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We're Whiskey Tit, an independent publisher of avant garde, genre bending, and unrelenting literary experiments, in the form of full-length books, a print quarterly, and an online journal. Some new releases are below, but we love all our titles equally. If you're a poor person, please use the ISBN on every book page to ask your local library to stock it. Libraries love hearing from readers, and we love being in libraries.
If it's within your means, buy some books. And if it's not within your means right now, that shouldn't stop you from reading, so get in touch and we'll figure something out.
NEW: DIVINE IN ESSENCE, by Yarrow Paisley
The stories of Divine In Essence exemplify a sui generis slipstream style that deftly weaves a psychedelic literary fabric from elements of Fabulism, Occult Horror, Transgressive Fiction, and the Weird. Attune your mind and be transformed. Escape!
Yarrow Paisley dictates dreams onto paper. His work is like nothing else I've read--enchanting, touching, terrifying, absurd.
– E. Catherine Tobler, author of The Necessity of Stars
NEW: SHIT LIST, by Daniel A. Hoyt
In a sharp, funny, and deeply relevant social satire, Daniel A. Hoyt examines the worlds of NBA basketball, indie Rock and Roll, and presidential politics. On the first day of 2017, Harrison Rawles — a paid body double for NBA superstar TR Washington — suffers an unsettling occurrence: A small orange animal on the side of the road fills him (and his police escort) with sudden, overwhelming regret. As 2017 moves into the first 100 days of President Dadondrik Kukla’s term of office, the creature appears throughout Zebulon City, especially at rock concerts led by singer/guitarist Sabina Murphy. When TR begins to make the yoga position known as “chair pose” during the National Anthem, President Kukla declares political war. Meanwhile, Sabina struggles with her new-found fanbase, and Harrison tries to love his pseudo-teammates and spread the joy of “Star Trek.” Will President Kukla receive his Russian tank? Will the orange creature make everyone cry? As the president and his deputies begin a series of inhumane policies, the tears seem all too necessary. SHIT LIST is a satire with a large heart — and a killer guitar solo.
NEW: THE BERLIN WALL, by David Leo Rice
Europe, 2020. Some claim that the Berlin Wall, once a living entity, is coming back together, its scattered pieces seeking reunion on the far side of history. The European continent trembles on the edge of total war, either in reality or deep in its own feverish imagination. Part present-tense apocalyptic satire and part neo-medieval phantasmagoria, David Leo Rice’s new novel presents an alternate history of the present where the Internet has become a territory unto itself and unstable factions obsessed with nationalism, liberalism, and romanticism drive one another toward a clash that could turn the very notions of refuge and culture into the ravings of a lunatic.
NEW: WIRE MOTHERS, by Katharine Coldiron
A woman begins to eat books when food can’t satisfy. A reporter discovers that sympathy for the devil might be misplaced. A grandmother organizes her crimes into neat checklists. These five stories, written by one of indie lit’s most versatile authors, explore bad vibes, bad choices, and bad parenting.
NEW: IN THE SIGHT, by Tobias Carroll
Farrier had been raised in the East…
Furtive spaces on the outskirts of cities, truck stops in the middle of nowhere, and obscure research outposts — those are the places where Farrier did his work. What’s the nature of that work, you ask? DIY brain modification, for starters — highly experimental and in no way legal. When his past catches up with him, Farrier sets out on a road trip without end, frenetically crossing the country in search of redemption, revisiting old haunts along the way.
NEW: CENTRIFUGAL: UNSTORIES, by Matthew Burnside
A girl flees to outer space in a bathtub, a man opts to live inside a vending machine, marble game glitches, tent cities, telescope murders, the beautiful afterlife of a book, an advent calendar for broken hearts, cheat sheet for transmigration of the soul, and many more “unstories” of characters arriving at points of no return.
NEW: IN THE SIGHT, by Tobias Carroll
Farrier had been raised in the East…
Furtive spaces on the outskirts of cities, truck stops in the middle of nowhere, and obscure research outposts — those are the places where Farrier did his work. What’s the nature of that work, you ask? DIY brain modification, for starters — highly experimental and in no way legal. When his past catches up with him, Farrier sets out on a road trip without end, frenetically crossing the country in search of redemption, revisiting old haunts along the way.
HOW I KILLED THE UNIVERSAL MAN, by Thomas Kendall
John Lakerman, alternative current affairs journalist for donkeyWolf media, is sent to participate and report on a clinical trial for a newly developed, biopharmaceutical, antidepressant. While researching the article, and the disappearance of its lead researcher, Lakerman is drawn into a complex world of body augmentations, migrant labour, billionaires, a Virtual Reality Game and a series of fatally seductive mutations.
How I Killed The Universal Man is a transhumanist noir taking place in a near future where environmental disaster and the advent of biological A.I is leading to the radical reorganisation of consciousness. A narrative about the unknown forces structuring narrative’s necessity, How I Killed The Universal Man begins from the premise that reality is always virtual.
BOYS BUY ME DRINKS TO WATCH ME FALL DOWN, by Anna Dickson James
A sentient zombie starves for intelligent brains and meaningful relationships in an increasingly vapid world.
A newly single woman struggles to keep up with a creepy, near-future beauty culture.
Anthropomorphic furniture ruins a man’s health, career, and love life.
A woman gets eaten alive by a well-meaning boyfriend.
The surreal landscape of the stories in this award-winning collection shines a fish-eye lens on the female experience while taking a shockingly hilarious plunge into themes of addiction, abuse, sex, and gender roles.
PERCOLATOR, by Joey Truman
Not everyone in this world needs to become a plumber or a securities broker, a housewife or a cop. There is no mandate from birth that you need to be anything. For most people, who they are is just the simple fact of: this is how things are done, so do them that way. And Guy and Buddy, for whatever reason, were simpatico in this way.
"In hilariously methodical prose, Joey Truman's Percolator takes us on an existential joyride through one day in the life of two inept roommates. This is Beckett meets grunge in a survival novel struggling to make it through the front door. Stove pot coffee is key." – Jess Barbagallo
MADSTONE, by K Hank Jost
The water is rising… Toilets overflow, and wages are low. Jobs are lost, and time is money. Time is money, and so is your body. Addictions relapse, and friendships falter. Meaning evades your grasp, and God is dead. God is dead, and so is your father… Your mind refuses you its secrets, and the immutable other, too often, tells the truth.
K Hank Jost’s charybdic anti-epic, MadStone, glitters with the strewn gore of every eviscerated day, the innards and excretions of both body and mind, unwinding a nauseous fugue of hungover prophecy, macerated identity, and the collapse of all distance between selves.
TROLL, by Dave Fitzgerald
Here you are, shopping for books online because honestly, who has the energy to go out anymore? There are so many people out there, all buying the same Oprah-stickered crap to take to the coffee shop and Instagram next to their PSLs and blueberry muffins with one perfect bite taken out (or pretend to read until their latest Tinder date shows up). It’s insufferable – the performance of it all – and everyone knows small presses are where the real literary vanguard is happening these days anyway. Well, maybe not everyone. But that’s kind of the point of your being here, isn’t it?
THE ASTRONOMER, by Brian Biswas
Franz Herbert suffers from epileptic seizures; are they a curse that takes him away from his wife, family, and friends, or a gift that allows him to explore the depths of the cosmos?
An exploration of a man’s struggle with a neurological disease, the nature of reality, and the workings of his own mind, The Astronomer is both a love story and the tale of a man’s journey to find his place in the universe.
NSFW, by David Scott Hay
Set in the world of social media moderators, @Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r must survive their first 90 days to qualify for health benefits and a life-changing mystery bonus.
As they flag a nonstop torrent of the most heinous [NSFW] videos, their coping mechanisms expand to include office sex, drugs, and a jellyfish.
But when copium is no longer an option, @Sa>ag3 & @Jun1p3r turn to a more bizarre form of therapy: intimacy.
Meanwhile a stream of ominous warning videos keeps popping up… COMING SOON… hinting at an event that will alter the American landscape.
FOUNDATIONS, by Abigail Stewart
A steely-eyed feminist, multi-generational novel, Foundations is told in three parts following the lives of three women — a housewife, a Hollywood actress, and a reality TV show contestant — all living in the same Dallas house in different eras, whose experiences parallel the history of women’s rights struggles in the American south.
“As Stewart explores repetitions and recurrences over time, you keenly care about these characters who are linked by one particular house that may or may not be able to contain their desires and their dreams.” — Deborah Shapiro
DROPPING OUT, by Niamh Burns
Rory Langford is in a downward spiral. After losing his father to suicide, he is cut adrift from a family he has always been at odds with: an older sister who has never understood him, and a grieving mother who can’t even bear the sight of him. Equal parts punk rock paean and Shakespearean tragedy, Dropping Out is a blistering portrait of addiction and self-immolation.
TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE, by Terena Elizabeth Bell
Tell Me What You See is a collection of ten experimental short stories about coronavirus quarantines, climate change, the January 6th invasion on the US Capitol, and other events from 2020-2021.
Written in both word and image, pieces from the collection have been called “inventive and topical and fresh, emotional, chaotic, and important” by The McNeese Review and “timely, relevant, and interesting” by The Missouri Review. Title story “Tell Me What You See” is a 2021 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) City Artist Corps winner.
COCK-A-HOOP, by Corey Mesler
Meet Neill Rhymer. Writer. Bookseller. Romantic. Or, maybe, Pervert; it could be tough to know the difference, those days. Follow Neill, his conquests, his loves and his losses, his catches and fumbles, as he plies his own orbit through literature and love in Cock-a-Hoop, a semi-autobiographical would-be coming of age story for anyone who’s ever attempted a life of mind.
CHARLOTTE AND THE CHICKENMAN, by Aina Hunter
It’s November 2, 2059 in Baltimore and Charlotte-Noa Tibitt, the downwardly mobile, adult daughter of a popular HelloCast lifestyle coach, feels like death. A few months back Charlotte and her Eurindigenous girlfriend scored a sweet subsidized apartment in a building chock full of fellow queer-radical-feminist animal rights activists. But when an unspeakable right-wing candidate again wins the US presidency, Charlotte seeks refuge in a luxury roof-top hotel bar and life begins to unravel.
So now it’s time to stop mourning. Get back on the bus, make a plan, start over.
All this on a screaming planet divided into ethno-states mostly controlled by South Africa’s ruling Economic Freedom Party and their right wing, anti-black opposition – the Eurin supremacists of the New Broederband.
LIMINAL, by Hobie Anthony
Louise has a mission. She has to deliver a black box through a Pacific Northwest that was ravaged by an offshore earthquake years ago. The box is seamless, with a single, blinking red light. Along the way she’ll find friends and foes. Her best friend, her soul-sister Maisie, will lead the way from a Spanner-village tower. Some will not survive the journey. Their fate can change in an instant, fickle variables in an unstable equation.
Liminal is a tale of hardship and transformation. It is about nature and technology, about humans trying to find their way in an uncertain world. Even the roads are full of holes. They have to rely on their wits, trusted friends, and Louise’s ancient Honda if they’re going to survive.
THE NEW HOUSE, by David Leo Rice
A family of outsider artists roams the American interior in search of the New Jerusalem in David Leo Rice’s new dream novel, loosely inspired by the hermetic worlds of Joseph Cornell. As Tobias Carroll writes, “The childhood of Jakob, The New House’s young hero, is one unlike that of your typical coming-of-age narrative. His is a youth surrounded by prophetic dreams, religious schisms, and secretive conversations — plus some shocking scenes of violence. Rice’s prose creates a mood abounding with mystery and dread, and The New House would fit comfortably beside the likes of Michael McDowell’s Toplin and Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory in terms of disquieting portraits of sustained alienation.”
THE AUTODIDACTS, by Thomas Kendall
A man mysteriously disappears in a lighthouse, as if dissolved by light, leaving behind a notebook filled with bizarre claims of a curse and a series of drawings entitled ‘The Death of the Jubilant Child.’ The investigation into the disappearance unearths hidden connections between the disappeared man, Helene and the strange figure of the Man With The Forks In His Fingers. Fifteen years later, the discovery of the detective’s copy of the notebook by Helene’s daughter seems to set in motion a repetition of the events of the past.
Circuitously structured and intensely lyrical, The Autodidacts explores the mythos of friendship, the necessity of failure, the duty of imagination, and the dreams of working class lives demanding to be beautiful. It is a prayer in denial of its heresy, a metafictional-roman-a-clef trying to maintain its concealment, and an attempt to love that shows its workings out in the margins of its construction.
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