Messed Up People and the Books about them
Explore our curated book list of messed up people and the dark, complex stories about them—from Bret Easton Ellis's Imperial Bedrooms to Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, plus unsettling fiction by Michael Hemmingson and Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island.
Book
Shutter Island
by Dennis Lehane
U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner, Chuck Aule, come to Shutter Island's Ashcliffe Hospital in search of an escaped mental patient, but uncover true wickedness as Ashcliffe's mysterious patient treatments propel them to the brink of insanity.
Book
This Other Eden
by Michael Hemmingson
Terrorism, crack cocaine and rape. Failure, miscarriages and suicide. Divorce, incest and misery. This Other Eden is Michael Hemmingson at his most brutal. A man wins the lottery and loses his family. A book agent must deal with a wild girl writer, a white trash genius and a limousine full of angry teenagers. His protagonists scratch at the bottom of society desperate to maintain delusions of adequacy. They fall into each other with hatred and bile; emerging with their own unique form of heroism. Provocative and intriguing, THIS OTHER EDEN by Michael Hemmingson is akin to reading a cross between someone's private journal and a True Crime magazine. Feeling titillated and naughty, as if reading a sibling's most private and dirty secrets, I found myself wholly unwilling to put this book down. It is glorious train wreck of loss, betrayal, and crime mixed with intimate thoughts and a poignant sense of loneliness. THIS OTHER EDEN is the kind of book that will make you forget your own life for a while but will also allow you to be grateful for it when you put the book down. Jennifer Brozek, Submissions Editor, Apex Book Company
Book
Pictures of Houses with Water Damage
by Michael A. Hemmingson
Hemmingson, who's been called Raymond Carver on acid, writes from within the everyday man's murky nightmares.
Book
Imperial Bedrooms
by Bret Easton Ellis
A follow-up to Less Than Zero continues the stories of the author's teenage characters at midlife, finding successful screenwriter Clay returning to Los Angeles to cast a new movie and reunite with former girlfriend Blair, recovering addict Julian and notorious dealer Rip.
Book
Super Sad True Love Story
by Gary Shteyngart
In a novel set in the near future, when a beautiful, yet cruel, woman that Lenny Abramov met in Italy says she his coming to stay with him in New York, even the tanks and soldiers stationed in the city and the ongoing war with Venezuela can't get him down.
