Whether you're an avid gamer, a Twitch subscriber, or just an incidental Subway Surfer, video games have changed the way you interact with the world, and have been part of our lives for over fifty years. Critical Hits is a celebration of play and playfulness, and the lasting impact of videogames. Composed of sharp, impassioned, and inquisitive essays, this collection begins with an introduction by Carmen Maria Machado and presents video games through the eyes of eighteen writer-gamers as they straddle real and artificial worlds. In games, they find solace from illness and grief, test ideas about language, bodies, race, and technology, and see their experiences and identities reflected in-or complicated by-the interactive virtual realities they inhabit. From a deep dive into "portal fantasy" games by Charlie Jane Anders and a comic by MariNaomi about her time as a video game producer, to the overlaps in gaming and poetry by Stephen Sexton, Critical Hits illuminates fragments of an industry that is wildly popular, grossly misunderstood, and absolutely spellbinding.

A blackly comic epic - a voyage through small-town America, and through the interior life of its most neurotic mailman. Albert Lippincott is a thirty-year veteran of the Nestor, New York, Post Office - a letter carrier extraordinaire, aggressively cheerful, obsessively efficient. But Albert has a few things to hide. His unfortunate habit, for instance, of reading other people's mail; his abortive university career, complete with a crackpot theory, a nervous breakdown and a thwarted attempt to bite out his professor's eye; a disastrous marriage, grotesquely self-absorbed parents and a sexually ambiguous entanglement with his melodramatic sister. And then there's his attempt to reform the postal system of Kazakhstan and his complicated relationship with his cats. And now his supervisors are on to his letter-opening compulsion, there's a throbbing pain under his left arm and he is finding it increasingly difficult to contain his emotions. Things are closing in on Albert, and he is forced to confront, once and for all, his life's failures. Albert Lippincott is a brilliant creation: flawed, damaged, but fiercely perceptive, and desperate to make meaning out of the mess of existence. He, and Lennon, hold us captive with a wild narrative voice fuelled by desperation and touched by madness.

A haunting, enigmatic novel about a woman who is given a second chance--and isn't sure whether she really wants it* A "Publishers Weekly" "Indie Sleeper" * A Powell's Indiespensable Pick * The "Nervous Breakdown's" October Book Club Pick *
Elisa Brown is driving back from her annual, somber visit to her son Silas's grave when something changes. Actually, everything changes: her body is more voluptuous; she's wearing different clothes and driving a new car. When she arrives home, her life is familiar--but different. There is her house, her husband. But in the world she now inhabits, Silas is no longer dead, and his brother is disturbingly changed. Elisa has a new job, and her marriage seems sturdier, and stranger, than she remembers. She finds herself faking her way through a life she is convinced is not her own. Has she had a psychotic break? Or has she entered a parallel universe? Elisa believed that Silas was doomed from the start, but now that he is alive, what can she do to repair her strained relations with her children? She soon discovers that these questions hinge on being able to see herself as she really is--something that might be impossible for Elisa, or for anyone. In "Familiar, "J. Robert Lennon continues his profound and exhilarating exploration of the surreal undercurrents of contemporary American life.

Finally available in the United States, a singular story collection that "Time Out" declared "unsettlingly brilliant" Astudent's suicide note is not what it seems. A high school football rivalry turns absurd--and deadly. A much-loved cat seems to have been a different animal all along. A pair of identical twins aren't identical at all--or even related. A man finds his own yellowed birth announcement inside a bureau bought at auction. Set in a small upstate New York town, told in a conversational style, "Pieces for the Left Hand "is a stream of a hundred anecdotes, none much longer than a page. At once funny, bizarre, familiar, and disturbing, these deceptively straightforward tales nevertheless shock and amaze through uncanny coincidence, tragic misunderstanding, strange occurrence, or sudden insight. Unposted letters, unexpected visitors, false memories--in J. Robert Lennon's vision of America, these are the things that decide our fate. Wry and deadpan, powerful and philosophical, these addictive little tales reveal the everyday world as a strange and eerie place.

"A phantasmagoria of American paranoia and self-loathing in the person of a deranged but somehow good-hearted middle-aged mail carrier in steep decline, the book hums with a kind of chipper angst," writes Jonathan Lethem in the "Los Angeles Times Book Review." "Mailman" tells the blackly comic story of Albert Lippincott. Albert is Nestor, New York's mailman extraordinaire aggressively cheerful, obsessively efficient. But he also has a few things to hide: his habit of reading other people's mail, a nervous breakdown, and a sexually ambiguous entanglement with his sister. Now his supervisors are on to his letter-hoarding compulsion, and there's a throbbing pain under his right arm. Things are closing in on Albert, who will soon be forced to confront, once and for all, his life's failures. Funny and moving, driven by a wild, compulsive interior voice, "Mailman" is a unique creation, a deeply original American novel. Already optioned to the movies, this astonishing and kinetically charged tale was one of the most exuberantly praised novels of 2003."