Dystopian Comedy

From the acclaimed PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize-winning author of A Naked Singularity, a shockingly hilarious novel that tackles, with equal aplomb, both America’s most popular sport and its criminal justice system. From Paterson, New Jersey, to Rikers Island to the streets of New York, Sergio de la Pava’s Lost Empress introduces listeners to a cast of characters unlike any other in modern fiction: dreamers and exiles, immigrants and night-shift workers, a lonely pastor and others on the fringes of society - each with their own impact on the fragile universe they navigate.

When gumshoe detective, Daxon Steele, finds he’s ankle deep in more than a chewed up wad, he quickly uncovers a sinister plot that sets out to exploit and destroy not just the skink-pushers who hide in the shadows of the Flatpack District, not just the poor guys, gals and others shaking their hips at Shooters & Hooters Club, but the entire population of Bryunsville. Will Dax overcome his prejudice and accept Gaz, a former stripper-bot, as his partner?

With these 13 transfixing, ingenious stories, Ben Marcus gives us timely dystopian visions of alienation in a modern world - cosmically and comically apt. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.

No name. No Clue. And a time old prophecy in a dysfunctional world ravaged by apathy. It’s all downhill from there when at the end of a noose. After a run in with a lunatic vagrant the two gallivant across the Lowland barrens when sparked by a sleazy advert for “Billy the Skids Truck Stop Depot”. Together they realize there might be more to life than first believed. More like muck mouth mutants, cannibalistic carnies, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and a 400-pound dictator with BO that would stop a truck. Everything is absurd.

Blood felt good in the enormous child’s hands.The 12-year-old never expected to turn his family into cherry red ragdolls, but the beatings had made him into a monster. It was all he knew. After being exiled by the vile inhabitants of the Lowlands, Preston “Porky” Sullivan planned his revenge for over 40 years. Hate. Loathing. Despise. Will it end in blood, or become yet another sad, moronic tale to dwindle in the raging abyss of the Lowlands?

Now the Congress of Animals is in control, unforgiving, and debating the fate of the planet’s most reviled species. The popular ruling: Exterminate humankind without exception. But a curious mare, coming of age, is making a case for a seemingly gentle person she longs to save - a wish for mercy that could once again unbalance the new and righteous nature of the world.