Murder in Negative Space


Book Description

An internationally acclaimed Russian floral designer is found murdered in a Boston hotel ballroom. Who killed her? And why?Valentina Zhukova is a glamorous, globetrotting floral designer; the “Queen of Negative Space” and “Vladimir Putin's favorite flower arranger”. But in the hours before the opening of the prestigious International Floral Design Alliance conference in Boston, someone stabbed her and then hung her body from a massive floral design.Six weeks after solving the murder of the Executive Director of the New England Botanical Society, Lieutenant Victoria Lee and young, computer-savvy Detective Jason Alvarez are again plunged into a world where flowers and horticulture can be grounds for homicide. They quickly learn that Zhukova was both more and less than the woman she seemed. The proud granddaughter of a World War II hero, she was also an ardent nationalist who toed the Kremlin line, and someone who relished inflicting on those around her. Who killed Zhukova? With an international cast of suspects, Lee and Alvarez – aided by suburban garden club president Liz Phillips – find few who knew her will mourn her death. Murder in Negative Space takes you into a world where 'amateur' designers are deadly serious about their work.




Negative Space


Book Description

"Like smoke off a collision between Dennis Cooper's George Miles Cycle and Beyond The Black Rainbow, absorbing the energy of mind control, reincarnation, parallel universes, altered states, school shootings, obsession, suicidal ideation, and so much else, B.R. Yeager's multi-valent voicing of drugged up, occult youth reveals fresh tunnels into the gray space between the body and the spirit, the living and the dead, providing a well-aimed shot in the arm for the world of conceptual contemporary horror." -Blake Butler, author of Three Hundred Million "Ever wonder where teenage children go at night? Perhaps it's best not knowing the answer. There's something amiss in Kinsfield, a drab, boring city much like your own, except for the teenage suicide epidemic, stagnant, ineffectual parents, cultish behavior that borders on psychosis, and strings, strings everywhere. B.R. Yeager's Negative Space is a hypnotic collage of message boards, memes, and ruined bodies twisting at the end of a rope. Most modern novels have lost all concept of magic. B.R. Yeager's Negative Space is a stunning refutation of the quotidian." -James Nulick, author of Haunted Girlfriend & Valencia




Negative Space


Book Description

Despite her parents' struggles with addiction, Lilly Dancyger always thought of her childhood as a happy one. But what happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges? Dancyger's father, Joe Schactman, was part of the iconic 1980s East Village art scene. He created provocative sculptures out of found materials like animal bones, human hair, and broken glass, and brought his young daughter into his gritty, iconoclastic world. She idolized him—despite the escalating heroin addiction that sometimes overshadowed his creative passion. When Schactman died suddenly, just as Dancyger was entering adolescence, she went into her own self-destructive spiral, raging against a world that had taken her father away. As an adult, Dancyger began to question the mythology she'd created about her father—the brilliant artist, struck down in his prime. Using his sculptures, paintings, and prints as a guide, Dancyger sought out the characters from his world who could help her decode the language of her father's work to find the truth of who he really was.




Negative Space


Book Description

Manny Farber, one of the most important critics in movie history, championed the American action film—the bravado of Howard Hawks, the art brut styling of Samuel Fuller, the crafty, sordid entertainments of Don Siegel—at a time when other critics dismissed the genre. His witty, incisive criticism later worked exacting language into an exploration of the feelings and strategies that went into low-budget and radical films as diverse as Michael Snow's Wavelength, Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana, and Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman. Expanded with an in-depth interview and seven essays written with his wife, artist Patricia Patterson, Negative Space gathers Farber's most influential writings, making this an indispensable collection for all lovers of film.




Midnight in Peking


Book Description

Winner of the both the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and the CWA Non-Fiction Dagger from the author of City of Devils Chronicling an incredible unsolved murder, Midnight in Peking captures the aftermath of the brutal killing of a British schoolgirl in January 1937. The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. Based on seven years of research by historian and China expert Paul French, this true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.




My Sister, the Serial Killer


Book Description

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • “A taut and darkly funny contemporary noir that moves at lightning speed, it’s the wittiest and most fun murder party you’ve ever been invited to.” —MARIE CLAIRE Korede’s sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola’s knife. Korede’s practicality is the sisters’ saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood (bleach, bleach, and more bleach), the best way to move a body (wrap it in sheets like a mummy), and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures to Instagram when she should be mourning her “missing” boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit. Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she’s exactly what he needs. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.




Murder City


Book Description

Ciudad Juarez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad. In Murder City, Charles Bowden-one of the few journalists who spent extended periods of time in Juarez-has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates. Interweaving stories of its inhabitants-a beauty queen who was raped, a repentant hitman, a journalist fleeing for his life-with a broader meditation on the town's descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Juarez's culture of violence will not only worsen, but inevitably spread north. Heartbreaking, disturbing, and unforgettable, Murder City was written at the height of his powers and established Bowden as one of America's leading journalists.




Negative Space


Book Description

This searingly intimate literary debut from top Irish art critic Cristín Leach weaves words and art with an unravelling of self that comes when a marriage breaks. In a series of layered essays, art critic Leach writes about the gaps between reality and perception, about writing and anxiety, body and brain, breaking and making, succeeding and failing, conventionality and independence. The non-linear structure of the essays, with repeats, retakes, and deliberately unsaid or missing information, mimics the gaps in memory and understanding that are part of the human condition, especially during times of great stress. It’s about art and writing as a fundamental way of explaining and understanding the world, perhaps saying what cannot be said, or revealing without showing. Negative Space is a memoir about writing as a salve and a means of escape, marriage as a refuge and a trap, the nature of home, and what happened when everything fell apart.




My Murder


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND GLAMOUR! “One of those rare emotionally intelligent books that are also fun reads… Going to keep readers turning pages late into the night.” –The New York Times “Ingenious…fresh and unpredictable.” –The Washington Post “Gleefully overturn[s] the age-old ‘woman-in-trouble’ plot…eerie and inventive.” –NPR's Fresh Air What if the murder you had to solve was your own? Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She’s also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her. Now it’s not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she’s always enjoyed—she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller.




Murder Imperfect


Book Description

"You can call this a confession if you must. Last year ... I murdered my husband. I did it with malice aforethought - a premeditated, cold blooded killing. No. On second thought, let's not call this a confession. A confession implies acknowledgement of guilt or remorse. I don't feel the least bit guilty and I certainly have no remorse. The bastard got what he deserved." With these words, Kat, a well-to-do suburban housewife with a flexible definition of morality, launches into her story. She has found ample evidence that her securities analyst husband, George, is cheating on her. But she has also discovered something else: George has squirreled away millions of dollars in secret accounts, violating every law in the SEC handbook. Claiming those assets in a divorce would alert authorities to George's crimes, and the resulting punitive fines might well wipe out their net worth. As Kat puts it, "The notion of George in prison was not so satisfying that I was willing to become poor."George's death becomes Kat's goal, and she carries out what she believes is the perfect murder with careful attention to detail. But she hasn't counted on a debonair district attorney with his eyes on higher political office, an aggressive SEC lawyer chafing because George died just as he was to be brought in for questioning, or an ambitious mistress with her own agenda.Funny, irreverent and introspective, Murder Imperfect traces Kat's tale through a roller coaster of financial shenanigans, ex-lovers and courtroom dramatics. If the essence of suspense is not, 'whodunit' but, rather 'will they get away with it?', Murder Imperfect will leave you guessing right to the very end.