January 2025

Arcade Publishing Monthly Newsletter

Jan 06, 2025

It’s a new year, and as most of you will be utilizing this break in the calendar as a reason to reflect on the last year and reorient yourselves for the next 365 days, we have done the same. So, to start, let’s talk resolutions.

The event you’ve been waiting for whether you knew it or not:

For this year, we have resolved to not only continue publishing great books, but also to do our utmost to engage with our readers—and writers we appreciate, whether we publish them or not—more directly. So, as a step in that direction, we have organized an Arcade Publishing reading on February 21st. See the details below:

More information will be coming your way. But, for now, put the date in your calendars. We are excited to see you there to enjoy readings from our very own

Noah Kumin

Emmalea Russo

, Matthew Davis, Bruce Wagner, and more to be announced soon.

Now let’s take a look back at what we, and our writers, accomplished:

Looking Back

The year started out strong with the release of the excellent American Sycamore by Charles Kenney, which Ben Bradlee Jr., Pulitzer Prize–winning editor of the Boston Globe Spotlight team, called “A gripping novel that reflects the turbulence in American life and the challenges of the American experiment.”

We then had the pleasure of publishing Pulitzer Prize–winning John Darnton’s newest novel, Burning Sky: a “compulsively readable and beautifully written novel,” according to David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager.

It has been quite the year for our resident visionary, Bruce Wagner: we published his newest book, The Met Gala and Tales of Saints and Seekers, in June, followed by six new paperback reissues: Marvel Universe, I’m Losing You, and Dead Stars in July; and Force Majeure, A Guide for Murdered Children, and I’ll Let You Go in November. And just a reminder that two more reissues are incoming in February: I Met Someone and The Empty Chair.

The end of summer and the beginning of autumn brought us two wonderful debuts: Matthew Davis’s Let Me Try Again was released in August, and Emmalea Russo’s Vivienne came the following month. Both have been wonderfully received.

In October, we had the distinct pleasure of publishing a USA Today bestselling author, Daniel Roberts, with his new novel Ponder becoming an Amazon bestseller.

Finally, in November we published the English translation of Hye-young Pyun’s To the Kennells, a *Booklist Starred Review*. Terry Hong praised the manner in which “Pyun resonantly captures the universal, ubiquitous malais of aloneness.”

For some more recent highlights:

Vivienne was all the rave in December. The venerable Mars Review of Books wrote a review worthy of praise on its own merit, highlighting Russo’s “refreshing” approach: “She brings this ancient sense of inspiration back to life in a way that feels suitably modern.” Read it here:

Mars Review of Books

Age Gaps, Trad Caths, Canceled Surrealists, and Garbagemen

The end of the year is almost here, which can mean only one thing—it’s time to maximize your tax deductions by donating to charitable institutions. Seriously, not only is donating to the Mars Review of Book Foundation a noble and deeply appreciated deed (we rely entirely on support from readers like you!), it can save you tens of thousands on your tax bill. Calculate how much…

6 months ago · 14 likes · sam buntz

Looking Forward

Apart from the above resolutions, we will also continue to do what we do best: publish good books.

A reminder that some hot titles are forthcoming, for your pleasure:

The Agonies comes out in March; an intoxicating novel with a truly memorable protagonist. You won’t want to miss out on this deeply impactful story. Just ask the wonderful

Naomi Kanakia

Another exciting release: For Emma, by Ewan Morrison, is coming in June.

More details on both:

The Agonies by Ben Faulkner

A 160-page Arcade Publishing novel. Out March 25, 2025. ISBN: 9781648211188

"I enjoyed this book much more than I enjoy most contemporary books, including most alt-lit books. The author tells a story about a boy recovering from grief, and he invests in actually telling that story. It has the angst and melancholy you'd expect, but it's also suffused with hope. This kid, Armand, has so much life, so much vitality—he so desperately wants to want things—and that liveliness infects his narration, which is oftentimes shockingly insightful and humane. It was a pleasure to spend some time with this voice." —Naomi Kanakia, author of The Default World

"The Agonies burns down the world with its artistry, poetic derangement, and miracles of unexpectedness. Ben Faulkner stands shoulder to shoulder with Denis Johnson and Thomas Bernhard."—Bruce Wagner

In the tradition of Albert Camus, J. D. Salinger, and Osamu Dazai, the archetype of the savage young man at the precipice returns in Ben Faulkner's hypnotic debut, The Agonies.

Armand Bernal is breaking apart. The trials of youth become a torrential odyssey of dislocation and disorientation. In this bildungsroman for our modern age—an age of collapse—Ben Faulkner has created an unforgettable character wary of work, college, relationships, and the world at large, becoming an unstable young man moving toward an act of terrifying violence. Will he survive the gothic America of The Agonies?

Ben Faulkner is a former child actor. He lives in the Midwest. The Agonies is his first novel.

For Emma by Ewan Morrison

A 360-page Arcade Publishing novel. Out June 17, 2025. ISBN: 9781648211423

“A masterpiece . . . For Emma is an extraordinary novel; a treatise of love and loss, the terror of the modern world and the sprung, high-tech trap humanity has set for itself. This would be more than enough: awe inspiringly, it’s also a page-turning thriller, and it confirms its author as the eminent fiction writer of our times.” —Irvine Welsh

“Absolutely wonderful . . . riveting, sad, mad and terrifying.” —Terry Gilliam

“For Emma is a brilliant book that you will devour. Its compelling exploration of love, loss, and the haunting power of technology and morality makes it a must-read, delving into the highly relevant and intriguing intersection of humanity and advanced AI.” —Bruna Papandrea, Producer of Gone Girl and Big Little Lies

“A worryingly convincing vision of our imminent present. Ewan Morrison is our Michel Houellebecq.” —Prof. Gavin Bowd. Translator of Houellebecq

What Are the Human Costs of Technological Accelerationism?

A year after Emma Henson, a young, genius bio-tech scientist, dies in a covert AI brain-chip experiment, her father Josh has nothing left to live for and vows to get revenge on the Silicon Valley CEO responsible.

Josh has thirty days to make his home-made bombs and to say goodbye to his life. To give himself courage in the countdown, he records daily video messages to his lost "Em." He is fueled by the horrific memories of Em’s death—her body and brain devoured by the AI "infinity" system in its quest for immortality. Memories flood him as he searches for the moments in Emma’s short life where he could have been a better father and saved her.

As he grapples with constructing and testing his DIY bombs, his thirty days start to run out, and Emma’s voice returns to him, speaking with him as he sets to complete his mission. He worries that he’s gone insane—he doubts if he can see the violent act through—but Emma’s voice insists he continue on his path toward murder and mayhem. Josh tries to resist his daughter’s voice as it attempts to take full control of his body. But is it even her? Or is it a ghost, a psychotic delusion or the AI system that is controlling him?

Inspired by the real-life Brain Chip Implant experiments (Musk/Neuralink) and the technogothic tradition (Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Island of Dr Moreau), For Emma is a tale of possession by a new force unleashed by science. It is a warning for the future but also an intimate, heart-breaking study of the love between a father and daughter and of the madness that grief can drive us to.

Ewan Morrison has been described as the “most fluent and intelligent Scottish writer of his generation” by Booker Prize judge Stuart Kelly. Morrison is an award winning novelist and screenwriter and an essayist. His writing has been praised by renowned authors Lionel Shriver, Ian Rankin, Fay Weldon, Douglas Coupland, James Frey, Irvine Welsh, James Robertson, Luke Rhinehart, and Hanif Kureishi among others. Ewan's eighth book, the 'darkly comic thriller, How to Survive Everything was published by Contraband in the UK in 2021, and in the US with Harper Perennial in 2022. Ewan’s novel, NINA X, published by Fleet an imprint of Little Brown, won Scotland's most prestigious literary prize—the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year—in 2019, and his novel, Close Your Eyes was the winner of the Scottish Book of the Year (SMIT) Fiction Prize in 2013. He is also the winner of the Not the Booker Prize in 2012 for Tales from the Mall (2012) which has been named one of the top 50 Scottish Books of the last 50 years (Scottish Book Trust). Morrison blogs regularly for Psychology Today as "WORD-LESS: A novelist ponders emotional health," and writes regular articles and essays for AREO Magazine on Utopianism, Technology, and Free Speech. Between 2011 & 2013 Morrison was a regular contributor to The Guardian, and he has contributed articles to The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Daily Mail, L’Express, La Republicca, Quillette, Areo, Scotland on Sunday, The Scotsman, The Erotic Review, GQ, Esquire, Arena, Mute, Frieze, The Psychologist and Psychology Today. Ewan can be found on X at @mrewanmorrison.

“Arcade is a storied literary imprint (its original publisher discovered Samuel Beckett) that mirrors and embodies Tony Lyons’s fierce, lifelong commitment to writers and their art. After thirty-five years and fourteen novels, I have never been treated with more care, respect, and devotion, and have never, hands-down, had such beautiful books created from my work than with Arcade . . . Long may Arcade (and Tony Lyons) live!”

—BRUCE WAGNER