J.S. Breukelaar Knihy

"- Mommy? Are you there?- Norma?- Is everything all right?- Everything's fine. I just want to go home is all.- Where are you?- I already told you.- Tell me again.- Outside a pharmacy on the coast. It's almost dawn and I'm barefoot.- Barefoot?- I don't know if he's the guy.- When you find the guy, you can come home.- I know. It's just, the longer I'm here the more it...- it hurts?- And it's just that we dropped I don't know how many pills. Couldn't you just come get me? You can drop me back, okay? I just need a break. I'd like to seeto hold, to touch, to haveto be"In the beginning, KALI I8 created Norma (a network operation requiring minimal access) with a singular goal: bring back the horn of the perfect male.Spill City: the coast of a near-future California, newly broken from the continental United States. In a temporary calm between storms, Norma combs the exposed intestines of the human world for the Guy. The Guy, the horn, is the only way home. If home exists. If home ever existed.The longer Norma stays, the harder it is to remember.She is a woman, a mother, a harbinger, a vessel, a tool, a program. She can be written and unwritten over and over again until something, someone, sticks.And people, humans, are starting to stick.Mommy is not pleased.

Meera and her twin sister Kai are among thousands of hybrid women—called Mades—bred by the Father in his Blood Temple cult. Meera is rescued by a mysterious healer and storyteller, Narn, but her sister, Kai, does not survive the Father’s “unmaking.” Years later, when the cult is discovered and abolished, Meera, still racked with guilt and grief, enrols in college to take advantage of a generous new Redress Program. When Narn’s conjure stories buy Meera a free ride to a notorious horror reading series, she is soon the darling of the lit set, feted by the other students, finally whole, finally free of the idea that she should have died instead of her sister. But college is not all it seems—Narn has lost a sister too, and Meera agrees to try and find her if Narn will keep feeding Meera the stories that are opening her up to memories she’s never acknowledged, secrets she’s never wanted to know, about Narn’s and the Father’s connection to a violent campus stalker.

A collection of twelve of J.S. Breukelaar's darkest, finest stories with four new works, including the uncanny new novella "Ripples on a Blank Shore." Introduction by award-winning author, Angela Slatter. Relish the gothic strangeness of "Union Falls," the alien horror of "Rogues Bay 3013," the heartbreaking dystopia of "Glow," the weird mythos of "Ava Rune," and others. This collection from the author of American Monster and the internationally acclaimed and Aurealis Award finalist, Aletheia, announces a new and powerful voice in fantastical fiction.