Hug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric of an Anomalous Child
Hug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric of an Anomalous Child is a gothic, Dickensian take on the Elephant Man, as if David Lynch wrote a fable for unbalanced orphans.
Hug Chickenpenny is an anomalous child. Born from tragedy and unknown paternity, this asymmetrical and white-haired baby inspires both ire and pity at the orphanage, until the day that an elderly eccentric adopts him as a pet. The upbeat boy's spirit is challenged in his new home and as he is exposed to prejudiced members of society in various encounters. Will Hug and his astronautical dreams survive our cruel and judgmental world?
For a free preview of the book, click here!
Reviews
"S. Craig Zahler is certain to become one of the great imaginers of our time." －Clive Barker
““I was intrigued (and still am) by the cover art on this new book. Detailed and beautiful, the cover is a good segue into what to expect from the story. (In case you’re wondering, the little boy looking off into the distance is Mr. Hug Chickenpenny. What is he looking at, I wonder?) Learn about Hug’s life by venturing into this aptly written wonder of fiction. You won’t regret it. “ ”
““A sharp look at family, deformity, community, and belonging. At once moving and merciless, this is a chronicle of a hapless but still altogether human life.” ”
““The only thing a Zahler work seems to promise its audience is that it will be wildly different from the one that preceded it. With Hug Chickenpenny, Zahler has once again mashed seemingly incompatible genres to produce a story that is funny, heartfelt, and sumptuously, Burtonesquely gothic. Much like its title character, the novel is ghoulishly anomalous, but eminently lovable. One of the best reads of the year.” ”
““An exceptional, original, and inherently fascinating read from beginning to end.” ”
Mean Business on North Ganson Street
A distraught businessman kills himself after a short, impolite conversation with a detective named Jules Bettinger. Because of this incident, the unkind (but decorated) policeman is forced to relocate himself and his family from Arizona to the frigid north, where he will work for an understaffed precinct in Victory, Missouri. This collapsed rustbelt city is a dying beast that devours itself and its inhabitants...and has done so for more than four decades. Its streets are covered with dead pigeons and there are seven hundred criminals for every law enforcer.
Partnered with a boorish and demoted corporal, Bettinger investigates a double homicide in which two policemen were slain and mutilated. The detective looks for answers in the fringes of the city and also in the pasts of the cops with whom he works--men who stomped on a local drug dealer until he was disabled.
Bettinger soon begins to suspect that the double homicide is not an isolated event, but a prelude to a series of cop executions...
Mean Business on North Ganson Street is currently in development with Warner Brothers and Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio are attached.
Reviews
“[A] grim, brilliantly imagined work.”
“Zahler evocatively illustrates a city on the verge of moral and economic collapse.”
“Unremittingly violent and brutally descriptive, the novel is both riveting and horrifying…”
“From the cinematic first sentence of the first paragraph of the first page of this book, S. Craig Zahler serves notice that the term “mean streets” is not exclusively reserved for big cities on either coast. Mean Business on North Ganson Street offers up a ‘heartland noir’ that will appeal to readers for whom mystery novels are like crack, but it will also entertain those who usually prefer to experience their crime fiction on shows like The Killing, and The Fall, and True Detective. Read this book.”
“If you can get past the detailed descriptions of violence and mutilation, you’ll find that Zahler (CORPUS CHROME, INC., 2014, etc.) tells a gripping story.”
“Whether writing westerns, science fiction, or crime, Zahler always manages to bring something new to the genre...Zahler’s mean streets are bizarrely mean. But “Mean Business” is often mordantly funny, too—and not to be missed.”
Corpus Chrome, Inc.
Decades in the future Corpus Chrome, Inc. develops a robotic body, dubbed a "mannequin," that can revive, sustain and interface with a cryonically-preserved human brain. Like all new technology, it is copyrighted.
Hidden behind lawyers and a chrome facade, the inscrutable organization resurrects a variety of notable minds, pulling the deceased back from oblivion into a world of animated sculpture, foam rubber cars, dissolving waste and strange terrorism. Nobody knows how Corpus Chrome, Inc. determines which individuals should be given a second life, yet myriad people are affected. Among them are Lisanne Breutschen, the composer who invented sequentialism with her twin sister, and Champ Sappline, a garbage man who is entangled in a war between the third, fourth and fifth floors of a New York City apartment building.
In the Spring of 2058, Corpus Chrome, Inc. announces that they will revive Derek W.R. Dulande--a serial rapist and murderer who was executed thirty years ago for his crimes. The public is horrified by the decision, and before long, the company's right to control the lone revolving door between life and death will be violently challenged...
Corpus Chrome Pilot is in development with FX.
Reviews
“CORPUS CHROME, INC describes one of the weirder post-singularity futures. The characters are very much alive. I was entertained throughout.”
“[We fell] completely under Zahler’s spell... A bravura literary performance.”
Wraiths of the Broken Land
A brutal and unflinching tale that takes many of its cues from both cinema and pulp horror, Wraiths of the Broken Land is like no Western you've ever seen or read. Desperate to reclaim two kidnapped sisters who were forced into prostitution, the Plugfords storm across the badlands and blast their way through Hell. This gritty, character-driven piece will have you by the throat from the very first page and drag you across sharp rocks for its unrelenting duration. Prepare yourself for a savage Western experience that combines elements of Horror, Noir and Asian ultra-violence. You've been warned.
Wraiths of the Broken Land is currently in production as a feature film with Ridley Scott attached.
Reviews
“[C]ompulsively readable.... Fans of Zahler’s A Congregation of Jackals (2010) will be satisfied; think Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. [C]lever mayhem ... leads to a riveting climax.”
“If you’re looking for something similar to what you’ve read before, this ain’t it. If you want something comforting and predictable, this damn sure ain’t it. But if you want something with storytelling guts and a weird point of view, an unforgettable voice, then you want what I want, and that is this.”
“[A] classic Western that’s been twisted into the shape of a snarling monster....”
“Zahler’s a fabulous story teller whose style catapults his reader into the turn of the century West with a ferocious sense of authenticity.”
“It would be utterly insufficient to say that WRAITHS is the most diversified and expertly written western I’ve ever read.”
A Congregation of Jackals
In 1888 Oswell Danford is living a hard but satisfying life as a rancher in Virginia when he receives an unexpected telegram. A wedding invitation should be cause to celebrate but not when it means he'll have to face past deeds that he's deeply ashamed of.
Now he and his brother, along with their ex-compatriot, an inveterate gambler from New York, will have to travel to Montana Territory to settle an old score they'd nearly forgotten. They will join the expectant congregation at the small town church for the marriage of their former brother-in-arms. But while everyone else will be wishing a blissful future for the happy couple, these men will be praying the darkness from their past doesn't devour the entire town. A Congregation of Jackals is an unrelenting tale of betrayal and revenge told with a precise brutality that will leave you breathless and haunted.
Nominated for The Peacemaker Award as well as The Spur Award.
Reviews
“If you have a hankering for a gritty, realistic and downright thrilling Western, S. Craig Zahler is your man.”
“A mature and thoughtful Western that can stand up alongside anything that Cormac McCarthy or Larry McMurtry have written. Its unrepentant violence, intensity, and dark worldview could appeal to fans of crime fiction.”
“A thoroughly modern perspective to the familiar archetypal trappings. What happens when gang meets gang...is more horrific than anything we might have imagined.”