The Suicide Collectors

The Despair has plagued the earth for five years. Most of the world's population has inexplicably died by its own hand, and the few survivors struggle to remain alive. A mysterious, shadowy group called the Collectors has emerged, inevitably appearing to remove the bodies of the dead. But in the crumbling state of Florida, a man named Norman takes an unprecedented stand against the Collectors, propelling him on a journey across North America. It's rumored a scientist in Seattle is working on a cure for the Despair, but in a world ruled by death, it won't be easy to get there.

"There's still so much silence and underlying stigma that surrounds suicide and self-harm. Thank you for being so brave, where others, I think, are too afraid to even voice the words self-harm and suicide." It is undeniable that putting thoughts, feelings and emotions into words, on paper, either with poetry or in a short story format, can be both therapeutic and an incredibly effective method of self-help and healing. In this brave and uncompromising collection, 50 writers and poets in countries around the world including: Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, England, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malawi, Malta, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa, Switzerland and the USA, creatively explore the themes of suicide and self-harm, either from their own personal perspectives and experiences, or from the experiences of friends, family and people close by. An anthology on these subjects is undoubtedly thought-provoking and emotional, but also positive and uplifting too as, for many, putting their thoughts and feelings into words has set many on the road to creativity, healing and ultimately recovery.All profits from the sale of this book will go towards the development of Counselling Through Creativity, a not-for-profit organisation helping and supporting others through the creative use of words as a effective, therapeutic tool for self-help and healing.

A spine-tingling new collection of stories from the acclaimed author of Thrill Me and The Dark Net Benjamin Percy is a versatile and propulsive storyteller whose genre-busting novels and story collections have ranged from literary to thriller to postapocalyptic. In his essay collection, Thrill Me, he laid bare for readers how and why he channels disparate influences in his work. Now, in his first story collection since the acclaimed Refresh, Refresh, Percy brings his page-turning skills to bear in Suicide Woods, a potent brew of horror, crime, and weird happenings in the woods. A boy in his uncle’s care falls through the ice on a pond and emerges in a frozen, uncanny state. A group of people in therapy for suicidal ideation undergoes a drastic session in the woods with fatal consequences. A body found on a train and a blood-soaked carpet in an empty house are clues to a puzzling crime in a small town. And in a pulse-quickening novella, thrill seekers on a mapping expedition into the “Bermuda Triangle” of remote Alaska are stranded on a sinister island that seems to want them dead. In story after story, which have appeared in magazines ranging from the Virginia Quarterly Review and Orion Magazine to McSweeney’s and Ploughshares, Percy delivers haunting and chilling narratives that will have readers hanging on every word. A master class in suspense and horror, Suicide Woods is a dark, inventive collection packed to the gills with eerie, can’t-miss tales.

When the hustle and bustle of modern life, the responsibilities of marriage and parenting, and the weight of middle-age get Tim Bowling down, he heads for a bookshelf in search of the solace books and reading can provide. But can the cure become the poison? One day, alone in the Modern Literature stacks of a university library, Bowling opens a tattered copy of Wallace Stevens’s poetry collection Ideas of Order and, on the front flyleaf, finds the elegant ownership signature of Weldon Kees–an obscure American poet, painter, photographer, filmmaker and musician who vanished mysteriously in 1955, an apparent suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge. So begins Bowling’s strange eight-month quest into American literature of the 1940s and ’50s and the world of book collecting, a journey branching into a wealth of subjects ranging from the relationship between fathers and daughters, suicide, masculinity, the Internet, the history of printing, bibliomania and the strange effects of midlife and obsession on an otherwise rational mind. Through it all, Bowling faces two central questions: the one that Weldon Kees put to his friend, Pauline Kael, on the day before he vanished–"What keeps you going?"–and, perhaps even more important, is it ever acceptable to steal a book for your own collection?

"Complicated histories that parents pass on to their children."--

"A provocative new author. A fascinating debut novel. Read it!” —Jeff VanderMeer In Rachel Heng's debut set in near future New York City—where lives last three hundred years and the pursuit of immortality is all-consuming—Lea must choose between her estranged father and her chance to live forever. Lea Kirino is a “Lifer,” which means that a roll of the genetic dice has given her the potential to live forever—if she does everything right. And Lea is an overachiever. She’s a successful trader on the New York exchange—where instead of stocks, human organs are now bought and sold—she has a beautiful apartment, and a fiancé who rivals her in genetic perfection. And with the right balance of HealthTechTM, rigorous juicing, and low-impact exercise, she might never die. But Lea’s perfect life is turned upside down when she spots her estranged father on a crowded sidewalk. His return marks the beginning of her downfall as she is drawn into his mysterious world of the Suicide Club, a network of powerful individuals and rebels who reject society’s pursuit of immortality, and instead choose to live—and die—on their own terms. In this future world, death is not only taboo; it’s also highly illegal. Soon Lea is forced to choose between a sanitized immortal existence and a short, bittersweet time with a man she has never really known, but who is the only family she has left in the world.

“The reportorial relentlessness of [David] Vann’s imagination often makes his fiction seem less written than chiseled. A small, lovely book has been written out of his large and evident pain.”—New York Times Book Review In Legend of a Suicide, his heartbreaking semi-autobiographical debut story-collection, David Vann relates the story of a young man trying to come to terms with the guilt and pain of his father’s suicide. The wild outback of the author’s native Alaska acts as the ideal backdrop for this collage of six stories—a novella and five shorts—and mirrors the author’s own psychological wilderness. From “an important new voice in American literature” (Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain) comes an unforgettable exploration of the tragic gaps between one boy and his father.

SHORTLISTED 2014 – Scotiabank Giller Prize Miriam Toews is beloved for her irresistible voice, for mingling laughter and heartwrenching poignancy like no other writer. In her most passionate novel yet, she brings us the riveting story of two sisters, and a love that illuminates life. You won’t forget Elf and Yoli, two smart and loving sisters. Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yolandi, divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men as she tries to find true love: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. Yoli is a beguiling mess, wickedly funny even as she stumbles through life struggling to keep her teenage kids and mother happy, her exes from hating her, her sister from killing herself and her own heart from breaking. But Elf’s latest suicide attempt is a shock: she is three weeks away from the opening of her highly anticipated international tour. Her long-time agent has been calling and neither Yoli nor Elf’s loving husband knows what to tell him. Can she be nursed back to “health” in time? Does it matter? As the situation becomes ever more complicated, Yoli faces the most terrifying decision of her life. All My Puny Sorrows, at once tender and unquiet, offers a profound reflection on the limits of love, and the sometimes unimaginable challenges we experience when childhood becomes a new country of adult commitments and responsibilities. In her beautifully rendered new novel, Miriam Toews gives us a startling demonstration of how to carry on with hope and love and the business of living even when grief loads the heart.