Cult Fiction
Discover cult fiction's wildest edge—from Chuck Palahniuk's *Fight Club* and *Haunted* to Carlton Mellick's bizarro masterpieces, Irvine Welsh's *Porno*, and Bret Easton Ellis's *American Psycho*. Dive into transgressive, mind-bending tales of anarchy, dark humor, and surreal shock value in this curated list of underground literary icons.
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Danny 2 - the Revenant
by Chancery Stone
Danny has been on the run, lost, searching for six long years. No-one knows exactly what he did during those missing years, all they know is he's back - and now his ownership is up for grabs. Everybody wants a piece of Danny, their own Personal Jesus. But what does Danny want? Donald Sutherland, the new 'boy'? Gerry, his latest acolyte and disciple? Or perhaps Andy, Gerry's sexy little twin? Then again, maybe it's something else entirely that Danny wants. And maybe Harry Greaves knows exactly what that is ...
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Swung
by Ewan Morrison
Impotent Scottish HR employee David leaves his family and begins a relationship with an American woman named Alice. With David teetering on the brink of unemployment, Alice decides they need help, and a remedy that starts out with sexy bedtime stories ends up right in the thick of Glasgow's swinging scene. And there, in the 'Black Room' along with nine other couples, where you can feel everything but see nothing, each of them finally finds what they are looking for...
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Fight Club: A Novel
by Chuck Palahniuk
"Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars."--P. [3] of cover.
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Invisible Monsters: A Novel
by Chuck Palahniuk
The career of a model ends when she is disfigured in an accident. Suspecting the accident was the work of her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, she takes revenge by slipping him a drug to grow breasts.
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Haunted
by Chuck Palahniuk
Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds heat, power, and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight. This is one of the most disturbing and outrageous books you’ll ever read, one that could only come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk.
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American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this modern classic, the acclaimed author of The Shards explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. "A seminal book.” —The Washington Post One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront. “A masterful satire and a ferocious, hilarious, ambitious, inspiring piece of writing.... An important book.” —Katherine Dunn, bestselling author of Geek Love Look for Bret Easton Ellis’s latest novel, The Shards!
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Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.
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The Bizarro Starter Kit
by Carlton Mellick
Features short novels and story collections by ten of the leading authors in the bizarro genre.
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The Haunted Vagina
by Carlton Mellick
Steve is madly in love with his eccentric girlfriend, Stacy. Unfortunately, their sex life has been suffering as of late, because Steve is worried about the odd noises that have been coming from Stacy's pubic region. She says that her vagina is haunted. She doesn't think it's that big of a deal. Steve, on the other hand, completely disagrees. When a living corpse climbs out of her during an awkward night of sex, Stacy learns that her vagina is actually a doorway to another world. She persuades Steve to climb inside of her to explore this strange new place. But once inside, Steve finds it difficult to return... especially once he meets an oddly attractive woman named Fig, who lives within the lonely haunted world between Stacy's legs.
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Clown Girl
by Monica Drake
Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Clown Girl finds herself unwittingly transformed into a "corporate clown," trapping herself in a cycle of meaningless, high-paid gigs that veer dangerously close to prostitution. Monica Drake has created a novel that riffs on the high comedy of early film stars -- most notably Chaplin and W. C. Fields -- to raise questions of class, gender, economics, and prejudice. Resisting easy classification, this debut novel blends the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty with stunning skill.
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
The classic novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “Beat” and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than fifty years ago. This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction by Ann Charters. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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The Troublesome Amputee
by John Edward Lawson
"I'm a big fan . . . and this is by far his best poetry collection to date. It's sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes deadly serious, but always morbid and thought-provoking. Any horror fan--even those who aren't into poetry--should check this one out." --Jeff Strand, author of "Pressure" and "Casket for Sale (Only Used Once)."
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War Slut
by Carlton Mellick
"Five exhausted soldiers are sitting in the middle of a frozen Arctic wasteland, waiting for something to happen. They don't know why they are there or what they are supposed to be doing. Their superior officers have stopped giving them orders, their food supply is running low, and they are unsure whether or not their enemy actually exists at all. Once they lose their war slut (a transmorphing sex cyborg), the soldiers leave the safety of their camp in order to get it back. Only what they find out in the dark icy landscape is something far beyond what they ever could have imagined"--Page 4 of cover.
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Cocaine Nights
by J. G. Ballard
Features a man who finds himself drawn into a network of drugs, pornography, and murder in a Spanish resort
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Wall of Kiss
by Gina Ranalli
A woman. A wall. Sometimes love blooms in the strangest of places... What would happen if a woman, tired of previous broken relationships, instead fell in love with her wall? Would she be spurned yet again, or would it be a match made in heaven? Gina Ranalli is the author of Suicide Girls in the Afterlife, 13 Thorns (with outsider artist Gus Fink) and Chemical Gardens.
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Not Quite One of the Boys
by Vincent W. Sakowski
One character dies, one is left for dead, and the third is kidnapped. And that's just the first chapter of this dark comedy. Sit back with Time, and watch as God and Satan gamble over everyone, following the misadventures of a couple of drug dealers. Add in a cop who has delusions of being the superhero Napkin Man, and his wife, a sexaholic junkie, a splash of Dante for a taste of not so classic literature, and you may get some idea of what this religious satire has in store for you. Strap yourself in baby-waby for some Blender Fiction at its finest. Vincent W. Sakowski is the author of the anti-epic novel of the surreal: Some Things Are Better Left Unplugged, and the short fiction collection: Misadventures in a Thumbnail Universe. Vincent lives and writes in Saskatoon, SK, Canada, where he was born and raised. "Vincent W. Sakowski is perhaps the most subversive of all the Bizarro writers working today. He knows how to write a traditional story that pulls you in all the while he's been slowly twisting it inside-out... and you find yourself in a wholly strange place, stunned and awe-struck. He's a literary acrobat, crafting smart surrealist fiction that stands on its head and spins plates from its feet, producing a captivating carnival of the mind unlike any of the other gonzo writers in his field and he truly deserves your attention. His work is unforgettable-and sometimes sicker than the sickest-and everyone who loves the surreal should be reading him right now, before he undoes the fabric of the universe and pulls you inside-out right along with it." -Michael Arnzen, author of Play Dead "With one single book Vincent W. Sakowski has completely reinvented the Christian mythology, infusing it with humor and a healthy does of blasphemy. Progressive satire of this type is a rare find and a pleasure to read, from beginning to end. The echoes of its intelligence stick with you long after the final page. If you want to know what Bizarro literature is all about look no further, because Sakowski is the real deal." -John Edward Lawson, author of Pocket Full of Loose Razorblades Cover art by Carrie Ann Baade
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Lap Dancing for Mommy
by Erika Lopez
Erika Lopez's award-winning work has reams of racy, raunchy and riotously funny appeal for audiences spanning regular comic fans to Generation X-ers to the queer literary world. This collection of comic, hilariously incisive narratives--illustrated in Lopez's splashy, apropos style--runs riot with mainstream perceptions of "underground" lifestyles--and with just about anything else that crosses this artist's keen eye.
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Porno
by Irvine Welsh
Ten years after the events detailed in "Trainspotting", Simon Williamson, a.k.a. Sick Boy, is back in Edinburgh to direct and produce a porn film along with university student Nikki Fuller-Smith and old friend Mark Benton.