The new workshop Across Genres & Beyond the Tropes return for its Spring workshop where we are focussing on three works by award winning author Victor LaValle.
Big Machine, Lone Woman and The Devil in Silver will be the focus of this Spring’s session and it promises to be and interesting journey into the mind of Victor LaValle. If you have read The Changeling or The Ballad of Black Tom (both works that were part of previous workshops) you know you’re in for a great read and a great discussion with the Beyond the Tropes series. Here are more about the titles this year:
Big Machine – Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God.
Lone Woman – Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.
The Devil in Silver – Pepper is the surprised inmate of a mental institution in Queens, New York. In the darkness of his room, on his first night, a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It’s no delusion: The other patients confirm that a devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to kill the monster that’s stalking them. But can the Devil die?
If you’re a fan of LaValle’s work, been wanting to pick up one of his novels or a fan of great speculative fiction and have a thirst for discussion about it, this is your opportunity to join us as part of the Center of Fiction reading groups.
Click on the link here at Victor Lavalle Reading Group and sign up*.
*The Center for Fiction reading group does require a minimum of 5 participants for this group to happen. If you know someone who would enjoy being a part of this session please share this with them. Thank you.