We are excited to share the cover reveal for BAD LAND by Corinna Chong set to be released by Arsenal Pulp Press on September 3, 2024!
A slow-burning story exploring the generational effects of repression and transgression, set against the raw, eerie landscape of the badlands.
Regina is a socially awkward loner who is content to live a life withdrawn from everyone except her cherished pet bunny. But after seven years of silence, Regina’s brother, Ricky, shows up unannounced on her doorstep, along with his daughter, Jez – a peculiar six-year-old with an unnerving vicious streak – upending Regina’s quiet life.
It’s clear to Regina that something terrible has happened, though the truth won’t come to the surface easily. After all, Regina and Ricky lived a childhood fraught with secrets buried as deep as the fossils in the desolate landscape around them. But this secret is one that cannot stay buried for long, and its exposure sets off a calamitous journey through the plains and mountains of Alberta’s badlands to the coast of BC, forcing Regina to confront the brutality of family love and to question how far she is willing to go to preserve it.
By turns thrilling and heartwarming, rife with gothic tension, and carried by fervent compassion, Bad Land is a story about the toxic nature of guilt, the fragility of memory, and the ways we shape our own versions of the truth in order to survive.
Corinna Chong’s short fiction has appeared in magazines including Grain, Room, and Riddle Fence. She won the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize for “Kids in Kindergarten.” Corinna’s first novel, Belinda’s Rings, was published by NeWest Press in 2013. She lives in Kelowna, BC, where she is an English and Fine Arts Professor at Okanagan College.
Corinna is represented by Marilyn Biderman and Samantha Haywood.
Pre order your copy of this heartwarming and thrilling story here: https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/B/Bad-Land