Dead Ink Books

In 1817, two German scientists travelled across Brazil and into the Amazon gathering flora and fauna to study and display in Europe. Among the collection they brought to the Bavarian court were two Indigenous children. The children's images became widespread, but little was known about the children themselves. Despite the scientists' detailed records about many of the plant and animal specimens, they only noted the children's tribes: the girl was a Miranha, and the boy, a Juri. After a few months, the children died in Germany, far from anyone who knew their names. Dancing delicately between history and legend, The Jaguar's Roar weaves together the perspectives of all those tied up in the Miranha girl's fate, from her German captors, to the mythic jaguar she conjures for protection, to the anguished modern day bystander who stumbles across her sketch in a museum. This incandescent novel explores the impact of colonialism on memory and belonging, forcing readers to confront Brazil's suppression of its Indigenous history. Juliana Barbassa's vivid translation of Verunchuk's poetic novel makes a lasting contribution to world literature.

An emotional, electrifying, and darkly hilarious debut about a woman who finds a dead body and can't give up its ghost, for fans of Mona Awad, Yellowjackets, and weird girl fiction. Ava thought the great tragedy of her life would be getting stuck in a dead-end office job, but reality looks even grimmer when she goes on an ill-fated hike with two of her coworkers. Meanwhile, spiraling from a disastrous falling-out with her mercurial best friend, Savannah retreats to her parents' empty lake house in upstate New York. Her days blend together in a hazy swirl of clinically concerning overthinking and alcohol-until she chases her nightly bottle of wine with an Ambien and wakes up in the woods behind her house... next to a dead body. Unfortunately, Savannah is so down bad that this well-preserved corpse offers some compelling friend potential; after all, a dead person can't judge you, they're amazing listeners, and they're not going to leave. This particular dead person also comes with a handy journal detailing her last six months lost in the woods! Ava, as it turns out, is more than just a cold, lonely corpse. She was funny. She was smart. And Savannah has finally found someone she can talk to... As Savannah spends more time with both the Ava in front of her and the Ava of the journal, she begins to feel something for Ava she hasn't felt for anyone else-and there's a good chance letting go would haunt her for the rest of her life. Is Savannah finally losing her grip? Or has she found what she's needed all along?

Justine is a vampire. Keith just lives like one. An ex-junkie and ex-rock star, his hands mangled by his dead ex's own jealous ex, he's let go of his ambitions. It's true that Justine has been around for a few centuries and Keith barely three decades, but they're good for each other: Justine is teaching Keith to take the long view; Keith is reminding her how it feels to be alive. Yet a cohort of criminals, desperate artists, dead-enders, hangers-on, and wanna-bes, undead and otherwise, threaten their curious union. Can love stay untainted in a world of monster? irst published in 1996, Todd Grimson's Stainless is a noir fantasia, a symphony of bloody horror, and a woozy, erotic tour of night-side L.A. Outsider Classics is Dead Ink's resurrection ground for the strange, the silenced, and the outcasts. This series exhumes lost literary voices that were ahead of their time to restore them to the cult status they always deserved. From forgotten masterpieces to once-censored provocations, each title is a reaction against the canon curated for readers who want to stray into the margins and away from the mainstream.

Winner of the Bram Stoker Award 1992Winner of the Locus Award 1992Shortlisted for the Phillip K. Dick AwardNicholas is a would-be poet and video-store clerk with a weeping hole in his hand - weeping not blood, but a plasma of tears... It began with Nakota and her crooked grin. She had to see the dark hole in the storage room down the hall. She had to make love to Nicholas beside it, and stare into its secretive, promising depths. Then Nakota began her experiments: First, she put an insect into the hole. Then a mouse... Now from down the hall, the black hole calls out to Nicholas every day and every night. And he will go to it. Because it has already seared his flesh, infected his soul, and started him on a journey of obsession - through its soothing, blank darkness into the blinding core of terror...

Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call-there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he's asking for her. This man isn't the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy. While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother's youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions-fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer. Spanning decades and continents, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a dark, magical realist family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism and inescapability of fate in stunningly rendered folklore.

A Visitation of Spirits, is the powerful story of Horace Cross, a popular and highachieving sixteen-year-old boy, who wrestles with the guilt of discovering who he is, a young man attracted to other men and yearning to escape the narrow confines of Tims Creek. Raised on stories of prophets, revelations, and dreams, his internal struggles take shape in his mind as demons and angels battling for his soul, culminating in one night of horrible and tragic transformation. Horace seeks help from his cousin, Reverend James "Jimmy" Greene, but he finds himself ill-prepared to help the boy, plagued by demons of his own. And as Horace spirals out of control, Jimmy must ask himself what it says about him and his community that they cannot reconcile the spirits of the past with those of the future. Weaving the mythos and the hard realities of rural Black life and easily gliding between past and present, A Visitation of Spirits is a classic novel of growing up from a literary giant. Outsider Classics is Dead Ink's resurrection ground for the strange, the silenced, and the outcasts. This series exhumes lost literary voices that were ahead of their time to restore them to the cult status they always deserved. From forgotten masterpieces to once-censored provocations, each title is a reaction against the canon curated for readers who want to stray into the margins and away from the mainstream.

Outsider Classics is Dead Ink''s resurrection ground for the strange, the silenced, and the outcasts. This series exhumes lost literary voices that were ahead of their time to restore them to the cult status they always deserved. From forgotten masterpieces to once-censored provocations, each title is a reaction against the canon curated for readers who want to stray into the margins and away from the mainstream. Dick and Reggie are ''leather boys'', working-class London teens with an affinity for leather jackets and motorcycles who become friends through their involvement in a gang. For Dick, the money he gets from the gang''s thefts helps to support his ailing grandmother; for Reggie, membership in the gang provides relief from an unhappy home life and a loveless marriage. When Reggie decides to leave his unfaithful wife and move in with Dick, the two soon discover their feelings for each other are much stronger than mere friendship. As they make plans for their future together, will they find the happiness they seek, or is their love doomed to end in tragedy? The first novel to offer an authentic portrayal of love between ordinary, working-class young men, Gillian Freeman''s The Leather Boys is a groundbreaking classic of gay fiction that remains moving and compelling today. Freeman''s novel and its 1964 film adaptation played a vital part in liberalizing British attitudes towards homosexuality.

A house is more than just a place to lay your head at night. Sometimes, the walls remember. Gathering ten modern masters of the strange and unsettling, Unquiet Guests sets fire to the blueprints and reimagines the haunted house from the foundations up. From dreamlike visions of an abandoned future mansion to a sentient building grown tired of its owners, these rooms echo with whispers of the disenfranchised and the lost. Featuring stories by: Chuck Palahniuk, Grady Hendrix, Kirsty Logan, Will Maclean, Irenosen Okojie, Alison Moore, Matthew Holness, Claire Fuller, Clay Macleod Chapman and Ally Wilkes.

An elegant and haunting dystopian novel about a group of individuals gathered to relearn how to navigate the world after a mysterious illness strips them of their memories. Nestled in an idyllic locale beside the sea, The Centre is a place of rehabilitation and rebuilding. Students arrive nameless, their memories and sense of identity wiped by a strange illness. Each day, they attend classes that will help them relearn the right ways to speak and live; they practice the roles they ll assume once they ve graduated and returned to society. In their free time, they negotiate a burgeoning social hierarchy and watch old DVDs together; stories of characters whose names they adopt: Maria, Chandler, Chino, Gunther... But as shards of memories - of pets, lovers, errands, and beloved music - begin to threaten the strict curriculum of The Centre, some students start to question the definitions given to them, and explore the ways in which they might define themselves. A stunning, intimately told story about what makes us who we are, THE DEFINITIONS examines the limits of language, the power of human connection, and the ways the human spirit can flourish even under the most oppressive conditions.

Murder either bonds you or breaks you. Rural PI Mel Tillman knows this well. She''s seen her fair share of bloody cases and botched cover-ups. But killing with someone? That is a different kind of mess all together, and Mel''s got real experience with it. No one''s heard from Toby Dunne since Chloe Harper''s sweet sixteen party - because the birthday girl and sixteen-year-old Mel buried him so deep in the backwoods, no one''s ever finding him. Mel loses little sleep over it - Toby had been terrorizing them. What she does lose sleep over is Chloe, the girl with whom she survived that horrible night in the woods. Chloe, the girl she fell in love with. Chloe, the girl who disappeared and hasn''t been seen in more than six years. Tasked with locating Chloe by her family, Mel can''t resist the call of a good chase, or finding the one who got away with her heart (and with murder). When Mel finds an armed and vigilant Chloe living off-grid in a highly booby-trapped patch of Canadian wilderness, she realizes that Chloe had been expecting someone other than her ex to come looking for her. The thing that''s kept Chloe going for years is that she''s kept Mel safe by running. Now, the truth must come out as they run for their lives once again. Because when they buried Toby Dunne in the backwoods, they buried something else, too. Something Toby took. And the powerful family he stole it from? They''ll do anything to get it back. Twisty and razor-sharp, Tess Sharpe''s No Body No Crime is a heart-pounding thriller teeming with secrets, betrayals, and a star-crossed romance for the ages.

Peer through the keyhole and you''ll see a mysterious dinner party with a sickening twist; a woman''s intense new relationship with a single father and his strangely shy daughter; the rediscovered journals of a famous artist with a singular obsession who disappeared in suspicious circumstances; a family driven to desperation by the impossible appearance of nonsensical notes; and a seemingly happily married couple driven to the edge of despair by a neighbour''s crying baby. Set in houses that should provide protection but instead turn on their inhabitants, places of safety invaded without warning, and familiar landscapes that gradually change beyond recognition, MAKE A HOME OF ME is about all the ways in which our sanctuaries can turn into foreign places, casting us as strangers as we roam the halls. The stories in MAKE A HOME OF ME are unsettling and distinct, introducing a fresh new voice in the horror landscape. Lock up when you''re done...

It is 1998; Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa are teenagers, and they are making Saga of the Sorceress, a game that will change everything, if only for the three of them. 18 years later, Saga of the Sorceress still exists only on the scattered drives of its creators. Lilith might be the first trans woman to ever work as an Assistant Loan Underwriter at Dollarwise Investments in Brooklyn. Sash is in Brooklyn as well, working as a research assistant and part-time webcam dominatrix. Neither knows that the other is there, or that Abraxa, the third member of Invocation LLC, is just across the Hudson River, sleeping on the floor of a friend''s grandparents'' Jersey City home. They have never met in person, and have been out of touch for years, but none have forgotten the sorceress, or her quest, still far from finished.

Nathan Ballingrud''s award winning debut collection is a cornerstone of contemporary horror fiction that dismantles the boundaries around genre fiction. Shattering and luminous, North American Lake Monsters explores the darker parts of the human psyche to reveal monsters, real and imagined, external and internal. They are us and we are them. What is revealed in these stories is a working class portrait of 21st century American life that is as cruel as it is fragile and as precarious as it is tenacious. These are love stories and monster stories. Monsters who wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The people in these stories are driven to extremes by love and by desperation. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to escape.