The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman Now in trade paperback--ALAs Best Horror Novel of the Year from the World Fantasy Award-nominated author of Those Across the River.Christopher Buehlmans Those Across the River delivered "an unsettling brew of growing menace spiked with flashes of genuine terror."* Now, the World Fantasy Award-nominated author stakes a bloody claim on vampire mythology in this chilling horror novel....New York City in 1978 is a dirty, dangerous place to live. And die. Joey Peacock knows this as well as anybody-hes spent the last forty years as an adolescent vampire, perfecting the routine he now enjoys- womanizing in punk clubs and discotheques, feeding by night, and sleeping by day with others of his kind in the macabre labyrinth under the citys sidewalks.The subways are his playground and his highway, shuttling him throughout Manhattan to bleed the unsuspecting in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park or in the backseats of Checker cabs, or even those in their own apartments who are too hypnotized by sitcoms to notice him opening their windows. Its almost too easy.Until one night he sees them hunting on his beloved subway. The children with the merry eyes. Vampires, like him...or not like him. Whatever they are, whatever their appearance means, the undead in the tunnels of Manhattan are not as safe as they once were.And neither are the rest of us.WINNER OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONS BEST HORROR NOVEL OF THE YEAR*New York Times bestselling author F. Paul Wilson FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Christopher Buehlman is the winner of the 2007 Bridport prize for poetry and the author of five horror novels including Those Across the River (best novel nominee, 2012 World Fantasy Awards), medieval apocalypse fable Between Two Fires, chilling vampire tale The Lesser Dead (Named best horror novel of 2015 by the American Library Association), and goblin war fantasy The Blacktongue Thief. A native Floridian, the author currently lives in Ohio with a wife he doesnt deserve and a snow-shoveling regimen he probably does. Review "Buehlman offers up a colony of fierce, brazenly unscrupulous vampires who reclaim the genre from angsty goths and return it to its fearsome and ferocious origins."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Surprising, scary, and, ultimately, heartbreaking…Sheerly amazing."—Tor.com "A ferocious and funny look at vampires living in 1978 New York City."—Dread Central Promotional The secret is, vampires are real and I am one.The secret is, Im stealing from you what is most truly yours and Im not sorry . . . Review Quote "Buehlman offers up a colony of fierce, brazenly unscrupulous vampires who reclaim the genre from angsty goths and return it to its fearsome and ferocious origins."-- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Promotional "Headline" The secret is, vampires are real and I am one.The secret is, Im stealing from you what is most truly yours and Im not sorry . . . Discussion Question for Reading Group Guide 1. How does the setting of New York City in 1978 affect the story? Why did the author choose this particular time and place? 2. Joey portrays his birth mother as self-absorbed: "She didnt know if I was in the house, in the garden, in the park, or at the bottom of the East River." How does Margaret compare as a maternal figure? Does Joey have any other parental stand-ins? 3. Why does Margaret tell Joey, "There was just a little part of me that admired what you did to me"? What does it say about her character? 4. Sandy is described as a "short-timer," unable to adjust to the lifestyle or even the very idea of being a vampire. In the world of the novel, do you think people must possess certain personality traits in life to be "good" vampires? What qualities are they? 5. Cvetko says the recipient of one of his "may-I-bite-you" letters will "understand on a subconscious level that this is a supernatural opportunity." Why might someone voluntarily rendezvous with a vampire? Do you think the Bakers are on some level aware of Joeys true nature? 6. What does Chlo Excerpt from Book For Terry White (Thats my aunt. She was a stewardess and model in the seventies. Theres a reasonable chance she did cocaine at Studio 54.) (Dont put that part in the dedication.) FOR STARTERS Im going to tell you about a year. This year. 1978. A lot of shit is happening and I think somebody had better write it down before we all forget. New York City is the place. If youre looking for a story about nice people doing nice things, this isnt for you. You will be burdened with an unreliable narrator who will disappoint and repel you at every turn. Still with me? Too bad for you. I cant wait to break your heart. Im going to take you someplace dark and damp where good people dont go. Im going to introduce you to monsters. Real ones. Im going to tell you stories about hurting people, and if you like those stories, it means youre bad. Shall we go on? Good. I hate people who pretend theyre something theyre not. Were going into the tunnels. Well start up here in Chelsea; theres a bricked-up ground-level window with half the bricks out, not a big space but big enough, then well go deeper, down where I stay. Where we stay. I hope bad smells dont bother you. I hope you brought your own light; I dont need one. I hope youre not fat. Heres a little taste of what youre in for, out of sequence, but I told you how unreliable I am. Its not all this nasty, but this is probably rough if youre not used to it. If you can get through this, we can hang out. * * * We heard them before we saw them. Hunchers. Thats what we called people who hunched in the tunnels. We stayed in the tunnels too of course, the deeper tunnels where no sunlight came at all, but we werent Hunchers. We werent even people anymore. When Margaret saw that her home had been broken into, she didnt hesitate. She tossed off her flip-flops and marched right for the open trapdoor with me behind her, not caring whether I followed, not caring how many of them there were, and there had to be at least two to pull the chain and get that trapdoor up--it was a big heavy bastard of a door made from part of an old subway car and broken-up seats. She walked with one hand balled on her hip, her stained bathrobe open enough to see her tit if you cared to. She was pissed. It was her place, after all. She was our duly elected mayor. "Goddamn it," she whispered, kicking a peeping shower of rats out of her way. She picked up and threw down a shred of a hamburger wrapper in disgust. Whoever they were, they had brought food. You dont bring food into the loops. They had tied belts together to lower themselves into the hole. A weak light danced down there, a flashlight, and I heard the sound of a lighter. Somebody sneezed a wet one. Somebody else laughed. She didnt bother with the belts. Just dropped down. I stayed up and watched. This was really a job for one vampire. Normally Old Boy or Ruth would have handled this. Old Boy was like her part-time bodyguard, lived in an abandoned train car just down the tracks past Purgatory, but he was a secretive fucker and you never knew where he was. Ruth was out hunting. She was always hungry. Turns out there were four of them, the intruders, I mean; black guy and three whites, but with Hunchers the race thing gets less important because theyre always dirty and dirt has one color. These guys looked hard, prison tattoos, prison muscles, probably came from the tracks under the Bowery. Guys under the Bowery are mostly wanted men and ex-cons, hunching down there in the piss-smelling dark rather than going back to Attica, which doesnt say much for Attica. They werent from the tracks above our tunnels. We had a few Hunchers above us, but not many and they knew better; our guys would sooner take a whiz on the third rail than walk into our loops. "Whoa!" the black guy said when the fast-moving woman-thing in the bathrobe landed near where he lay back on the couch, Margarets prized antique couch, and he jumped and dropped his flashlight. One of the white guys said, "Shit!" Margaret snatched up the flashlight. Shone it at them each in turn. Not that she needed it, just wanted to make sure they were good and night-blind. Two of them spoke at once. "Get that out of my face!" "Bitch, youd best get out of here if you know whats good for you." "Dont talk like that to my mom," I said in my high, little-boy voice. I have a great little-boy voice, but I had barely gotten mom out before she started. She started by breaking the flashlight on the black guys head--Margarets a little racist, but its not her fault, shes Irish. Or maybe he got it first because he was on her couch. Either way, you know how these things go, everything happens in a hurry. The hurt guy yelled, everybody stood up or tried to, there was a sick thump as somebodys head got stove in, then another one, but I admit the gunshots surprised me. I saw it all from the trapdoor, but what did it look like for the poor bastard with the gun? His muzzle flashes, and there were two, lit up a dead woman with shining eyes and big dirty canines that belonged on a panther. He yelled before she even touched him. One bullet hit her, the second ricocheted madly in the vaulted brick room. And then she touched him plenty. The last guy tripped over the coffee table trying to find the belt to climb up. She was on top of him then, putting her knee in his back and pulling his head by the hair at his temples while he went, "Gah! Gah!" until she rocked back like she meant it, his spine popped, and he yelled. She pulled his snotrag from where it tongued out of his back pocket and stuffed it into his mouth, this to shut him up, but he lost consciousness anyway. She stood up then, a little wobbly, and said something garbled. She spat out a rope of blood. I leapt down, landed on one of the dead guys, pocketed the dropped Zippo, and sat on the wooden chair. Not the couch. "What was that?" I said. She spat again, bloody with a tooth in it. She put up one wait-a-minute finger and I realized what had happened. She was in pain. He had shot her in the mouth and her busted mouth was forming up again. That didnt take long. Eyes take longer. You dont want to get your eye hurt in a fight. "I said," she said, slurring just a little on top of her thick-as-bread Conny-whatsis accent, "never call me your mother again." A DOOR INTO NIGHT I like the taste of sweat. How it runs from the head, through the hair, like water filtering down through earth and tree roots into a spring; only instead of getting purer, sweat gets filthier, picks up grit, maybe tobacco, a hint of shampoo, but under and through all of that is salt. Almost too much salt, like honey was almost too sweet, what I remember of honey. They say the tongues cut up into little provinces, salty, sour, bitter, sweet. I dont know if thats true, but I do know that salt is about the only taste I enjoy now. Salt in blood is the best, of course, and blood is a feast: iron-coppery and personal and as good in the stomach as ever was a steak. Sweat cant satisfy, not by itself, but it does hint at whats next. Sweat is to blood as dirty talk is to sex. Its an offer. Its a tease. If I can, if Im not too hungry, if I have time, I lick before I bite, with the flat of the tongue like a dog. Maybe your eyes are half-closed because this is sexual for you, or maybe youre good and scared and making that ripe, rotten fear sweat I shouldnt love but do. Maybe my hands are tangled in your hair so you cant run, or maybe youre so charmed youre smiling like an idiot and leaning down to me so if anyone sees, they think Im telling you a secret. In a way, I am. The secret is vampires are real and I am one and no cop is coming and no doctor can help you and your own mother wont believe you if you tell her . The secret is I look like a high school freshman but Im pushing sixty . And the secret is Im stealing from you what is most truly yours and Im not sorry . * * * My name is Joey Peacock. I live in the tunnels under the subways. And dont go thinking the underground is so bad for us. It would be for you, if youre still warm, but things change when youre turned. Darkness isnt so dark anymore. Everything seems candlelit, even the blackest black, so that what looks to you like black dirt and a wall covered with black mold takes on a kind of warm glow for us, full of layer and detail like modern art, not that Guggenheim shit, but the pretty stonework-type stuff. Or like Rothko. You know Rothko? Hes at the Guggenheim, but hes different. First time I saw one, I thought, Whats the big deal, squares of color, so what? But there was something about it. A foxy European chick with a scarf and high boots was staring at it and I said, "What do you see?" and she said, "Just keep looking," so I did. I think she was French. But she was right. The edges of the square of color started waving and then the painting glowed, like it was full of radiation. She said, "Did a door open for you?" and I said, "Yeah." Nights like that now. Its always been there, full of radiation or whatever, and maybe thats what cats stare at when they look off into nothing but now I see it, too. When I first changed, I used to spend hours under bridges and down under manholes just trying to count the different kinds of black. Only none of it was exactly black anymore. I know I cant make you see it, but its like The Wizard o Description for Sales People Vampires are still a hugely popular genre in fiction and film. Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse series (Gollancz) and TV adaptation True Blood (HBO) attract hundreds of viewers. Christopher Buehlman was a World Fantasy Award nominee for his 2011 novel Those Across the River (Ace). Will appeal to fans of horror and genre fiction as well as fans of vampires. Details ISBN0425272621 Author Christopher Buehlman Short Title LESSER DEAD Language English ISBN-10 0425272621 ISBN-13 9780425272626 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2015 Imprint Berkley Publishing Corporation,U.S. Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Publication Date 2015-10-06 UK Release Date 2015-10-06 US Release Date 2015-10-06 Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc DEWEY 813.6 Audience General NZ Release Date 2016-03-31 AU Release Date 2016-03-31 Pages 368 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:141698096;

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