I Blame Myself But Also You and other stories
“Fleury knows how to burrow into this peculiar business called being alive. These are stories that make you love them.”
—Joshua Mohr, author of Model Citizen
“The stories in Fleury’s collection are strange, unsettling, yet so firmly anchored in place that we can hear, see, smell, and almost touch these remarkable settings. Each story feels utterly familiar but also slightly shifted; they’re sharp gems and I wanted to read twenty more of them.”
—Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges
In stores July 2nd
A woman seeks out the meaning of an inscrutable note given to her by a man who used her car as an instrument of his own suicide. Two teenage boys discover that the devil has opened a record store in their seedy Florida suburb. A man’s obsession with living a minimalist life goes nowhere as the possessions he discards all seem to find their way back to him.
These stories are a little absurd, a little speculative, and a little dark. They repeatedly dig into a handful of universal themes: The search for that one existential totem we expect to fix everything, but that never quite does; the strange, unnerving liminal space between childhood and not-quite-adulthood; the endless struggle to find our place in the world, and the nagging fear that maybe we never will.
Preorder directly from Malarkey Books
Also by Spencer Fleury: How I’m Spending My Afterlife
“As fast-paced as it is fun, packed with quick dialogue and quicker hijinks. Spencer Fleury is a writer to watch.”
—Michelle Richmond, NYT bestselling author of The Wonder Test
“A breakneck dissection of truth, lies, and the trouble in between.”
—Stephanie Hayes, author of Obitchuary
“A dark, comic debut.”
—Eryk Pruitt, author of What We Reckon
“Reading How I’m Spending My Afterlife is like watching a train wreck—in the best possible sense. As Alton Carver makes one ill-advised decision after another, it’s impossible not to keep turning the pages. Alton’s spectacular bad judgment—and Fleury’s sharp prose—are obsessively compelling.”
—Janis Cooke Newman, author of A Master Plan For Rescue
“Spencer Fleury manages a fantastic balance between a wild, wicked plot and well-rendered characters who earn our sympathy, even as they wallow in the muck of their own bad behavior. This book is hard to put down.”
—James Brubaker, author of The Taxidermist’s Catalog
“How I’m Spending My Afterlife starts out of the gate at an all-out sprint, hooking us by the end of the first paragraph and luring us relentlessly forward with sharp, propulsive prose. Fleury’s deft pacing raises the stakes and ratchets up the tension with every twist and turn, and his knack for balancing poignant reflection with dark, side-splitting humor is undeniably top-notch. Add to that an authentic, engaging narrative voice, and what you have is memorable debut novel that’s a hell of a good time and not to be missed.”
—William R. Soldan, author of In Just The Right Light
“Contains about a thousand more ‘fuck‘s than I would have included.”
—Bob Fleury, co-creator of Spencer Fleury
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