This New & Poisonous Air - by Adam McOmber (Paperback)

About the Book

Written in the New Wave Fabulist tradition, these historically-grounded stories blend the fantastic and the macabre in astonishing, unforgettable ways.

Book Synopsis

Written in the New Wave Fabulist tradition, these historically-grounded stories blend the fantastic and the macabre in astonishing, unforgettable ways.

Review Quotes

"A sinuous, antiquated style proves marvelously effective in these dark and imaginative tales by author McOmber."
-- Publishers Weekly

"A journey through this collection feels like an afternoon peering over the dustiest shelves of a museum of curiosities. I felt studious, peculiar, and intrigued."
-- A CAPPELLA ZOO

"The ten stories in [McOmber's] debut collection This New & Poisonous Air are remarkable not only for their aesthetic (a thoroughly new combination of the dark and the weird) but also for the consistent quality of their writing, which allows McOmber to credibly transport his readers across both time and lines of belief."
-- Arts&Letters

"McOmber does an excellent job of creating multilayer characters, all somehow ill-at-ease in the situations in which they find themselves thrust...The stories themselves aren't as dark or grim as I would have thought, given the comparisons to Poe, but beneath each runs a subtext that a darkness resides in us all."--Historical Novel Society

About the Author

Adam McOmber: Adam McOmber is the assistant director of Creative Nonfiction at Columbia College Chicago where he teaches both nonfiction and literature with a focus on mythology. He is the associate editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika. His work has recently been published in Conjunctions, StoryQuarterly, Third Coast, The Greensboro Review, Arts and Letters, Ascent, Web Conjunctions and Quarterly West. In 2012, This New and Poisonous Air was chosen as one of NewCity Lit's "Lit 50" in Chicago. McOmber holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Indiana University. This New and Poisonous Air is his first book.