Showing results by author "Kathe Koja" in All Categories

Nicholas, a would-be poet, and Nakota, his feral lover, discover a strange hole in the storage room floor down the hall - "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." It begins with curiosity, a joke - the Funhole down the hall. But then the experiments begin. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says "We're not." But they're not in control, not from the first moment, as those experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation.

Addiction is the perpetual epidemic, where swarms of human moths flutter to the flames of hell. Because that warm blanket of a heroin high, that joyful intoxication of a pint of vodka, that electric energy from a line of cocaine, over time leaves you with a cold loneliness and a bitter heart. Relationships destroyed, bodies deteriorate, loved ones lost, yet the craving continues for that which is killing us—living, as the title suggests, like an Orphan of Bliss.

Sometimes the world is a very dark place. You know the magic is still out there, but it feels distant or displaced. Voices in the Darkness is an attempt to create a link, to bring some of those voices together in a single work of art. Six award-winning authors lent their talent to this work. The stories are unique and dark, filled with wonder and emotion. 

Grant, an ambitious photographer, is possessed by a young mental patient's strange drawings and becomes the disturbed young artist's confidant and guardian in a relationship that pushes Grant's own sanity to the edge.

Tess welds metal. Bibi molds flesh. Together, they make art that moves, dances, burns, and bleeds, and the Surgeons of the Demolition become the hottest ticket in town. But Bibi wants more, always more, no matter who gets hurt. And Tess needs to burn, no matter what.

With his shaved head and begging bowl the new kid is an automatic target for the bully boys of Edward Rucher High, an easy mark for their casual cruelty.

From the award-winning author of The Cipher and Buddha Boy, comes Velocities: Stories, Kathe Koja's second electrifying collection of short fiction. Thirteen stories, two never before published, all flying at the speed of strange.

Under the Poppy is a brothel owned by Decca and Rupert. Decca is in love with Rupert but he in turn is in love with her brother, Istvan. When Istvan comes back to town, louche puppet troupe in tow, the lines of their age-old desires intersect against a backdrop of approaching war. Hearts are broken when old betrayals and new alliances - not just their own - take shape, as the townsmen seek refuge from the onslaught of history by watching the girls of the Poppy cavort onstage with Istvan’s naughty puppets.

Three lives. One man. Christopher Marlowe was the first rock star poet, a spy, an atheist, a gay rebel whose controversial plays thrilled audiences and challenged the government. Christopher Wild is Kathe Koja’s new novel, a daring remix of eras - the glitter and threat of Elizabethan England, a grimy mid-20th century, and a dark near-future of constant surveillance - as Marlowe loves and fights and writes his way through every dangerous age.

High-school senior Dana discovers that three can mean trouble when she has to face some facts: not only is she in love with her long-time best friend's boyfriend, but he returns the feelings.

Dark Factory is a dance club: three floors of DJs, drinks, and customizable reality, everything you see and hear and feel. Ari Regon is the club's wild card floor manager, and Max Caspar is a stubborn DIY artist, both chasing a vision of true reality. And rogue journalist Marfa Carpenter is there to write it all down. Then a rooftop rave sets in motion a fathomless energy that may drive Ari and Max to the edge of the ultimate experience. Kathe Koja combines her award-winning writing and her skill directing immersive events to create a story that unfolds in the listener's creative mind.