Searing, troubling, and funny, these revolutionary, linked stories flit and dart among the shadows of small town life, and the touching and heartbreaking characters that occupy it. Employees use roadkill instead of faux pelts during a build-a-critter battle for mall supremacy. Former band geeks are harassed with mutilated musical instruments and then murdered. The collection is haunted by allusions to a fatal cannonball jump that crescendos in the explosive final story. An extraordinary addition to the canon of gonzo fiction, Congratulations on Your Martyrdom! introduces Zachary Tyler Vickers as an exciting new author whose unflinching prose grabs you and won’t let go.

Congratulations on Your Martyrdom! (Break Away Books)

Literature & Fiction

Saunders, George

Huneven, Michelle

Mathis, Ayana

Anthony, Jessica

Ockert, Jason

Vickers, Zachary Tyler

Humor & Satire

Break Away Book Club Edition

Riotously funny, beautifully written, and charged with emotional intelligence, this well-crafted debut investigates the world from the fringe through characters who stray so far from convention they seem to inhabit another universe. Whether it's Alston Goldstein ferrying drugs around Florida on his yellow moped, a young man fighting his entire neighborhood to find a suitable husband for his pregnant sister, or a man preparing to arm wrestle Jesus, these 13 stories hinge on the interplay between middle-class normality and capricious heroes, transporting readers to a tenderly evoked world where the real and the absurd at last make peace. This fictional masterpiece is for readers who love Americana, root for the underdog, and delight in the approach of the next great voice in southern eccentricity.

Rabbit Punches: Stories

United States

Low Fidelity Press

“Wasp Box is full of wonders, by which I mean it’s full of drunken fathers and the Finger Lakes of New York and middling wineries and too-smart-and-nosy-for-their-own-good kids and bomb shelters and young love and lost love and lost diaries and killer wasps. In this, his unbelievably smart, tense, breakneck first novel, Ockert has made something strange, and great, a book that is absolutely impossible to put down once you’ve started it.”—BROCK CLARKE, author of Exley  “With sentences as darting and sharp as the wasps that haunt this remarkable debut novel, Jason Ockert has crafted an unforgettable vision of an America—and a family—in peril.”—LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of The Isle of Youth  “Wasp Box may cause swelling, itching, anaphylactic shock, renal failure, barbed terror, stinging empathy, and profound joy.”—BENJAMIN PERCY, author of Red Moon When a soldier returning home to a small New York town inadvertently transports an invasive species of deadly parasitic wasps, he sets off a frightening chain of events that throws an entire community into an unpredictable crisis. Escalating in its psychological, emotional, and narrative intensity, Ockert’s gripping first novel examines the choices individuals make in the face of danger, the limits of personal strength, and the value of family loyalty when the familiar world unravels.Praise for Ockert’s previous work:  “Ockert’s voice is quirky, funny, and totally original—it conveys, in these dreamlike, virtuosic stories, a strange and vulnerable kindness you haven’t read before.”—George Saunders, author of Tenth of December  “Beautiful stories, searching and generous. Ockert never ceases to astound.”—Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao  “Ockert’s plots are hair-raisingly original, his humor is feverish and dark, his language soars. And yet no matter what altitude of weird Ockert achieves here, his imaginary worlds are always populated by real people, characters who matter deeply to each other, and to their readers.”—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

Wasp Box

Contemporary

Panhandler Books

Proper Imposters: Four Novellas

Parker, Jeff

Bhuvaneswar, Chaya

Figueiras, Mauricio Montiel

Literary

Neighbors of Nothing examines characters who find themselves searching for new identities in worlds they no longer recognize. In "Piebald," parents assume the identity of their dead son; in "Everyday Murders," the sole survivor of a violent crime attempts to confront an online entrepreneur who sells football-style serial killer jerseys. Through odd, compelling, and sometimes futile gestures, these characters struggle against guilt and grief and the seemingly endless stretch of days. Influenced by absurdism and the southern gothic, Neighbors of Nothing offers intelligent and heartrending insights into the complex human struggle to exist with purpose.

Neighbors of Nothing

Short Stories & Anthologies

Dzanc Books

Speculative and darkly surreal, the stories in Shadowselves examine characters who have stepped dangerously close to an edge they cannot see. A snow plow driver stranded on the roadside during a blizzard finds himself trapped in a riddled memory. A middle-aged man wakes up one morning to find he’s gained four hundred pounds overnight, along with the unbearable regrets of countless strangers. A lonely child sets off to prove the existence of a mythic bird, but uncovers an ugly secret on the other side of town. A comatose teenage outcast traverses the liminal space between life and death. With a sometimes-tenuous grip on reality, and often haunted by mistakes, repressions, and alternate versions of who they might have been, the characters in Shadowselves struggle to find meaningful human connections in a world where the most important things always seem just out of their reach.

Shadowselves

Riotously funny, beautifully written, and charged with emotional intelligence, this well-crafted debut investigates the world from the fringe through characters who stray so far from convention they seem to inhabit another universe. Whether it's Alston Goldstein ferrying drugs around Florida on his yellow moped, a young man fighting his entire neighborhood to find a suitable husband for his pregnant sister, or a man preparing to arm wrestle Jesus, these 13 stories hinge on the interplay between middle-class normality and capricious heroes, transporting readers to a tenderly evoked world where the real and the absurd at last make peace.

Rabbit Punches

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Books by Ockert, Jason