Bøger udgivet af Montag Press

Horror writer Matt Mott invites you to experience three stories that will keep you awake and still and breathing. Breathing. Breathing. Meet a family torn apart by a mother drowned. She will not let her son be, and her grieving husband will not let her go. Meet a young boy on a mission in the woods. He thinks his imaginary friend may be a real witch, or at least her ghost. Either way, he thinks he knows where to find her. And meet a woman obsessed with her shower. She thinks the trees are taking over, slowly replacing the town and its people, but just because no one else has any memory of the missing doesn't mean she's wrong. Here, in his debut collection, Mott calmly takes you into the backwoods of New Brunswick, and then without looking back, he leaves you there to find your own way out. Be sure to mind the trees. "Finding Woods is a tough, unflinching collection of smart horror. Matt Mott's debut collection will haunt you for days after you've put down the book." Eden Robinson, Author of Traplines and Monkey Beach

People in Bedfordshire are disappearing. Two teenagers are kidnapped from a rural train station. A baby is taken from an urban market. Another baby is stolen from an encampment of Travellers. Two burglars, who have never met, break into a village home and one dies, killed by a giant wave of sea water that appears from nowhere. All the while a strange man obsesses with making a movie...whatever the cost to those around him. Another man appears to care only about the beautiful birds that he keeps in a cage... But nothing is what it seems. Ventriloquists is a story about a man who discovers a liminal space between life and death. Around him bad people desperately try to defend their appearance of civility...but to what emotional and physical cost? What does it mean when kidnappers are kidnapped? Who are the puppets? And who are The Ventriloquists?

BEYOND HERCULES is the story of a charismatic techno-geek who discovers anti-gravity not knowing the galaxy is patrolled by a derelict weapon that annihilates anyone using anti-gravity technology. Imagine Duke Wainwright's surprise when a simple fiber optics experiment blows a mile-deep hole in his garage floor. He's discovered anti-gravity, but doesn't know it. However, a derelict weapon, programmed to annihilate anyone with anti-gravity technology, does know it. It begins a countdown before Duke even knows what he's discovered. Duke, his teenage sweetheart, an out-of-work astronomer, and a dead cosmonaut scramble to mount a defense as the robotic weapon begins its attack. Beyond Hercules is a First Contact story of discovery, mystery, adventure, and romance for readers of all ages.

STAY IS A REMARKABLE DEBUT by one of America's best emerging young authors. These nine powerful stories portray conflicts of race and class in San Francisco's East Bay in language that is profound and heartbreaking. A widower in the midst of a custody battle takes his daughter on a tour of America's ballparks. The parents and friends of a slain Black teenager struggle to manage and express their grief under a harsh national spotlight. And in the title story, a childless couple in the path of a devastating firestorm is forced to decide what baseball memorabilia they value the most - and whether to flee or make a stand. Zachary Amendt's engaging style and mature narrative instinct make him one of our most essential storytellers.

DARK DAYS APPROACH: A black prophecy of the future escapes from beneath the broken and snowbound streets of Old Russia. Fierce growls and thunderous drumbeats echo from within subterranean slums. Drunk and drugged voices, the underclass of the Middle Eastern Union, scrape together a bleak and bitter existence. Addicts, criminals, workers, and nobodies congregate at The Wreckage, washing away their sins in a tide of heavy metal and heavy intoxication. Khalil Madi, escaped fugitive and bassist for death metal outfit Infidel, is caught up in a violent bar-room raid and faces trial for multiple murder amongst countless other crimes against an entrenched and oppressive government. The verdict? Deaths. As many as it takes to tame him. In front of billions of streaming viewers, one man struggles to hold on despite all odds. Deep inside all of our souls, a dark desire to... Punish the Wicked. Cyberpunk is dead. Long live the Wicked.

AMERiCAN BACCHAE This play is based on the ancient Greek tragedy The Bacchae by Euripides, where the God Dionysus compels the warrior King Pentheus to dress as a woman before he is used as the victim for the ritual blood sacrifice of the Maenads. These themes are somehow surprisingly relevant for today. FAMILY WARFARE This play is a portrait of an America family inverted like an upside down cross, where the rebel is not the leather clad punk, but the morally driven activist. PROSPERO'S MACHINE I wrote this play with the intention of creating a new literary hybrid by taking the most sublime dramatic form, the Shakespearean play -and combining it with the most base genre -the infomercial -thus creating a surrealist hybrid allegorical text exploring themes of spirituality, morality and green technology.

Stinger Stars is the story of mankind's first contact with another intelligent species-a man-made species that can enable humans to regenerate lost or damaged body parts. Tragically, the intelligent creatures must be repeatedly maimed in order for them to produce the regenerative agent that makes them so useful. Set in a world of rival genetic research companies, ruthless alpha males, unauthorized experiments, and industrial espionage, Stinger Stars follows Maria de la Cruz, a lowly biology student with a stunted arm, as she struggles with the very personal moral and ethical issues-whether to protect the intelligent animals from cruel exploitation or benefit from their suffering to regain the use of her arm. Stinger Stars is a captivating tale of mystery, intrigue, romance, and ethos that will engage your mind and warm your heart. *** "Paul Bussard's Stinger Stars is a superb science-fiction drama you won't soon forget. It's unique, exciting and thought-provoking. Infused with innovative genetic engineering, ethical dilemmas, romance and betrayal it's an outstanding debut." H. W. "Buzz" Bernard, best-selling author of Eyewall, Plague and Supercell.

Vesper is a scientific-minded young woman living in the kingdom of Malland. When she finds a detached talking penis in the woods, her sheltered life with its wistful fantasies of change explodes into chaos as the penis chases her home, wrecks her sister's engagement party, and causes a scandal so costly that it results in Vesper's forced engagement to a wart-faced widower who agrees to pay her family's debt. Vesper flees her engagement, hoping for a reward when she returns the penis to his owner-the royal prince, no less. But she discovers that the penis isn't the only talking body part flying around the kingdom. People everywhere are falling victim to a magical disease that causes body parts to fall off and animate, and Vesper finds herself fighting an evil plot to create an army of body parts and a society of denial and control, one that deals with all problems by severing them. Uplifting, humorous, and full of wisdom, Dysmorphic Kingdom is high fantasy with a philosophical bouquet, raising questions about conquering both our insecurities with ourselves and our differences with others, all in a polarity-ridden world. "Edgy, original. It's inventive, funny, and sly. The characters come alive, and you can't help but lose yourself in this world. Great writing makes you think of the world in a different way-and Chen does exactly that." Ori Brafman, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Chaos Imperative and Sway "Warning: addictive. Side effects may include e-stalking Colleen Chen to locate more of her writing, sitting on a sunlit patio for several hours to devour a book that's outside of the genres you normally read or compulsively visiting a surprising world in which none of the tedious old rules apply." Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, author of Collateral Damage: A Triptych

ORACLE OF DELPHI - BOOK ONE OF THE DELPHI CHRONICLES In Oracle of Delphi, the first part of a trans-planetary teenage fantasia, a young country teen comes into his manhood in front of the epic backdrop of warring interstellar species and royal intrigue. Oracle of Delphi is a breathtaking and genre-bending coming of age story that tells the tale of Tad, an orphaned young man raised by his uncle in the desert, who ventures into the seat of royal power only to discover that he might have been chosen as royal companion to the boy king for his buried magical powers. Caught between the space of magic and science, where ancient technologies have been lost and ignorance reigns supreme, Tad must navigate the deadly world of royal inter-specieal intrigue, assassination attempts, and eventually banishment into the deadly barren lands crushed by the Veil, an intergalactic scourge that eliminated interstellar transportation eons ago.Whether by choice or by burden, Tad quickly realizes that his destiny is larger than anyone could have ever guessed, his purpose greater than he ever thought, and his young loves more magnificent than his innocent mind can imagine. Part Game of Thrones Part Harry Potter in space, the Oracle of Delphi imagines the most amazing story world yet to come.

BILLY ALFRETH IS SERVING FIVE YEARS as an inmate at Dellacotte Young Offenders Institute, in the north of England. Billy has memories of being attacked by three men, but CCTV footage doesn't bear out his account and he is locked up for stabbing one man. Billy's world overlaps with that of Ronald Dott, a serial rapist, who claims to know Billy from when he was a child, only that is impossible. And then there is Kate Thistle, ostensibly at Dellacotte to study prison slang, but inordinately interested in both Dott and Billy. As strange events occur and his reality begins to unravel, Billy learns of the Oasis, and a prison ship, and of a desert town called Hospital, where time works in mysterious ways. Dott tells Billy of their terrible entwined histories... whether or not Billy wants to be convinced of what he cannot understand. "I experienced an acute, often surreal, sense of an offender's pathology, with all its traps, humour and contradictions. O My Days is a tour de force of powerful writing. It's demanding, gruelling yet always honest, insightful and finally moving. It explores areas that serious fiction rarely travels to. A quite remarkable novel." Alan Price, author of Outfoxing Hyenas "This is a writer who has been there, viewed with compassion, and reported back. There is a new mythos here, something that feels ancient and sand-blasted and unfathomable, but it is revealed within the most modern of contexts. Highly recommended." Paul Meloy, author of Islington Crocodiles

When I awoke I cried and screamed from a pain so great it could only mean life and I breathed like coming up from out of the water and I was ice-cold to the touch with fatal scars that no living entity should wear. "Coleman's prose will incarcerate you for all the crimes you've committed in your head." Zachary Amendt, author of Stay

THE TERRAIN OF EAST TENNESSEE hides many terrors: meth labs, moonshiners, and a series of brutal murders committed by a teenage girl. The law is too slow, the migrant workers aren't talking, and the snake-handling preachers know something the rest of the town doesn't. Mexican paranormal investigator, Cassandra Jimenez, aims to find out exactly why the girl has been killing with impunity, but she can't do it alone. Erik van de Roer, a South African-born veteran of Afghanistan who helps the local church run liquor across the mountain ranges, agrees to help Cassandra as long as she's willing to face unimaginable terror. In the forgotten corners of America, where time and culture have given way to necessity and survival, Cassandra will confront the ugly truth about human nature and everything else that is inhuman. "Rich and engaging. Reading it is like being bitten by a cobra: the first sentences are sharp and unpleasant followed by a strange euphoria." Mary Beth Arthur, Rose Hips

Xtremus is a dystopian satire about the aftermath of a cataclysmic demise of technology that takes place in post-apocalyptic Southern California. Eco terrorists have unleashed a computer virus killing the ruling class whose power and life force were dependent on sophisticated brain implants through which they communicated and held sway. The story follows the quest of Condor, leader of a group of "hackers" who survived Cybergeddon because of the immunities they received, albeit without the firepower of the halcyon days of techno splendor. Condor and other "hackers" are sworn to protect The Well, the only remaining database from the high-technology past that now resides in brains of the Bionicans. Condor's mission is to determine whether The Well's secret database could be hacked by other survivors outside of Bionica to develop weapons of mass destruction and wreak havoc again. Condor's quest obliges him to deal with all three surviving clans in Southern California, each bent on imposing their unique ideology in this post-apocalyptic world: his fellow Bionicans, a drug besotted lot who communicate telepathically through The Well; the crude and romantic Goths, who love gladiatorial combat and motorcycles, and treat bad poetry as a capital crime; and the decadent Greeks whose work to revive of the Classics from Homer to Plato is supported by slavery and guided by sexual politics. Condor's quest is transformed many times by the women he conquers and manipulated by the woman who finally conquers him. His exploits turn into a power-grabbing adventure of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. By the time he learns about the true nature of his quest, it is too late for our hero to prevail. Xtremus is a morality tale and a satire of the Information Age, as we now know it. It pokes fun at the ideological mélange of the 1960's that gave rise to environmental awareness, consumerism, sexual freedom, gay liberation, vegans, Eastern religion, mythology, New Age healing, motorcycle-based rebellion, and drug-induced alternate states of consciousness. It also takes on those whose blue-sky tunnel vision of technology is painting our future into a corner where wildlife and civil society cannot thrive.

WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in the 1880s: Settlers are moving west, as do the iron horses that bring them by rail...and somewhere in those vast regions of deserts and native tribes, a darkness is gathering. Calls Thunder Song, a powerful Shoshone shaman, senses it first, and reaches out to the Western Council, an association of magi and other magical folk, for possible insight and assistance. In response, the Council sends a single magus, Aquinas Moore, as a token gesture, but what starts as a simple diplomatic mission for Aquinas turns into a struggle for existence against a foe more terrible than any of them has ever encountered, which has already infiltrated the halls of power. Now, these unlikely allies must band together with a pair of Native American deities and a dead man to fight off a threat from outside the universe, a threat that intends to not only conquer, but change the very nature of existence.

THE NO GO ZONE IS IN FULL MOTION. Everything goes on the Night of the Clean Hands. There are only three rules: Old debts are forgotten. Payback is forbidden. Killing is outlawed. But just for one night. One night without the fear of death doesn't sound like much, but it means everything in the slums. Kai, born and raised in the No Go Zone, understands that even in a place forsaken by the rest of the world, order always creeps in. As a member of the 25's, a local enforcement gang, Kai jumps from the rooftops and glides over the streets, keeping the population inside the separation barriers under constant surveillance. When a string of copycat murders disrupts the festivities of the Night of the Clean Hands, it falls to Kai to uncover the mystery behind the killings. As we follow Kai through the underbelly of this urban jungle, we explore a lost city with unspoken rules and unravel the secrets behind its devotion for the Red Light Princess.

A young woman's organs plot a slow and torturous cannibalization of her body. Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel poison their bodies with gardens worth of parsley while devouring their many princely suitors. Lilith and Eve usurp Adam's throne in Eden. An anthropomorphic uterus withers as it travels through a rotten landscape of spoiled deserts and collapsed streets. A woman makes a home in the confines of a small room while refusing to allow her spouse inside. Throughout the stories in Wrapped in Red flesh starves and is consumed, reddens and collapses, all while clamoring through putrid forests and dilapidated factories. The bodies might be beautiful but that doesn't mean they aren't killers.

Self-proclaimed outsider, Arthur Sonntag, has proudly placed himself on the fringes of a contemptible society. But now, after desperately trying to follow in his literary heroes' footsteps and write something immortal, he finds himself struggling to write. Piece by piece, crippled by his mediocrity and consumed by his lust for success, Arthur's mind starts to unravel... A wave of political unrest sweeps through the city. Protests. Kidnappings. Suicides. Every event documented by the all-seeing eye of the newswire, Metropolis. Now the newswire is recruiting... On the edge of despair, Arthur desperately wants in. Anywhere. Meanwhile, in his high window, a shadowy insider dreams of just the opposite. To save what remains of his sanity, the insider wants out. Once a paragon of the Metropolis elite, now he hides himself away, to escape the waking death of his working life. Alone, he starts to write. But through his window he notices bizarre scenes in the building across. Steadily, he drifts into obsession. Steadily, he drifts into madness. *** By turns a paranoid mystery, existential thriller, and postmodern satire, M Against M is a timely and harrowing look at modern media, and the professionals who run them.

A somewhat deranged cultural studies professor, having been informed by a reliable source (his "girlfriend of the time") that he reminds her of the legendary silent film star Buster Keaton, inexplicably dumps her and strikes out on his own to seek out the nature of this resemblance. A truly slapstick adventure ensues in which our good professor travels from the Boston area back home to Tennessee, flees the police to parts unknown, encounters psychopathic roommates, heroin punks, the sadomasochistic underground, hermaphrodite butlers, curmudgeonly cave dwellers, tarot card casino dealers, vaudeville cults, guru junkies, and more, all of whom, in the spirit of Keaton's films, he falls in love with one by one. When our hero steals a hot air balloon in order to make it to California, will he finally discover the secret of Keaton's apocryphal machine, the "love catapult"?

Life as a middle school principal can be humdrum, and so was the case for Suzanne Clay. Everyday it was the same thing, filling out detention slips and dealing with fist fights between boys and the cliquishness among prepubescent girls. Everything changed when she met the Children of Lot and got caught up in their strange prophecy. Along with Suzanne, the special education teacher and a handful of students find themselves locked in a potentially deadly and mind-altering encounter with the Children of Lot. It is an encounter that will test everything within Suzanne just to survive and get her students out of harm's way. At every step, a new danger rears its horrible head, and she battles wits with the sly and crafty leader of the cult, who will stop at nothing to make sure God smiles on his people.

SAN FRANCISCO 1906. BORN OF A GOLD RUSH, the greatest city on the West Coast was the golden gate to a wild world of corruption where all drugs were legal, thousands of sex slaves labored in the bowels of Chinatown, parlor houses catered to the rich, and the unwary were shanghaied in a fog of sudden wealth and quick death before the earth awoke beneath their feet. Into this world comes Lorelei, the last of an ancient lineage who has chosen the night for survival and must hide her tracks as she changes history while the apocalypse approaches. "Bruce Lee Bond's marvelous novel, THE BROKEN COAST, should take its rightful place among the poignant and poetic portraits of a marvelous time in the marvelous city of San Francisco - a city of Chinese Tongs and parlor girls, a time of love and transformation, brutality and mysticism.... James Dalessandro author of 1906 and Bohemian Heart

"Once upon a hollowed out moon, my liver withers ..." The Bloodless girl is haunted by confusing memories of her cannibalistic worm mother. Did the Bloodless girl bury her worm mother in salt? Where have all the worm siblings gone? And how did the Bloodless girl end up on a curving rural road that leads to nowhere and everywhere? The Bloodless girl can't remember. All she knows is that dust fills her arteries and the worm mother is gone. Accompanied by a skeletal pumpkin and devil tree, the Bloodless girl journeys through the New Jersey backwoods in search of a hilltop slaughterhouse that is the key to regaining her blood and learning the truth about the worm mother's disappearance. ======== 'Hooks and Slaughterhouse: a novel' by Alana I. Capria ('Organ Meat, Killing Me' and '3 Pieces from The Bovine Uterus') is a groundbreaking work of experimental horror based on New Jersey's urban legends. Illustrations by Rita Okusako. Production by Montag Press Transmedia Collective ======== FOLLOW THE BLOODLESS GIRL at www.hooksandslaughterhousebook.com. Visit the author at http: //alanaicapria.com/. Visit the illustrator at http: //ritaokusako.com/. Visit Montag Press at http: //montagpress.com/.

What if you had to spend the end of the world with a psychopath? After a virus takes out most of the population, recovering addict Jack "Colonel" Jones survives this new plague by relapsing. Only the hard drugs he's been avoiding can save him. On a trip to a hospital for supplies, he meets up with the brilliant and hulking Jack Cruz. Cruz has set himself up in a fully stocked warehouse where he plans to find a cure for the virus and he'd like Colonel to be his right-hand man. As their lonely time together creeps along from one fix to the next, Colonel begins to suspect Cruz is more interested in death than life, and when Macy, a guest to the warehouse, comes to a strange end, Colonel believes that his roommate is even more monstrous than the virus. When a new visitor, Gwen Landers, comes into their lives, Colonel must decide if his suspicions are right and just how he and Gwen can escape Jack Cruz's grip on them. Adapted from the novel by A.A. Garrison, The End of Jack Cruz is an intense story of paranoia and survival where the end of the world isn't the worst thing that can happen to you, Jack Cruz is.

"Coil Quake Rift deals, in an ambitious and imaginative way, with not only space, time, and memory, but also with the yearning we all have to love and be loved. Nathan Elias is a damn fine storyteller."- Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and The Heavenly Table "In Coil Quake Rift, four characters connected by a history of love, betrayal, and loss, come together and fall apart in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake that opens a portal in space and time. With clear, confident prose, Nathan Elias sets these characters on a poignant and emotional metaphysical journey that forces them to grapple with regret and possibility; the destination is extraordinarily satisfying. Coil Quake Rift is a gift for anyone who has ever asked: what if?"- Tiffany Quay Tyson, author of The Past is Never and Three Rivers "Coil Quake Rift is a cinematic, contemplative, reality-bending page-turner deepened by its vivid Los Angeles setting and its intriguing questions about multiple universes and the afterlife."- Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of Annie and the Wolves When Margot learns she is carrying her husband Knox's child, she questions if she can bear another loss after a failed pregnancy divided her and Jason. Knox celebrates the news-despite the sorrow and guilt still lingering after his astrophysicist ex, Tiffany, died one year ago- until an earthquake jostles their Hollywood apartment and strips them of power. Moments later, when a small fissure opens in Venice Beach, Jason discovers an abandoned little girl outside his home. As authorities prove unable to help them, Jason determines that the already-fraught city and child are both worse off than he initially imagined. And Tiffany? After the sting of Knox's betrayal, she programmed the RIFT-a byproduct of her particle collider-to activate after her suicide. Thus, a ground-opening black hole is created, into which Margot, Knox, and Jason must descend. In multiple hall-of-mirror-like alternate universes, they are confronted with a choice: Accept the true pain of losing someone you love, or live a lie wherein the loved one was never lost?

Jasmine Wills doesn't know it, but every moment of her heretofore humdrum life is being televised on a reality TV show called Diet Extreme. And America is mesmerized. Wait till she finds out! Preston Price, the improbable impresario, is a man bent at a 45-degree angle. Or is he? Nothing is as it seems in this propulsive and slightly terrifying novel. Lee Rozelle has staked claim on a wild new territory of obsession, loss, betrayal, and unspeakable secrets. There is a surprise on every page in this breathtaking comic romp. Enjoy the ride, but hold onto your hat-the road's a little bumpy up ahead.- JOHN DUFRESNE, author of I Don't Like Where This Is Going Ballad of Jasmine Wills is a fast, furious ride and I loved every twist. Jasmine is the antihero the world needs right now-smart, resourceful, and full-bodied. A totally dark and enjoyable read.- DANA SCHWARTZ, author of Early Birds A zany twist on the Southern Gothic, Ballad of Jasmine Wills is a wild and heartfelt tale of abduction and revenge, body shaming and media fame. Lee Rozelle's debut novel is the story of overweight banker Jasmine and her kidnapper, the enigmatic reality TV mastermind Preston Price. Trapped inside an egg-shaped studio in the secluded backwoods, Jasmine is tortured with haute cuisine, brainwashed with self-help videos, and badgered with cardio exercise routines for her growing mass of livestream fans. Filled with flashbacks of adolescent nuttiness and ennui in the 1980s, Ballad of Jasmine Wills goes bizarro to explore links between reality TV and the real, intervention and exploitation.

A certain someone's tried his hand at killing Jackson Cole-small-time pornographer and political pamphleteer what he been-in a Pittsburgh at the end of history and under siege of Christians from the midland states of the larger fractured landscape America as it is become-and Jackson Cole believe he is known this certain someone happen and this certain someone just so happen to be the man behind it all, aka Colby Sheffield, mayor and local hero what's kept Pittsburgh independent all this time. And a new yellow-junk narcotic, 'Margarine, ' spread through the streets and on up inside the veins of Jackson's sometime girl, Cassey Darling, and Jackson losing what friends he got left, and increasingly, he holding onto nothing but the thinnest veneer of control, while all the while, g3, Muslim female-oriented singularity run the hive state of California, lurking forever on the periphery. "Imagine an AI trained on Quentin Tarantino films, William Burroughs novels, a few bits of David Ohle's weirder surrealism, and a Pittsburgh street map is told to write a dystopian noir, and halfway through that project someone feeds in a bunch of William Gibson and Philip K. Dick, and the AI meanwhile has fleshy arms and is growing sticky and pungent and wet. And imagine this AI hands off a first draft to a wandering poet with an ear for torqued language, a lonely figure, a touch sentimental but with a bitter streak. And then this poet revises the draft while reading abstruse philosophy and accounts of mystic visions. Now speed up whatever you>re imagining, such that it becomes a propulsive hyperviolent plunge through fractured layers of perception and possibilities, ends of the world without end, the impossible tortures of the post-post, the indifference of hallucination and prophecy. Perhaps this might approach Devil, Everywhere I Look, but it's still unlikely you will have anticipated the bears."-Ben Segal, author of The Wes Letters and Pool Party Trap Loop