This year, the classics we all know will be taken by dark forces and their ink will be stained with blood. Zombies, werewolves, vampires, and other monsters will roam the pages of these books, haunting any soul who dares to take a peek.

When people purchase a regular copy of any of these novels from The Wild Detectives, they’ll also receive the digitally possessed version of the story as a treat. That’s right, no trick, just treat.

Join The Wild Detectives in reimagining your favorite stories into the new horror classics. Get your brooms out and get here ASAP. But if you prefer to stay home or need to protect yourself from the full moon, just order it from our online store.

Go get yours and do not worry, books are meant to be possessed. By you.

The post Possessed Books: A spooky spin on your favorite classic books appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

The first section, “Doll,” focuses on paper dolls, both fashion dolls and garlands of connected dolls. These poems interrogate embodiment, relationships between women, and creating an identity given stifling constraints. The speaker in “Paper Dreams” says, “Doll paper dreams tabs-in-slots, / Dreams the sheet // From which / She was punched. // How close it felt to free, / Uniting all those tiny holes // To outline / Her in air.” In our conversation during her live performance, Ginsburg pointed out to me that paper is, in fact, a three-dimensional object, it’s just very thin, and if you look closely, it is made up of intricate layers. I’ve thought about that a lot since, and her poems demonstrate that careful attention to layers, subtly, and textures.

The second section, “Apollo,” explores the mythological god Apollo (featured in Daphne’s story), the moon landing (and the surrounding conspiracies), and the moon itself. These poems unfold in the same landscape as all the previous poems, as evidenced by the continued threads of lush imagery haunted by violence: “Wolf god. Sheep god. God trapped in a mine. God of fields and flowers. Of pastures and herds. God of exoskeletons. Hunter and flayer, feeder of snakes. Healer god of arrows, of oracles you will never figure out. God of colonies and the crying rock. Unshorn god. Shining god of mice and islands” (“Apollo”). I was fascinated to learn that the poems in this section are also a limited edition handmade chapbook published by Condensery Press, aptly titled Apollo. I think a lot about the chapbook form, especially in relation to the full-length collection, and these two publications offer a compelling example of what that can look like.

The final section, “Toile,” invites readers into pastoral vignettes set in the same landscape as the rest of the book. The poem “Night” shows us: “A pond disrupts the field / like a smoke break a night shift: flicker // of light, moon leaning on the bank, small fire / doused in the flush surface. // As the makers of night make night, / as night is time and ends, this world drowns // its workers, the makers of the world.” These poems are beautiful and meditative while maintaining the threads of violence and doubt from the previous sections. I admire Ginsburg’s ability to craft a cohesive collection out of seemingly disparate subjects, showcasing the rich possibilities of poetry. Doll Apollo is surprising and gorgeous, full of poems that stick with me. You should read it.

Listen to the podcast episode: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/yhn8OJf1EAb

Link to the book: https://lsupress.org/books/detail/doll-apollo/

The post Book Review: Doll Apollo by Melissa Ginsburg appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

My mother has a word for what she’s been doing since the Sixties:
piddling (verb, intransitive). We lick the rims of our margaritas, mine
salted, hers sugared.

Fruity Pebbles, Hungry Man, everything I ate had a name
more memorable than mine.

Here, as in other poems, Davis holds both the objects and words of his life to the light, examining them with both humor and sadness. Blossoming from the poems recounting Davis’s childhood, are poems celebrating queerness, which is an inextricable part of the collection’s identity. The remarkable titular poem, “Club Q,” named after the Colorado night club that was recently made famous by the tragic hate-related shooting, is an achingly memorable song of affirmation. Opening with the powerful and painful declaration:

I stand for quest, which is to say mission,
as in “our mission is to provide
a safe space to be yourself,”
which is to say “it is not always safe
for you to be yourself.”

“Club Q” continues in its announcement, often doubling back on itself syntactically, clarifying itself, and further redefining its definitions. Rather than bloating the poem with these continued definitions, claims, and clarifications, the poem becomes the very act of redefinition and reclamation: the message being that we are allowed to shape and reshape ourselves as we see fit. That the very act of being is, in itself, a fluid act.

The collection does not end with Davis’s moving and often wry observations and within the first section, but moves on, in later sections, to dissect language with a surgeon’s scalpel. Davis is a competitive Scrabble player, and the second section, “Queries,” takes sound and language to task with the same wit and humor the reader has grown to expect. In the poem “Is,” Davis opens with the laugh-out-loud observation, “How fondly I remember the last impeachment, / how much care was taken for the children,” referring to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, when children all over the US were often first exposed to the word “fellatio” through the nightly news.

Davis continues to turn his gaze on American culture and politics in the final section, aptly named “Quotidian,” with poems that take aim at the establishment of bigotry and stupidity that reigns in the 21st century. Still, these poems are steeped in Davis’s humor and intelligence, leaving the reader unsure whether to laugh, cry, or both.

Overall, Club Q is a startling, memorable debut, and readers will find the collection to be well worth the read. We should all expect big, beautiful things from James Davis.

Link to podcast episode: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/czcW0sJgLAb
Link to book: https://waywiser-press.com/product/club-q/

The post Book Review: Club Q by James Davis appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

Chris George is also a master of dressing a stage, and each story within this volume is meticulously written into its setting. The result is a feeling of unease and quiet desperation in most of the narratives, though these are expertly punctuated by moments of surreality and odd characters that float in and out like ghosts, like a mysterious woman in the story “Threesome,” who deftly remarks “I realize that Dallas is a confused city, and we are a confused people, so it’s a perfect place for refugees.” These stories reflect that confusion and desire to escape.

In all, while the locations within the stories of The Occultation might be places many Dallasites and Texans are familiar with, George invites readers to enter a universe just on the margins of urban and suburban experience: where fragments of the American dream rest at the bottom of flooded rivers, dive-bar bathrooms, and within uneasy conversations.

Book: https://www.surveyorbooks.com/product/the-occultation
Podcast episode: https://anchor.fm/thewilddetectives/episodes/Inner-Moonlight-Chris-George-e1ip9ob

The post Book Review: The Occultation by Chris George appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

The opening poem is not the only piece with a dedication or an address to someone else. Zantea writes poems for other poets, her son, and other victims of violence. One particularly chilling piece is entitled “Letter to Carolyn Bryant,” the white woman who is responsible for Emmett Till’s murder. Carolyn Bryant is still living at the time of this writing. At the time of Zantea’s performance, news outlets were reporting the discovery of an unserved warrant for Bryant’s arrest. A grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict Bryant; the Till family and activists are still seeking justice. In the poem, the speaker says, “We haven’t seen your face, we haven’t seen your children, how are they? Your boys, do you have grandchildren? Do you watch them play, and wonder how they would look bloated in muddy waters?” This poem demonstrates another important purpose of poetry—speaking truth to power—and highlights the injustices pervasive in our culture.

For all its unflinching darkness, this book is also imbued with the promise of a life beyond that darkness. In “Self-Reflection, Part 2,” the speaker reminds us of the power and value of using one’s voice: “We will stand/ United/ Prepared to fight for our weak./ Speak for those who have been silenced. / We become everything the world told us not to be.” Zantea told me that she wrote this book with her young students in mind. While the book depicts violence and death, these realities are portrayed with the necessary honesty to give struggling young people a deep sense of hope. You can learn more about Zantea’s vision for the book by listening to the podcast episode, and of course, you should pick up a copy for yourself.

Podcast episode: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/albCnqI09vb

Book: https://store.deepvellum.org/products/oak-cliff-hangers

The post Review for Oak Cliff-Hangers: Stories in a Snow Globe by Sherrie Zantea appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

Raqi tells us that “Motorcycle clubs like the Lawless were chapters left out of books, so they wrote their own with rubber and asphalt” (61). In my conversation with Temblador, she told me about the meticulous research that went into the book’s complex and authentic depiction of a culture many folks only know about through tropes in storytelling. In our Inner Moonlight episode, you can hear Temblador expand on the research she conducted, including earning her motorcycle license. Temblador is equally meticulous in creating characters who are never solely heroic or villainous. It’s true that Raqi’s early life is filled with violence and trauma, but there are also moments of tenderness, connection, and care. Raqi is just as complicated as everyone else in the book—she is smart and confident, but also guarded and sometimes catastrophically impulsive. These elements make for a fascinating and immersive experience.

The magical realism throughout this book sets it apart and offers another intriguing layer. Images of skulls recur throughout the narrative, and they are almost always alive: “I took careful time pouring over the center patch [of Dodge’s black leather vest]—a motorcycle with a skull in the middle, tongue out in a salacious jeer. Rubbing my fingers over the skull awakened it from slumber. Its empty sockets looked around wildly until it saw me and calmed. The skull whipped its tongue inside its mouth for just a second, then flicked it out and licked my hand from the bottom of my palm to the tip of my fingertips. Its tongue was rough like worn tires embedded with metal nails, glass, and dirt. It marked me as one of its own until I died” (35). These moments are poetic, beautiful, and often unsettling, and as a poet, I absolutely loved it.

Like I said, I don’t read many novels, but I am so glad I read this one. I highly encourage you to check out Temblador’s Inner Moonlight episode to hear her read one of my favorite moments, and of course, you should pick up a copy of Half Outlaw for yourself.

Podcast episode: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/49KbslOPbwb

Book: https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/half-outlaw-dwtb.html

The post Review for Half Outlaw by Alex Temblador appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

“And the music is enormous, frightening in its beauty” (“The Arctic Variations”). Music touches everything. Donald Revell writes in his preface that Bruce Bond comes to “know the condition of music in this world, and in this world now.” The impressions are immediate and countless, speaking of a visceral knowledge that attends to the sound of “constellations breaking down” (“Verklärte Nacht”). Stars literally pulled apart, and spaces carved out between the notes themselves: “the lost between the ivories like a fallen pair of keys” (“Monk”). Revell calls it “a liberation of dissonance from the myth of harmony.” To have one, you need the other.

We could liken Bond to the Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who rejected negative-light sculpture because of its reliance on the shadows. He instead chose positive-light sculpture, which presents a purely reflective surface that provides an invisibility of surface like that of still waters, whose presence can be detected only when objects – a tree, the mountains, a ship’s hull – are reflected in them. In Bond’s poetry we see reflected a number of things. For one, language and music representing an ache to connect – to the music, to each other. Bond relates Ornette Coleman’s introduction to his plastic sax, which he discovers in a pawnshop: “How strong it was, and is. This will to connect” (“Wolves”).

And how does music relate to language? Music is “a language for no language, a pulse / beneath the skin of words, the compulsory / insistence of a chisel breaking stone” in the spirit of “making something out of nothing,” for “the first drum was nothing we would call a drum, nothing until we heard it.” (“Measure”). We have to know something before we can call it by name. We also see reflected in this poem an origin story, how the “world’s first instrument was time,” how “night after night / God’s Ocean beats its measures in the dark.” This rhythm best measured in silence, language and air, in passing expectation.

The collection ends with “The Arctic Variations,” in which we see a reference to who I think is the musician Ludovico Einaudi: “Somewhere / the oldest cliffs are coming down in sheets / where a man on an ice floe plays piano.” A remarkable image that paints man against the backdrop of global warming. “The music that you hear is the warmest year on record. I learned that today.” Music flooding the ice sheets that are melting too quickly, forcing us to pay attention. But, will we?

“Dear ice, when I think of you, / I think of this. I see you as a place just north / of north. When I think of life after life, a planetary / furnace blows a phantom through the ocean / floor.” And music is there to witness it all.

Podcast episode: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/qDNCmBQXbwb

Book: https://schaffnerpress.com/books/liberation-of-dissonance/

The post Review for Liberation of Dissonance by Bruce Bond appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

Readers can choose between their favorite Halloween characters, including a werewolf, a ghost, a witch, a monster, or a zombie. While each Booooook Cover tricks the outside world, the playful titles treat the reader with delight and spread a subtle yet effective message against the institutions that want these books banned.

Libraries and schools around the country have banned or are trying to ban hundreds of books that tap into topics like sexual orientation and racism.
As an independent library, we feel the obligation to fight back, defend these topics, and protect freedom of speech. Booooook Covers are the perfect way to trick the system and treat all readers across the U.S.

A world where reading is censored is a horror story scarier than any Stephen King novel. Those who work to sensor our freedoms show us that monsters are not only found in fiction. All stories and points of view deserve to be told and to be read. This campaign covers banned books but opens worlds of access and inclusion.

Join The Wild Detectives in giving this horror story a happy ending.

Choose and download your favorite booook cover HERE

The post BOOOOOOK COVERS: The best disguises for this Halloween. appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

Meet your contestants: Camelot, Troy, La Mancha, Wonderland, Utopia, Lilliput, Oz and The Hundred Acre Wood.

How does it work?
8 teams, 7 games, 1 winner. Starting off with the quarter finals, these teams will face each other and fight for a place in the final. The quarter finals and semifinals will be audios narrated by two hosts and commentators who talk you through the best highlights of the games. Each highlights audio will mix elements, easter eggs and characters from each book with the thrill of soccer. Making it appealing not only for soccer fans, but for book lovers too.

And what about the final?
The final will be a full 5-minute-long narration of the game, commenting on everything in real time. You’ll feel like you are listening to an actual game between these two teams, and how their characters use all their abilities to fight for the championship.

All the highlights and the big final will be posted and shared on The Wild Detectives social media, and on their Spotify Channel.

The beautiful game has now started a new chapter that is yet to be written. Who will come out as Champion? Stay tuned to find out.

Bookball Nations, where literature plays for the cup.

The post BOOKBALL NATIONS: The Cup every book reader should be watching. appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

Why do we care?

Hundreds of books that revolve around themes crucial to the human experience such as race, sexual orientation, and gender identity are being threatened to be or are actively being banned from schools and public libraries. Though the constitution protects freedom of speech, school administrators and librarians are facing growing pressure from politicians and parents alike, and are even threatened with criminal charges. 

Access to diverse stories and points of view are under attack. 

We’ve had enough. Together, we can save these books.

The best way to protect them is reading them. The best way to save them, is to promote them. Help us transform the negative words into positive action by turning our loudest enemies into our strongest allies.

And if you want to learn and do even more in your community to help save these books from getting banned, click on any of the links below: 

https://texansfortherighttoread.com/

https://www.ftrf.org/

The post Banvertising: Using Hate to Save Books appeared first on The Wild Detectives.