Wife Shaped Bodies

Laura Cranehill

Sorrowland meets Manhunt in this literary horror debut in which an isolated newlywed—covered in mushroom growths like all the other wives in her community—strikes a precarious balance between following her husband’s strict rules and pursuing an intense connection with a woman who makes her question everything.Forbidden from leaving her house from girlhood until marriage, Nicole has only her mother's lessons and what she can see from her bedroom window to draw on in forming her view of the world, and of herself. Taught that the mushrooms which cover the women in her village are repulsive and dangerous, she conforms to a rigid set of rules to protect herself and those around her. When her wedding day arrives, Nicole moves from one prison to another—an empty mansion on the very outskirts of town belonging to the husband she’s been promised to since birth. As she haunts the edges of Silas's unknowable life and decaying home, maintaining control over her own transforming body becomes increasingly impossible. And when another wife with rebellious tendencies pays Nicole an unexpected visit, something within her cracks open. Their furtive explorations yield confusing answers, unearthing the long-buried secrets of the generations of resentful brides that came before. Unmoored, angry, and at last awakened, Nicole must reckon with who she really is, and perhaps, give in to what she truly wants. Raw, visceral, and relentless, Wife Shaped Bodies is an exploration of gender, power, and community through the lens of mycological body horror and an ode to the unsettling beauty of the natural world.

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It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

Anne de Marcken

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it ― how much of what we love can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens?  This third perspective on myself is disconcerting.  The heroine of the spare and haunting It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over  is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known―where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.  A bracing writer of great nerve and verve, Anne de Marcken bends reality (and the reader’s mind) with throwaway assurance. It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love. Delivering a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader’s imagination, this is one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, a tale for our dispossessed times.

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It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

Anne de Marcken

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it ― how much of what we love can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens?  This third perspective on myself is disconcerting.  The heroine of the spare and haunting It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over  is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known―where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.  A bracing writer of great nerve and verve, Anne de Marcken bends reality (and the reader’s mind) with throwaway assurance. It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love. Delivering a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader’s imagination, this is one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, a tale for our dispossessed times.

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Summer Hours

Alessandra Thom

'Everything about this book is alive' – Maria Sledmere It's a hot Edinburgh summer, and Roisin's life is stagnating. She spends her days cancelling plans, skipping work and drinking lukewarm wine in the bathtub with her best friend Eve. When their wealthy mutual friend Claire offers Roisin a significant amount of money under the guise of 'freelance work,' Roisin thinks her luck might finally be changing. But Claire's proposal is not all it seems, and soon Roisin finds herself trapped. Paralysed by both her intense infatuation with Eve and her secret arrangement with Claire, Roisin must walk a delicate line to avoid losing what matters to her most.

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Summer Hours

Alessandra Thom

'Everything about this book is alive' – Maria Sledmere It's a hot Edinburgh summer, and Roisin's life is stagnating. She spends her days cancelling plans, skipping work and drinking lukewarm wine in the bathtub with her best friend Eve. When their wealthy mutual friend Claire offers Roisin a significant amount of money under the guise of 'freelance work,' Roisin thinks her luck might finally be changing. But Claire's proposal is not all it seems, and soon Roisin finds herself trapped. Paralysed by both her intense infatuation with Eve and her secret arrangement with Claire, Roisin must walk a delicate line to avoid losing what matters to her most.

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A Dowry of Blood

S.T. Gibson

S.T. Gibson's sensational novel is the darkly seductive tale of Dracula's first bride, Constanta. This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. . . Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband's dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.

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