The Already Dead

This book considers how a culture of crisis management&—what Cazdyn calls "the new chronic"&— has come to dominate all aspects of contemporary life, from biomedicine to economics to politics. Drawing from his own experiences battling leukemia and the subsequent effects of his illness on the process of becoming a Canadian citizen, Cazdyn unravels the logic of the new chronic where people find themselves suspended in a space between life and death.

Those stories you hear? The ones about things that only come out at night? Things that feed on blood, feed on us? Got news for you: they’re true. Only it’s not like the movies or old man Stoker’s storybook. It’s worse. Especially if you happen to be one of them. Just ask Joe Pitt. There’s a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks’ brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he’s still the one who has to deal with them. That’s just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word. From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe is one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be stronger and faster than you, and he’s tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that’s eating at him isn’t his idea of a good time. And Joe doesn’t make it any easier on himself. Going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan–it ain’t easy. It’s worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition–the city’s most powerful Clan–and finds himself searching for a poor little rich girl who’s gone missing in Alphabet City. Now the Coalition and the girl’s high-society parents are breathing down his neck, anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, and a crazy Vampyre cult is stalking him. No time to complain, though. Got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the whip comes down . . . and before the sun comes up.

A contemporary noir, Already Dead is the tangled story of Nelson Fairchild Jr., disenfranchised scion to a northern California land fortune. A relentless failure, Nelson has botched nearly every scheme he's attempted to pull off. Now his future lies in a potentially profitable marijuana patch hidden in the lush old-growth redwoods on the family land. Nelson has some serious problems. His marriage has fallen apart, and he may lose his land, cash and crop in the divorce. What's more, in need of some quick cash, he had foolishly agreed to smuggle $90,000 worth of cocaine through customs for Harry Lally, a major player in a drug syndicate. Chickening out just before bringing the drugs through, he flushed the powder. Now Lally wants him dead, and two goons are hot on his trail. Desperate, terrified and alone, for Nelson, there may be only one way out. This is Denis Johnson's biggest and most complex book to date, and it perfectly showcases his signature themes of fate, redemption and the unraveling of the fabric of today's society. Already Dead, with its masterful narrative of overlapping and entwined stories, will further fuel the acclaim that surrounds one of today's most fascinating writers.

The bright, funny and wild story of an acrobat from Hamburg who decided to become the King of Albania, succeeded, and fell in love along the way Otte Witte is an old man. The Allies are raining bombs on his city and, having narrowly escaped death, he has come home to his little caravan to drink what remains of his coffee (dust) and wait for the inevitable. Convinced that he will not see the sunrise, he decides to write the story of his life for the poor soul who finds what's left of him come the morning. And it's quite a story. Years earlier, when he was in either Buda or Pest, working in the circus, a dear friend showed him a newspaper article: Albania was searching for a long-lost Turkish prince to be the new king. The Turkish prince was the image of Otto. . . A plan was formed; adventure, disaster, love and sheer, unabashed hope followed. If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead is a joy to read; accomplished and full of the warmth, honesty and lightness of touch for which Andrew Nicoll is known and loved.

To Write As If Already Dead circles around Kate Zambreno’s failed attempts to write a study of Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. In this diaristic, transgressive work, the first in a cycle written in the years preceding his death, Guibert documents with speed and intensity his diagnosis and disintegration from AIDS and elegizes a character based on Michel Foucault. The first half of To Write As If Already Dead is a novella in the mode of a detective story, searching after the mysterious disappearance of an online friendship after an intense dialogue on anonymity, names, language, and connection. The second half, a notebook documenting the doubled history of two bodies amid another historical plague, continues the meditation on friendship, solitude, time, mortality, precarity, art, and literature. Throughout this rigorous, mischievous, thrilling not-quite study, Guibert lingers as a ghost companion. Zambreno, who has been pushing the boundaries of literary form for a decade, investigates his methods by adopting them, offering a keen sense of the energy and confessional force of Guibert’s work, an ode to his slippery, scarcely classifiable genre. The book asks, as Foucault once did, “What is an author?” Zambreno infuses this question with new urgency, exploring it through the anxieties of the internet age, the ethics of friendship, and “the facts of the body”: illness, pregnancy, and death.

When the story begins without its hero Kimihiko Kimizuka has always been a magnet for trouble and intrigue. For as long as he can remember, he’s been stumbling across murder scenes or receiving mysterious attache cases to transport. When he met Siesta, a brilliant detective fighting a secret war against an organization of pseudohumans, he couldn’t resist the call to become her assistant and join her on an epic journey across the world. ...Until a year ago, that is. Now he’s returned to a life that is normal and tepid by comparison, knowing the adventure must be over. After all, the detective is already dead.

The gripping story of two families struggling to overcome their own destinies. A mosaic of treachery and revenge, of possible and impossible loves, and of the great adventure that is living and surviving in a land marked by intolerance and outrage. Marian Miller, an NGO aid worker, is asked to write a report on illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian territories. In order to do so, she wants to make sure she understands both sides of the story. Marian arranges a meeting in Israel with Ezekiel Zucker, an elderly man who, like many others, has a lot to tell and also, a secret to hide. Ezekiel will narrate his story as if it were a massive jigsaw puzzle with many complex pieces and Marian will tell him the version she's familiar with: the Arab one. At the twilight of the 19th century, the Zuckers are banned from their homeland of Russia because they are Jewish. After undergoing unspeakable horrors and injustices under the tsar's rule, they set out for the Promised Land and buy land owned by the Ziads, an Arab family headed by a man named Ahmed. The two men, Ahmed Ziad and Samuel Zucker, will establish a strong bond, a friendship that can overcome religious and political differences and that will continue on for generations. This riveting family saga that culminates in 1948 is not only Julia Navarro's best and most ambitious novel yet, it's a tale filled with real people taking responsibility for their own destinies by following their dreams and fighting for their lives. An unforgettable novel that, like all of history's greatest books, conceals many novels within.

WHO WERE YOU TO HER? WHO WAS SHE TO YOU? While on an outing one day, Kimihiko Kimizuka and his three friends are kidnapped by...Siesta herself?! But they soon learn there’s more to the story as she reveals the long-forgotten truth about Siesta’s death. Will this be the clue that finally unlocks the secrets of Kimihiko's past?