Jeffrey Ford

Diego, un joven inmigrante mexicano, es acogido por el as del timo Thomas Schell. Juntos capean con comodidad el tem-poral de la Gran Depresión estafando a los neoyorquinos pudientes mediante sesiones de espiritismo. Hasta que un acontecimiento imposible lo cambia todo. En una de sus sesiones Schell ve la imagen de una niña en una puerta de cristal, que suplica en silencio la ayuda del estafador. A pesar de saber que sus poderes paranormales son una farsa, Schell ofrece sus servicios para ayudar a encontrar a la niña perdida, arrastrando a Diego con el hacia el interior de un complejo laberinto de mortales secretos y terribles experiencias. Jeffrey Ford es una autor que, como Jonathan Carroll, cultiva un estilo de literatura fantastica surrealista muy personal. Su obra se caracteriza por su gran dosis de imaginacion, humor, referencias literarias y por su forma de contar cuentos como si no lo fueran.

A bold and intriguing fabulist novel that reimagines two of the most legendary characters in American literatureCaptain Ahab and Ishmael of Herman Melvilles Moby-Dickfrom the critically acclaimed Edgar and World Fantasy award-winning author of The Girl in the Glass and The Shadow Year.At the end of a long journey, Captain Ahab returns to the mainland to confront the true author of the novel Moby-Dick, his former shipmate, Ishmael. For Ahab was not pulled into the oceans depths by a harpoon line, and the greatly exaggerated rumors of his untimely death have caused him grievous harmafter hearing about Ahabs demise, his wife and child left Nantucket for New York, and now Ahab is on a desperate quest to find them.

A bold and intriguing fabulist novel that reimagines two of the most legendary characters in American literature—Captain Ahab and Ishmael of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick—from the critically acclaimed Edgar and World Fantasy award-winning author of The Girl in the Glass and The Shadow Year.

En 1960, una pequeña comunidad de Long Island se ve afectada por extraños sucesos. Tras las huellas de estos se encuentran un joven y su hermano mayor, Jim, que pasan los últimos días del verano sumergidos en un ambiente asfixiante, con un padre pluriempleado y una madre alcohólica. Un mirón anda suelto por las calles y un hombre observa amenazador a los dos jóvenes desde un coche frente a su casa. Pero cuando un chico del pueblo desaparece sin dejar rastro, ambos tienen claro que el culpable es el señor Blanco. La sorpresa llega cuando descubren que Mary, la hermana pequeña de los chicos, mueve de manera misteriosa figuritas en una maqueta del pueblo, mostrando sucesos antes de que ocurran.

El retratista Piero Piambo, la gran sensación de Nueva York en 1893, siente menguar sus ambiciones artísticas, pese a in-mortalizar a todos los nuevos ricos de la ciudad en sus óleos. Pero entonces recibe un lucrativo encargo distinto a los demas.Su cliente es una tal señora Charbuque; el unico problema es que Piambo no podra verla, sino que tendra que sentarse delante de un elegante biombo y su modelo le contara todo sobre su vida, dandole pistas por las que el debe adivinar su apariencia. Mientras se esfuerza lo indecible para capturar en el oleo el rostro de una mujer a la que no ha visto jamas, una serie de asesinatos tienen lugar en la ciudad. Y al tiempo quela relacion de Piambo con la señora Charbuque va com-plicandose, este sospecha cada vez mas que esos terribles acontecimientos, su encargo imposible y su extraña benefactora estan intimamente relacionados.

These are Jeffrey Fords personal selections spanning the decades of his career and representing his many stylesgenre hybrids, literary approaches to SF/F/H tropes, forays into the New Weird as one of its early practitioners, realist-auto-biographical/fantastic/ horror mash-ups, and straight-on fantasy stories. Ford is at home across the map of speculative fiction but is tied to, and claims allegiance to, no country.If you are looking for a collection in which every story is a window on a new world, this book is for you. Within these pages, youll visit with the mythic jinmenkins of Japan (dogs with human heads), the great poet of Amherst, Emily Dickinson, the Beautiful Gelreesh, a monster of sympathy, a young man who suffers from a rare form of synaesthesia, Stoodtladdle, the enormous flea mayor of Exo-skeleton town, and Charon, the boatman of Hell. You will travel to strange localesa bottled city, under the bottom of the lake, the Hotel Lacrimose, and the Idiot Planet. In the words of Joyce Carol Oates: Jeffrey Ford is a beautifully disorienting writer, a poet in an unclassifiable genrehis own.This volume includes an entirely new tale ("Mr. Sacrobatus"), an eloquent note on each story, and brilliant header sketchesby Derek Ford, the noted fantastic artist and son of Jeffrey Ford.

Mixing the mundane with the metaphysical, the pairings of the everyday and the extraordinary in this collection of short fiction yield supernatural results-a young musician perceives another world while drinking coffee, a fairy chronicles his busy life in a sandcastle during the changing tide, a demonic 16th-century chess set shows up in a New Jersey bar, and Charon, the boatman of hell, takes a few days vacation. Storylines both conventional and outlandish reveal humdrum routines as menacing, or imaginary worlds as perfectly familiar. Allusions to authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne reinforce the fantasy tradition in these tales, while understated humor and moments of sadness add a quirky unpredictability. Also included is the previously unpublished novella, "Botch Town," a coming-of-age story about a boy on Long Island whose family and friends live ordinary lives under threats both real and imagined. Each story is followed by a brief afterword that details its genesis.

Diego, un joven inmigrante mexicano, es acogido por el as del timo Thomas Schell. Juntos capean con comodidad el tem-poral de la Gran Depresión estafando a los neoyorquinos pudientes mediante sesiones de espiritismo. Hasta que un acontecimiento imposible lo cambia todo.En una de sus sesiones Schell ve la imagen de una niña en una puerta de cristal, que suplica en silencio la ayuda del estafador. A pesar de saber que sus poderes paranormales son una farsa, Schell ofrece sus servicios para ayudar a encontrar a la niña perdida, arrastrando a Diego con el hacia el interior de un complejo laberinto de mortales secretos y terribles experiencias.

El retratista Piero Piambo, la gran sensación de Nueva York en 1893, siente menguar sus ambiciones artísticas, pese a inmortalizar a todos los nuevos ricos de la ciudad en sus óleos. Pero entonces recibe un lucrativo encargo distinto a los demás. Su cliente es una tal señora Charbuque; el único problema es que Piambo no podrá verla, sino que tendrá que sentarse delante de un elegante biombo y su modelo le contará todo sobre su vida, dándole pistas por las que él debe adivinar su apariencia. Mientras se esfuerza lo indecible para capturar en el óleo el rostro de una mujer a la que no ha visto jamás, una serie de asesinatos tienen lugar en la ciudad. Y al tiempo que la relación de Piambo con la señora Charbuque va complicándose, este sospecha cada vez más que esos terribles acontecimientos, su encargo imposible y su extraña «benefactora» están íntimamente relacionados.

Emily Dickinson takes a carriage ride with Death. A couple are invited over to a neighbors daughters exorcism. A country witch with a sea-captains head in a glass globe intercedes on behalf of abused and abandoned children. In July of 1915, in Hardin County, Ohio, a boy sees ghosts. Explore contemporary natural history in a bakers dozen of exhilarating visions.Contains:-The Blameless-Word Doll-The Angel Seems-Mount Chary Galore-A Natural History of Autumn-Blood Drive-A Terror Rocket Ship to Hell-The Fairy Enterprise-The Last Triangle-Spirits of Salt: A Tale of the Coral Heart The Thyme Fiend-The Prelates Commission

En La Fisiognomía , ganadora del World Fantasy Award, Jeffrey Ford concibió un genio de mente satánica que imaginó, construyó y dominó una metrópolis de pesadilla llamada la Ciudad Bien Construida. Esa mente es el oscuro lugar que el antiguo fisiognomista Cley se vera obligado a explorar si quiere salvar a sus amigos de una terrible enfermedad del sueño. Ocho años despues de la destruccion de la Ciudad Bien Construida, Cley vive en el pequeño pueblo rural de Wenau, dedicado a ayudar a sus vecinos. Pero un dia, el Amo Below reaparece y esparce una virulenta nube amarilla que provoca un profundo sueño. Cley debe emprender la busqueda de Below en las ruinas de la antigua ciudad con la esperanza de encontrar un antidoto. Pero el tirano ha caido victima de su propia enfermedad del sueño y la unica esperanza para encontrar la formula esta en la adormecida memoria de Below, en la ilusoria casa de los sueños, recuerdos e imaginacion de un loco. Ford nos introduce en un purgatorio sombrio de horrores surreales e impactantes ambiguedades morales.

En la tierra de la Ciudad Bien Construida, la forma del cuerpo y de la cara determinan el carácter de hombres y mujeres, descubren los más ocultos de los secretos, y hasta predicen el futuro. En manos de un experto como el fisiognomista Class Cley, la fisiognomía imparte justicia, edifica o destruye fortunas, y hace o deshace destinos. Cuando Drachton Below, Amo de la Ciudad Bien Construida, envía a Cley a una lejana región fronteriza para que esclarezca el robo de una fruta maravillosa, que puede otorgar la inmortalidad, el fisiognomista descubre el amor y también la arbitrariedad de la fisiognomía. El resultado de estas revelaciones es un tiempo de horror y destrucción; el mundo de los privilegios se disuelve en una odisea de pesadilla.

A mysterious and richly evocative novel, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque tells the story of portraitist Piero Piambo, who is offered a commission unlike any other. The client is Mrs. Charbuque, a wealthy and elusive woman who asks Piambo to paint her portrait, though with one bizarre twist: he may question her at length on any topic, but he may not, under any circumstances, see her. So begins an astonishing journey into Mrs. Charbuques world and the world of 1893 New York society in this hypnotically compelling literary thriller.

After beholding the destruction of the Well-Built City, physiognomist Cley is now a simple healer seeking peace and atonement in the happy village of survivors. When the town falls into a deadly sleeping sickness, Cley must make a dangerous trip to the ruins of City - now beset by mechanical birds and werewolves - to seek out an antidote. The evil Master Below is still alive, but an accidental exposure to the sickness that he created has put him into a coma. With the help of Belows adopted demon son, found in the wreckage of the laboratory, Cley ventures into the mind and intricate memories of Below to search for a cure. Cley will encounter wonders and dangers undreamed of in the second installment of this classic trilogy.

At times literary, at other times surreal, this collection offers an eclectic group of stories that deal with real-life conflicts, human values, and coming-of-age experiences all placed within fantastical settings. One tale recounts the authors search for a Kafka story that can only be found in an elusive and quite possibly cursed edition. Other stories feature humans dressing in full-body protective exoskins in the personas of old Hollywood movie stars to barter old Earth movies for an alien aphrodisiac and a young boy coming to terms with creation and moulding his own man out of detritus from a nearby forest. In the title story, a great fantasy writer loses touch with the world he has created and pleads with his young assistant to help him visualise the storys end and enable him to complete his greatest novel ever.

In the Well-Built City, Master Drachton Belows power is absolute, and he will not hesitate to use it. His primary method of control is through his physiognomists, who are trained to read a persons face and body, perceiving that persons past and secrets-and even events yet to come. These seers are the judges and jury. Now Drachton has found something that could extend his reign for eternity: a fruit that bestows immortality. To investigate its whereabouts, Below sends cold, collected physiognomist Cley to the remote mining town of Anamasobia. One at a time Cley interrogates the townspeople, performing his usual fact finding without issue. That is, until he meets the beautiful and bright Arla, who harbors a secret that could potentially turn Cleys world upside down-and topple the Well-Built City itself.A Kafkaesque journey into the unknown, The Physiognomy is an award-winning trip through a land where the line between reality and imagination is constantly blurred.

There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry-and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it. . . .There is a life lived beneath the water-among rotted buildings and bloated corpses-by those so overburdened by the worlds demands that they simply give up and go under. . . .In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover.

Eclectic is certainly an adjective that can be used to describe the work of the phenomenal Jeffrey Ford-along with imaginative, provocative, mesmerizing, and brilliant. His powerful dark fantasy, The Physiognomy, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; his novel, The Girl in the Glass, won the Edgar Award, mystery and crime fictions most prestigious prize. Crackpot Palace is Fords fourth superb collection of short fiction, and in it, his prodigious talent shines as brightly as ever. Here are twenty tales both strange and wonderful, filled with mad scientists, vampires, lost souls, and Native American secrets, from an author who has been glowingly compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr (The Alienist).