Kirjahaku

A woman creeps through the ductwork of a quiet home. A medical procedure reveals an object of worship. A carnivorous reptile divides and cauterizes a town. Amelia Gray's curio cabinet expands in "Gutshot," where isolation and coupling are pushed to their dark and outrageous edges. A master of the macabre, Gray's work is not for the faint of heart or gut: lick at your own risk.

David's wife is dead. At least, he thinks she's dead. But he can't figure out what killed her or why she had to die, and his efforts to sort out what's happened have been interrupted by his discovery of a series of elaborate and escalating threats hidden in strange places around his home--one buried in the sugar bag, another carved into the side of his television. These disturbing threats may be the best clues to his wife's death: CURL UP ON MY LAP. LET ME BRUSH YOUR HAIR WITH MY FINGERS. I AM SINGING YOU A LULLABY. I AM TESTING FOR STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS IN YOUR SKULL. Detective Chico is also on the case, and is intent on asking David questions he doesn't know the answers to and introducing him to people who don't appear to have David's or his wife's best interests in mind. With no one to trust, David is forced to rely on his own memories and faculties--but they too are proving unreliable. In "THREATS," Amelia Gray builds a world that is bizarre yet familiar, violent yet tender. It is an electrifying story of love and loss that grabs you on the first page and never loosens its grip.

If anything's going to save the characters in Amelia Gray's debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it's a John Mayer concert tee. In AM/PM, impish humor and cutting insight are on full display. Readers tour the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrodinger boxes, and volcano love. June wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard falls in love with a chaise lounge; Betty insists everything except flowers are a symbol of her love for her husband; Andrew talks to his house in times of crisis. Written every morning and night for two months, these brief vignettes (50 to 100 words) recall Donald Barthelme in their whimsy and subtle yet powerful emotions. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens, AM/PM mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original work of fiction.

Using the scaffolding of Isadora Duncan's life and the stuff of her spirit, Amelia Gray's breakout novel delivers an incredibly imaginative portrait of the artist, resulting in "a stunning meditation on art and grief by one of America's most exciting young authors" (NPR). As dynamic, enthralling, and powerful as the visionary artist it captures, Amelia Gray's Isadora is a relentless and living portrayal of a woman who shattered convention, even in the darkest days of her life. In 1913, Isadora Duncan was known as much for her stunning dance performances as for her eccentric and salacious personal life -- her lovers included poets, directors, and the heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. But when her two children drowned in Paris, she found herself taking on a role she had never dreamed of. The tragedy brought the gossips out in full force, and the grieving mother wanted nothing more than to escape it all. Fleeing the very life she had worked so hard to build, she left her sister, Elizabeth, holding the reins of the artistic empire along with Elizabeth's lover, Max, who had his own ideas for greatness. For two years Isadora cast about prewar Europe, living on credit on islands in Greece and in shuttered beachfront dwellings in Italy. She lashed out at her dearest lovers and friends, the very people who held her up. But life had cracked her spirit in two: on one side, the brilliant young talent who captivated audiences the world over; on the other, a heartbroken mother spinning dangerously on the edge of sanity.

A monogrammed cube appears in your town. Your landlord cheats you out of first place in the annual Christmas decorating contest. You need to learn how to love and care for your mate?a paring knife. These situations and more reveal the wondrous play and surreal humor that make up the stories in Amelia Gray’s stunning collection of stories: Museum of the Weird. Acerbic wit and luminous prose mark these shorts, while sickness and death lurk amidst the humor. Characters find their footing in these bizarre scenarios and manage to fall into redemption and rebirth. Museum of the Weird invites you into its hallways, then beguiles, bewitches, and reveals a writer who has discovered a manner of storytelling all her own.