Fiction. A startling new voice in traditional storytelling carves out a territory all its own. The vibrant prose of this debut collection—ranging in both style and length from experimental and realistic to flash and longer form fiction—searingly probes and dissects the idea of connection and alienation with one's self, the world and others. Always gritty, often cruel, yet quietly insightful, this jagged chain of vignettes is for readers who try to hold their thoughts together with duct tape while never quite grasping the things they just can't seem to name."There's a brooding, raw, rustbelt, jazzy, Motown energy that informs the sensibility and sound of this writer, fuels his prose, and gathers this collection into a compelling whole."—Stuart Dybek"This book is lit from within, the pages dunked in the holy water of booze and kerosene."—Peter Markus

Three Ways of the Saw: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Matt Mullins

Literary

Atticus Books

Fiction. "KINO is a fast, complex, exhilarating roadster ride through history and time, a mystery, a documentary, a remarkable remix of reality and imagination. It is the story of a woman who becomes obsessed with her grandfather, a visionary film director in the Germany of the nineteen-twenties through World War II. Tracing the arc of his spectacular decline, she risks a husband and her ordinary life, but uncovers the powerful bindings of family, the sweet, dark loam of loss, and the instant-on high-voltage current of pulp fascism, dirty pictures, propaganda, cultural piracy, art and money. It's quick but complicated, feverish, trying, speculative, high-minded, and occasionally Goebbels-esque. Everything forced into close and incendiary quarters. KINO is intoxicating Euro-brew, written with enormous skill and dedication."—Frederick Barthelme

Kino: A Novel

Fauth, Jurgen

Contemporary

Fiction. THE LAW OF STRINGS AND OTHER STORIES is an existential yelp examining individual choices and our all-too-human response to unexpected events. Fans of George Saunders and Aimee Bender will delight in Gillis' surprising surrealist twists in the heart of painfully real emotion and interpersonal relationships. From a tightrope walker abandoning his trade to an Immovable Girl learning to levitate, THE LAW OF STRINGS explores what happens at the crossroads in our lives and how we decide what matters most in a world defined by chaos."[T]his story collection hooked me from story one and continued to captivate to the end. Expert dialogue and movement and resolution in each piece...This is a book you could read in a sitting or two. The pace is that swift; the stories are that good."—Stephen Dixon

The Law of Strings and Other Stories

Gillis, Steven

Fiction. It's not easy for a messiah to grow up in the Badlands of North Dakota. And it's even harder for him to share his message when radical ideas and so-called "miracles" are the surest way to get the FBI breathing down your neck. The sequel to NAZARETH, NORTH DAKOTA, APOSTLE ISLANDS follows Sam Davidson and his group of roughneck followers as they save wedding receptions, cure cancer patients, and boost a flagging fishing season, all while breaking bread and laws and making peace and enemies.On a mission to change one botched up world, Sam knows he will one day be called to make the ultimate sacrifice, and indeed he sees the writing on the shores of Lake Superior when one of his inner circle betrays him. A playful and delightfully irreverent take on the New Testament, APOSTLE ISLANDS reveals what it takes to shake up the status quo while paying the price to save the ones you love.

Apostle Islands (Messiah Trilogy)

Zurhellen, Tommy

Fiction. When Tommy's parents abandon him as a baby, his grandmother Gaga takes him to her reclusive house at the top of Pike's Peak. Gaga's parenting methods are extreme, but Tommy soon learns her eccentricities are nothing compared to the rest of his family. As he's passed between his outlandish aunts, Tommy's journey takes him to the country homestead of Aunt Tess (who hides surprising objects in her voluminous hair), the four city houses of Aunt Penny (who prefers to communicate by ESP), and the cave-like desert home of Aunt Chelsea the coyote hunter. As his cross-country romp reveals how bizarrely different families can be, Tommy begins to wonder if the conventional home he's dreamed of might not be for him after all. THE TALL TALE OF TOMMY TWICE captures the unmoored feelings of young adulthood and the complexities of American identity. It's a dazzling novel about the ineffability of childhood and the nature of family and relationships in the increasingly rootless American experience.

The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice

Leslie, Nathan

When Jared Yates Sexton finished his MFA and returned to his hometown in Indiana, he found a population plagued by the kind of turmoil and tension usually reserved for fiction. Unemployment and uncertainty lurked everywhere he looked. In his debut story collection, this pervasive turbulence tilts into the fantastical as we observe the inspired, absurd, and even horrific moments in the lives of lost and luckless Midwesterners looking for something to believe in. Through language that's both striking and unassuming, Sexton creates a dangerous and disturbing world in which everything and everyone teeters precariously on the edge of total chaos; a world that bears a startling resemblance to our own.

An End to All Things

Sexton, Jared Yates

When it comes to shaping the history behind modern American literature, few institutions have played as essential a role as that of the literary magazine. In this collection of essays and interviews, Travis Kurowski has compiled insights on the difficulty, worthiness and purpose of the ''little'' magazine, from sources ranging from Ezra Pound to T.C. Boyle. 
Following its origins with Benjamin Franklin through its latest incarnations on the web, Paper Dreams engages its reader in historical conversations and explores why, despite small readership and astronomical failure rates, lit mags continue to pop up in droves across our literary landscape. 
Paper Dreams reveals the idyllic motivations and goals of founding editors and writers of literary journals, who believe in the ethereal power of communication via the printed word and offers an exciting introduction to the individuals whose high ideals and boundless dedication brought to light so many groundbreaking ideas of our time.

Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine

Editor)

Travis Kurowski

Reference

In two artfully crafted novellas, Colin Winnette offers a sly and sinister portrayal of lineage and loss, and the roles we all play in writing our own family history. Written in a seamless, entrancing style, Gainesville follows the twisted branches of a restless family tree in a small Texas town. As tragedy strikes each generation in a slightly skewed fashion, what remains is the relentless passage of time toward an eerily familiar pattern. In One Story, The Two Sisters is woven from an array of beautifully haunting short stories. It details the lives of two sisters, both cast as wildly imaginative entities, each more bizarre than the next. Winnette joyfully plays with life forms as he presents the sisters as (1) an olive at the bottom of a dirty martini; (2) Shel Silverstein; (3) transoceanic swimmers, and so on. The result is an entertaining, skillful meditation on art, love, family, the creative impulse, and what can and cannot be communicated in a single story, or a single life.

Fondly

Winnette, Colin

Sidewalk Dancing is a careful exploration of a diverse family's dynamics told with the subtle wrist bends and brush strokes of a perpetual outsider. Multiple narratives told by a gifted multi-ethnic artist create a beautifully crooked mosaic. Miranda McGee, the daughter of shy, pragmatic Grace Chao and globetrotting dreamer George McGee, feels like a social pariah. She is a factory original, not bound to one land, nor one people. Miranda knows she doesn't entirely belong anywhere. She doesn't understand how her parents ever married, how they picked up and moved to Oahu. How, despite their cultural differences, they could start a new life, build a house, raise a child, and run a popular local diner. Miranda may feel like an outcast in Hawaii or New York, but it is her alienation from her family environment and her own identity that makes her realize that some people feel like outsiders no matter where they are, and this alone may be the one thing her family members have in common.

Sidewalk Dancing: A Novel in Stories

Letitia L. Moffitt

2011 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Award - Gold for Best Regional Fiction (Mid-Atlantic) Fight for Your Long Day is a day-in-the-life satire that follows the eventful unraveling and misadventures of Cyrus Duffleman--''Duffy''-- a portly, down-and-out adjunct instructor who teaches at four urban universities, and then works the night shift as a campus security guard. After a morning of student outbursts, political protests and threats of bodily harm, Duffy witnesses a tide-turning event that would bring most people's day to a halt, only he's too preoccupied to notice. With his overstuffed book bag and perversely cynical thoughts, Duffy battles corruption, staple-wielding zealots and chaos every step of the way. Until the novel's frenzied end, it's anyone's guess who will escape sane--no less alive. Set in the postmodern age of pervasive terror, Alex Kudera's debut novel embodies the American-made irony of being overeducated, overworked and und

Fight for Your Long Day

Kudera, Alex

Humor & Satire

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Atticus Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Atticus Books