The Strange

1931, New Galveston, Mars: Fourteen-year-old Anabelle Crisp sets off through the wastelands of the Strange to find Silas Mundt's gang who have stolen her mother's voice, destroyed her father, and left her solely with a need for vengeance.

Since Anabelle's mother left for Earth to care for her own ailing mother, her days in New Galveston have been spent at school and her nights at her laconic father's diner with Watson, the family Kitchen Engine and dishwasher as her only companion. When the Silence came, and communication and shipments from Earth to its colonies on Mars stopped, life seemed stuck in foreboding stasis until the night Silas Mundt and his gang attacked.

At once evoking the dreams of an America explored in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and the harder realities of frontier life in Charles Portis True Grit, Ballingrud's novel is haunting in its evocation of Anabelle's quest for revenge amidst a spent and angry world accompanied by a domestic Engine, a drunken space pilot, and the toughest woman on Mars.

Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts in 1970, but spent most of his life in the South. His short story collection, North American Lake Monsters, won the Shirley Jackson award, and his collection Wounds was adapted by Netix. His work has been nominated for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker awards. Among other things, he has been a cook on oil rigs and barges, a waiter, and a bartender in New Orleans. He now lives in Asheville.

Anabelle Crisp is fourteen when the Silence arrives, severing all communication between Earth and her new home on Mars. After her family's diner is robbed, including the last recording of her mother's voice, Anabelle strikes out into the Martian desert to take her revenge. Exposed to the bizarre dangers of the planet, Anabelle learns Mars is a vast haunted house infested with ghosts of evil intent, and her home, once safe, is nothing more than a guttering candle in a dark world.

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