Jeffrey Ford ist ein amerikanischer Schriftsteller, der für seine umfassende Vorstellungskraft, seinen Witz und seine tiefe Faszination für ineinander verschachtelte Geschichten gefeiert wird. Sein Werk durchquert meisterhaft Genres und verbindet Elemente von Fantasy, Science-Fiction und Mystery zu einzigartig fesselnden Erzählungen. Ford's unverwechselbare Stimme zeichnet sich durch literarische Anspielungen und eine tiefe Auseinandersetzung mit der Tradition der fantastischen Literatur aus. Leser fühlen sich von seiner Fähigkeit angezogen, immersive Welten zu erschaffen, die unerwartete Reisen und eindrucksvolle Bilder versprechen.
Der Roman thematisiert das Erwachsenwerden in den 60er Jahren in Amerika und verbindet dabei phantastische Elemente mit einer tiefgründigen Coming-of-Age-Geschichte. Die Erzählung entfaltet sich vor dem Hintergrund gesellschaftlicher Umbrüche und persönlicher Herausforderungen, während die Protagonisten ihre Identität und ihren Platz in einer sich verändernden Welt suchen. Jeffrey Ford gelingt es, die Magie des Alltags mit den komplexen Emotionen des Heranwachsens zu verweben und eine nostalgische, aber auch kritische Perspektive auf diese prägende Zeit zu bieten.
In the far future, the world is divided into two cultures, each controlled by
the mysterious and powerful Commission. One person finds a route between the
two cultures — what he discovers changes everything and threatens more than
his life.
There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry—and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it. . . .There is a life lived beneath the water—among rotted buildings and bloated corpses—by those so overburdened by the world's demands that they simply give up and go under. . . .In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction's most original artists.
Set in 1893 New York, the narrative follows portraitist Piero Piambo as he embarks on a unique commission from the enigmatic Mrs. Charbuque. The unusual stipulation that he cannot see her while questioning her leads to an intriguing exploration of her character and the complexities of high society. This richly evocative novel weaves a hypnotic tale that delves into themes of perception, identity, and the intricacies of human connection, creating a compelling literary thriller.
A group of ramblers are taken to an idyllic other world. But things are not so
simple and they find themselves at the centre of a battle between opposing
spirits.
"Christmas and Other Horrors" is an anthology that explores the darker side of the winter solstice through original stories. It invites readers to embrace the eerie and horrific traditions of the season, featuring contributions from notable authors. The collection weaves together chilling tales that contrast festive joy with unsettling encounters.
The nightmare metropolis called the Well-Built City exists because the satanic genius and Master, Drachton Below, wished it so. And few within its confines hold the power of Physiognomist First Class Cley. With scalpels, calipers, and the other instruments of his science, Cley can divine good and evil, determine character and intelligence, uncover dark secrets and foretell a person's destiny, through the careful study of facial and bodily features. But now the Master has ordered the great physiognomist out of the City on a seemingly trivial assignment into the rural hinterlands. but there, removed from Below's omnipresent scrutiny, even the most loyal servant of logic and order can fall prey to seductions of the flesh and spirit. And in this strange and unfamiliar place possessing terrors uniquely its own, there are stark truths awaiting the eminent Cley--and inescapable revelations that could shatter his perceptions of himself, his profession, and his world.
The toast of 1893 New York society, the portraitist Piero Piambo has his pick of choice assignments. Acclaimed by his peers and his "betters," he is a fixture in the city's most opulent salons, yet he fears he has sold his soul to arrive there. But then comes a commission unlike any other -- one that will test Piambo's talents, his will...and his sanity. The client is a Mrs. Charbuque, and the offer she makes to the artist is as bizarre and intriguing as it is financially rewarding. Piambo must paint the lady's portrait, and for the service he may name any price. However, though he may question her at length on any topic, he must never look upon his subject. And if the painting ends up a true likeness, his payment will be doubled. With sketchbook in hand and his "model" hidden behind an elegant screen, the artist begins his haunting descent into her life and mind. Carried by her words through a strange childhood in a world of ice -- where she aided an obsessed, perhaps murderous, father in his study of the divine language of snowflakes -- and across a history marked by fame and despair, desire and rage, phantasm and myth, Piambo is alternately seduced and repulsed by the story she has to tell. Yet each session leaves him more determined than ever to unwrap the enigma that is Mrs. Charbuque. But while he struggles to capture in oils the face of a woman he has never seen, a series of horrific and inexplicable deaths rocks the outside city. On street corners, in the alleys off the bustling shopping areas, and between the crumbling tenements, anonymous women are dying, their lifeblood flowing freely like tears from their eyes. And the deeper Piambo is drawn into Mrs. Charbuque's world, the more he begins to suspect that these terrible events, his impossible task, and his odd "benefactress" are somehow intimately connected. An astonishing amalgam of the works of Henry James and Raymond Chandler, Jeffrey Ford's The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque is a rare and rewarding reading experience -- equally satisfying as a hypnotically compelling literary work, a richly atmospheric historical novel, and a page-turning thriller. It will leave an indelible mark.
This collection of 27 never-before published stories from an impressive cast—Roddy Doyle, Joyce Carol Oates, and Stuart O'Nan, among others—sets out to shift genre paradigms. The overarching theme is fantastic fiction, or fiction of the imagination, with fantasy being used in the most broad-sweeping sense rather than signaling the familiar commercial staples of elves, ghouls, and robots. Consequently, the collection's offerings run a wide gamut. In Joe Hill's Devil on the Staircase, an Italian boy commits a crime of passion and subsequently meets an emissary of Satan. In Jodi Picoult's Weights and Measures, a young couple who have just lost their daughter struggle to hold their marriage together as they both start noticing strange changes taking place. Chuck Palahniuk's The Loser features a college kid on acid as a contestant on a game show, and in Kurt Andersen's Human Intelligence, a geologist meets an explorer from another planet who has been studying humans for the past 1,600 years. The range of voices and subjects practically guarantees something for any reader, but the overall quality is frustratingly variable: most stories are good, some aren't, and few are exceptional —Publishers Weekly
