The Hell Candidate


Book Description

I opened my eyes. I wasn't dreaming. I was awake. And right beside me, Jennifer was panting and moaning and bouncing up and down on the bed. I stared harder into the darkness, chilled with fright, and against the dim gray light that filtered in through the closely-drawn drapes, I saw an outline on top of Jennifer that made me cram my hand into my mouth to stop myself from screaming. It was a huge, bulky outline, as dark as sin. But its eyes glowed slanted and orange, like the eyes of a wolf, and on its head were two curved horns. It stank of stale incense and animal sweat, and it was grunting with grotesque delight. When businessman Hunter Peal decided to run for President of the USA, they said he didn't have a chance in Hell ... but they were wrong. Initially he seemed pleasant and moderate ... but then everything started to change. As his popularity grew, so did his ability to influence people, sending them weeping to their knees, and seeing sights which no cameras could capture. And what of his opponents and the strange 'accidents' which befel them? Indeed, Hunter Peal was not the man he once was ... one of the denizens of Hell has made a pact with him, and on his inauguration, all Hell will be let loose. Literally. Telos Publishing is proud to present a superb new edition of this long out-of-print 1981 novel. A horrific tale of lust and greed and power from one of the genre's greatest writers, Graham Masterton. 'If you like horror novels, the kind that make you catch your breath at certain parts, can change your perception of the temperature in the room and leave you with impressions that can't be unseen for days - if ever - then this is your book. It really is an absolute masterpiece and in my opinion one of the weirdest, most twisted horror tales ever told, where the message, "Be careful who you vote for" really makes a hell of a lot of sense.' Cat DeSpira, Retrobitch




The Candidate


Book Description

The Candidate is one of the most masterful, psychologically penetrating novels in Armenian diaspora literature. Published in 1967 at a time of political awakening among the descendants of survivors of the Armenian genocide, the novel explores themes of trauma, forgiveness, reconciliation, friendship, and sacrifice, and examines the relationship between victim and perpetrator. The book opens in 1927 in Paris after Minas has found his friend Vahakn’s body on the floor of the apartment they share. In a fragmentary way, Minas tells of his meeting Vahakn in the cafés of the Latin Quarter; the friendship that joins them; their conversations with Ziya, a Turkish student in Paris; Vahakn’s murder of Ziya; and Vahakn’s suicide. At the core of the novel is the note Vahakn leaves Minas to explain the enigma of Ziya’s murder and his own suicide. The letter recounts Vahakn’s and his mother’s deportation from their village in the Ottoman Empire; his mother’s death and Vahakn’s adoption by a Turkish woman, Fatma, who rapes and abuses him; his feelings of alienation and self-estrangement in France; and his inability to adapt to life after trauma. Known for his innovation of the Western Armenian novel, Vorpouni challenges the narrative elements of the conventional novel by playing with subjectivity and linearity. His melding of contemporary French literary and intellectual currents produces a literary and cultural hybrid unique in Western Armenian literature.




How the Hell Did This Happen?


Book Description

The iconic humorist offers his take on the stranger-than-fiction (and stranger-than-fact) 2016 presidential election and its equally unbelievable aftermath. The 2016 election cycle was so absurd that celebrated political satirist, journalist, and die-hard Republican P. J. O’Rourke endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. As P. J. put it, “America is experiencing the most severe outbreak of mass psychosis since the Salem witch trials of 1692. So why not put Hillary on the dunking stool?” In How the Hell Did This Happen?, P. J. brings his critical eye and inimitable voice to some seriously risky business. Starting in June 2015, he asks, “Who are these jacklegs, high-binders, wire-pullers, mountebanks, swellheads, buncombe spigots, four-flushers and animated spittoons offering themselves as worthy of America’s highest office?” and surveys the full cast of presidential candidates including everyone you’ve already forgotten and everyone you wish you could forget. P. J. offers a brief history of how our insane process for picking who will run for president evolved, from the very first nominating convention (thanks, Anti-Masonic Party) through the reforms of the Progressive era (because there’s nothing that can’t be worsened by reform) to the present. He takes us through the debates and key primaries and analyzes everything from the campaign platforms (or lack thereof) to presidential style (“Trump’s appearance—indeed, Trump’s existence—is a little guy’s idea of living large. A private plane! A swell joint in Florida! Gold-plated toilet handles!”). And he rises from the depths of despair to come up with a better way to choose a president. Following his come-to-Satan moment with Hillary and the Beginning of End Times in November, P. J. reckons with a new age: “America is experiencing a change in the nature of leadership. We’re getting rid of our leaders. And we’re starting at the top.” “Where are we going? Where have we been? P. J. O’Rourke casts his gimlet gaze on the circus of clowns-people foisted on us by the 2016 election—and demands to know How the Hell Did This Happen?” —Vanity Fair




The Candidate


Book Description

Drawing on first-hand interviews with those involved in the campaign, including its most senior figures, Nunns traces the origins of Jeremy Corbyn’s remarkable ascent in British politics.




The Devil in Gray


Book Description

In a town where Confederate blood still flows, a serial killer is on the loose—one so evil he’s no longer human. America’s Civil War left wounds on the land that bled for over a century—and perhaps something even more terrible that will never heal. A man on the edge, haunted by a recent personal tragedy, homicide detective Martin Decker has been assigned to investigate a bizarre series of gruesome and seemingly random mutilation murders plaguing Richmond, Virginia. A serial killer is somehow finding his way into locked rooms to butcher his victims before vanishing without a trace, and the only witness is a young woman with Down syndrome who claims to have seen the man responsible for the horrific carnage. But the bloody trail is leading Decker to a place where his sanity will be sorely tested—and where pure evil has given rise to an unstoppable nightmare of terror and death. This gripping masterwork of horror fiction from Graham Masterton, the award-winning author of The Manitou, takes horror to a breathtaking new level. A story not for the faint of heart, The Devil in Gray is a stunningly original tale of terror, one of the very best, from an acknowledged giant of the genre.




The Manchurian Candidate


Book Description

The classic thriller about a hostile foreign power infiltrating American politics: “Brilliant . . . wild and exhilarating.” —The New Yorker A war hero and the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Sgt. Raymond Shaw is keeping a deadly secret—even from himself. During his time as a prisoner of war in North Korea, he was brainwashed by his Communist captors and transformed into a deadly weapon—a sleeper assassin, programmed to kill without question or mercy at his captors’ signal. Now he’s been returned to the United States with a covert mission: to kill a candidate running for US president . . . This “shocking, tense” and sharply satirical novel has become a modern classic, and was the basis for two film adaptations (San Francisco Chronicle). “Crammed with suspense.” —Chicago Tribune “Condon is wickedly skillful.” —Time




I Know This Much Is True


Book Description

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.




House of Bones


Book Description

No one lives for very long in the houses they buy from Mr Vane. Neighbours complain of noises that chill the blood, and then deathly silence. Maybe the occupants have moved away, but then again, maybe they haven't. John has joined Mr Vane's estate agency. He thinks houses are for living in – happily ever after. He has no idea about the hidden forces inside Mr Vane's properties, nor about their strange appetites, but he's about to find out. First published in 1998, House of Bones is a chilling, gruesome, horror novel.




The Library of the Unwritten


Book Description

In the first book in a brilliant new fantasy series, books that aren't finished by their authors reside in the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, and it is up to the Librarian to track down any restless characters who emerge from those unfinished stories. Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing-- a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto. But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifyingly angelic Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil's Bible. The text of the Devil's Bible is a powerful weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the power to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell….and Earth.




Insane Clown President


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dispatches from the 2016 election that provide an eerily prescient take on our democracy’s uncertain future, by the country’s most perceptive and fearless political journalist. In twenty-five pieces from Rolling Stone—plus two original essays—Matt Taibbi tells the story of Western civilization’s very own train wreck, from its tragicomic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion. Years before the clown car of candidates was fully loaded, Taibbi grasped the essential themes of the story: the power of spectacle over substance, or even truth; the absence of a shared reality; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism that would destroy what was left of the Kingian dream of a successful pluralistic society. Taibbi captures, with dead-on, real-time analysis, the failures of the right and the left, from the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the flawed and aimless Hillary Clinton campaign; the rise of the “dangerously bright” alt-right with its wall-loving identity politics and its rapturous view of the “Racial Holy War” to come; and the giant fail of a flailing, reactive political media that fed a ravenous news cycle not with reporting on political ideology, but with undigested propaganda served straight from the campaign bubble. At the center of it all stands Donald J. Trump, leading a historic revolt against his own party, “bloviating and farting his way” through the campaign, “saying outrageous things, acting like Hitler one minute and Andrew Dice Clay the next.” For Taibbi, the stunning rise of Trump marks the apotheosis of the new postfactual movement. Taibbi frames the reporting with original essays that explore the seismic shift in how we perceive our national institutions, the democratic process, and the future of the country. Insane Clown President is not just a postmortem on the collapse and failure of American democracy. It offers the riveting, surreal, unique, and essential experience of seeing the future in hindsight. “Scathing . . . What keeps the pages turning in this so freshly familiar story line is the vivid observation and original turns of phrase.”—San Francisco Chronicle