fiori. E l'incontro-scontro fra le diverse culture produrrà effetti tragicomici non meno che devastanti.

The Metamorphosis is a story about a man who wakes up transformed into a bug and the repercussions it has on his life and the people around him. What does it all mean? It is most probably an autobiography of how Kafka himself experienced early life living with his parents. Kafka describes how he endured his mother and father's financial and emotional exploitations, to the point of detaching from them and thereby ceasing to be their son (the real metamorphosis).

En una lúgubre ciudad de Europa del Este, que cubren al ocaso las brumas del río y enfrían las nieves nocturnas, un joven médico y su viejo mentor capturan a un vagabundo de porte monumental. Lo retienen en un sótano donde, ayudados por una sumisa asistente, han montado su laboratorio. Acorazado en un espléndido guardapolvo, el aspirante a galeno emprende su viril empresa sacrificial en favor de la ciencia.

As head of the crisis management team at a Madison Avenue PR firm, Leonard Lundell spends his days counseling executives whose reputations have been ruined by scandal. But Leonard has been managing a strange and debilitating crisis of his own that’s held him captive his entire adult life: Leonard likes to eat soap, pencils, paint chips—anything with no nutritional value. For years, he’s kept his compulsion hidden behind a professional veneer.

Before the clocks stopped, Narwhal Slotterfield was an ordinary basketball referee. He blew his whistle. He stretched the rules. He even had a girlfriend. But then the clock thing happened. Now it’s 7:23 p.m., Narwhal’s in a diner in the middle of the Great Plains, and now is all he’s got.