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Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys by Aaron Tucker

Two days before a mysterious catastrophe befalls Toronto, before a man decides he must trek through violence and bloodshed to save his ex-girlfriend, the two of them are having a conversation about John Wayne. She’s telling him about The Searchers as a way to talk about their histories, their families, maybe even their relationship. But as he drinks more and more, the evening takes a difficult turn. Soon after, he wakes up to disaster and decides to be a hero.Using the tropes of both the Western and the disaster movie, Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys looks at the violence of our contemporary masculinity and its deep roots in shaping our culture.

Join us for the launch on Tuesday June 20 at 7:00 pm at The Tranzac Club!

"In Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys, Aaron Tucker refuses the easy projections of masculinity from film history. Instead he gallops into the screen to sift out how drama collaborates with the bloodiest of truths. That this novel shifts from dialogical treatise into a thriller proves that Tucker is well on his way to stealing the weird fiction mantle away from Don DeLillo."
– Emily Schultz, author of The Blondes and Little Threats 

"Ask the right questions and a conversation about the movies becomes a conversation about your life, family, past, and everything you value: Aaron Tucker’s novel, which starts chatty before turning deeply, unexpectedly inward, grasps the ceaseless, sometimes terrible relevance of violence and troubling art."
– Naben Ruthnum, author of A Hero of Our Time

Not Anywhere, Just Not by Ken Sparling

The boy and the girl have been married for decades, mostly getting along as they go about their lives. But one day, like thousands of people around the world, the boy vanishes, and the girl is left to wait, wonder, and worry. Will he return? Who might she be if she moves on without him?

This is a world where every morning the cat gets fed and the coffee gets made, but also one in which God sometimes lives in the garage – she likes to sleep on the freezer – and gigantic words can fall from the sky. Not Anywhere, Just Not cracks open the small dramas of our lives to show the dread and wonder inside
all of us.

Read an excerpt of the novel in Blue Arrangements here.

Join us for the launch on Thursday June 29 at 5:00 pm at Coach House Books!

"Ken Sparling is a brilliant writer and this book, like all his books, is a beauty. Sparling chronicles the times I fear most – the moments of loneliness, of loss, of ennui – and somehow makes them seem worthwhile, even wondrous, and often flat-out funny. His work makes life look livable, which makes him a wizard to me."
– Derek McCormack, author of Castle Faggot

"A gorgeous rendition of the domestic uncanny, Not Anywhere, Just Not is an ostensibly quiet book that slowly and carefully unnerves and unsettles you – both because of its precise swapping out of reality and because of just how familiar it so often seems. All of us, Sparling seems to say, are on the verge of vanishing at any moment."
– Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World