Richard Thomas’s eSingle “Victimized” reads like a vignette from Sin City— concise, dark, and comfy as a broken rib. Set in dystopian future where the legal system has turned into a kind of auxiliary blood sport, “Victimized” is a breathless revenge fantasy beyond the reach of morality.
In this future, defendants in violent crime cases are given a choice: take your chances before a jury, or step into the ring. If you choose the ring, your opponent– if anyone even shows at all– will be someone hurt by the crime in …

Out of Touch by Brandon Tietz is a new entry into the arms race of transgressive literature, informally reignited by Chuck Palahniuk a decade or so ago. It’s an increasingly dysphoric genre; moral bankruptcy is the new black. One wonders how deep into pure unfeeling we can descend before there’s no earth left to move. Yet here is a book with a rather elegant twist: Tietz binds his narrator, Aidin, so literally to the typical themes of the genre– abandonment; addiction; intense family dysfunction– that he is inextricable from them.
You see, Aidin can’t feel a thing.  Literally. He suffers a condition that’s …

Some fairly prominent elements of Stephen Prosapio’s Dream War might seem familiar; for example, the concept of cutting-edge technology that allows trained operatives to invade other peoples’ dreams in order to ferret out hidden information, or even to plant new information, all to nefarious ends.
If this sounds like a rip-off of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, wait: Prosapio’s copyright on Dream War is from 2007, predating the film by three years. And furthermore, it’s only in the practical machinery of the dream-link concept that Prosapio’s novel resembles Nolan’s film. The sum products diverge wildly. …

Casual brutality, sex, and disorder: the heroes of noir have never been terribly endearing to the heart, but the seven nihilistic souls of Richard Thomas’s Transubstantiate seem like they were born ruined, and are likely to die that way. The story draws heavily on all the beloved accouterments of the neo-noir tradition— fractured narratives; cynicism; disorientation; ruthless beatings— but the story branches out into other areas, exploring themes of mysticism and the unknowable, even broaching the peripheral terrors of Lovecraftian horror.
We follow our seven characters over the course of events …

Bret Easton Ellis burst onto the literary scene in 1985 with his debut novel, Less Than Zero. Less Than Zero was born smack-dab in the middle of the Reagan 80’s, a time of debauchery and decadence shrouded in a Cold War haze; the dawning of the era where the self-indulgent I would obliterate the once-united We into exile. MTV was in its infancy and Betamax was promising technology.  Clay, Less Than Zero’s protagonist, had a problem merging on freeways, and couldn’t seem to shake the implications of an overbearing billboard …

Caleb Ross’ stories do not behoove summaries. Let’s just get that out of the way. Let’s also just say that they contain blood drinking, deformity, death, and disfigurement, to varying degrees. These stories swirl like nightmares: a populace of anti-protagonists so wounded that there is generally no hope for their redemption. The reader acts as sponge, absorbing their pain. Making sense of it. As the reader, you are the first man on the scene; as such, you are to perform the tasks the characters themselves are no longer capable of performing: observe, record, and interpret. Seek your own closure. …

“Edgewater was once a pretty normal ‘burb,” writes Drew Ballard, the narrator of Major Inversions. “Now, everyone you meet is in the process of becoming something.” This little seaside town has undergone some growing pains in the past couple of years. It is the suburb of what is becoming a burgeoning film town, the Hollywood of the eastern seaboard: Wilmington, North Carolina. It might not have Hollywood’s platinum sparkle, but movies get made in Wilmington, and everyone wants to get a break in the industry. As such, everyone in Edgewater …

Sheep and Wolves, Jeremy C. Shipp’s short story collection follow-up to his debut 2007 novel, Vacation, is not a quick read. Though only 160 pages, this collection demands an investment deeper than its length would suggest. Wearing the skin of the absurd while hiding the guts of a literary paranormal investigation, the collection defies casual reading and easy categorization. Sheep and Wolves must be approached carefully, chewed slowly, and swallowed cautiously.
The tales, rarely more than 10 pages in length individually, are challenging enough to traditional modes of storytelling that one …

The inherent danger with a politically grounded novel is the potential to read the book as an author’s manifesto. There is a desire for the reader to take a Rhetorical Critic’s stance on the text and interpret every politically-backed statement as the author’s personal belief. And with this danger comes the potential to polarize audiences. Joey Goebel’s third novel, Commonwealth, is weighed by this dynamic, however he has the storytelling chops to move beyond treatise territory and deliver a great story, helped, not hindered, by the political setting.
Commonwealth follows the …

The plot of The Golden Calf, Henry Baum’s second novel, reads like it was born of a dare. “Henry, I dare you to write a novel with a sympathetic Hollywood stalker. Give him a dull life, a dull job, call him Ray. Then turn him into an anti-celebrity missionary disgusted by the wealthy man’s ignorance of the Everyman’s plight. Make him pity Hollywood while simultaneously conscious of the need to help those wrecked by the Hollywood lifestyle. Most importantly, Mr. Baum, make me agree with this man.”
“Sure,” Henry Baum says. …