Mitchell, a twenty-something nobody, wakes each morning next to his midlife girlfriend, living an ever- thinning line between human and machine. As his literal condition progresses he loses his capacity for human emotion, and potentially with it, Marsha. As a Machine and Parts is a story of Mitchell's struggle to discover which assembly line he belongs to. As a Machine and Parts integrates illustrative elements to render a story beyond conventional text. As Mitchell morphs from human to machine, the text morphs too, from a handwritten style to a typed font and ultimately to...

Murmurs: Gathered Stories Vol. One brings together nine previously published stories hand selected to best represent the darkness prevalent in much of Caleb J. Ross' fiction. Deformities, parenthood, childhood, each treated with literary integrity, come together to map the visceral, gut-wrenching side of family life. Ross' obsession with the domestic grotesque is represented here in full, ranging from his very first published story (Petty Injuries) to his most recent (as of the publication of Murmurs) Click-Clack, a story that appears in Warmed and Bound: a Velvet Anthology. Packed within...

Jackson Jacoby is a motherless twenty-two year old boy with only the support of his crazy ex-military Uncle Marve and a kindred motherless peer named Creg. Creg holds fast to the hope of one day reuniting with his mother while Jackson maintains that his own life is so much better off without all the baggage that comes along with being somebody's son. After finding a plea in a newspaper from a woman begging her runaway son, Kevin Masons, to return home, Jackson takes the opportunity to prove to Creg that a mother is not necessary to be happy. What begins as a drunken call to the mysterious...