New Releases by Jeffrey Ford

The story of a secret, privately funded, late 60''s space mission as told by the science fiction writer who was aboard. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"A Terror", by Jeffrey Ford, is a dark fantasy/horror novelette about a strange encounter Miss Emily Dickinson has one early September morning, and the consequences for her and others. "Ford captures the rhythms and attitudes of [Emily Dickinson''s] Victorian times in a manner that is simultaneously vintage and eternal."--Locus At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This collection of unabridged, spectacular steampunk speculations includes several classics of the genre. These tales will sweep you away with their amazing automata, daring dirigibles, grinding gears, and scintillating steam as days long gone are infused with tech. In “Smoke City,” by Christopher Barzak, a woman comes to terms with the loss of her family to the child labor mills of the city. A doctor tries to cope with a strange plague terrorizing the citizens of London in Jeffrey Ford’s “Dr. Lash Remembers.” In “Machine Maid,” by Margo Lanagan, a sexually repressed wife gets revenge on her husband through a robot maid. Friedrich Engels strives to spread class revolution as a labor organizer for factory cyborg matchstick girls in Arbeitskraft, by Nick Mamatas. In “Ninety Thousand Horses,” by Sean McMullen, an acclaimed mathematician, with a murky past, is forced to spy for an industrialist prior to becoming Britain’s foremost rocket expert during World War II. An orphan boy builds an automaton, in an aging scientist’s laboratory, that becomes more than an idle companion in Cherie Priest’s “Tanglefoot (A Clockwork Century Story).” In “Clockwork Fairies,” by Cat Rambo, an English aristocrat courts a woman who would rather spend her time in a laboratory than at high society balls. At Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, in 1893, an Algerian bodyguard crosses paths with a disoriented naked man in Chris Roberson’s “Edison’s Frankenstein.”. In “A Serpent in the Gears,” by Margaret Ronald, a dirigible journeys to an isolated land and discovers people and animals merged with machine parts. Radio Jones finds a way to listen in on the Naked Brains, who rule the world, while Rudy the Red fights against the oppressors in “Zeppelin City,” by Michael Swanwick& Eileen Gunn.

“Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen….A rare and wonderful talent.” —Jonathan Carroll, author of The Wooden Sea Eclectic is certainly an adjective that can be used to describe the work of the phenomenal Jeffrey Ford—along with imaginative, provocative, mesmerizing, and brilliant. His powerful dark fantasy, The Physiognomy, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; his novel, The Girl in the Glass, won the Edgar® Award, mystery and crime fiction’s most prestigious prize. Crackpot Palace is Ford’s fourth superb collection of short fiction, and in it, his prodigious talent shines as brightly as ever. Here are twenty tales both strange and wonderful, filled with mad scientists, vampires, lost souls, and Native American secrets, from an author who has been glowingly compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr (The Alienist).

En 1960, una pequeña comunidad de Long Island se ve afectada por extraños sucesos. Tras las huellas de estos se encuentran un joven y su hermano mayor, Jim, que pasan los últimos días del verano sumergidos en un ambiente asfixiante, con un padre pluriempleado y una madre alcohólica.Un merodeador anda suelto por las calles y un hombre observa amenazador a los dos jóvenes desde un coche frente a su casa. Pero cuando un chico del pueblo desaparece sin dejar rastro, ambos tienen claro que el culpable es el señor White. La sorpresa llega cuando descubren que Mary, la hermana pequeña de los chicos, mueve de manera misteriosa figuritas en una maqueta del pueblo, mostrando sucesos antes de que ocurran.

Strane cose succedono in una tranquilla cittadina di Long Island. È solo l''inizio di una scia di delitti e avvenimenti misteriosi. Due ragazzini decidono di indagare, guidati dalle premonizioni della sorella più piccola. Ma una volta scoperta l''identità del killer, i tre si ritrovano nel suo mirino e quello che era iniziato come un gioco si trasforma in un incubo destinato a segnare la loro infanzia.

Arnaquer des riches crédules en organisant chez eux des séances de spiritisme est une chose, être soi-même la victime d''une sorte d''hallucination inexplicable en est une autre. Schell, illusionniste de talent, bien placé pour être le plus sceptique des hommes, a pourtant bien vu dans le reflet d''une baie vitrée l''image d''une fillette disparue. Fantôme ? Hallucination ? Mauvaise farce ? Dans l''Amérique en crise puritaine et hypocrite de la prohibition et alors qu''en Europe les thèses nazies donnent de la voix, Schell, accompagné d''un immigré mexicain de dix-sept ans et d''un ancien hercule de foire, refuse de trancher et décide de retrouver l''enfant. Pouvait-il imaginer qu''il allait, par sa curiosité, heurter de plein fouet un monde obscur et terrifiant ?...

The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair -- and only a privileged few have risen above it: the exorbitantly wealthy ... and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant, owes his salvation to master grifter Thomas Schell. Together with Schell''s gruff and powerful partner, they sail comfortably through hard times, scamming New York''s grieving rich with elaborate, ingeniously staged séances -- until an impossible occurrence changes everything. While "communing with spirits," Schell sees an image of a young girl in a pane of glass, silently entreating the con man for help. Though well aware that his otherworldly "powers" are a sham, Schell inexplicably offers his services to help find the lost child -- drawing Diego along with him into a tangled maze of deadly secrets and terrible experimentation. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery and a stunningly evocative portrait of Depression-era New York, The Girl in the Glass is a masterly literary adventure from a writer of exemplary vision and skill.

A mysterious and richly evocative novel, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque tells the story of portraitist Piero Piambo, who is offered a commission unlike any other. The client is Mrs. Charbuque, a wealthy and elusive woman who asks Piambo to paint her portrait, though with one bizarre twist: he may question her at length on any topic, but he may not, under any circumstances, see her. So begins an astonishing journey into Mrs. Charbuque''s world and the world of 1893 New York society in this hypnotically compelling literary thriller.

There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry—and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it. . . . There is a life lived beneath the water—among rotted buildings and bloated corpses—by those so overburdened by the world''s demands that they simply give up and go under. . . . In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction''s most original artists.

In New York''s Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family''s modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness—until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood. Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police—while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys'' night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement. Not since Ray Bradbury''s classic Dandelion Wine has a novel so richly evoked the dark magic of small-town boyhood. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a masterful re-creation of a unique time and place, a celebration of youth, and a poignant and disquieting portrait of home and family—all balancing on a razor''s edge separating reality from the unsettlingly remarkable—The Shadow Year is a monumental new work from one of contemporary fiction''s most fearless and inventive artists.

Are you sick of counting the hours until retirement-or vacation-or Friday? If this sounds oddly familiar, and you want-or need-more control over your work life, then ask yourself the following questions: Do you want better performance reviews, better job assignments, and bigger raises? Have you just been promoted and you need to improve your on-time performance? Have you just been promoted and you are now managing other people? Do you want to start successfully delivering everything you are supposed to deliver, and do it on time and under budget? In this clear, concise guide, coauthors Jeffrey and Laurie Ford explain how to achieve outstanding work performance. They describe how to avoid the nine reasons that prevent people from being star performers. For those ready to move beyond the obstacles and gain an edge at work, Deadline Busting provides more than eighty proven and easy-to-use tips. The results will be a rapid, stress-free improvement in the quality of your work.

Roman de science-fiction. Nouvelles.

In the land of the Well-Built City, Physiognomist First Class Cley studies the body''s shape to determine character, uncover secrets, even foretell the future. But swirling around him are dark pools of arrogance and corruption, and before long the privileged physiognomist must confront the surprising truth about himself and his profession.

A fable, a nightmare, a vision, a mystery -- superbly rich imaginative fiction at its best. New York, 1893, and society portrait painter Piero Piambo feels his artistic ambition waning, even while he immortalizes the city''s nouveaux riches in oil paints. But then he receives a bizarre and lucrative commission, to paint the mysterious Mrs Charbuque. The catch is that he is not allowed to see her, and so Piambo sits before a screen as his sitter tells him of her life, dreams, and fears -- clues from which he must divine her visage. As he works, a series of murders plagues the city -- deaths that at first seem accidental. And, as Piambo''s masterpiece takes shape, his relationship with Mrs Charbuque grows ever more tangled...while her deranged husband becomes hellbent on some inexplicable vengeance.