Dead Souls

For readers of Roberto Bolaño's Savage Detectives and Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent, this "sublime" and "delightfully unhinged" metaphysical mystery disguised as a picaresque romp follows one poet's spectacular fall from grace to ask a vital question: Is everyone a plagiarist? (Nicolette Polek, author of Imaginary Museums). A scandal has shaken the literary world. As the unnamed narrator of Dead Souls discovers at a cultural festival in central London, the offender is Solomon Wiese, a poet accused of plagiarism. Later that same evening, at a bar near Waterloo Bridge, our narrator encounters the poet in person, and listens to the story of Wiese's rise and fall, a story that takes the entire night—and the remainder of the novel—to tell. Wiese reveals his unconventional views on poetry, childhood encounters with "nothingness," a conspiracy involving the manipulation of documents in the public domain, an identity crisis, a retreat to the country, a meeting with an ex-serviceman with an unexpected offer, the death of an old poet, a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost, an entanglement with a secretive poetry cult, and plans for a triumphant return to the capital, through the theft of poems, illegal war profits, and faked social media accounts—plans in which our narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated. Dead Souls is a metaphysical mystery brilliantly encased in a picaresque romp, a novel that asks a vital question for anyone who makes or engages with art: Is everyone a plagiarist?

From the award-winning author of the acclaimed novel Poe comes an edgy and bone-chilling new novel. When Fiona Dunn is approached in a bar by a man who claims he’s the devil, she figures it’s just some kind of postmodern-slash-ironic pickup line. But a few drinks in, he offers her a wish in exchange for her immortal soul, and in addition, Fiona must perform a special favor for him whenever the time comes. Fiona finds the entire matter so absurd that she agrees. Bad idea. Not only does Fiona soon discover that she really was talking to the devil incarnate, but she’s now been initiated into a bizarre support group of similar “dead souls”—those who have done the same thing as Fiona on a whim, and who must spend their waking hours in absolute terror of that favor eventually being called in...and what exactly is required from each of them in order to give the devil his due.

Vigilantes appear in a housing complex in Edinburgh after police reveal a convicted child molester is living among them. Inspector Rebus, already up to his ears with a released serial killer, is put on the case.

A stranger arrives in a Russian backwater community with a bizarre proposition for the local landowners: cash for their "dead souls," the serfs who have died in their service. A comic masterpiece.

Collecting New Mutants: Dead Souls #1-6. They aren’t the X-Men-in-training anymore! The New Mutants are launching themselves headfirst into some of the creepiest corners of the Marvel Universe, going on the missions no one else will. But does they know what they’re really hunting for? The enigmatic Magik leads Wolfsbane, Rictor, Boom-Boom and Strong Guy into battle with paranormal threats that might just tear them apart! Braving an Arctic research base where everyone has mysteriously died! Helping a scared boy alone in the woods! Attempting to save a crashing plane with the passengers trying to stop them! Breaking into Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum! And attending a funeral for one of their own! All the while, the New Mutants wonder what their true mission is — and what they finally discover will shake them to their core!

When college professor Ellie McKay walks into the Maverick Bar in Farmington, New Mexico, late one evening, she plans to get drunk, not engaged. But within thirty minutes, she’s met cowboy Al Robison, he’s proposed to her, and she’s accepted. Al only knows that Ellie is attractive, vulnerable, and single; he doesn’t know that she has been on the run for weeks from a sociopath who killed her surgeon boyfriend in Pennsylvania and raped and tortured her. Reeling from the ordeal and deeply scarred emotionally and physically, Ellie flees first to Paris, where she seeks refuge in the bottle. Then, coming to her senses, she returns to Pittsburgh to resume her life and her career, believing she will be safe there. When that proves untrue, she takes to the road, no longer caring much what happens to her. Ellie’s escape route leads her to Santa Fe and then north to Farmington, where Al seems the safest bet. When she says yes to Al’s proposal, she knows only that he is a local rancher. She doesn’t know about Al’s own dark past, and she doesn’t tell him that her heart belongs to Doug Hansen, the detective who originally investigated the case. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The female ghost or yurei (literally, "faded spirit") is perhaps the most recognizable figure in Japanese horror culture, powerfully reinforced through the success of Japanese ghost films such as Ringu ("The Ring") and Ju-On ("The Grudge"). Their traditional appearance -- long black hair in disarray over the face, white skin and white burial clothing -- goes back to the very first painted scroll images of such creatures, of which the prototype is said to be Maruyama Okyo's painting of the ghost of the geisha Oyuki, from 1750. "Night Parade Of Dead Souls", the first book of its kind to be published in English, collects 70 of the most striking and disturbing Japanese ghost images from classic art, and offers an essential glimpse into the twilight strata of Japanese art, popular myth, and religious belief. The artists featured range from obscure painters to the venerated ukiyo-e artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, who created numerous ghost paintings around 1880. All the paintings, which range in date from 1750 to the early 20th century, are shown at full-page length, and in full colour throughout. The Ukiyo-e Master Series: presenting seminal collections of art by the greatest print-designers and painters of Edo-period and Meiji-period Japan.

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.

For eighteen-year-old Johnny Petrie, the dilapidated farmhouse in Maine meant a way out. When the letter arrived saying he had inherited an estate from a man he'd never heard of before, Johnny knew he could finally escape the hell of living with his religious zealot mother and drunken father. He didn't realize that the hell he was moving into would be far, far worse. The previous owner of the estate was Benjamin Conroy, a man obsessed with securing eternal life for himself and his family-even if he had to kill them to do it. Conroy's ultimate ritual, a perverse ceremony of blood and butchery, went hideously wrong, denying him the immortality he sought, leaving him and his family dead. But now that Johnny has arrived at the house, Conroy's spirit will have a second chance....