The Atlas

The third installment of a cinematic horror-LitRPG series: Die in the story, and you'll be back; break the story, and you're gone for good. Since the day they unwittingly found themselves in the horror show of Carousel, Riley (the Film Buff), Antoine (the Athlete), Kimberly (the Eye Candy), Camden (the Scholar), and Anna (the Final Girl) have learned the rules of their horror-movie world. They've fought through story after story and come out alive-or at least preserved the storyline enough to come back to life. But their biggest challenge yet lies ahead. While the vets who've been there longest want to travel to the mountain they believe to be the source of Carousel's power, Riley is more concerned about something else: the murderous man with an axe who follows their every move to ensure they play by the rules. But even knowing the secrets of Carousel can't save them from the real horrors to come . . . The longer they stay in Carousel, the more Riley and his friends wonder: Who's running the game? Where does it end? And why don't the vets seem to know any more than they do?

The third installment of a cinematic horror-LitRPG series: Die in the story, and you'll be back; break the story, and you're gone for good. Since the day they unwittingly found themselves in the horror show of Carousel, Riley (the Film Buff), Antoine (the Athlete), Kimberly (the Eye Candy), Camden (the Scholar), and Anna (the Final Girl) have learned the rules of their horror-movie world. They've fought through story after story and come out alive-or at least preserved the storyline enough to come back to life. But their biggest challenge yet lies ahead. While the vets who've been there longest want to travel to the mountain they believe to be the source of Carousel's power, Riley is more concerned about something else: the murderous man with an axe who follows their every move to ensure they play by the rules. But even knowing the secrets of Carousel can't save them from the real horrors to come . . . The longer they stay in Carousel, the more Riley and his friends wonder: Who's running the game? Where does it end? And why don't the vets seem to know any more than they do?

Winner of the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction - a collection of fifty-three interconnected stories by the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central Hailed by Newsday as "the most unconventional--and possibly the most exciting and imaginative--novelist at work today," William T. Vollmann has also established himself as an intrepid journalist willing to go to the hottest spots on the planet. Here he draws on these formidable talents to create a web of fifty-three interconnected tales, what he calls "a piecemeal atlas of the world I think in." Set in locales from Phnom Penh to Sarajevo, Mogadishu to New York, and provocatively combining autobiography with invention, fantasy with reportage, these stories examine poverty, violence, and loss even as they celebrate the beauty of landscape, the thrill of the alien, the infinitely precious pain of love. The Atlas brings to life a fascinating array of human beings: an old Inuit walrus-hunter, urban aborigines in Sydney, a crack-addicted prostitute, and even Vollmann himself.

Winner of the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction - a collection of fifty-three interconnected stories by the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central Hailed by Newsday as "the most unconventional--and possibly the most exciting and imaginative--novelist at work today," William T. Vollmann has also established himself as an intrepid journalist willing to go to the hottest spots on the planet. Here he draws on these formidable talents to create a web of fifty-three interconnected tales, what he calls "a piecemeal atlas of the world I think in." Set in locales from Phnom Penh to Sarajevo, Mogadishu to New York, and provocatively combining autobiography with invention, fantasy with reportage, these stories examine poverty, violence, and loss even as they celebrate the beauty of landscape, the thrill of the alien, the infinitely precious pain of love. The Atlas brings to life a fascinating array of human beings: an old Inuit walrus-hunter, urban aborigines in Sydney, a crack-addicted prostitute, and even Vollmann himself.