Heresy Press – serie

Heresy Press’s new anthology, Axe: Stories That Cut Deep, gathers dazzling short fiction from some of today’s most acclaimed voices, including National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners. Inspired by Kafka’s injunction that “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us,” these thirteen stories strike at complacency with audacity and style. Joyce Carol Oates, Sherman Alexie, Chuck Palahniuk, Lionel Shriver, Andrew Doyle, Richard North Patterson, Jeffrey Ford, David Sedaris, and Alice Walker deliver tales of cruelty, compassion, delusion, and revelation—from gothic horror and biting satire to surreal fables and lyrical meditations. Across these pages, the familiar world cracks open to reveal what lies beneath: violence, longing, and the possibility of grace.In these daring tales by celebrated and boundary-pushing authors, nothing is as it seems. Joyce Carol Oates reveals the dark roots of genius, while Sherman Alexie charts a Native scholar’s mystical return to his heritage. Bradford Morrow turns inheritance into horror; Lionel Shriver and David Sedaris skewer modern taboos, and Chuck Palahniuk exposes the dark seamy side of child sex trafficking. Jonathan Santlofer’s seductive thriller and Andrew Doyle’s hallucinatory farce explore deception and madness; Alice Walker and Elizabeth Hand deliver haunting explorations of death and grieving, while Richard North Patterson, Jeffrey Ford, and James Morrow expose beauty, compassion, and absurdity in equal measure. Provocative, poignant, and richly imaginative, these thirteen stories dare to tell uncomfortable truths.In a spirited afterword, Junot Díaz urges readers to read “hungrily, adventurously, and blasphemously”—the perfect benediction for a compilation filled with trenchant, impactful stories.

The untold story behind protests, riots, political violence, and the struggle for truth in America's age of unrest.“Fearless, meticulous, and unfashionably fair.”—Nadine Strossen | Past president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Senior Fellow at FIRE, and coauthor of The War on WordsOver five years of on-the-ground reporting, Jeremy Lee Quinn dissects the riot culture that reshaped U.S. politics from 2020–2026. Blending eyewitness livestreams, interviews, and case studies, he shows how mob psychology, decentralized militant tactics (black bloc, viral “diversity of tactics”), and social-media amplification turned protests into sustained cycles of violence. Quinn traces parallel radicalization on left and right—from Minneapolis, Portland, and Kenosha to Santa Monica, Los Angeles, and January 6—documenting arson, targeted assaults, and political vigilantism (the Sonoma pig’s-head episode, WiSpa clashes, CHOP, Proud Boys/Oath Keepers). He critiques media framing, cancel culture, and activist purity politics that obscure complexity and fuel polarization, profiling intermediaries like masked livestreamers and embattled journalists. Culture of Confusion argues militant escalation influenced elections, hollowed mainstream narratives, and left institutions unwilling to confront violence holistically—urging a clearer, less partisan accounting of political militancy and its civic consequences.

A former Washington lobbyist tells all.Misadventures on K Street recounts Riva Levinson’s decade embedded with high-powered Washington lobbyists—Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly—from its rise in 1985 to its shuttering a decade later. At twenty-four years old, Riva was the lone woman in the room at a firm that operated as a privatized, rogue Department of State. While her partners pulled the strings from their offices on the Potomac, Riva was on the front lines, facing real-world danger. Courageous and fiercely loyal, she fought relentlessly for her firm and her clients—only to be ultimately betrayed.Riva’s narration moves from the boardrooms and back channels of D.C. to the proxy wars of the Reagan era, offering readers an insider’s look at a world few Americans have ever seen. She discloses, with original archival detail, the campaigns for controversial clients (UNITA/Savimbi; Kashmiri activists; Somalia’s president), and recounts her dangerous foreign missions (Angola, South Africa, Somalia, Pakistan, Indian-occupied Kashmir, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka), ethical compromises, and a political theater that reshaped US foreign policy. Personal arcs intertwine—the pride and shame of her family history, a near-reckless restlessness, sexual harassment, abandonment, love, and motherhood—illustrating how ambition and idealism clashed with scandals, personal danger, and betrayal.Levinson exposes the world of privatized influence, covert operations, and the human fallout of high-stakes geopolitics, probing accountability and survival amid power, deep-seated corruption, and historical consequence, with lasting international ramifications today. As one of the few survivors of the era she witnessed, Riva uses her book to bring back to life the friends and colleagues whose stories—and lives—were cut short.

From Berlin to the Bronx, from Holocaust survivor to American success story, this riveting, fast-paced biography traces the extraordinary life of Gary “Pips” Phillips who defied the odds at every turn. With an Aryan mother and Jewish father, Pips could have escaped much of the Holocaust’s horrors. Instead, he made a fateful decision at age 13 to become a bar mitzvah just as the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, effectively choosing to be labeled a Jew under Nazi rule. Pips’s wartime experience is marked by daring escapes, improbable rescues, and survival while hiding deep within Nazi Berlin. Captured four times, he escaped thrice, choosing to remain in Nazi custody the fourth time as there was nowhere to run in bombed-out Berlin. At his place of confinement, he met his future wife, Olga Horvath, who had been imprisoned after surviving Auschwitz and the Death March to Bergen Belsen. After their marriage in chaotic post-war Berlin, they emigrated to the USA to start a new life. Arriving in New York with nothing, Pips rose from waiter to co-owner of the world’s largest photo agency—despite never owning a camera. Unlike Pips, Olga was unable to escape the shadow of her Holocaust experiences, and in a horrifying twist, she threw herself off the roof of their gleaming luxury high-rise after more than 50 years of marriage, leaving Pips grief-stricken, but also able to reinvent himself one more time. This cinematic life brims with chance, love, loss, resilience, and reinvention, culminating in a poignant exploration of Jewish identity, memory, and legacy. Pips’s story is a tribute to the power of choice, endurance, and the human will to belong.