Finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, Dan Chaon's Best of 2017 pick in Publishers Weekly, one of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Best Books of 2017, a BOMB Magazine "Looking Back on 2017: Literature" Pick, and one of Vulture's 10 Best Thriller Books of 2017.Jac Jemc's The Grip of It is a chilling literary horror novel about a young couple haunted by their newly purchased home...

The Summer 2025 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”The Summer 2025 issue, edited by Victor LaValle, features prose by Helen Phillips, Deesha Philyaw, S.A. Cosby, Joanna Pear...

A wildly over-the-top social satire reimagining the mad misadventures of the iconic royal cousins King Ludwig and Empress Sisi, from the incomparable Jac Jemc.History knows them as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Empress Elizabeth of Austria, icons of the late nineteenth century who died young and left behind magnificent portraits and palaces. But to each other they were Ludwig and Sisi, cousins who shared a passion for beauty and a stubborn refusal to submit to the ...

The mundane becomes sinister in this collection of twenty disquieting stories from the author of The Grip of It.In Jac Jemc's dislocating second story collection, False Bingo, we watch as sinister forces—some supernatural, some of this earth, some real and some not—work their ways into the mundanity of everyday life."Strange Loop" introduces us to an outcast who, attempting to escape an unnamed mistake, spends his days taxiderming animals. I...

Ten years ago the narrator unlocked the door of a wrecked apartment, empty of any trace of his wife. As stunning as her disappearance is his response. He freezes on the facts of her, haunting his recollections. This is the story of a man unable to free himself enough from the idea of a woman to try to find her.Jac Jemc's work has appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Caketrain, Handsome, and Sleepingfish, among others. She is the aut...

A wildly over-the-top social satire reimagining the mad misadventures of the iconic royal cousins King Ludwig and Empress Sisi, from the incomparable Jac Jemc.History knows them as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Empress Elizabeth of Austria, icons of the late nineteenth century who died young and left behind magnificent portraits and palaces. But to each other they were Ludwig and Sisi, cousins whoshared a passion for beauty and a stubborn refusal to submit to the roles impos...

In Jac Jemc's dislocating second story collection, False Bingo, we watch as sinister forces (some supernatural, some of this earth, some real, and some not) work their ways into the mundanity of everyday life.In "Strange Loop," an outcast attempting to escape an unnamed mistake spends his days taxiderming animals, while in "Delivery," a family watches as their dementia-addled, basement-dwelling father succumbs to an online shopping addiction. "Dont Let’s" finds a woman, re...

Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move—prompted by James’ penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh.But this house, which sits between lake and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to settle into their home and their relationship, the house and its surrounding terrai...

From the bestselling author of The Boy Who Drew Monsters and The Stolen Child comes a modern take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice—a suspenseful tale of romance and enchantmentIn the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toy shop that is never open. She is spending her summer working as an acrobat with the cirque while her husband, Theo, is translating a biography of the pioneering photographer Eadweard ...

Karl, Eleanor, and their daughter, Irina, arrive from New York City in the wake of Karl's infidelity to start anew. Karl tries to stabilize his flailing art career. Eleanor, a successful commercial novelist, eagerly pivots in a new creative direction. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Irina becomes obsessed with the brutal murders that occurred in the house years earlier. And, secretly, so does her mother. As the ensemble cast grows to include Louis, a hapless salesman in a carpet warehouse who i...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child comes a hypnotic literary horror novel about a young boy trapped inside his own world, whose drawings blur the lines between fantasy and reality.Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those draw...

In this tantalizing tale of Victorian ghost stories and family secrets, timid, solitary librarian Gerard Freeman lives for just two things: his elusive pen pal Alice and a story he found hidden in his mother's drawer years ago. Written by his great-grandmother Viola, it hints at his mother's role in a sinister crime. As he discovers more of Viola's chilling tales, he realizes that they might hold the key to finding Alice and unveiling his family's mystery—or will they bring about his untim...