c a t a l og # 3 UNNAMED PRESS fall 2015 | winter 2016
Connect with new voices from the Unnamed Press
JEREMIE GUEZ “Devoured in a sitting and leaves you reeling”
meghan tifft “Funny, b i z a r r e , and emotionally resonant” “W h imsical and wrenching”
BETTe ADRIAANSE “A charming, heartfelt re buke to corporate sameness and artificial relationships”
robert kloss
“Traces of Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, and the rattling bones of Bill Faulkner”
kristine ong muslim matt kish “ Renews our age-old love of expressive handmade imagery” “Beautifully creepy”
fabienne josaphat “Challenging political dynasties”
janice pariat
“An unhinged and utter delight””
“A startlingly brilliant and compassionate writer”
carly j. hallman
AUGUST 2015
THE long fire MEGHAN TIFFT Paperback, Fiction | $16.00 978-1-939419-44-6 Pub Date: 8/25/15 Rights Available: French, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Turkish, Swedish, Mandarin
Natalie used to eat the pages of paperback thrillers
as she read them. Now she’s trapped in the middle of a mystery that threatens to unravel her life.
Featuring the unlikeliest detective since Jonathan Let-
hem’s Motherless Brooklyn, The Long Fire is a thriller “Equal parts funny, bizarre, and emotionally resonant, Meghan Tifft’s beautifully written and wholly original debut novel tells the wild tale of a woman who will put anything in her mouth. I devoured it.” — Seth Greenland, author of Shining City and I Regret Everything “Meghan Tifft’s auspicious first novel is gripping and beautifully written, both whimsical and wrenching.‘It reminded me of a book I ate once,’the protagon is t s a y s o f he r p ar e nt s’ l iv e s. The Long Fire will remind you of nothing else.” — Laurence Klavan, author of The Family Unit and Other Fantasies “An unusual, strikingly written novel about a young woman’s desire for u n d e r s t a n d i n g and love and how that longi n g r e m a i n s f a m i l i a r i n e v e n t h e most eccentric of circumstances.” — Kirkus Reviews
about family secrets locked inside a secretive world: the American gypsy community. Natalie’s stalled-out college
education, her job at the local news station, even her dys-
functional relationship with her ex-boyfriend: Natalie’s never had much chance to be normal. Growing up, her
life was dominated by an abusive and controlling mother who recently perished in a house fire. Her older broth-
er, a drug addict, disappeared when she was still a kid. Underlying all of this is Natalie’s urge to eat the ined-
ible, from pencil shavings to foam peanuts to plastic doll parts. Her compulsion, called Pica, helps fill the void left
by a traumatic childhood, but it can’t shield her from a
cryptic voicemail that implicates her mother’s estranged gypsy family in her gruesome and fiery death.
Meghan Tifft teaches English at the University of
Colorado, Colorado Springs. The Long Fire is her first novel.
september 2015
THE REVELATOR ROBERT KLOSS art by matt kish Paperback, Fiction | $16.00 978-1-939419-50-7 Pub Date: 09/15/15 Rights Available: Contact Kent Wolf at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin
“The Revelator carries traces of Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, and the rattling bones of Bill Faulkner…I felt transported mind, body and soul to some weird liminal space where a prophet can emerge from the dirt and speed of things, from the darkness in us all brought forth by a ready-made zealot who can turn on a dime. Read it and weep—because this novel turns us inside out in the best way.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Small Backs of Children and The Chronology of Water “I’d be hard pressed to think of a young novelist I admire more than Robert Kloss. An heir of Melville, Faulkner, and McCarthy, Kloss stands unflinching before conventional history, rich with ambition and aesthetic daring. To read one of his books is to be thrilled anew with the possibilities of contemporary fiction.” —Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods
From the darkest reaches of 19th century America, Robert Kloss channels a prophetic voice to reimagine the founding of the Mormon Church. Featuring original cover art by Matt Kish (Moby Dick in Pictures, Heart of Darkness) as well as exclusive interior illustrations. Charismatic and conflicted, Joseph grows up carousing with conmen, crooks, and itinerant preachers at a time when utopic fantasies and wild ambition are drawing Americans westward in droves. Haunted in his dreams by a dark beast—an angel that condemns most of conventional society to hell—Joseph sets out to find a new way of life. Soon, he has attracted a congregation of believers. They squat in backyards and linger outside of towns, seeking the funding to print Joseph’s book of revelations. With swelling coffers, a temple is built. The ministry is rich. But Joseph’s church is at odds with the “gentiles” living among them, not to mention the federal government. As Joseph and his followers are expelled from their camps and pushed further west, the church grows, and so too its troubles. And yet, despite lost children, fraying relations with his family, and constant challenges to his authority, the relentless beast remains at Joseph’s side—until the shocking end.
Robert Kloss is the author of one previous novel, The Alligators of Abraham, a novella, How the Days of Love and Diphtheria; and the hybrid genre work, The Desert Places, co-authored with Amber Sparks and illustrated by Matt Kish. Matt Kish is a self-taught artist and librarian. He is the artist behind two books illustrating every page of two classics, MobyDick and Heart of Darkness (both of which were published by Tin House). He lives in Ohio with his wife, their two frogs, and far too many books.
november 2015
EYES FULL OF EMPTY JEREMIE GUEZ TRANSLATED BY EDWARD GAUVIN Paperback | Fiction $16.00 978-1-939419-43-9 Pub Date: 11/10/15 Rights Available: Contact Laure Pécher at Agence Astier-Pécher
“JEREmie Guez strikes again,” —Macha SEry, Le Monde “Tense, electric, carried by a beatnik rhythm, Eyes
Full of Empty is devoured in a sitting and leaves you reeling.” —Alexandre Fillon, Livres Hebdo “In the weaving of a classic noir novel, JEREmie Guez scores. An echo of Chandler, but with his own unique voice, he is bringing more and more.” —Michel Abescat, TELErama
From France’s hottest young crime writer, hardboiled noir with the pace of a Chandler novel and the French Algerian literary legacy of Camus. Idir is not your typical Parisian detective. The son of an Algerian immigrant who made good, Idir’s middle class upbringing places him at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to his rich friends from university, while his street smarts make him just intimidating enough to handle the secret problems of Paris’s elite. Put another way, Idir knows precisely how much pressure to exert on behalf of his wealthy clients, while keeping things low profile. That is, until Oscar Crumley, a powerful media mogul, hires Idir to find his missing younger half-brother, Thibaut. Sent on a wild goose chase through highs and lows of the Paris underground, Idir must navigate upper crust treachery and entrenched criminal rings to discover the truth. Echoing the headlong impulsiveness of Chandler’s Marlowe, and deftly translated by Edward Gauvin, Eyes Full of
Empty introduces us to an entirely new kind of Parisian mystery.
Jérémie Guez was born in Paris in 1988 and has been hailed as the rising star of contemporary French noir. His two previous novels, Balancé dans les cordes and Paris la unit, were awarded the 2013 SNCF du Polar and 2012 Plume Libre prizes, respectively. Eyes Full of Empty is the highly anticipated first English translation of Jérémie Guez’s work. He lives in Paris. Edward Gauvin is a prolific translator and the recipient of numerous awards. His work has been featured most recently in The New York Times, Tin House, Best European Fiction 2014, PEN America, Words Without Borders , and Gigantic , among others. He lives in San Jose, CA.
december 2015
YEAR OF THE GOOSE CARLY J. HALLMAN Paperback, Fiction | $16.00 978-1-939419-51-4 Pub Date: 12/08/15 Rights Available: French, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Turkish, Swedish, Mandarin
The era of the tycoon has reached its climax in China,
and the lives of a snack food heiress, hair extension magnate, and the nation’s most cherished goose are about to collide.
Junk food scion Papa Hui’s beloved pet goose is not just the icon for an empire, it is the company’s sole inspiration. Desperate for her father’s approval, and bitterly at
“Year of the Goose is a completely fresh and original comic novel overflowing with mayhem, sly and mordant humor, bloodthirsty slapstick, corporate malfeasance, hair
extentions,
Watermelon
Wigglers,
an enlightened turtle and a malevolent goose. It is an unhinged and utter delight.” — Mark Haskell Smith, author of Raw: A
Love Story and Naked at Lunch
odds with the goose, Kelly Hui takes the reins of a government-sponsored health initiative, only to watch it be-
come a gruesome fat camp for children, from which there are few survivors. Meanwhile, hair tycoon Wang Xilai is a perverse modern day Gatsby, and his life is unravel-
ing as quickly as his prized hair extensions. These are
the characters whose lives revolve around the success of the Bashful Goose Snack Company, China’s most profit-
able corporation. Out of the absurdist satirical tradition of Mo Yan, comes a hard-hitting yet whimsical portrayal
of China’s new “tycoon culture,” from a darkly hilarious and original new voice.
Carly J. Hallman has a degree in English writing and rhetoric from St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX.
She lives in Beijing. Year of the Goose is her first novel.
december 2015
RUS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE BETTE ADRIAANSE Paperback, Fiction | $16.00 978-1-939419-53-8 Pub Date: 12/15/15 Rights Available: Contact Chris Wellbelove at Greene & Heaton
Debut novelist Adriaanse weaves together intersecting lives to create a mini-epic;—a charming, heartfelt re-
buke to corporate sameness and artificial relationships. In an unnamed European city, a neighborhood’s local postal worker surveys the struggling lives around her
with an omniscient eye. There’s Mrs. Blue, compulsively stealing hand creams and obsessing over a doomed soap Bette Adriaanse is a writer and a visual artist.
opera; the Secretary whose failures at making small talk
department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy
extreme conclusions; a delivery man whose immigrant
in creative writing from Oxford University in
attempts to make it big; and an aging bachelor, ham-
for literature and philosophy, and she exhibits
the Queen might redefine the trajectory of his life (if he
eryone Else is her first novel. She was born in
is Rus—a happy-go-lucky man-child—who learns that
Bette graduated from the Image and Language
(much less human connections) drive her to surprisingly
in Amsterdam in 2008 and received her M.A.
status and general bad luck constantly undermine his
2010. She has published fiction in magazines
pered by devastating paranoia, whose chance to meet
her visual work internationally. Rus Like Ev-
can just hold it together long enough). And finally, there
Amsterdam in 1984 and lives in London.
there is such a thing as taxes, and that he owes quite a
lot. Stumbling into the real world, Rus gets a dreary of-
fice job, a demanding girlfriend, and a home that is not
an illegal squat. But he misses the simple, albeit lonely
life he once led. As it turns out, dreams of the parents who abandoned him, and in particular the submarine on which his father supposedly sails, may save Rus from becoming like everyone else.
january 2016
SEAHORSE JANICE PARIAT Paperback Fiction | $16.00 978-1-939419-55-2 Pub Date: 01/12/16 Rights Available: Contact Maria Cardona at Pontas Agency
A sweeping tale of love, memory, and nostalgia, mov-
ing through 1990s New Delhi and present-day London, Seahorse tracks one man’s undying love for his former professor across time and place.
Nem, a college student in New Delhi, is still reeling from the loss of his childhood friend when he falls in love with
Nicholas, an enigmatic young professor from London. “Janice Pariat’s first novel has the piercing insight and linguistic felicity of her short fiction. It is an ardent and highly accomplished meditation on art, love and sexuality.” — The Sunday Guardian “Janice’s stories announce the arrival of a startlingly brilliant and compassionate writer whose book is as haunting as the world it emerges from.” — Siddhartha Deb
The affair is passionate, but brief, and after Nicholas returns to London, Nem continues with his life. He soon
finds success as a critic in India’s burgeoning art world
and when he is invited to speak to artists in London, the past is suddenly resurrected. While Nem is both exhilarated and terrified at the thought of seeing Nicholas, he
quickly finds himself immersed in London’s contemporary art scene. But when Nem sees Myra, the woman introduced to him in India as Nicholas’s sister, nothing will be the same.
Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Col-
lection of Short Stories (Random House India, 2012).
She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi (Indian National Academy of Letters) and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013. Seahorse is her first novel. She divides her time between Italy and India.
january 2016
AGE OF BLIGHT KRISTINE ONG MUSLIM art by alessandra hogan Paperback, Fiction | $14.00 978-1-939419-56-9 Pub Date: 01/12/16 Rights Available: French, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Turkish, Swedish, Mandarin
In this collection of speculative, horror-tinged stories, human cruelty, in all of its abundant diversity, compels humanity toward the final stages of the
Anthropocene.Illustrated throughout with charcoal drawings by artist Alessandra Hogan.
What if the end of man isn’t caused by some cataclysmic Kristine Ong Muslim is the award-winning author of several short story collections. She
grew up and continues to live in a small farming town in the southern Philippines.
event, but by the nature of humans themselves? In
Age of Blight , a young scientist’s harsh and unnecessary experiments on monkeys are recorded for posterity; children are replaced by their doppelgangers, which emerge like flowers in their backyards; and two
men standing on opposing cliff faces bear witness to
each other ’s terrifying ends. Age of Blight explores a kind of post-future, in which the human race is finally
abandoned to the end of its history. Muslim’s poetic vignettes explore the nature of dystopia itself, often
to darkly humorous effect, while artist Alessandra Hogan’s illustrations provide these short tales with a beautifully creepy atmosphere.
february 2016
DANCING IN THE BARON’S SHADOW F A B I E N N E J O S A PHAT Paperback, Fiction | $16.00 978-1-939419-57-6 Pub Date: 02/09/16 Rights Available: Contact Charlotte Gusay at Charlotte Gusay Literary Agency
Fabienne Josaphat received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Florida International
University. Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow is her first novel. She lives in Miami.
Haiti, 1965. Nicolas, a bourgeois socialist is sent to the notorious Fort Dimanche prison by dictator Papa Doc’s militia, and his brother Raymond must try to save him. Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc or Baron Samedi, is the impoverished island nation’s brutal dictator. Relentless curfews, and Papa Doc’s terrifying Tonton Macoutes militia, have made life in Port-au-Prince increasingly difficult for struggling taxi driver Raymond L’Eveillé. But it is Raymond’s brother, Nicolas, a wealthy professor at the local university, who is stirring up trouble. After a tip-off from a disgruntled student, Nicolas’ home is raided and his secret anti-Duvalier manifesto discovered, landing him in Fort Dimanche, a notorious, disease-ridden prison many enter but few ever leave. Raymond resolves to get himself arrested as part of a death-defying plan to break his brother out of jail. Fabienne Josaphat’s electric prose brings to life a horrifying and not so distant time in Haiti’s past, describing in rigorous detail the shocking realities of life in the Baron’s shadow. A page turning jail break thriller—sure to be one of the year ’s best.
COMING IN SPRING 2016 March 2016: Deep Singh Blue by Ranbir Singh Sidhu
june 2016: Arcade by Drew Nellins Smith
Set in the 1980s, Deep Singh is a Spinoza-loving Indian-
A young man wrestling with his sexual identity becomes
famous for its large KKK rallies who begins an affair
anonymous sex.
American teenager in a rural Northern California town
obsessed with a video peep show where people meet for
with an older married woman.
978-1-939419-72-9
978-1-939419-68-2
April 2016: The Border of Paradise by Esme Weijun Wang
June 2016: The Sadness by Benjamin Rybeck A down-on-her-luck young woman returns home to Maine in
A remarkable multigenerational novel about the inheritance
search of her father, but instead falls into a mystery that in-
tury Brooklyn, Taiwan, and Northern California.
movie star, and the cult film that connects them.
of madness in an iconoclastic family set in mid-twentieth cen-
volves her movie-obsessed twin brother, a missing woman, a
978-1-939419-69-9
978-1-939419-70-5
April 2016: Ear to the Ground by David L. Ulin and Paul Kolsby
July 2016: Neon Green by Margaret Wappler
A devastating earthquake is about to hit Los Angeles, and
A spaceship lands in the backyard of a family of en-
producers rush to finish a blockbuster about the looming
knows what they are after.
as a seismologist wunderkind fights to stop it, Hollywood
vironmentalists in 1990s suburban Illinois, and no one
natural disaster.
978-1-939419-71-2
978-1-939419-73-6
May 2016: How to Succeed in Mexican Jail: Based on the actual cell-phone diaries of a dude who spent three years in jail in Cancun! The first book in our Accidental Tourist Guide series written by the Jack Handey of Mexican jail. 978-1-939419-83-5
May 2016: Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday by Debbie Graber This hilarious collection of short stories offers an unsparing and comedic look at post-slacker office life. 978-1-939419-84-2
July 2016: The Shooting by James Boice With Boice’s fourth novel, The Shooting, the author delivers
what no American novelist has yet thought to do: a sprawling, fearless, and ground-breaking portrait of gun violence in America.
978-1-939419-74-3
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