Out of Body

by Jeffrey Ford

Overview

After surviving a violent crime, a smalltown librarian begins leaving his body—and discovering dark secrets—in the award-winning author’s fantasy thriller.

Owen is a creature of habit. Every morning just after seven a.m., he picks up his coffee and sweet roll at the local deli where he would invariably see young Helen Roan behind the counter. Then one morning changes everything for Owen. That morning, he attempts to save Helen from being murdered . . . and fails.

Soon Owen discovers just how much the experience has changed him. What had once been routine sleep paralysis begins to transform into something far more disturbing. The trauma, it seems, is driving him out of his own body. The town he knows so well is suddenly revealed to him from a whole new perspective. Secrets are everywhere and demons fester behind closed doors.

Worst of all, Owen discovers a serial killer who has been preying on the area for over a century . . . one capable of traveling with him through his dreams.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250250148
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/04/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	170
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

JEFFREY FORD is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His short story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace,and A Natural History of Hell. Ford’s short fiction has appeared in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies. Both books and stories have been translated into nearly 20 languages worldwide. Ford is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Hayakawa Award, and Gran Prix de l’Imaginaire. He lives in Ohio in a hundred and twenty year old farm house surrounded by corn and soybean fields and teaches part time at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels Vanitas, The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. Ford has published over one hundred short stories, which have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies, from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edgar Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, and Japan’s Hayakawa’s SF Magazine Reader’s Award.
 
Ford’s fiction has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to writing, he has been a professor of literature and writing for thirty years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA in Creative Writing Program, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Ford lives in Ohio and currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Editorial Reviews

03/02/2020

Ford’s dark fantasy (after Ahab’s Return) is a thrilling supernatural slugfest acted out by sleeping souls in the “night world” of the astral plane. Owen Hapstead, a librarian in the quiet town of Westwend, survives a pistol-whipping during a convenience store holdup and (possibly as a result of the head trauma) discovers that his ethereal self can break free to roam the town while his corporeal self sleeps. During his discarnate jaunts he meets Melody, a fellow sleeper who mentors him through the night world’s possibilities and perils—among them “cutters,” beings who can fatally sever the intangible cord tethering the sleep self to the body, and an even more horrifying killer whose true identity comes as a late surprise and whose predations add frightening complexity and purpose to the couple’s nocturnal adventures. Ford’s elaboration of the night world is wildly imaginative and his depiction of Owen’s invisible explorations of it verges on the voyeuristic, adding unusual piquancy to the story. Readers will find this well-wrought tale of a mysterious world both eerie and bewitching. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. (June)

Publishers Weekly

04/01/2020

Small-town librarian Owen is a man of routine, until the day his regular morning stop at the local store is interrupted by a violent robbery, an event that leaves one person dead and Owen with PTSD in the form of sleep paralysis, during which he leaves his body behind and travels to the world of "the sleepers." As Owen is taught the rules of this night world by a new friend, he is both tempted and repulsed by the dark allure of voyeurism; his nocturnal adventures reveal the secrets of the townspeople he thought he knew so well. He soon discovers a centuries-old serial killer and is determined to use his powers to help put an end to the reign of terror. VERDICT Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award winner Ford (A Natural History of Hell, The Girl in the Glass) offers a short, captivating tale about strength and sacrifice. For fans of Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane, Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream, and Keith Donohue's The Motion of Puppets.

Library Journal