Dale Peck

When Sprout and his father move from Long Island to Kansas after the death of his mother, he is sure he will find no friends, no love, no beauty. But friends find him, the strangeness of the landscape fascinates him, and when love shows up in an unexpected place, it proves impossible to hold. An incredible, literary story of a boy who knows he's gay, and the town that seems to have no place for him to hide.

Sprout

Sent to stay with their uncle in a ship-like home called Drift House, twelve-year-old Susan and her stepbrothers embark on an adventure involving duplicitous mermaids, pirates, and an attempt to stop time forever.

The First Voyage

The Drift House

"You'd think it has been done before but it really hasn't—the perfectly crafted, haunting and heartbreaking, raw, funny, unblinking yet merciful art novel."—Marlon James Family secrets, sexual explorations, art world wealth, and legacies of racism and environmental destruction collide in the new novel from Lambda Award-winning author Dale Peck. A century and a half of family secrets are written on Judas Stammers’s body, painted purple by a birthmark that covers half his face and abdomen. Judas is the last descendent of a 19th-century robber baron who made his fortune off the slaves who died in his coal mines. The money’s gone, but the legacy lives on in the form of an all-male, all-black private school founded by the family patriarch in atonement for his sins. Ostracized for his name as much as his appearance, Judas’s lust for his classmates is matched only by their contempt for him, until finally he’s driven to seek out sex in places where his identity means nothing to the anonymous men he gives himself to. Hovering over everything is Judas’s mother, Dixie, an acclaimed potter whose obsession with creating the perfect vessel over and over again leaves her son that much more isolated. By turns philosophical and perverse, Night Soil is a tour de force by the writer whom Alexander Chee called “the only genius I know who could write it and live.”

Night Soil

"Family secrets, sexual explorations, art world wealth, and legacies of racism and environmental destruction collide in the new novel from Lambda Award-winning author Dale Peck The art world falls in love with Dixie Stammers when it is discovered that not only are her pots mechanically perfect spheres, they are also identical, despite the fact that they are made entirely by hand, without benefit of a wheel, measuring device, or any other tool. Her teenage son, Judas, is pathologically shy, and retreats into a world of anonymous sexual encounters at a roadside rest area, although what he really longs for is a relationship with one of the boys at the private school he attends. This Academy was founded by Judas's ancestral grandfather, a nineteenth-century coal magnate. Driven by his mother's secretive nature, Judas's begins digging into his family's history, and the Academy's, until he unearths a series of secrets that causes him to question everything he thought he knew about his world"--

"Dixie Stammers, a potter, and her son Judas, live in an unusual community in an unnamed southern state. When Judas is a teenager, the art world falls in love with Dixie when it is discovered that not only are her pots mechanically perfect spheres, they are also identical, despite the fact that they are made entirely by hand, without benefit of a wheel, measuring device, or any other tool. Fame and fortune puts a strain on Judas's relationship with his mother, in part because he is an only child and never knew his father, but also because he is afflicted with a port wine stain that covers the entire left side of his body, including his face. Pathologically shy (or maybe just pathological), the teenaged Judas retreats into a world of anonymous sexual encounters at a roadside rest area, although what he really longs for is a relationship with one of the boys at the private school he attends. This Academy was founded by Judas's ancestral grandfather, a nineteenth-century coal magnate named Marcus Stammers who due to a tragic accident, closed his mines and transformed them into a nature conservancy, which is overseen by the Academy. Driven by both lust and a desire to understand his mother, Judas dives deeper into his family's history, and the Academy's, until he uncovers a series of secrets that causes him to question everything he thought he knew about his world"--

Night soil

In Martin and John, Dale Peck weaves together two sets of stories to create a haunting, heartrending portrait of an artist in our time. The first is told episodically by John, a hustler in New York, who falls in love with Martin, a man dying of AIDS. Interwoven with these stories is a second set, in which characters named Martin and John appear, but living different lives. The resulting novel is a work of stunning originality that is "inspired and brilliant" (The Nation).

A Novel

Martin and John

Tim Kring

Includes five never-before-seen bonus chapters, plus detailed authors’ notes revealing the stories behind Shift’s most fascinating people, places, and events A new caliber of thriller set at the collision of ’60s counterculture and the rise of dark forces in world government. Heroes creator Tim Kring injects history with a supernatural, hallucinogenic what-if. Set in the crucible of the 1960s, Shift is the story of Chandler Forrestal, a man whose life is changed forever when he is unwittingly dragged into a CIA mind-control experiment. After being given a massive dose of LSD, Chandler develops a frightening array of mental powers. With his one-in-a-billion brain chemistry, Chandler’s heightened perception uncovers a plot to assassinate President Kennedy. Propelled to prevent the conspiracy of assassination and anarchy, Chandler becomes a target for deadly forces in and out of the government and is pursued across a simmering landscape peopled by rogue CIA agents, Cuban killers, Mafia madmen, and ex-Nazi scientists . . . all the while haunted by a beautiful woman with her own scandalous past to purge, her own score to settle. Chased across America, will Chandler be able to harness his “shift” and rewrite history? Combining the nonstop style of Ludlum with the sinister, tangled conspiracies of DeLillo and Dick, and featuring cameos from Lee Harvey Oswald to Timothy Leary to J. Edgar Hoover, Shift is a thriller guaranteed to be equal parts heart-stopping and thought-provoking.

The Guided Trip Premium Edition eBook

Shift

"Novelist and critic Dale Peck's latest work--part memoir, part extended essay--is a foray into what the author calls "the second half of the first half of the AIDS epidemic," i.e., the period between 1987, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded, and 1996, when the advent of combination therapy transformed AIDS from a virtual death sentence into a chronic manageable illness. Reminiscent of Joan Didion's The White Album and Kurt Vonnegut's Palm Sunday, Visions and Revisions has been assembled from over a dozen essays and articles that have been extensively rewritten and recombined to form a sweeping, collage-style portrait of a tumultuous era. Moving seamlessly from the lyrical to the analytical to the reportorial, Peck's story takes readers from the serial killings of gay men in New York, London, and Milwaukee, through Peck's first loves upon coming out of the closet, to the transformation of LGBT people from marginal, idealistic fighters to their present place in a world of widespread, if fraught, mainstream acceptance. The narrative pays particular attention the words and deeds of AIDS activists, offering a street-level portrait of ACT UP with considerations of AIDS-centered fiction and criticism of the era, as well as intimate, sometimes elegiac portraits of artists, activists, and HIV-positive people Peck knew. Peck's fiery rhetoric against a government that sat on its hands for the first several years of the epidemic is tinged with the idealism of a young gay man discovering his political, artistic, and sexual identity. The result is a visionary and indispensable work from one of America's most brilliant and controversial authors. "--

"Novelist and critic Dale Peck's latest work--part memoir, part extended essay--is a foray into what the author calls "the second half of the first half AIDS epidemic," i.e., the period between 1987, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded, and 1996, when the advent of combination therapy transformed AIDS from a virtual death sentence into a chronic manageable illness. Visions and Revisions has been assembled from more than a dozen essays and articles that have been extensively rewritten and recombined to form a sweeping, collage-style portrait of a tumultuous era. Moving seamlessly from the lyrical to the analytical to the reportorial, Peck's story takes readers from the serial killings of gay men in New York, London and Milwaukee, through Peck's first loves upon coming out of the closet, to the transformation of LGBT people from marginal, idealistic fighters to their present place in a world of widespread, if fraught, mainstream acceptance. The narrative pays particular attention the words and deeds of AIDS activists, offering up a street-level portrait of ACT UP together with considerations of AIDS-centered fiction and criticism of the era, as well as intimate, sometimes elegiac portraits of artists, activists, and HIV-positive people Peck knew. Peck's fiery rhetoric against a government that sat on its hands for the first several years of the epidemic is tinged with the idealism of a young gay man discovering his political, artistic, and sexual identity. The result is a book that is as rich in ideas as it is in feeling. A visionary and indispensable work from one of America's most brilliant and controversial authors"--

coming of age in the age of AIDS

Visions and revisions

Drift House

In the first book in this new fantasy series, three siblings are sent to live with their uncle whose house looks like a ship perched at the edge of the sea. It's not until a great flood comes that the house's name--Drift House--starts to make sense.

Drift House -Lib

A Drift House Voyage (Drift House)

The Lost Cities

“A coming-of-age tale for both the gay community at large and a nation coming to terms with that community’s place in American society” (The Boston Globe). Part memoir, part extended essay, Visions and Revisions is a foray into the period between 1987, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded, and 1996, when medical advances transformed AIDS from a virtual death sentence into a chronic manageable illness. Offering a sweeping, collage-style portrait of a tumultuous era, this book takes readers from the serial killings of gay men in New York, London, and Milwaukee, through Dale Peck’s first loves upon coming out of the closet, to the transformation of LGBT people from marginal, idealistic fighters to their present place in a world of widespread, if fraught, mainstream acceptance. Named as one of 2015’s best nonfiction books by Flavorwire, the narrative pays particular attention to the words and deeds of AIDS activists, offering a street-level portrait of ACT UP and considerations of AIDS-centered fiction and criticism of the time—as well as intimate, sometimes elegiac portraits of artists, activists, and HIV-positive people Peck knew. Peck’s fiery rhetoric against a government that sat on its hands for the first several years of the epidemic is tinged with the idealism of a young gay man discovering his political, artistic, and sexual identity. The result is “a flinty-eyed look into the heart of the H.I.V. epidemic, from the late 1980s until the development of protease inhibitors and combination therapies in the mid-1990s [and] a compelling snapshot of the social activism that defined the era” (The New York Times Book Review).

Coming of Age in the Age of AIDs

Visions and Revisions

Rife with textual analysis, historical context, and insights about the power of fiction, Peck hacks away literature's deadwood to discover the vital heart of the contemporary novel.

Writings on Contemporary Fiction

Hatchet Jobs

In the fourth volume of the Gospel Harmonies, a young man inherits a building in New York City upon the death of his mother. Before long he is caught in a web of sexual, familial and financial complications, over which hangs the spectre of 9/11.

The Garden of Lost and Found

Celebrated author Peck presents a beautifully written page-turner of a literary thriller. This mesmerizing tale imagines a complete parallel universe filled with shockingly dark corners where the secrets of human nature wait to be discovered.

Body Surfing

A son's account of his father's dramatic and life-shaping childhood.

A Story of My Father's Childhood

What We Lost

Now It's Time to Say Goodbye

Fucking Martin

The story of a forty-year marriage follows the turbulence and joys shared by Henry and Beatrice, who in the emotional fallout of their relationship discover that they still have mutual feelings of love for each other. Reprint.

The Law of Enclosures

In The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction, editor Dale Peck offers readers a fresh take on a seminal period in American history, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Cold War was rushing to its conclusion, and literature was searching for ways to move beyond the postmodern unease of the 1970s. Morally charged by newly politicized notions of identity but fraught with anxiety about a body whose fragility had been freshly emphasized by the AIDS epidemic, the 34 works gathered here are individually vivid, but taken as a body of work, they challenge the prevailing notion of the ’80s as a time of aesthetic as well as financial maximalism. Formally inventive yet tightly controlled, they offer a more expansive, inclusive view of the era’s literary accomplishments. The anthology blends early stories from writers like Denis Johnson, Jamaica Kincaid, Mary Gaitskill, and Raymond Carver, which have gone on to become part of the American canon, with remarkable and often transgressive work from some of the most celebrated writers of the underground, including Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, and Gary Indiana. Peck has also included powerful work by writers such as Gil Cuadros, Essex Hemphill, and Sam D’Allesandro, whose untimely deaths from AIDS ended their careers almost before they had begun. Almost a third of the stories are out of print and unavailable elsewhere. The Soho Press Book of ’80s Short Fiction is a daring reappraisal of a decade that is increasingly central to our culture.

The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction

America in 1963 is a country at a crossroads: Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the Cuban missile crisis, the sexual revolution, FBI, CIA, LSD - and a promise of change offered by a new President, John F Kennedy. Some people believe in the future. Other conspire to control it. Chandler Forrestal is a man whose life is changed forever when he is unwittingly dragged into a CIA mind-control experiment. After being given a massive dose of LSD, Chandler develops a frightening array of mental powers. With his heightened perception he uncovers a plot to assassinate President Kennedy. Chased by the dark powers of world government, will Chandler be able to harness his 'shift' and rewrite history?

Dale Peck

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