Browse by author

Brite Poppy Z

Exquisite Corpse

Touchstone

List Price: $14.99
Price: $2.11
You Save: $12.88 (86%)

Description

To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his "art" to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his "art" to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.

Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London's Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of the New Orleans French Quarter, and punctuated by rants from radio talk show host Lush Rimbaud, a.k.a. Luke Ransom, Tran's ex-lover, who is dying of AIDS and who intends to wreak ultimate havoc before leaving this world, Exquisite Corpse unfolds into a labyrinth of murder and love. Ultimately all four characters converge on a singular bloody night after which their lives will be irrevocably changed -- or terminated.

Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. Exquisite Corpse confirms Brite as a writer who defies categorization. It is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one.

You've probably heard that this love story about two cannibalistic serial killers (loosely modeled after Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer) is over the top. You've been warned about the lovingly meticulous descriptions of murder and necrophilia. But the novel also features a keen look at the AIDS plague, in a setting almost worth dying for: Brite's doomed aesthetes dance in a sweet, heady New Orleans of milky coffee and beignets, alligators, Billy Holiday tunes, scented candles, pirate radio, swamp French, andouille sausage and one bar for every 175 people. And the structure is the tightest of Brite's books so far.
Soul Kitchen: A Novel

Three Rivers Press

List Price: $14.00
Price: $7.36
You Save: $6.64 (47%)

Description

If you can't stand the heat...Get the hell out of New Orleans!

Liquor has become one of the hottest restaurants in town, thanks in part to chefs Rickey and G-man’s wildly creative, booze-laced food. At the tail end of a busy Mardi Gras, Milford Goodman walks into their kitchen—he’s spent the last ten years in Angola Prison for murdering his boss, a wealthy New Orleans restaurateur, but has recently been exonerated on new evidence and released. Rickey remembers him as an ingenious chef and hires him on the spot.

When a pill-pushing doctor and a Carnival scion talk Rickey into consulting at the restaurant they’re opening in one of the city’s “floating casinos,” Rickey recommends Milford for the head chef position and stays on to supervise. But soon Rickey finds himself medicating a kitchen injury with the doctor’s wares, and G-man grows tired of holding down the fort at Liquor alone. As the new restaurant moves toward its opening, Rickey learns that Milford’s past is inextricably linked with one of the project’s backers, a man whose intentions begin to seem more and more sinister.

Full of the flavor of one of America’s greatest cities, Soul Kitchen is a sharp commentary on race relations in pre-Katrina New Orleans and a fast ride through the dark side of haute cuisine.
Lost Souls

Dell

List Price: $7.99
Price: $3.66
You Save: $4.33 (54%)

Description

In Missing Mile, North Carolina, in search of supple young flesh and thirsting for blood, three beautiful vampires--Molochai, Twig, and Zillah--follow vampires Nothing and Ann on a mad, illicit road trip south to New Orleans. Reprint. AB. PW.
Drawing Blood

Dell

List Price: $7.99
Price: $4.03
You Save: $3.96 (50%)

Description

Escaping from his North Carolina home after his father murders their family and commits suicide, Trevor McGee returns to confront the past, and finds himself haunted by the same demons that drove his father to insanity. Reprint. K. AB.
Prime: A Novel

Three Rivers Press

List Price: $13.95
Price: $5.93
You Save: $8.02 (57%)

Description

Two years after the opening of Liquor, New Orleans chefs Rickey and G-man are immersed in the life of their restaurant, enjoying a loyal cast of diners, and cooking great booze-laced food. All’s well until a bad review in a local paper not-so-subtly hints that their “silent” backer, celebrity chef Lenny Duveteaux, has ulterior motives. When Lenny is accused of serious criminal activity by eccentric D.A. Placide Treat, Rickey and G-man realize it may be time to end their dependence on him.

When Rickey is offered a plum consulting job at a Dallas restaurant, it seems the perfect way to beef up their bank account. But taking the gig will mean a reunion with Cooper Stark, the older chef with whom Rickey shared an unsettling cocaine-fueled encounter back in culinary school, as well as dealing with gung-ho Texas businessman/restaurateur Frank Firestone. At G-man’s urging, Rickey finally accepts the offer and revamps Firestone’s menu to rave reviews.

Home in New Orleans, Rickey has just settled back into his daily kitchen routine when he receives disturbing information that forces his return to Dallas. As Placide Treat’s machinations grow ever more bizarre, G-man learns that there’s more to the story—and that Rickey is in Texas-size danger.
Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans

Small Beer Press

List Price: $16.00
Price: $7.15
You Save: $8.85 (55%)

Description

hese two short novels bookend Poppy Z. Brite’s cheerfully chaotic series starring two chefs in New Orleans. The Value of X introduces G-man and Rickey, who grew up in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and who are slowly realizing there are only two important things in life: cooking and each other. Rickey’s parents aren’t quite so taken with the boy’s plans and get him an impossible-to-resist place at the Culinary Institute of America.

In D*U*C*K, Rickey and G-man’s restaurant, Liquor, is doing well but there are the usual complications of running a kitchen: egos get bruised, people get fired . . . and then Rickey is jumped in an alley by one of their ex-waiters.

On the mend, Rickey takes a side job to cater the annual Ducks Unlimited banquet, where every course must, of course, include the ducks the hunters have bagged. Rickey’s crew are ready to meet the challenge, but Rickey’s not sure he can do it all and deal with the guest of honor—his childhood hero, former New Orleans Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert.

"Fun foodie fiction, and readers will scarf it down as quickly as a plate of blackened crawfish."—Publishers Weekly

Originally published in limited hardcover editions, these two novels are full of the pure joy of love, hard work, and great food and are a tremendous extension (or introduction) to Brite’s series.

Praise fo the Rickey and G-man stories:

“A high-end restaurant is...a gift that keeps on giving. The heat, the bickerings and intrigue, the pursuit of perfection, the dodgy money keeping it all afloate: the setting spawns plots...Can the [Liquor] franchise sustain itself? The answer is yes.”—New York Times

“World-class satire and perfect New Orleans lit.”—Andrei Codrescu

“Steeped in spicy dialogue and [New Orleans] flavor...a behind-the-swinging-door peek into the world of chefs.”—Entertainment Weekly

Poppy Z. Brite’s fiction set in the New Orleans restaurant world includes Prime, Liquor, and Soul Kitchen. She has also published five other novels and three short story collections. She lives with her husband Chris, a chef, in New Orleans.

Brite Poppy Z News




Rentrée littéraire : Liquoreuses crev...
La boîte à sorties - Aug 08, 2009
Rentrée littéraire : Liquoreuses crevettesParu en 2004 aux Etats-Unis et acclamé par la critique « Alcool » (« Liquor ») de Poppy Z. Brite paraît enfin en Français Au Diable Vauvert.