Out there: stories - kate folk

A thrilling new voice in fiction injects the absurd into the everyday to present a startling vision of modern life, [as] if Kafka and Camus and Bradbury were penning episodes of Black Mirror (Chang-Rae Lee, author of My Year Abroad ).

Stories so sharp and ingenious you may cut yourself on them while reading.

--Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Kirkus Reviews With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folks debut collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment.

A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle.

A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earths remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity.

A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care.

And in the title story, originally published in The New Yorker, a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by blots, preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data.

Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection.

Prescient and wildly imaginative, Out There depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires.

Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.