Last Days

by Brian Evenson, Peter Straub (Introduction)

Overview

To find a cult leader’s killer, a former detective must literally give up his body in this award-winning work of literary horror—“A dark treat” (AV Club). Nominated for the Shirley Jackson award and winner of the ALA/RUSA Best Horror novel, Brian Evenson’s Last Days is an intense, profoundly unsettling down-the-rabbit-hole detective noir. Kline is a former detective who’s cool head in the face of a brutal amputation makes him the perfect candidate to infiltrate a dark cult that believes amputation brings one closer to God. Kline is tasked with finding the cult leader’s killer. But to get to the truth, Kline must lose himself—literally—one body part at a time. Last Days was first published in 2003 as a limited edition novella titled The Brotherhood of Mutilation. Its success led Evenson to expand the story into a full-length novel. In doing so, he has created a work that’s disturbing, deeply satisfying, and completely original.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566894241
Publisher:	Coffee House Press
Publication date:	02/01/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	196,630
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Peter Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. His two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House, were international bestsellers. Two of Peter’s most recent novels, Lost Boy Lost Girl and In the Night Room, were winners of the Bram Stoker Award. In 2006, he was given the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award. Peter and his wife live in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

The clinical tone with which Evenson is able to traverse such situations, and the strange stark architecture of their world, makes even the most insidious or repulsive situations seem plausible, mathematical, nearby. Nothing is real, so everything is real.” —VICE

“Evenson offers a distinctive spin on the private investigator genre, finding moments of horror and humor along the way.” —Signature

"The deceptively simple prose keeps the book brisk and even gripping as its puzzles grow more craggy and complex. This is Evenson's singular, Poe-like gift: He writes with intelligence and a steady hand, even when his characters decide to lop their own limbs off." —Time Out New York

“[Last Days] is a novel that must be read by fans of mysteries, noir, and horror if they want to have an idea of what those genres can be. . . . Brian Evenson is the kind of writer who should be rediscovered by every generation.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“Last Days . . . is a detective novel and a cult novel (in that it is about cults—though perhaps the other designation would work too) and a brutal horror novel and a fine work of minimalist literary fiction.” —LitHub

From the Publisher