Christian Tebordo

A boy receives an email from his mother offering free movie tickets shortly after her death. He recognizes it for spam, but wishes she'd really sent it. He responds, and is soon barraged with offers for male enhancements drugs, home appliances, mortgages, and everything else he never knew he needed, by way of the afterlife. Soon, he and his father are swallowing all manner of black market pharmaceuticals, somehow growing closer together as they fall apart, each in his own way.

IS A GHOST ENGINE ALIVE? IS IT RELATABLE? Christian TeBordo weaves between narratives in search of the answer in his latest collection of stories, Ghost Engine, a Bridge Eight Press Fiction Prize Winner. You'll learn from a convicted murderer why the rainbow is the most insidious of all metals. Fashion designer Gordon Gartrelle adapts to his identity as fashion designer Gordon Gartrelle. Frag and Watt take turns with a wrench, hoping to assemble something that just might work, if only for a moment. From scenes of chilling hilarity to an underlying absurdity, ​Ghost Engine​ finds a way to keep the haunt alive long after you've finished reading.ADVANCED PRAISE"Make no mistake: Ghost Engine is original to its bones. TeBordo's prose hits as hard as a hammer, his characters haunt your dreams. The satire never tires and somehow you wind up laughing and loving every page you turn."- TOM WILLIAMS, author of Among the Wild Mulattos"Given that we live in so bizarre a multiverse, these brilliant, irreverent, ingenious stories may seem impolite at times. Vicious. Disturbing. The book may cause you to laugh out loud at something you'd rather not admit you find funny, or bring tears to your eyes on behalf of a character you'd rather not admit you find human--it might hurt your feelings--but Ghost Engine loves you. Ghost Engine only hopes for the best for you. All that Ghost Engine really wants, in the end, is to see you smile that pretty smile of yours while it sets your house on fire."- CAMILLE BORDAS, author of How to Behave in a Crowd"TeBordo speaks to the troubling light and the comforting darkness of our present situation. He writes from the core of our shared junkheap and excavates beauty, buries it again, breaks it out anew."- JUAN MARTINEZ, author of Best Worst American

Fiction. Do we call TOUGHLAHOMA the satire we all deserve, a monstrously true fable of the late days of capitalism? We could say, for instance, that TOUGHLAHOMA crosses Vico's early sociological theories with Hobbes's and Locke's conflicting notions of the state of nature to tell the story of one civilization's failed attempts to become civilized. Or we could say that TOUGHLAHOMA is simply a first account of the Toughlahomans and what they did and do: Jesus went to the End and back before inventing Uglahoma. Ishmael kicked ass and said taglines all over Roughlahoma. Good Dad mostly stayed put. The rest of them hang around the Community Center chewing their Necro Wafers and just being themselves--bicepsual, troublesexual, and martially artistic--in case they ever get to have a war. Let's call TOUGHLAHOMA a history, a scripture, a goddamn dithyramb, and a public relations campaign all in one. In the post-apocalyptic, Mad Max world of literature, Christian TeBordo is the guy with the shotgun.--Amelia Gray A non-stop rush of luscious language and ingeniously twisted story logic told from another dimension, perhaps the fifth or sixth.--David Ohle

After three novels, dynamic and masterful young writer Christian TeBordo, has finally collected his best short stories in The Awful Possibilities. A girl among kidney thieves masters the art of forgetting. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic child-rearing. A teen in Brooklyn, Iowa, deals with the fallout of his brother's rise to hip hop fame. Populated with the people we've all heard whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door, these brilliantly strange set pieces explode the boundaries of short fiction and locate the awe in the awful possibilities we could never have imagined.