“The Last Weekend is a typically riotous and inventive mix of the undead, dystopian fiction and paranoid conspiracy.”
Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolos is a Bay Area Rust Belt refugee, failed sci-fi writer, successful barfly and, since the exceptionally American zombie apocalypse, an accomplished “driller” of reanimated corpses. There aren’t many sane, well-adjusted human beings left in San Francisco, but facing the end of the world, Billy’s found his vocation trepanning the undead, peddling his one and only published short story, and drinking himself to death.
Things don’t stay static for long. Billy discovers that both his girlfriends turn out to be homicidal revolutionaries. He collides with a gang of Berkeley scientists gone berserker. Finally, the long-awaited “Big One” shakes the foundation of San Francisco to its core, and the crumbled remains of City Hall can no longer hide the awful secret lurking deep in the basement. Can Billy unearth the truth behind America’s demise and San Francisco’s survival—and will he destroy what little’s left of it in the process? Is he legend, the last man, or just another sucker on the vine?
Why We’re Excited About This Book: Subtitled “A Novel of Zombies, Booze, and Power Tools”, this novel from Nick Mamatas is a typically riotous and inventive mix of the undead, dystopian fiction and paranoid conspiracy. Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolos is the booze-soaked narrator, a failed writer making his living as a zombie trepanning specialist in San Francisco. The zombie uprising is old news, the zombies can’t climb the hills of the city, and whilst his life is full of crazies things aren’t too bad for Billy. But that doesn’t mean they will stay that way for long…
Described by the author as ‘an uncosy catastrophe’ (a typical tongue in cheek reference to John Wyndham’s novels), The Last Weekend is filled with satire, gags and tragedy, all told in Mamatas’s typical witty and self-referential style. It’s a book like nothing else out there; go give it a shot.
The Last Weekend is out now from Night Shade Books.
“Split Tongues is a lavishly designed volume of two new Kristi DeMeester stories.”
Two emotionally-charged pieces of dark fiction from Kristi DeMeester. The titular ‘Split Tongues’ spins a hallucinatory tale of a young woman’s fractured family and an eruption of bizarre religion into their lives. The shorter piece ‘The Dream Eater’ explores another mother-daughter relationship in a far-off rural environment. Includes wrap-around cover photo and three interior pieces by Natalia Drepina.
Why We’re Excited About This Book:
Kristi DeMeester may be a relatively new writer, but she’s already made her mark on the weird fiction scene, with appearances in Black Static, Shimmer and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume 1. Dim Shores are a publisher of high-quality, limited edition runs of dark, literary fiction. Combine the two and you get Split Tongues, a lavishly designed volume of two new DeMeester stories, the title story and ‘The Dream-Eater’.
Dim Shores Publications always include artwork as well as prose, and Split Tongues contains some haunting photographic images from the Russian artist Natalia Drepina. The book also comes with a print of the cover art. If you want a copy, act fast, as Dim Shores Publications are limited to 150 copies. Future releases from the press include works by Cody Goodfellow, Michael Cisco and S.P. Miskowski.
Split Tongues is available to pre-order from 13th January 2016 is out now from Dim Shores.
JAMES EVERINGTON