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THE SECOND SHOOTER (PRE-ORDER)
“You're talking about a coven!”
“No, it was a book club.”
In the first reports of every mass shooting, there’s always mention of a second shooter—two sets of gunshots, a figure seen fleeing the scene—and they always seem to evaporate as events are pieced together.
Commissioned by a fringe publisher to investigate the phenomenon, journalist Mike Karras finds himself tailed by drones, attacked by a talk radio host, badgered by his all-knowing (and maybe all-powerful) editor, and teaming up with an immigrant family of conspiracy buffs.
Together, they uncover something larger and stranger than anyone could imagine—a technomystical plot to ‘murder America.’
Time for Karras to meet his deadline.
"A brilliant, brutal and highly entertaining thriller. Mamatas excavates the American landscape of violence, paranoia and mass casualty events with a clear eye and a sly wit. Tightly plotted, surreal, sublime, The Second Shooter is a lucid dispatch from the outskirts of reason."— Cara Hoffman, author of So Much Pretty and RUIN
"One of the best conspiracy thrillers I've read in a long time. Think Michael Marshall's THE STRAW MEN meets FRINGE but highly original in its own way. Clever and addictive, THE SECOND SHOOTER will have you reading late into the night — and looking for mysterious drones in the sky the next time you're outside."— Robert Swartwood, USA Today bestselling author of THE SERIAL KILLER'S WIFE
"The Second Shooter is a magic trick of a book, where it seems like every turn of the page blasts you off into an entirely unexpected direction—and yet, Mamatas keeps you rooted with great characters and a maddeningly relevant plot. Most authors could not pull this off, and he makes it look easy." — Rob Hart, author of The Warehouse
"Nick Mamatas' The Second Shooter is a brilliantly original and very funny commentary on modern American life. It's Lethem meets Amis, in a journey into paranoia about the corrupt and byzantine machines that made us tick."— Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors
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THE PLANETBREAKER'S SON
Upending and recombining familiar genres with fearless abandon, Nick Mamatas is known for his wicked satires in which Horror rides shotgun with SF as they power through Fantasy’s rush-hour traffic. Lanes are crossed, speed limits exceeded, and minds often blown.
Our title piece, original to this volume, is something entirely new. Trust me. “The Planetbreaker’s Son” is a starship novella in which interstellar emigrants maintain their stadium-sized vessel with dreams and play. On the fly. Think Pinocchio meets Ender’s Game.
“Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring” is a cautionary tale about the perilous interface between ancient wizardry and modern ringtones. And it’s for you. “The Term Paper Artist” is Nick’s celebrated and hilarious how-to on embellishing the academic establishment with equal parts imitation and duct tape. Based on a true story of lies.
And Featuring: of course, our casually candid Outspoken Interview, in which Greek sailors, Japanese manga mavens, Doc Martens, Lovecraft, Grandma, and Kerouac mingle and mix. Care to dance?
"Mamatas dances between forms and genres; readers will appreciate the way he builds his fantastical worlds out of the odds and ends of modern life. This is a worthy showcase of Mamatas’s skill." — Publishers Weekly
"Despite the bizarre setting, the story is most moving at this fundamental level; its singular image is that of the son appearing simultaneously as an eight-year-old and a surly 16-year-old, flickering between these stages while the mother tries to figure out how one child has evolved from the other, and what to do about each." — Locus
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BULLETTIME
“Think Run Lola Run by way of the Columbine massacre. . . . A noir steeped in teenage misery and revenge” by the author of Sensation and Sabbath (Backlisted).
Every day, Dave Holbrook runs the gauntlet of high school in northern New Jersey, complete with racial tensions, bullying, and outright violence. His home life isn’t so great either. His mother’s an alcoholic and his father can’t be bothered. So Dave subsists on over-the-counter cough syrup and his love for her . . .
She’s a transfer student, a waitress, a goddess of discord named Eris. And she offers Dave a way out of his miserable existence—and into an infinite number of tragically short lives. In one, he dies of bronchitis as a baby. In another, he has a job installing lottery machines until a fatal car wreck. And in the darkest one of all, he arms himself with an Uzi and walks into his school. No matter what happens, it seems, Dave is trapped on a never-ending ride of infinite possibilities—with Eris at the wheel.
“Nick Mamatas’s work is often so relevant and timely as to border on the prophetic, and his fourth solo novel is no exception. It may also be his most accessible book to date, which is all the more impressive when you consider its non-linear, unique structure, and the Gus Van Sant-sized elephant in the classroom—Bullettime centers around a miserable teenager shooting up his high school.” —Strange Horizons
“Complex, ambitious . . . Readers willing to venture off the beaten path will be intrigued by Dave’s sometimes pathetic and sometimes oddly endearing life stories.” —Publishers Weekly
“Mamatas’s strong voice shines.” —SF Signal
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WONDER & GLORY FOREVER
Even though he passed over 80 years ago, H. P. Lovecraft maintains a visceral influence over a host of contemporary writers. Inspired by the Master of the Macabre's more optimistic writings, this unique collection spotlights the weird works of nine current horror and fantasy authors, including the award-winning Michael Cisco and Livia Llewellyn plus Victor LaValle, Molly Tanzer, and Masahiko Inoue.
Also includes Clark Ashton Smith's 1931 "The City of the Singing Flame" and Lovecraft's own "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" as well as an extensive Introduction by leading Lovecraftian scholar Nick Mamatas.
"Wonder and Glory Forever has some utterly brilliant short fiction in it. In a subgenre of a subgenre, Lovecraftian fiction can become simple pastiche. But in the hands of authors like these, it excels and shows us vastation." — Grimdark Magazine
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Also available:
MOVE UNDER GROUND
"Readers will be enthralled, chilled, and astonished." — Tom Piccirilli, author of A Choir of Ill Children
Somewhere back in the 1960s, the stars align for the rising of Old R'lyeh from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. The first witness to this portent of humanity's certain doom happens to be Jack Kerouac. The pioneering Beat author recognizes Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft's deity of cosmic entropy, as the source of modern-day conformity, commercialism, and complacency. Kerouac loses no time in recruiting fellow Beats Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs for a battle against the devastations of the Lovecraftian gods and their "Cult of Utter Normalcy." Together, the three set out on a road trip from California to New York to end the madness — unless it overwhelms them first.
"Those who appreciate sophisticated, progressive horror and fantasy fiction should eat it up." — Publishers Weekly
"A damned fine novel . . . Horror fans looking for something different will definitely enjoy this, and fans of the Beats should find more than enough good stuff here for them as well." — Bookslut
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SABBATH (Now available in paperback!)
Highlander meets Seven in Nick Mamatas's Sabbath.
The infamous eleventh-century warrior Hexen Sabbath is plucked from death and certain damnation by a being claiming to be an angel of the Lord, and finds himself dropped into contemporary Manhattan with no clothes, no weapons, no resources, and one mission—to track down and kill the living personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins before they bring about Armageddon.
With time running out and his only ally a destitute art gallery owner, Sabbath must fight his way through New York's elite and challenge the world's most powerful man, or an eternity of suffering will be his, and our, only reward.
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THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING
Welcome to the People's Republic of Everything―of course, you've been here for a long time already. Make yourself at home alongside a hitman who always tells the truth, no matter how reality has to twist itself to suit; electric matchstick girls who have teamed up with Friedrich Engels; a telepathic boy and his father's homemade nuclear bomb; a very bad date that births an unforgettable meme; and a dog who simply won't stop howling on social media.
The People's Republic of Everything features a decade's worth of crimes, fantasies, original fiction, and the author's preferred text of the acclaimed short novel Under My Roof.
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MIXED UP: COCKTAIL RECIPES (AND FLASH FICTION) FOR THE DISCERNING DRINKER (AND READER)
"Seriously, why hasn't anyone thought of this before? MIXED UP pleases the pallet and the soul with its sharp pairing of cocktail-inspired short fiction and delightfully rendered recipes and drink-origins. With the help of this book you too can be the life of the party, for once. Get loaded with MIXED UP."
—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil's Rock
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A cocktail is like an excellent story―bitter and sweet and over too quickly, but the memory of it stays with you. From the Pimm’s Cup to Smoking Bishop, the Manhattan to the Moscow Mule, Mixed Up features not only more than two dozen classic recipes and hot tips on ingredients and preparations by co-editor Molly Tanzer, but new cocktail-themed short stories from some of today’s most popular and acclaimed writers.
Contributors include: Jeff VanderMeer, Benjamin Percy, Cara Hoffman, Elizabeth Hand, Jarret Kobek
I AM PROVIDENCE
"Just what I'd expect from Nick Mamatas: sharp wit, biting but humane social commentary, and, for the romantics among us, a faceless narrator decomposing at the morgue."
—Matt Ruff, author of Bad Monkeys and Lovecraft Country
"Dark and hilarious. . . I am Providence is that murder-mystery-in-a-writers-convention you didn't even know you wanted, but (like the human skin-bound book which propels the plot) you really must buy."
—Lavie Tidhar, author of Osama and The Violent Century
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For fans of legendary pulp author H. P. Lovecraft, there is nothing bigger than the annual Providence-based convention the Summer Tentacular. Horror writer Colleen Danzig doesn’t know what to expect when she arrives, but is unsettled to find that among the hobnobbing between scholars and literary critics are a group of real freaks: book collectors looking for volumes bound in human skin, and true believers claiming the power to summon the Elder God Cthulhu, one of their idol’s most horrific fictional creations, before the weekend is out.
Colleen’s trip spirals into a nightmare when her roommate for the weekend, an obnoxious novelist known as Panossian, turns up dead, his face neatly removed. What’s more unsettling is that, in the aftermath of the murder, there is little concern among the convention goers. The Summer Tentacular continues uninterrupted, except by a few bumbling police.
Everyone at the convention is a possible suspect, but only Colleen seems to show any interest in solving the murder. So she delves deep into the darkness, where occult truths have been lurking since the beginning of time. A darkness where Panossian is waiting, spending a lot of time thinking about Colleen, narrating a new Lovecraftian tale that could very well spell her doom.
Advance Reviews
"With sharp writing, Mamatas brings Lovecraft into a uber-modern setting while keeping the old-fashioned dread intact."
— B&N Sci-Fi Fantasy Blog (read the full review)
"Lovecraft’s fiction has been closely examined in recent years, and who better to write a meta novel about the man’s legacy than Nick Mamatas?"
— io9