MONTAG PRESS
COLLECTIVE
B O O K S W O R T H B U R N I N G
Books by Connor de Bruler
Tree Black
It’s hard being a trans woman. Harder still in North Carolina. Sandy Pogue knows this first-hand. Along with her Cherokee boyfriend Yona Bridger, Sandy manages to eke out a simple but happy life until inevitable circumstances force them to pack up and skip town. What starts as a journey towards a new life together takes a drop into the seedy underbelly of an isolated South, where some of the old ways die hard. As they carve out a new life, Sandy and Yona find themselves in the clutches of a bizarre cult of kidnapped women and demonic children. What is Yona’s connection to this mysterious group of backwoods zealots, and can he help Sandy avoid a fate worse than death? More than just their two lives hang in the balance as they hack a bloody swath through the ancient countryside, trying to reach the safety of the light through the TREE BLACK.
In Tree Black, De Bruler introduces the most amazing new heroine to blast onto the horror scene in ages. Swinging her hatchet through the heads of demon-possessed hillbillies, Sandy is a cross between Hedwig and Evil Dead’s Ash Williams. A fully realized and dynamic character instead of a boring clichéd archetype, Sandy strikes blow after brutal blow for outsiders everywhere.
The Mountain Devils
THE TERRAIN OF EAST TENNESSEE hides many terrors: meth labs, moonshiners, and a series of brutal murders committed by a teenage girl. The law is too slow, the migrant workers aren’t talking, and the snake-handling preachers know something the rest of the town doesn’t. Mexican paranormal investigator, Cassandra Jimenez, aims to find out exactly why the girl has been killing with impunity, but she can’t do it alone. Erik van de Roer, a South African-born veteran of Afghanistan who helps the local church run liquor across the mountain ranges, agrees to help Cassandra as long as she’s willing to face unimaginable terror. In the forgotten corners of America, where time and culture have given way to necessity and survival, Cassandra will confront the ugly truth about human nature and everything else that is inhuman.
“Rich and engaging. Reading it is like being bitten by a cobra: the first sentences are sharp and unpleasant followed by a strange euphoria.”
-Mary Beth Arthur, author of Rose Hips
Last Junction
“Harsh and vivid...ultraviolent. Prepare to get roughed up.”
—Christopher Clancy, author of We Take Care of Our Own
Dagur Aní Hemuðsen, a 17-year-old Faroese-born crust punk, goes by the nickname Rayne. He rides trains illegally across the United States in search of adventure and to escape the custody of his alcoholic, verbally abusive stepfather. While immersed in punk-rock subculture, Rayne finds himself passing through Last Junction, North Carolina, a dangerous Appalachian outpost with more than one bizarre secret.
“Dark, gritty, and—most importantly—believable.”
—Eric J. Guignard author of Doorways to the Deadeye
“A writer you want to watch.”
—Fleas on the Dog Online
“Bruce Lee Bond’s marvelous novel, THE BROKEN COAST, should take its rightful place among the poignant and poetic portraits of a marvelous time in the marvelous city of San Francisco – a city of Chinese Tongs and parlor girls, a time of love and transformation, brutality and mysticism….”
-James Dalessandro, author of 1906 and Bohemian Heart
Olden Days
Alluring high-school junior, Victoria Vandergreven, has gone missing from an upper-class home in the dead of night. The only clue is a tenuous connection to a remote campground hundreds of miles away in the hills of Tennessee. Like the shards of what was once a pane of glass, the disappearance connects a cast of desperate outsiders into their darkest days: a failed detective, a contract killer, a kidnapped woman, a small-town sheriff, and the CEO of a health food enterprise. Today is only the history of tomorrow. We’re all living in the Olden Days.
Vagabone
An enthralling novel... would fit nicely on the shelf next to Cormac McCarthy and the darker tales of Joe R. Lansdale. A damn fine book.
— Brandon Notla, Iron and Smoke
Brutal and unrelenting.
— Jessie McKinnell, Anarchy and Other Lies
Vagabone follows protagonists Amalin and Pancho as they fight to survive in a post-apocalyptic United States and Mexico. Before the collapse, Amalin worked as a bartender and bookstore clerk. Fueled by desperation, she accepts a contract to venture beyond the military cordon to kill a dangerous cult leader known as The Teacher. Along the way, she meets Pancho, a Mexican boy with the gift of perfect aim, and Isaiah Dorman, a 19-year-old maverick trucker with adventure on his mind.
Part Jodorowsky’s El Topo by way of Sam Shepard, part William Gibson by way of Larry McMurtry, Vagabone exists to make real American literature out of the New Weird Fiction canon.
