Current BooksCurrent Zine

• 

  Meeks

  Julia Holmes

  July 2010: A dark satire rendered with the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, this debut novel follows a hapless bachelor who must find a wife before the end of the summer or be confined forever in the city factories.

• 

  Redemption in Indigo

  Karen Lord

  July 2010: In this funny, fresh fable, a villager leaves her husband and finds she can manipulate chaos.

• 

  Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers

  Alasdair Gray

  The first US edition (updated with the author’s corrections from the UK edition) of a novel that British critics lauded as one of the best of Gray’s long career.

• 

  Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 25

  Gwenda Bond, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, Susannah Mandel, Richard Parks, Haihong Zhao

Chuntering On and On

Your photos? Wed 21 Jul 2010

We’re in the final stages of our new Working Writers Daily Planner and I thought I’d throw out a last minute call for for photos or art. We pay $10 + 1 copy for print + electronic rights. Please post links in the comments but only to art/photos you have rights to, thanks!
Also just added [...]

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Meeks today, more tomorrow Tue 20 Jul 2010

Today is publication day for Julia Holmes’s excellent debut novel Meeks! If you’re in NYC or environs, there’s an awesome launch party happening at WORD tonight. Do not say we did not warn you! Julia’s reading all over the place (Portland, OR! Boston, MA! More!) and you should attend in your bachelor suit.
Other updates: Kathe [...]

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Weightless is Featherproof! Tue 20 Jul 2010

Over on our Weightless ebook store (the best place for indie press ebooks!) we just added half a dozen titles from one of our fave Chicago publishers, Featherproof Books, plus two o/p titles from sf writer Judith Moffett—who was in the right place at the right time when we needed to try adding a few [...]

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Latest Eruption of Fiction Into the Universe

Meeks

July 20, 2010 · 9781931520652 · trade paperback

An August 2010 Indie Next Notable Book

New: Read excerpts from Meeks at The Collagist, BenMarcus.net, and Conjunctions.

“The satire here has plenty of bite, but instead of winking at the reader, Holmes evokes her world with luminous prose.”
—Los Angeles Times

“A highly imaginative debut finds a stark Darwinian logic in a rigidly hierarchical society. . . . Holmes has fashioned a terrifying and utterly convincing world in which the perfect human being is one stripped of all illusions.”
—Publishers Weekly

No woman will have Ben without a proper bachelor’s suit . . . and the tailor refuses to make him one. Back from war with a nameless enemy, he’s just discovered that his mother is dead and that his family home has been reassigned by the state. As if that isn’t enough, he must now find a wife, or he’ll be made a civil servant and given a permanent spot in one of the city’s oppressive factories.

Meanwhile, Meeks, a foreigner who lives in the park and imagines he’s a member of the police, is hunted by the overzealous Brothers of Mercy. Meeks’s survival depends on his peculiar friendship with a police captain—but will that be enough to prevent his execution at the annual Independence Day celebration?

A dark satire rendered with all the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, Julia Holmes’s debut novel evokes the strange charm of a Haruki Murakami novel in a dystopic setting reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Meeks portrays a world at once hilarious and disquieting, in which frustrated revolutionaries and hopeful youths suffer alongside the lost and the condemned, just for a chance at the permanent bliss of marriage and a slice of sugar-frosted Independence Day cake.

Early Reader Reaction:

“Meeks is a feat of desolating literary spellcraft, irresistible for its bleak hilarity and the sere brilliance of Julia Holmes’s prose.”
—Wells Tower (author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned)

“The world of Meeks is cruel, cold, and weird, suffocating in laws so strange they very nearly resemble our own.  Julia Holmes is that rare artist who, with invention and mythology, reveals nothing less than the most secret inner workings of the real world we overlook every day. A masterful debut by a writer of the most forceful originality.”
—Ben Marcus (author of Notable American Women and The Age of Wire and String)

“Oh bachelors, poor bachelors, pining for their pale suits—these needy men, so poignant in their search for wives, will break your heart in twain. Splendid and limping, hilarious and painful, a quiet perfection in its idiosyncrasy, the powerful alternate reality of Meeks is also an unforgettable truth. You’ll never see marriage the same way again.”
—Lydia Millet (author of How the Dead Dream and Oh Pure and Radiant Heart)

“The life of a bachelor is always hard, but in Meeks it’s truly desperate: if you don’t have the right suit then it’s either the Brothers of Mercy or the factories. Julia Holmes’s lucid prose tightens the noose of this curious world around your readerly neck before you even know what’s hit you. An invisible enemy, a pageant, a fashion system whose signification would stymie Roland Barthes, and a society that demands everyone rush quickly to fill their odd social slot, makes Meeks a unique (and uniquely imaginative) nightmare and a severely engrossing read.”
—Brian Evenson (author of  Fugue State and The Open Curtain)

“Pity the young gentleman set loose in this world of cruel tailors, perpetual war, large-scale civic pastry and the untold rivalries of the Bachelor House! With her uncommonly assured first novel, Julia Holmes channels the surreal paranoia of Poe and the dark-comic melodrama of a lost Guy Maddin script. The strangest, most compelling debut you’ll read this year.”
—Mark Binelli (author of Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die!)

Cover art © Robyn O’Neil.

More Books

• 

  A Life on Paper: Stories

  Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud

  May 2010

  A major French fabulist translated into English for the first time.

• 

  The Poison Eaters & Other Stories

  Holly Black

  In her debut collection, New York Times best-selling author Holly Black “assures her place as a modern fantasy master.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• 

  A Working Writer’s Daily Planner 2010

  December 2009:

  Organize your writing schedule, track deadlines, and learn about grants, contests, and workshop programs. Deadlines are built right in, along with spotlights on writing markets and helpful online resources.

• 

  Interfictions 2

  Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak, Editors

  November 2009:

  21 original and innovative writers including Jeffrey Ford, Brian Francis Slattery, Nin Andrews, and M. Rickert, and more. Introduction by Henry Jenkins.

• 

  Second Line

  Poppy Z. Brite

  October 2009:

  Two short novels of love and cooking in New Orleans, starring lovable chefs Ricky and G-man, written by the incomparable Poppy Z. Brite. “Fun foodie fiction, and readers will scarf it down.”—Publishers Weekly

• 

  Hound

  Vincent McCaffrey

  When a book dealer’s ex-lover is murdered, he is forced to examine his past and investigate the murky depths of literary Boston. Hound is the first of a series of novels featuring Henry Sullivan, and the debut novel of a long-time Boston bookseller, Vincent McCaffrey.

• 

  Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales

  Greer Gilman

  “Sublimely lyrical Jacobeanesque dialect . . . readers who enjoy
  symbolism and allusion will cherish Gilman’s use of diverse folkloric elements to create an unforgettable realm and ideology.” —Publishers Weekly

• 

  Couch

  Benjamin Parzybok

  Three guys move a couch, save the world.
  An exuberant and hilarious debut in which an episode of furniture moving gone awry becomes an impromptu quest of self-discovery.

• 

  The Serial Garden

  Joan Aiken

  This is the first complete collection of Joan Aiken’s beloved Armitage stories — and it includes four new, unpublished stories.
  The Serial Garden is also the first title in our new imprint for readers of all ages: Big Mouth House.

• 

  The King’s Last Song

  Geoff Ryman

  “An unforgettably vivid portrait of Cambodian culture past and present.” —Booklist (starred review)

• 

  The Ant King and Other Stories

  Benjamin Rosenbaum

  A dazzling, postmodern debut collection of pulp and surreal fictions.
  Download for Free

• 

  The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories

  John Kessel

  Book Sense Pick
  Dustjackets: 1 · 2
  Interviews: 1 · 2
  Podcasts
  Download for Free

• 

  Generation Loss

  Elizabeth Hand

  Shirley Jackson Award Winner
  Start reading | Listen.
  YouTube interview
  Believer Award Short List

• 

  The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet

  Kelly Link & Gavin Grant, Editors

  So good there had to be a book. Or something.
  “An otherworldly Farmer’s Almanac.”—Library Journal

• 

  Water Logic

  Laurie J. Marks

  A triumph of politics, fantasy, world-building, and intelligent design: of character, world, and magic.

  Listen to Ch.1

• 

  Endless Things

  John Crowley

  An Ægypt Novel
  “Confirms that he is one of our finest living writers, period.” —Michael Dirda

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