Books by Farah Rose Smith

The history of art is littered with Great Men and the Muses they use as stepping stones to brilliance. In this shockingly lyrical, endlessly rich and luxurious nightmare of a novel, the Muse turns. Yet, it is not so much a tale of vengeance or comeuppance as it is a heroine's journey, as Anonyma survives doomscapes almost beyond imagination and the transgressions of mere men, mere artists, survives the horrors imposed upon the feminine to rediscover her own magic and power. Anonyma, novel and narrator, holds up a dark mirror to our paradigm of art as a kind of device for reducing women to Platonic ideals while staging theophanies for men. But she also holds the mirror to herself, her sisters, even, daring to hope, a daughter. ANONYMA is a novel full of blood and love and despair and courage.

"Dear sick soul, you have met the universe." Farah Rose Smith's THE ALMANAC OF DUST is a stunning work of visionary imagination reminiscent of the great Angela Carter. This numinous, experimental novelette presents the dissolution and loss of a couple's intimate relationship, all set in a dust-choked world, like a nightmare-hybrid-landscape of Beckett's Endgame and Hodgson's The Night Land. In the background-via intersectional notes about and quotes from the titular, fictional tome-a bleak philosophy emerges, driven by a paradoxically dynamic, melancholic mental illness. An uncanny environmental/metaphysical catastrophe (internalized as self-neglect, grief, violence, and regret) dominates Smith's wonderfully disjointed, powerful story/treatise. The Almanac of Dust is a book to cherish, and Farah Rose Smith is a distinctive, literary talent to watch."-Jon Padgett, author of THE SECRET OF VENTRILOQUISM and founder of Thomas Ligotti Online

Vex Valis--doctor. Vex Valis--rocker. Vex Valis--iconoclast. You would think Vex Valis has it all but what Vex has is a secret that rots away at her from her very core. Vex is infected with Gut Ghouls and will do anything to be rid of them, even if it means consorting with subterranean worms or blending science and the occult in dangerous and unsavory ways. You may envy Vex's jet-setting Dark Wave scientist lifestyle but you won't when you see the trials incurred when she catches the attention of a being that rends people and worlds alike, the scrutiny of...The Eviscerator