808s Otherworlds

"September’s Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature" —Lambda Literary "Most-Anticipated New LGBTQIA+ Books of 2021" —Paperback Paris "An elegant mash of memoir, poetry, tales of appropriation, thoughts on Black masculinity, Hulk, Kanye." —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune 808s & Otherworlds announces a bold and incendiary new voice in Sean Avery Medlin. Against the backdrop of the Phoenix suburbs where they were raised, Medlin interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity. Through storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized. From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.

As the D.C. city sprawl moved west along the banks of the Potomac in the late 1990s, what had once been a rural backwater was rapidly transformed into a dystopian suburbia of suspicion, greed, and naked self-interest. This collection examines the resulting blends of money, race, and class that have come to define the ongoing metamorphosis of Northern Virginia. In "Kalim Mansour," a boy trying to understand his father fixates on a mysterious Saudi car salesman. In "Rowdy," a man who was sexually assaulted by his high school football team still romanticizes their masculine code of behavior. In "A Non-Smoking House," two contractors battle the realtors who control their livelihood as the ties that bind civil behavior pull tight, and then snap. Each of MacKenzie's stories explores the incommensurable moments that lie at the heart of shared experience, the yawning gaps that separate us, and our desperate attempts to close them.Content warnings: suicide, derogatory epithets, sports rape, peer pressure, strong language, racism, xenophobia, social injustice, war trauma, disability, toxic masculinity

Poul Anderson, recently the winner of the Nebula's Grandmaster Award for lifetime achievement, returns to the world of his acclaimed novel Operation Chaos with the tale of one family's mission to the moon. Ginny Greylock and Steven Matuchek are partners an Earth quite unlike our own. For starters, Ginny is a licensed witch and Steve is an engineer and werewolf. Steve moonlights by working on a spacecraft in the Arizona desert, a project which soon discovers that there is life on the moon. Neither Steve nor the US government has any inkling as to the nature of the moonsprites, and everyone is anxious to make contact. But when the time comes to test the spacecraft, a host of bugs, snafus, and angry spirits conspire to prevent the launch. It's a recipe for perfect lunacy as Ginny and her clan struggle to figure out who, or what, is sabotaging the greatest magical and scientific achievement of the century.

New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong has captivated readers with her spellbinding Women of the Otherworld series. In this collection of four tales, she gives equal time to the men who love these sexy, supernatural women—men who live on the wild side. As a curious six-year-old, Clayton didn’t resist the bite—he asked for it. But surviving as a lone child-werewolf was more than he could manage—until Jeremy came along, taught Clayton how to straddle the human-werewolf worlds, and introduced him to the Pack. So begins this tantalizing volume featuring three of the most intriguing members of the American Pack—a hierarchical founding family where bloodlines mean everything and each day presents a new, thrilling, and often deadly challenge. For as he grows from a wild child to a clever teen who tests his mentor at every turn, Clayton must learn not only to control his animal instincts but to navigate Pack politics—including showing his brutal archnemesis who the real Alpha is.

'One of the best novels about growing up fast' GUARDIAN 'One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER 'Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true' EVENING STANDARD The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status on first publication and remains a timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living. Sally Jay Gorce is a woman with a mission. It's the 1950s, she's young and she's in Paris. Having dyed her hair pink, she wears evening dresses in the daytime and vows to go native in a way not even the natives can manage. Embarking on an educational programme that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realises he's single and wants to marry her); nights in cabarets and jazz clubs in the company of assorted "citizens of the world"; an entanglement with a charming psychopath and a bit part in a film financed by a famous matador. But an education like this doesn't come cheap. Will our heroine be forced back to the States to fulfill her destiny as a librarian, or can she keep up her whirlwind Parisian existence? Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

Can one man be the salvation of two nations? Gabriel is a thinker, a healer, a dreamer. His past haunts him, and his future is intertwined with ancient prophecies. He is a son of the Navoran Empire, yet his soul can only find peace with the wild Shinali people on the outshirts of the city. He can interpret the dreams of the Empress and heal the wounded of her city, but as sinister forces take control fo the empire, Gabriel's destiny may be far greater than he can possibly imagine. Sherryl Jordan has crafted a powerful fantasy novel about a young man destined to become the link between two warring cultures.

National bestselling author of Roadkill Bar owner Triva Iktomi knows that inhuman creatures of light and darkness roam Las Vegas-especially since she's a bit more than human herself. She's just been approached with an unusual proposition. Something has slaughtered almost one thousand demons in six months. And the killing isn't going to stop unless Trixa and her friends step into the fight... Watch a Video

In the hills of China’s central Hunan province, an anxious young apprentice officiates over a Daoist ritual known as the Banner Rite to Summon Sire Yin. Before a crowd of masters, relatives, and villagers—and the entire pantheon of gods and deceased masters ritually invited to witness the event—he seeks to summon Celestial Lord Yin Jiao, the ferocious deity who supplies the exorcistic power to protect and heal bodies and spaces from illness and misfortune. If the apprentice cannot bring forth the deity, the rite is considered a failure and the ordination suspended: His entire professional career hangs in the balance before it even begins. This richly textured study asks how the Banner Rite works or fails to work in its own terms. How do the cosmological, theological, and anthropological assumptions ensconced in the ritual itself account for its own efficacy or inefficacy? Weaving together ethnography, textual analysis, photography, and film, David J. Mozina invites readers into the religious world of ritual masters in today’s south China. He shows that the efficacy of rituals like the Banner Rite is driven by the ability of a ritual master to form an intimate relationship with exorcistic deities like Yin Jiao, which is far from guaranteed. Mozina reveals the ways in which such ritual claims are rooted in the great liturgical movements of the Song and Yuan dynasties (960–1368) and how they are performed these days amid the social and economic pressures of rural life in the post-Mao era. Written for students and scholars of Daoism and Chinese religion, Knotting the Banner will also appeal to anthropologists and comparative religionists, especially those working on ritual.