Zombie Illinois

The sequel to the bestselling Zombie, Ohio, this explosive supernatural thriller from Scott Kenemore tells the story of three Chicagoans who have been thrown together by a bizarre, interconnected series of events during the first twenty-four hours of a zombie outbreak in the Midwest's largest city. A partnership is crafted between a pastor from Chicago's rough South Side, an intrepid newspaper reporter, and a young female musician, all of whom are fighting for survival as they struggle to protect themselves and their communities in a city overrun with the walking dead. Between the barricaded neighborhoods and violent zombie hunters, the trio encounters many mysterious occurrences that leave them shaken and disturbed. When the mayor of Chicago is eaten by zombies on live television, and a group of shady aldermen attempt to seize power in the vacuum, these unlikely friends realize that they have stumbled upon a conspiracy to overthrow the city . . . and that they alone may be qualified to combine their talents to stop it. Zombie, Illinois will delight devoted zombie fans and put readers in mind of some of the best recent works of supernatural horror. You will be left shocked, horrified, and craving brains! This novel will grab you from the first page and not let go until the riveting finale.

In the third book of his Zombie series, Scott Kenemore brings the explosive horror thriller of an undead outbreak in the city of Indianapolis. Zombie, Indiana takes place during the same timeline as the outbreaks in his books Zombie, Ohio and Zombie, Illinois, and has the same punch as the previous two. Zombie, Indiana explores the impact of an invading zombie horde on a trio of Hoosier protagonists . . . each of whom have some dark secrets to keep. When the governor’s daughter mysteriously disappears on a field trip, IMPD Special Sergeant James Nolan, scholarship student Kesha Washington, and Governor Hank Burleson must all come together not only to find the governor’s daughter, but also to undertake a quest to redeem the very soul of the state itself . . . all while under constant attack from the living dead. With humorous, memorable characters, tense action sequences, and brutal zombie violence, Zombie, Indiana will put readers in mind of some of the most compelling works of popular fiction. At once a mystery, a thriller, and a horror novel, Kenemore strikes again with this rollicking tour through America’s heartland that is nothing but a tour de force for zombie fiction fans! Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

When rural Ohio college professor Peter Mellor dies in an automobile accident during a zombie outbreak, he is reborn as a highly intelligent (yet somewhat amnesiac) member of the living dead. With society crumbling around him and violence escalating into daily life, Peter quickly learns that being a zombie isn’t all fun and brains. Humans—unsympathetic, generally, to his new proclivities—try to kill him at nearly every opportunity. His old friends are loath to associate with him. And he finds himself inconveniently addicted to the gooey stuff inside of people’s heads. As if all this weren’t bad enough, Peter soon learns that his automobile accident was no accident at all. Faced with the harrowing mystery of his death, Peter resolves to use his strange zombie “afterlife” to solve his own murder. Skillfully combining the genres of horror, humor, and film noir, Zombie, Ohio weaves an enthralling and innovative tale that any fan of the current zombie craze is sure to relish. Followers of detective and horror fiction alike will find something to love about Zombie, Ohio—a tale of murder, mystery, and the walking dead.

Bestselling author Scott Kenemore is back with a hilarious, over-the-top, and bloodthirsty send-up of the 2016 political season. In the tradition of Joe Klein's Primary Colors and Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate, Zombie-in-Chief: Eater of the Free World is a compelling and dramatic story with characters and events that may resemble familiar, real-life elections a little too closely! After all, who better to perform an autopsy of the American political system than an expert on the undead? When a tycoon and reality TV star improbably wins his party's nomination for the presidency, pundits and analysts are as baffled as they are certain that he will never win the general election. What can a man who already lives at the top of a golden skyscraper with a supermodel wife still want? Absent entirely from their prognostications is the possibility that it could be to gorge upon the brains of the living! That he dreams of building a border wall to better keep delicious humans in! That he seeks to make American great again. . . for zombies! Only an unlikely journalistic partnership between a reporter fresh from J-school and a blogger who is derided and dismissed as "fake news" seems to have any chance of derailing the tycoon's plans and exposing him as a member of the walking dead. Yet a terrifying question still remains. . . In a nation divided along political lines as never before, will such a revelation change anything? Or will a candidate revealed to be a proud "Zombie American" simply be another stepping stone on a historic (and not-so-above-board) journey to the presidency?

The zombie has cropped up in many forms--in film, in television, and as a cultural phenomenon in zombie walks and zombie awareness months--but few books have looked at what the zombie means in fiction. Tim Lanzendörfer fills this gap by looking at a number of zombie novels, short stories, and comics, and probing what the zombie represents in contemporary literature. Lanzendörfer brings together the most recent critical discussion of zombies and applies it to a selection of key texts including Max Brooks's World War Z, Colson Whitehead's Zone One, Junot Díaz's short story "Monstro, " Robert Kirkman's comic series The Walking Dead, and Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Within the context of broader literary culture, Lanzendörfer makes the case for reading these texts with care and openness in their own right. Lanzendörfer contends that what zombies do is less important than what becomes possible when they are around. Indeed, they seem less interesting as metaphors for the various ways the world could end than they do as vehicles for how the world might exist in a different and often better form.

Zombies have become an increasingly popular object of research in academic studies and, of course, in popular media. Over the past decade, they have been employed to explain mathematical equations, vortex phenomena in astrophysics, the need for improved laws, issues within higher education, and even the structure of human societies. Despite the surge of interest in the zombie as a critical metaphor, no coherent theoretical framework for studying the zombie actually exists. Addressing this current gap in the literature, Theorising the Contemporary Zombie defines zombiism as a means of theorising and examining various issues of society in any given era by immersing those social issues within the destabilising context of apocalyptic crisis; and applying this definition, the volume considers issues including gender, sexuality, family, literature, health, popular culture and extinction.

A history of Western culture’s fascination with undead creatures in film and television. Are you a fan of the undead? Watch lots of mummy, zombie and vampire movies and TV shows? Have you ever wondered if they could be “real?” This book, A History of the Undead, unravels the truth behind these popular reanimated corpses. Starting with the common representations in Western media through the decades, we go back in time to find the origins of the myths. Using a combination of folklore, religion and archaeological studies we find out the reality behind the walking dead. You may be surprised at what you find . . .

The alarm and anxiety unleashed by the Great Recession found fascinating expression across popular culture. Harried survivors negotiated societal collapse in The Walking Dead. Middle-class whites crossed the literal and metaphorical Mexican border on Breaking Bad or coped with a lack of freedom among the marginalized on Orange Is the New Black. Camilla Fojas uses representations of people of color, the incarcerated, and trans/queers--vulnerable populations all--to work through the contradictions created by the economic crisis and its freefalling aftermath. Television, film, advertising, and media coverage of the crisis created a distinct kind of story about capitalism and the violence that supports it. Fojas shows how these pop culture moments reshaped social dynamics and people's economic sensibilities and connects the ways pop culture reflected economic devastation. She also examines how these artifacts illuminated parts of society usually kept off-screen or on the margins even as they defaulted to stories of white protagonists.