Books published by Silverthought Press

Scott Alvin can't live with himself. Returning home from near death at a drive-by shooting, Scott finds his roommate, Jase, talking to... Scott Alvin. Jase, a burnout pot-dealing tattoo artist, assumes this other Scott must be a twin. No such luck. This Scott Two is something else, and he's none too pleased with the way that Scott Alvin's life-or, rather, their life-has gone. Existential ennui has replaced the orgy of their youth far too soon. From skateboarding girl-swooning partier to their current state as stagnant, complacent, baked-out pornography tech gurus, the new Scott Two has plans to change. The problem for Scott Alvin is that Scott Two has the freedom to do everything they never did. To make radical changes in all aspects. To use Scott's bed, his clothes, to hang out with his friends, and to go after his lover, all while using his face and not even paying the rent! One thing's clear-you can only tolerate so much of yourself before things turn nasty. This world just isn't big enough for two Scott Alvins. Scott Too by Victor Giannini, magical realism set in Brooklyn, is a novella about living with your "better" self, who just happens to use your stuff, your bed, your girlfriend, and who slowly begins to appropriate your past until you feel like you no longer truly exist. Hey, what can go wrong?

"Jim Bainbridge's poems in Cloud-Glazed Mirror capture a wide range of human experience in language that is fresh, vital and precise. Whether tender, playful or meditative, the poems are fully engaged with the world of the senses, nature, emotion and consciousness, calling us to a deeper level of awareness of what it means to feel and experience life fully. Beguiling and luminous, these are poems to savor and return to." --Paulette Bates Alden

I only care about my sons, how they are fruita garden fullof misunderstood leaves Lyrical and reflective and painfully honest, David LaBounty's debut collection is an exploration of faith, love, fatherhood, and fidelity all weaved around a series of poems dealing with life, parenting, and the wake of a changing family.

What would Stephen Tyler do? Mickey, an ex-adult movie star turned supermodel, has to choose between two Johnsons-should he align himself with fashion icon Paul Johnson, the cigar smoking, micromanaging, chainsaw wielding megalomaniac, or Sandy Johnson, the flamboyant, murderous, vindictive narcissist? Which designer can propel Mickey to the top of Seventh Avenue? While trying to land his dream runway job, Mickey is thrown into the center of a scene where sex is often the motivation, the wine is served by year, and cocaine is back in full force. A runway exhibition has been scheduled to determine who-Paul or Sandy-is truly the best Johnson. Mickey will be Paul's top model, and Sandy has found a homeless person nicknamed Kung Fu Master to showcase his line. In addition to getting his new line in place, Paul Johnson is also buying chain saws-the louder the better-to put the special in this special event. Did you know that you can't be sentenced to prison if you are actively seeking help at a mental facility? Paul Johnson knows this. Somewhere between the girls, counting Vicodin pills, and preparing for this runway extravaganza, Mickey develops a conscience. He believes (and his psychiatrist agrees) that he has the power to change what's happening around him. Is there anything Mickey can do to derail the epic showdown between fashion's two most powerful Johnsons before anyone else ends up dead? In a world where this year is the new last year and cocaine is the new cocaine, blood is the new red.

Here There Be Monsters: The fifteen stories of Drink for the Thirst to Come lead the reader into the darkest corners of the imagination. The people who inhabit these places are demons or angels; here, life ends horribly or stretches to the darkest eternity. Here, the world dies whimpering, ends with a bang, or goes down with the clack of a billion tiny teeth. Here, you'll find all the standard tropes, vampires, zombies, ghosts, ghouls. You may not recognize them, not right away. They might be standing in a quiet corner or walking in a sunny field or seated next to you on a bus, they might be pulling up to the gas pump or, hell, they might be you, sitting there, reading the book.

Seth and Marvin struggle to make a life for themselves in the abandoned northern half of the United States. The dual catastrophes of peak oil and a decade-long grain blight have annihilated the gas pump and breadbox of North America. The great cities of the northeast corridor have imploded, leaving only tiny rural Amish communities intact and subsisting, as they ever have, unhindered by the need for fuel or mass-produced food. The two friends have grown accustomed to the Amish ways, and earn their keep delivering mail on foot from far-flung farm communities stretched from Indiana and Illinois to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. In the absence of people, nature has begun to retake what man has built. Cities and towns teem with wildlife and crumble year after year, and even amongst the warmth of the Amish, the two men find it difficult with each passing year to make sense of what has happened to their way of life. Returning again and again to the places that once were their homes, Seth and Marvin discover that even though the grubby boot-print of humanity is being slowly scoured away from the countryside along the Great Lakes, so too are the memories of happier times with those they have loved and lost. There are secrets, you see, and choices. Some choices can free a man, and some can forever hang him in chains. The Damnation of Memory is about the end, and what comes after.

The Weirdness swirls around Harold Schreiber and his family like snakes made of black mist. Where it comes from is unknown, but what it is doing is clear-it's eating away at the woodwork of this man's life. During his childhood, Harold's mother is more concerned with her garden club than with raising her two sons. His father is a silent lump of rage. His brother Derek is damaged to the edge of psychosis, and possibly beyond. Decades later, the neighborhood is going to hell. A visit to an abandoned mansion reveals two impossible men whose response to being discovered is not kind. Harold's sons are filled with inexplicable fury-and Halloween candy. A giant sea beast strikes at people on the beach where the Schreiber family is trying to vacation, and his wife is accused of murder. A steroid-addled colleague turns violent in health clubs and on the road. An old man is hit by an SUV on the big boulevard running through town and turns into an otherworldly being that may or may not be attacking drivers. Any other man might try to crawl into a hole and hide. His wife suggests he call the police when trouble comes. Harold is having none of it. He's got problems. His family, his neighborhood, and his bowling alley are under attack. He doesn't think much about what to do, he just wades into fights with his fists held high and takes whoever happens to be around into battle against the demons lurking in the streets. Voices are calling out to Harold to join the chaos of the neighborhood, to take part in the pure wanton joy of destruction. He can't do it. Somebody has to fight back, to put some order into things. Somewhere in the core of his being, he believes that he is the man to do it, even if his name is Schreiber. Horror House Detective, a novel in stories by Michael Gold, is the tale of a hard working family man besieged on all sides by The Weirdness-and he's sure as hell not going to run away from the fight.

Charles Dash has everything a young insurance executive rising through the ranks of Midwestern Accident and Life can hope for-a beautiful wife, a white Mustang, a townhouse, a tape deck, satin sheets, and contemporary leather furniture. As Dash climbs the corporate ladder, his superiors soon recognize his brutal skill set: denying customer claims with a ruthlessness they had seldom seen. Midwestern rewards Dash with promotions. Banks reward him with credit cards. Soon Dash finds his spending spiraling out of control. He lives paycheck to paycheck to support his suburban lifestyle of golf on weekends, owning the first SUV in his neighborhood of luxurious McMansions, and a growing penchant for prostitutes. He applies for-and banks are more than willing to give him-more credit cards. Ensnared in the vicious cycle of spending, he finally has to remortgage his house, but soon, even that isn't enough. Broke and desperate, Dash decides to wage a violent one-man war against the credit card companies. His spree of destruction leads him to a financial solvency that comes with a very heavy price-but it is a price he is more than willing to pay. He will do anything to keep his lifestyle intact. Affluenza, the third novel by Michigan author David LaBounty, is a scathing critique of credit card culture, a tale of consumerism, vanity, debt, and sexual addiction torn from today's headlines. Relevant to these troubled times, Affluenza is a dire warning to those who choose to spend their way to the American Dream.

Two novels about drugs, sex, revenge, the corporate crunch, and the inevitable unpleasantness of life and death are presented here in one double format volume.

"I resolve to sit down on my couch and never get up. Please don't call." Overwhelmed with the endless brainwashing advertisements and memes that society has pumped into her psyche since childhood, a woman sits down on her couch and doesn't get up for years. What is real? What is normal? Is it possible to have a single original thought? Rather than accepting her mental break as something that must be fixed, she embraces the moment and refuses to go outside until she is ready-which may be never. In recorded conversations with herself that are mailed off to her therapist, her growing obsession with her couch is revealed as it expands to encompass not only her entire apartment but also the condo next door. Cut off from the outside world, she picks through the hypocrisy of her life and tries to make sense of the moments that brought her to this place of self-imposed invalidism. Chaise, the debut novel from Becci Noblit Goodall, is a meditative indictment of the modern world.

Chris Fairbanks is a lonely young man who joins the Navy in search of travel, adventure, and women-but mostly to escape his lower middle-class existence, his loveless family, and to find some meaning in his otherwise meaningless life. The Navy sends Chris to a small communications base in Scotland, where he is befriended by a disillusioned Catholic chaplain, Father Alexander Crowley. Crowley joined the Navy for his own sinister reasons-including his desire to incite a race war that will consume the world. Blinded by his search for friendship and acceptance, Chris reluctantly finds himself drawn into Crowley's white supremacist group and his alcohol-fueled plans for genocide. After realizing the depths of Crowley's madness and struggling with his own complicity in this reign of terror, Chris appeals to his chain of command. Met with indifference and disbelief, he takes matters into his own hands, leading The Trinity to an apocalyptic and fiery end. Set against the turbulent backdrop of the Cold War and the pastoral beauty of eastern Scotland, The Trinity is a contemplative exploration of the complexity of human evil.

Red Ivy Afternoon is a novel of community and disenfranchisement, subversion and revolution in the digital age. The setting is a future we already know: good homes are unaffordable, good jobs are outsourced to other countries, and people anchor themselves to the glowing monitors in their homes to distract themselves. Julian Lightfall, a relatively successful Boston shipping secretary, lives his life from gadget to gadget and bar to bar in a haze of consumerism and boredom. He frequents the Portfolio lounge of the Ultimatum Hotel, playground of the rich and powerful, and throws his attention ineffectually at a sultry and disinterested regular named Christina. Another lone bachelor named Pyndan Calabas moves into the apartment next door. Calabas tells Julian he is a trauma surgeon and the two become friends. But, as Julian soon discovers, his new neighbor hides a secret that will change Julian's life, and the world, forever. Red Ivy Afternoon is a post-modern odyssey through a future that is already upon us.

"Maybe I'm not a murderer, maybe I'm just a survivor with crappy luck." All Benjamin Benson ever wanted to be was a writer. Forced to leave college in the midst of an economic depression, Benson joins the Army and is stationed in Iraq. A mediocre soldier at best, he finds himself poised on the border between Iran and Iraq, preparing to invade Iran, when his unit--and every other unit in a thinly spread Army--receives orders to withdraw to Baghdad. Amid mass confusion and uncertainty, Benson finds himself flying back to America, reluctantly participating in a coup d'etat spearheaded by the Perfect Soldiers, seemingly invincible robot warriors commanded by General Prescott, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the architect of the coup and The Perfect Revolution. Upon returning to the States, Ben finds himself meritorously promoted at a furious pace, but his promotions come with a cost, a deep and deadly moral cost, and as he patrols the streets of his devastated country, Benson is forced to confront the truth behind his meteoric rise to power and his complicity in the wholesale slaughter of innocents that is the real aim of The Perfect Revolution.