Fabian is already having a terrible morning—then he realizes he’s not alone in his own life. In a near-future Chicagoland of strained systems and stranger appetites, one mistake becomes a cascade: mistaken identity, family vendettas, and a workplace that makes “quality control” sound like a threat.
Three brothers. One face. Zero clean exits.
Fabian wakes up to an impossible problem: two corpses in his apartment. Calling the police would ruin his life. Handling it himself might end it. And somewhere in the background, the rest of his family is doing what they do best: escalating.
And as the fallout spreads, the question stops being who did what and becomes: what kind of world makes this feel inevitable?
Clem Stubbs, on parole after ten years in a Florida state prison, works for a small company that processes placentas for moms who want to eat or otherwise make use of their placentas after giving birth. Conditions are terrible: his boss is a tyrant, his ex-wife has married his parole officer, and he has not seen his beloved daughter for ten years. His roommate and best friend is romantically involved with an armadillo. As Clem struggles to make a life for himself, Florida descends into terminal capitalism.
The book includes recipes for cooking placentas.
In the near-future United States, the Eat Me fad is based on the consumption of human meat that has been cultured and grown in a vat. Franklin Honeycutt, a college student and all-purpose slacker, gets lured into the Eat Me movement with promises of making big money, although he has no interest in eating human meat himself. Along the way, Franklin learns one big lesson: read the fine print.
Young Alat, the fifteen-year-old son of an outcast widow in his tiny 18th C steppe community, becomes infected by an adult gilgul, a sentient parasitic slime-mold. After barely surviving the infection, Alat must learn how to live with the parasite, how to interact with other humans, and ultimately, how to destroy the gilgul.