In the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a work of heartbreak and horror, a novel about how far we will go, and the sorrows we will endure, in order to protect our families.

A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children’s speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction.

With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parents’ sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isn’t so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition.

From one of the most innovative and vital writers of his generation, an extraordinary collection of stories that showcases his gifts—and his range—as never before.

In the hilarious, lacerating “I Can Say Many Nice Things,” a washed-up writer toying with infidelity leads a creative writing workshop on board a cruise ship. In the dystopian “Rollingwood,” a divorced father struggles to take care of his ill infant, as his ex-wife and colleagues try to render him irrelevant. In “Watching Mysteries with My Mother,” a son meditates on his mother’s mortality, hoping to stave off her death for as long as he sits by her side. And in the title story, told in a single breathtaking sentence, we watch as the narrator’s marriage and his sanity unravel, drawing him to the brink of suicide.

As the collection progresses, we move from more traditional narratives into the experimental work that has made Ben Marcus a groundbreaking master of the short form. In these otherworldly landscapes, characters resort to extreme survival strategies to navigate the terrors of adulthood, one opting to live in a lightless cave and another methodically setting out to recover total childhood innocence; an automaton discovers love and has to reinvent language to accommodate it; filial loyalty is seen as a dangerous weakness that must be drilled away; and the distance from a cubicle to the office coffee cart is refigured as an existential wasteland, requiring heroic effort.

In these piercing, brilliantly observed investigations into human vulnerability and failure, it is often the most absurd and alien predicaments that capture the deepest truths. Surreal and tender, terrifying and life-affirming, is the work of an utterly unique writer at the height of his powers.

Ben Marcus achieved cult status and gained the admiration of his peers with his first book, With Notable American Women he goes well beyond that first achievement to create something radically wonderful, a novel set in a world so fully imagined that it creates its own reality.

On a farm in Ohio, American women led by Jane Dark practice all means of behavior modification in an attempt to attain complete stillness and silence. Witnessing (and subjected to) their cultish actions is one Ben Marcus, whose father, Michael Marcus, may be buried in the back yard, and whose mother, Jane Marcus, enthusiastically condones the use of her son for (generally unsuccessful) breeding purposes, among other things. Inventing his own uses for language, the author Ben Marcus has written a harrowing, hilarious, strangely moving, altogether engrossing work of fiction that will be read and argued over for years to come.

What can a beautiful, still-young woman do when her self-centered husband casts her aside for another less desirable mate simply because the new one has a fortune, and he doesn’t like to work?

In the case of heartbroken Sally Sue Bennett, as related in this light-hearted novel by author Carl Van Marcus, the girl began to carve a career for herself, hiding the deep hurt she felt. Although passionate by nature, she denied herself the pleasure and comfort of a man. Instead, she worked agonizing hours to build the Sally Sue Show. And for comfort and companionship she took in stray animals and birds until she had a private zoo.

Sally Sue knew how to love life, but she was afraid to love, afraid of being hurt again. In this touching novel, she finally yields herself to a young engineer for the small radio station where she works . . . and fails in her search for love and fulfillment.

Then she becomes embroiled with a precocious teenage boy, Terry, who is old beyond his years. Terry callously decides to exploit the lovely Sally Sue’s need for him and forms a strange alliance with a somewhat older girl, a beautiful little blonde, Virgie, who after being brutally raped has turned to lesbianism.

With the use of drugs, the two teenagers manage to bring the emotionally disturbed heroine almost to the point of madness and involve her in carnality she had never thought possible.

Buffeted between her sense of right and wrong and her own desires the lovely young divorcee eventually finds a solution which will shock many readers.