Böcker av Benjamin Harnett

"A hidden gem," where the stories read like "Black Mirror episodes"-in twelve engaging and original short stories, author Benjamin Harnett visits characters at the end of the world and chronicles their immense personal growth-figuratively and, sometimes, literally.Inventive and poetic, these stories bend genres, marrying tales of domestic woes, coming-of-age, love and friendship, loss and discovery, with fantastic and mysterious happenings on an individual, societal, and global scale. From the dangers of vaccine skepticism to the ethics of museum displays of looted artifacts, the stories in Gigantic hit important issues head on.From suburban New Jersey to subterranean caverns, from the mysteries of quantum entanglement to the attacks of homicidal squirrels, from young Communists to giant youngsters, every page is a journey to an unexpected milieu. In "Gigantic" the children of the world experience a growth spurt. In "The Snap" a woman has the power to replay moments in her life. In "The Weather Underground" a young cave guide is faced with his hardest path yet. "Delivery" is all about freeing yourself, and in "Tom Doolie" a very nasty man doesn't get what he deserves. "The Stick Man" is a tale of rebirth, while "Natalia" is about the face we present to the world. "This Little Piggy" went to market. "Nuts!" is crazy. "The Device" will recreate your most-prized possessions save one.Stories in this short collection were published in literary journals and on sites like Moon City Review, Queen Mob's Tea House, Brooklyn Quarterly, and Ducts. The story "Delivery" was selected by Longform as fiction of the week. It also includes a chapter-long preview of Harnett's "trippy, ambitious debut novel"(Edward Sung, for IndieReader) The Happy Valley, for readers interesting in reading more of Harnett's unique and genre-bending prose.

This volume collects 48 poems written and published between 2016 and 2020, grouped thematically by "the taxonomic roots of our world." Within these pages you will find meditations on nature, mortality, and love; also references to a wide range of literary and historical figures, as well as nods to the more modern: social media and memes.The overarching sensibility is one of attention: attention to detail, attention to feeling, attention to the vast beauties of existence and its contradictions. From poem to poem you will encounter talking animals, and mystic trees; search-engines and movie-stars; humor, pathos, and mystery.Poems in this collection have won literary prizes, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and appeared on Entropy and Queen Mob's Tea House, in Saranac Review, Alabama Literary Review, The Evansville Review, and elsewhere.Also includes an author's preface and extensive notes.

In this "heavily immersive" (Kirkus) kaleidoscopic voyage through the past, present, and future of the United States, a young girl uncovers a secret society, a middle-aged man searches for his lost first love, a group of teens invent a role-playing game, protests threaten to topple the government, and an eccentric lawyer and his young Vietnamese protégée re-open a dormant case. "A knotty, philosophical mystery dense with lingering regrets." -KirkusIn the early 1990s in Harmony Valley, a rural, Upstate New York village faded from its 18th and 19th century heyday, a group of teens engaged in an idiosyncratic role-playing game cross paths with June, a mysterious girl whose family has deep roots in the area, and Clyde Duane, a janitor who makes weekly visits to a strange room-the headquarters of a secret society-opening its door with a golden, serpent-headed key. Meanwhile an eccentric Utica lawyer pulls his young Vietnamese protégée into their firm's special case, which stretches back to the 1840s.Decades later, in 2034, as the United States is breaking apart and a new way of life taking shape, June has disappeared. The mystery of her disappearance inspires a journey back to "The Happy Valley," and a reevaluation of the past that exposes the dark personal and societal secrets betraying our founding myths.This atmospheric mystery, at turns gothic, poetic, cerebral, and funny, ranges from rural New York to the outer reaches of the Zebulon Galaxy; from the 1700s to the 4th decade of the 21st century. The hardcover edition includes a new Afterword by the author, with 66 full-page b&w illustrations by the author that "recall the excitability of middle-grade stories" (Kirkus), and includes an Appendix with a Timeline, and a detailed Reading Group Guide.