Look Out For … Crooked by Austin Grossman

“Crooked is a tragicomedy combining political intrigue and Lovecraftian monstrosities.”

This is the story of the great con game that was the late twentieth century, of American history’s worst presidency, of how I learned to lie. It is not history as you know it. There are at least three sides to this story, and I’m telling both of mine.

I promise you I will show the same contempt for the historical record that it has shown for me.

My name is Richard Milhous Nixon. I swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and I have seen the devil walk.

An alternate history, a horror novel, a political satire and a study of what people will sacrifice to succeed, Crooked is the ultimate inside story of the strange, all-too-human monsters at the heart of American power.

Why We’re Excited About This Book:

Crooked by Austin Grossman begins with Richard Milhous Nixon, thirty-seventh president of the United States, recounting the night of the Watergate scandal that destroyed his reputation. But this is no fictionalised retelling of political scandal; as envisaged in Crooked, Watergate was merely a cover up for something even more terrible. As the real Watergate mission takes place, Nixon is spilling his own blood in the Oval Office, performing an occult rite to ensure its success…

So begins one of the most original sounding novels we’ve come across for a long time, a tragicomedy combining political intrigue with dark magic and Lovecraftian monstrosities. Nixon is recast as an anti-hero, deliberately sacrificing his reputation and career to protect America from what lurks beneath it. Grossman’s first person narration is one of the novel’s many triumphs; Nixon’s voice is a tangled mix of vanity, loneliness, bitterness and determination.

Provocative, funny and oddly moving, Crooked deserves to be a huge success for Grossman.

Crooked is out now from Mulholland Books.

Look Out For … Something Remains

“Something Remains is an apt and powerful testament to the range of Joel Lane’s imagination.”

When Joel Lane died unexpectedly in November 2013, the literary world lost a remarkable talent. He left us too early, with so much unfinished as indicated by the copious notes and outlines of stories and poems he had yet to write. In these pages you will find stories inspired by and based on these notes, completed by many of his friends and colleagues–over thirty writers including Tim Lebbon, Steve Rasnic Tem, Alison Littlewood, John Grant, Simon Bestwick, Lynda E. Rucker, John Llewellyn Probert, Gary McMahon, Thana Niveau, Steven Savile and many others.

Why We’re Excited About This Book:

Something Remains is a unique book that celebrates the life and work of one of the most formidable writers of weird fiction the UK has seen. Joel Lane’s early death at the age of 50 occurred at the height of his powers–his collection Where Furnaces Burn had won the World Fantasy Award not long before he passed away.

Something Remains is an apt and powerful testament to the range of Lane’s imagination but it’s no mere tribute anthology. Instead, the editors Peter Coleborn and Pauline E. Dugdale invited writers to pen tales based on the ideas and fragments that Lane left unwritten or unfinished at the end of his life. The result is one of the year’s must-have anthologies, with thirty-seven stories and poems based on Lane’s notes, plus a generous selection of essays on his life and art.

Authors who have contributed to the book include Simon Bestwick, Ramsey Campbell, Jan Edwards, Alison Littlewood, Stephen Bacon, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Gary McMahon and many, many more. All profits from the book go to Diabetes UK.

Something Remains is available to pre-order now from Alchemy Press.

JAMES EVERINGTON