Axe (Stories That Cut Deep)

Heresy Press’s new anthology, Axe: Stories That Cut Deep, gathers dazzling short fiction from some of today’s most acclaimed voices, including National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners. Inspired by Kafka’s injunction that “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us,” these twelve stories strike at complacency with audacity and style. Joyce Carol Oates, Sherman Alexie, Chuck Palahniuk, Lionel Shriver, Andrew Doyle, Richard North Patterson, Jeffrey Ford, David Sedaris, and Alice Walker deliver tales of cruelty, compassion, delusion, and revelation—from gothic horror and biting satire to surreal fables and lyrical meditations. Bradford Morrow’s chilling inheritance scenario, Jonathan Santlofer’s seductive con game, James Morrow’s heretical tour-de-force, and Elizabeth Hand's wrenching portrait of a dying hedonist exemplify fiction that cuts deep and lingers. Across these pages, the familiar world cracks open to reveal what lies beneath: violence, longing, and the possibility of grace. In a spirited afterword, Junot Díaz urges us to read “hungrily, adventurously, and blasphemously”—the perfect benediction for a compilation that defies conventional artistic boundaries.