Julia Elliott

At an obscure South Carolina nursing home, a lost world reemerges as a disabled elderly woman undergoes newfangled brain-restoration procedures and begins to explore her environment with the assistance of strap-on robot legs. At a deluxe medical spa on a nameless Caribbean island, a middle-aged woman hopes to revitalize her fading youth with grotesque rejuvenating therapies that combine cutting-edge medical technologies with holistic approaches and the pseudo-religious dogma of Zen-infused self-help. And in a rinky-dink mill town, an adolescent girl is unexpectedly inspired by the ravings and miraculous levitation of her fundamentalist friend's weird grandmother. These are only a few of the scenarios readers encounter in Julia Elliott's debut collection, The Wilds. In these genre-bending stories, teetering between the ridiculous and the sublime, Elliott's language-driven fiction uses outlandish tropes to capture poignant moments in her humble characters' lives. Without abandoning the tenets of classic storytelling, Elliott revels in lush lyricism, dark humor, and experimental play.

The Wilds

Fortysomething divorced taxidermist Romie Futch becomes a research subject at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience, where "scientists" download humanities disciplines into his brain. With his new and improved brain Romie hopes to reclaim his marriage, revolutionize his life, and revive his artistic aspirations, but ends up getting mixed up in the absurd and murky underworld of biotech operatives, FDA agents, and environmental activists.

The New and Improved Romie Futch

In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript. In rural South Carolina, an alligator named Dragon becomes a beloved pet for a precocious, tough-talking twelve-year-old. During a long, muggy July, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods.

With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, in eleven stories of earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.

Hellions: Stories

Elizabeth M. Knowles

A resource that is both useful and engaging, "The Oxford Dictionary of New Words" is the first place to turn for information when faced with new words and phrases. From auto bra, shock-jock, and Beltway Bandit to trainspotting, wormhole, and zaitech, this cornucopia of new words and phrases presents a gold mine of language for word lovers everywhere.

The Oxford Dictionary of New Words

Catherine Soanes

Sara Hawker

Provides definitions of words in contemporary use in English-speaking countries throughout the world, with examples of idiomatic uses, guides to irregular forms, notes on grammar and preferred usage, and lists of related terms.

Julia Elliott

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