Owen King

Mark Jude Poirier

In this wildly entertaining collaboration, novelists Owen King and Mark Jude Poirier team up with illustrator Nancy Ahn to present a wickedly funny graphic novel about an alien invasion on a college campus. Stacey, a brilliant, overachieving astrobiology major at Fenton College, had planned on just another lonely Spring Break on campus. But when a hurricane batters the small college town, downing power lines and knocking out cell phone reception, Stacey and her friends are stranded with no way to communicate with the outside world at the worst possible moment: in the midst of an alien invasion. As space insects begin to burrow into students and staff, transforming them into slobbering, babbling monsters, a conglomeration of misfits must band together to prevent the infestation from spreading. Meanwhile, Stacey’s long-stifled romantic feelings for her friend Charlotte begin to surface, while the professor she had admired and respected becomes the students’ worst enemy. Illustrated with enormous wit and dynamism—mixing classic tropes from science fiction, indie comics, B-movies, and campus culture—this graphic novel is something different, a large-scale action/adventure story as seen from the point-of-view of a contemporary, realistic heroine. The result is a funny and singular work unlike anything else you’ve ever read.

Intro to Alien Invasion

"Almost too hot. It had cracked 100 the day before, and the old weatherman on channel four, the guy who Joyce had said was the most accurate but heard was a pervert, had said today would be hotter by a few degrees." The summer heat in Tucson makes some people dry up and some people boil over. In the dusty, gated desert community of Rancho Sin Vacas (Ranch Without Cattle), a handful of residents are finding that neighborhood life is becoming increasingly bizarre among the crumbling swimming pools, overwatered lawns, and disaffected children. Sixteen-year-old Kendra obsessively hones her body into a perfectly muscled machine, even as she struggles to master a mounting violent streak. Thomas, her increasingly misanthropic brother, rarely leaves the house, all the while cultivating a disturbing little obsession of his own under the front porch. Down the street, Merv is stuck in a rut, thirty years old and still living at home. Lonely and looking for a way out, he's reaching his breaking point over his insomniac mother, whose oddly compulsive behavior with household appliances threatens to wreak havoc on his life. When a strung-out, magic marker sniffing teenager disappears from the neighborhood and rumors of murder surface, these malcontents find themselves in an unlikely alliance that will alter the course of one long, sun-baked summerand perhaps their lives. Funny and disturbing, Modern Ranch Living probes the emptiness of modern American culture, the strange things people do to satisfy their twin hungers for pleasure and oblivion, and the unexpected small acts of kindness they can sometimes perform to ease one another's pain. This delicately deadpan comedy makes brilliantly clear why Mark Jude Poirier was named "the young American writer to watch" by the Times Literary Supplement.

A Novel

Modern Ranch Living

An anthology of short fiction captures the humiliation, depression, angst, growing pains, first romance, embarrassment, and confusion of adolescence in a collection that features contributions by John Barth, Stanley Elkin, AM Homes, Nathan Englander, Amber Dermont, George Saunders, Jennifer Egan, Kevin Canty, Jim Shepard, and other writers. Original. 35,000 first printing.

Mark Jude Poirier

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