The Girlfriend Game

Fiction. Nick Antosca's THE GIRLFRIEND GAME is a tumble through the looking glass into a vortex of violence and desire. The 12 stories in the newest collection by the Shirley Jackson Award-winning author are brutal, urgent and unforgettable. In "Predator Bait," a decoy in a sex sting news show questions her job and the man who shares her bed. An undependable son watches his mother become a creature he hardly recognizes in "Amphibian." A young man plots the death of his girlfriend's killer in "Winter Was Hard." Antosca crafts surreal doomsday scenarios and otherworldly transformations alongside painfully articulate depictions of sexuality and animal impulse. The stories in THE GIRLFRIEND GAME are mesmerizing, leaving a haunting afterglow long after you close the book.

My life spiraled out of control in front of millions. One minute I'm playing the game of my life in the playoffs. The next I wake in a hospital bed after suffering from an anxiety attack.To keep my spot on the team, I'm required to see a shrink to heal my head. But it's my heart the beautiful doctor steals. Now I have to learn to play a new game - the girlfriend game.

It was two years ago that I met Y-ko. She was my boss at the job I was working at the time. I was a student, and I had no idea what I was doing. After a time, we ended up becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. It turned out she was a "fujoshi." Not only that, but a "hidden fujoshi," one who didn't show any inkling of the sort around other people... But as a general rule, she never hides it around me. In fact... It seems more like she's intent on dragging me down that path with her. ...And I'll be honest. It's slowly but surely seeping into me.

‘I was blown away. The Girlfriend is the most marvellous psychological thriller . . .’ - Jilly Cooper The Number One bestselling debut thriller from Michelle Frances. She loves your son. She wants your life. How far would you go to protect your son? Laura has it all. A successful career, a long marriage to a rich husband, and a twenty-three year-old son, Daniel, who is kind, handsome, and talented. Then Daniel meets Cherry. Cherry is young, beautiful and smart but hasn’t led Laura’s golden life. And she wants it. When tragedy strikes, a decision is made and a lie is told. A lie so terrible it changes their lives forever . . . The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances is a gripping and chilling debut psychological thriller – the story of a mother, a son, his girlfriend and an unforgivable lie.

The NBC series Hannibal has garnered both critical and fan acclaim for its cinematic qualities, its complex characters, and its innovative reworking of Thomas Harris’s mythology so well-known from Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991) and its variants. The series concluded late in 2015 after three seasons, despite widespread fan support for its continuation. While there is a healthy body of scholarship on Harris’s novels and Demme’s film adaptation, little critical attention has been paid to this newest iteration of the character and narrative. Hannibal builds on the serial killer narratives of popular procedurals, while taking them in a drastically different direction. Like critically acclaimed series such as Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, it makes its viewers complicit in the actions of a deeply problematic individual and, in the case of Hannibal, forces them to confront that complicity through the character of Will Graham. The essays in Becoming explore these questions of authorship and audience response as well as the show’s themes of horror, gore, cannibalism, queerness, and transformation. Contributors also address Hannibal’s distinctive visual, auditory, and narrative style. Concluding with a compelling interview with series writer Nick Antosca, this volume will both entertain and educate scholars and fans of Hannibal and its many iterations.

It was two years ago that I met Y-ko. She was my boss at the job I was working at the time. I was a student, and I had no idea what I was doing. After a time, we ended up becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. It turned out she was a "fujoshi." Not only that, but a "hidden fujoshi," one who didn't show any inkling of the sort around other people... But as a general rule, she never hides it around me. In fact... It seems more like she's intent on dragging me down that path with her. ...And I'll be honest. It's slowly but surely seeping into me.

An inspiring and humorous celebration of the special bond of friendship.