Book description
"Opening these pages is like stepping through a secret doorway to discover a menagerie of wonders, impossibly beautiful. There are sentences here so fine, so perfectly worded, they made me gasp. Unsettling, mysterious, slightly subversive, deeply moving, these stories are small punches to the heart. Though collectively they feel huge,…
Why read it?
1 author picked Machines of Another Era as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Bess Winter’s book is a dazzling debut collection. It is full of exactly the kind of offbeat, formally experimental, historically informed short fiction I love to read, with a wicked sense of humor.
Thomas Edison’s mythical cache of discarded talking dolls provides the basis for exploring Edison’s West Orange female factory workers’ lack of agency. Claire Clairmont (Mary Shelley’s stepsister!) is given a chance to shine as a writer in her own right, redefined by something more lasting than her ill-fated trysts with Lord Byron. Hashish candy causes an uproar outside a small-town pharmacy. A little girl at sleepaway horse…
If you love Machines of Another Era...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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