Jason Heller

"A dense forest of might'ves." That's how the Willesden Kid, the main character in China Miéville's short story "The Dowager of Bees," describes the weird world he's found himself in: A world much like ours, only ominously askew. The Willesden Kid is a newcomer to an underground circuit of gambling. ...

Everything from the blockbuster National Treasure to the TV series Sleepy Hollow has trafficked in the idea that America might not be exactly what it appears. Similarly, Austin Grossman's new novel, Crooked, imagines a United States founded not only on democracy and independence, but on the murky foundation of dark ...

Six years ago I picked up a book called Sandman Slim by an author, Richard Kadrey, whose name was only vaguely familiar to me. I bought it on a whim. I'm happy I did. Turns out Kadrey wrote Metrophage — a book I'd heard about but never actually got around ...

Shakespeare references, a cappella intermissions and sprawling 10-minute tracks aren't what first spring to mind when thinking about punk albums. That's because most punk albums aren't remotely like Titus Andronicus' The Most Lamentable Tragedy — unless you count a handful of ambitious, legendary predecessors such as The Clash's ...

Like most things mystical, tarot cards aren't given much mainstream credence in our Internet age. Rachel Pollack, however, knows the magic they still contain.

Besides being simply another multiple-award-winning fantasy author, Pollack is a world-renowned authority on tarot. It's no shock, then, that her new book richly overlaps these areas ...

Jason Isbell's relationship with the South — like that of his former band, Drive-By Truckers — is complicated. An Alabama native, Isbell has continued to embrace his Southern identity since leaving the group in 2007 and embarking on a solo career. But what exactly does that Southern identity ...

There's nothing pretty about The Unnoticeables. The novel's author, Robert Brockway, is a senior editor at Cracked.com, and he brings that publication's legendarily irreverent wit to this raunchy, rollicking tale of punk rock, gruesome horror and pop-culture satire. Lurking beneath that layer of grime and spilled beer, though, are ...

Books about books can be tricky things, a fact that Erika Swyler slyly acknowledges in her generous yet somewhat disappointing debut novel, The Book of Speculation. In it, a young librarian named Simon Watson finds himself in the midst of numerous erosions and breakdowns: His family has all but disintegrated ...

When it came out last year, Beth Cato's The Clockwork Dagger was a fresh, welcome addition to the steampunk canon. Still, it left many questions unanswered: The novel's protagonist, Octavia Leander — a young healer with a tragic past — hadn't grasped the scope of her magical powers. And ...

Erika Wennerstrom's voice cuts deep: It's warm yet gritty, throaty yet sweet, gigantic yet intimate. As the singer-guitarist of the rootsy band Heartless Bastards, she's found the perfect vessel for that voice — a mix of country-rock twang, classic-rock heroics and restless ambition that's not afraid to incorporate psychedelia, ...

From H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King, horror writers have found frightening inspiration in small-town New England. It's no surprise, then, that the works of both authors are cited in A Head Full of Ghosts, the latest novel by Boston-based writer Paul Tremblay. Accordingly, A Head Full of Ghosts is also ...

In The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi's best-selling, Hugo- and Nebula-winning debut, the author imagines a 23rd century in which the forces of commerce have run amok over the basic, biological building blocks of life. In his equally powerful sophomore novel, The Water Knife, he takes a similar approach to an ...

Kirsty Logan is no stranger to secrets. The Glasgow-based author's award-winning short-story collection, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales, beautifully brought together myth, magic, and the muted fantasy of the everyday. It also dealt with curious topics like circuses and worldwide floods — two things that resurface in her captivating ...

Some of the best (and worst) novels in speculative fiction stick to a basic, tried-and-true approach: Lay out the rules of your imaginary world, then throw your protagonist against those rules. Nicole Kornher-Stace does exactly this, winningly, in her latest novel, Archivist Wasp.

The book's main character, Wasp, is an ...

Orson Welles thought he was ruined after the 1938 broadcast of his adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The 23-year-old actor-director's star was just beginning to rise, but the panic caused by the radio show sparked an immediate backlash. Major newspapers reported on cases of mass ...

Before Brian Catling's debut novel, The Vorrh, was published in his native England in 2012, he'd already racked up an impressive list of credentials — just not as a fiction writer. His poetry, sculpture, paintings and performance-art pieces have been getting international acclaim for decades.

Catling turned to The Vorrh ...

The end of the world sure is taking a long time. Ever since the breakout success of Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel The Road, America has been degraded, devastated, and decimated time and time again — at least, on the page. Granted, McCarthy didn't invent post-apocalyptic fiction. But he helped spark ...

Raw, belligerent, dissonant and powerful: That's just the tip of the noise-rock iceberg when it comes to Metz's self-titled debut from 2012. Released by Sub Pop, Metz helped inject a fresh dose of fierce punk spirit into the record label that brought the world Nirvana, but has lately focused more ...

Indie rock was conceived to be nondescript, but few indie legends come as dressed down as Mac McCaughan. For 25 years, the Superchunk frontman and Merge Records co-founder has quietly made some of the loudest pop in history, meanwhile keeping his profile inversely proportional to his ...

History may be written by the victors, but alternate history is written by anyone with a lust for the past — both established and imagined. Molly Tanzer's imagination is keener than almost anyone's. Her new novel, Vermilion is a work of alt-history that finds a fresh kind of magic in ...