<p>A food truck craze involving human cannibalism. A Texas Governor who obsessively listens to Rebecca Black right before every state execution. A chainsaw factory that plays Ozzy Osbourne for its welding robots. An ex-girlfriend drunk-dialing from Kandahar, where she's starting a Shakey's Pizza restaurant chain. And an endless search to find the right mix of prescription medication to stop the memories of a bizarre past. These mad stories make up the latest by Jon Konrath, a collection of 20 flash fiction narratives that cross between metafiction and experimental prose, telling grim and absurd fast-paced tales about Konrath's life in a twisted fashion.</p>

The Earworm Inception

Konrath, Jon

Literature & Fiction

Paragraph Line Books

Can we tell the difference between our dreams and reality? In his latest collection of short stories and flash fiction, Jon Konrath dances between metafiction and nihilism in an absurdist world of geek culture where cancer is the latest fashion trend, books have been replaced in schools with episodes of Barney Miller, time travel is possible but annoying because of the commercials, and mutant krill/human hybrids perform special forces military operations in Iran. Each story either shows the narrator’s past in a land called Bighikistan, or peeks at his subconscious in a series of insomnia-influenced dreams and nightmares. In the 27 fast-paced stories that make up Konrath’s bizarro compendium, themes drift from finding meaning in life (“Oil Change Introspection Therapy”), political extremism (“Tree AIDS and the Slurpee Abortion Speech”), and sexual fetish (“The George Washington Buttplug”).  The absurdism challenges and humors readers with taboo subjects such as big-budget snuff film cartoons, franchised bondage dungeons in airports, and hundreds of protestors self-immolating themselves because of a nationwide McRib ban. Filled with dark humor and outrageous stylings, this compilation drifts through a paranoid Kafkaesque dreamscape parodying the information overload of the modern world.

Sleep Has No Master

Short Stories & Anthologies

Absurdist writer Jon Konrath returns with another collection of hilarious and demented flash fiction. Descend into a manic world of Kafkaesque insanity and paranoia including FDA drone strikes against weight-loss clinics, amputee porn, a celebrity kickboxing match between Yo Yo Ma and Manuel Noriega, and hobby shop exorcisms.  The author of the cult classic Rumored to Exist continues his surreal nonlinear journey through a nightmarish terrain of Jeff Spicoli-themed restaurants, indian casino abortion clinics, and an apocalyptic landscape laced with insane humor and nonstop non sequitur references to pop culture, medical technology, military machinery, and extreme heavy metal. This collection of 26 short stories and flash fiction pieces explores the human element through deranged comedy in what demonstrates Konrath's bizarre style of experimental writing. Bonus: The paperback edition of Thunderbird also includes the short story "The Zombies of Kilimanjaro," an undead parody of the Hemingway classic.

Thunderbird

Literary

Fiona Helmsley’s My Body Would be The Kindest of Strangers begins with an epigram from Anne Sexton’s With Mercy for the Greedy and ends with an essay on the virtues of Courtney Love. In-between, her stories and essays breathe new life into the idea that the things that we are ashamed of often make for the best stories.   Including essays on art and persona, the rejection of the word “victim,” and an imagined meeting between Joan Vollmer Burroughs and Patti Smith at the Chelsea Hotel, My Body Would be the Kindest of Strangers proves Fiona Helmsley is as deft at turning her gaze outward as she is at turning it in on herself.

My Body Would be the Kindest of Strangers

Helmsley, Fiona

<p>Absurdist writer Jon Konrath returns with another collection of hilarious and demented short fiction. Twenty laugh-out-loud tales of the post-apocalyptic and abnormal drift from reality to the bizarre, from killdozer marathons to UFO cults to Satanic fast-food roast beef.The author of the Wonderland Award-nominated Atmospheres and cult classic Rumored to Exist weaves a chaotic nonlinear tapestry of pop culture, heavy metal, and offensive absurdity.The Gonzo stylings of Vol.13's narrative twist the reader through the dystopian landscape while positing serious inquiries about the meaning of existence, the folly of man, and the pain of nostalgia, but answers them with scenes of an absurd destruction of society. The book is a personal journey that questions reality, but reveals a fragmented chaos, while being hilarious and impossible to put down.Bonus: Vol.13 includes three stories from the now out-of-print rarity Mandatory Laxative #14.</p>

Vol. 13

Humor & Satire

Doug Liberty Presents Bandit the Dancing Raccoon

Sheppard, John L.

The Orphic Egg Caper

Buckley, Keith

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