A Tree or a Person or a Wall gives us Matt Bell at his most inventive and uncanny: parents and children, murderers and monsters, wild renditions of the past, and acute takes on the present, all of which build to a virtuoso reimagining of our world. A 19th-century minister builds an elaborate motor that will bring about the Second Coming. A man with rough hands locks a boy in a room with an albino ape. An apocalyptic army falls under a veil of forgetfulness. The story of Red Riding Hood is run through a potentially endless series of iterations. A father invents an elaborate, consuming game for his hospitalized son. Indexes, maps, a checkered shirt buried beneath a blanket of snow: they are scattered through these pages as clues to mysteries that may never be solved, lingering evidence of the violence and unknowability of the world. A Tree or a Person or a Wall brings together Bell’s previously published shorter fiction-the story collection How They Were Found and the acclaimed novella Cataclysm Baby-along with seven dark and disturbing new stories, to create a collection of singular power.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * A PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER BEST OF THE YEAR

“Woven together out of the strands of myth, science fiction, and ecological warning, Matt Bell’s Appleseed is as urgent as it is audacious.” –Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and national bestselling author of Get in Trouble

A “breathtaking novel of ideas unlike anything you’ve ever read” (Esquire) from Young Lions Fiction Award-finalist Matt Bell, a breakout book that explores climate change, manifest destiny, humanity’s unchecked exploitation of natural resources, and the small but powerful magic contained within every single apple.

In eighteenth-century Ohio, two brothers travel into the wooded frontier, planting apple orchards from which they plan to profit in the years to come. As they remake the wilderness in their own image, planning for a future of settlement and civilization, the long-held bonds and secrets between the two will be tested, fractured and broken–and possibly healed.

Fifty years from now, in the second half of the twenty-first century, climate change has ravaged the Earth. Having invested early in genetic engineering and food science, one company now owns all the world’s resources. But a growing resistance is working to redistribute both land and power–and in a pivotal moment for the future of humanity, one of the company’s original founders will return to headquarters, intending to destroy what he helped build.

A thousand years in the future, North America is covered by a massive sheet of ice. One lonely sentient being inhabits a tech station on top of the glacier–and in a daring and seemingly impossible quest, sets out to follow a homing beacon across the continent in the hopes of discovering the last remnant of civilization.

Hugely ambitious in scope and theme, Appleseed is the breakout novel from a writer “as self-assured as he is audacious” (NPR) who “may well have invented the pulse-pounding novel of ideas” (Jess Walter). Part speculative epic, part tech thriller, part reinvented fairy tale, Appleseed is an unforgettable meditation on climate change; corporate, civic, and familial responsibility; manifest destiny; and the myths and legends that sustain us all.

In this epic, mythical debut novel, a newlywed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply, to fish the lake, to trap the nearby woods, and build a house upon the dirt between where they can raise a family. But as their every pregnancy fails, the child-obsessed husband begins to rage at this new world: the song-spun objects somehow created by his wife’s beautiful singing voice, the giant and sentient bear that rules the beasts of the woods, the second moon weighing down the fabric of their starless sky, and the labyrinth of memory dug into the earth beneath their house.

This novel is a powerful exploration of the limits of parenthood and marriage–and of what happens when a marriage’s success is measured solely by the children it produces, or else the sorrow that marks their absence.

They say writing is rewriting. So why does the second part get such short shrift? Refuse to Be Done will guide you through every step of the novel writing process, from getting started on those first pages to the last tips for making your final draft even tighter and stronger.
From lauded writer and teacher Matt Bell, Refuse to Be Done is encouraging and intensely practical, focusing always on specific rewriting tasks, techniques, and activities for every stage of the process. You won’t find bromides here about the “the writing Muse.” Instead, Bell breaks down the writing process in three sections. In the first, Bell shares a bounty of tactics, all meant to push you through the initial conception and get words on the page. The second focuses on reworking the narrative through outlining, modeling, and rewriting. The third and final section offers a layered approach to polishing through a checklist of operations, breaking the daunting project of final revisions into many small, achievable tasks.

Whether you are a first time novelist or a veteran writer, you will find an abundance of strategies here to help motivate you and shake up your revision process, allowing you to approach your work, day after day and month after month, with fresh eyes and sharp new tools.

For fans of The Dog Starsand Station Eleven, Scrapperuses the real-life dystopia of a devastated Detroit serves as a backdrop for one man’s desperate quest for justice and redemptive grace. In the wake of tragedy, ex-boxer Kelly returns to Detroit after years in the south. Unable to find work, he scavenges for scrap metal in the hundred-thousand abandoned buildings at the heart of the city, an area he calls “the zone,” where one day he finds something far more valuable than the copper he’s come to steal: a kidnapped boy handcuffed to a bed, crying out for rescue. After being celebrated as a hero, Kelly secretly decides to avenge the boy’s unsolved kidnapping, a task that will take him deeper into the zone and into a confrontation with his own past, unearthing long-buried cycles of trauma and cruelty, memories made dangerous again. In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woodswas a commercial and critical success. Author is very connected in the publishing world and has friends and fans across the country, including many booksellers, reviewers and other industry buzz-builders. After the mythological explorations of his first novel, Scrapperis set in a world closer to our own, expanding his appeal to new readers. Praise for In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods An ABA IndieNext Selection Flavorwire Staff Pick/Top 10 Debut of the Year The Nervous Breakdown Book Club Selection “A gripping, grisly tale of a husband’s descent into and ultimate emergence from some kind of personal hell.”–The New York Times “Bell’s novel isn’t just a joy to read, it’s also one of the smartest meditations on the subjects of love, family and marriage in recent years.”– NPR “Somber, incantatory sentences to hold you within [Bell’s] dreamlike creation…. This unique book leaves you with the haunting lesson that even if you renounce and cast away your loved ones, you can never disown the memory of your deeds.”– The Wall Street Journal “Here’s a story that stirs the Brothers Grimm and Salvador Dali with its claws…As gorgeous as it is devastating.”–The Washington Post “An extraordinary achievement, telling a most ancient story in a way that feels uncannily new.”– The Boston Globe Matt Bell is the author of the novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, a Michigan Notable Book, and an Indies Choice Adult Debut Book of the Year Honor Recipient, as well as the winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award. He is also the author of two previous books, How They Were Found and Cataclysm Baby, and his stories have appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Fantasy, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, The American Reader, and many other publications. He currently teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. Marketing and Publicity National media campaign targeting Detroit interest as well as building on the success of campaign for IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS. The author has also expanded his resume as a reviewer, including doing work for the NYT. $40,000 marketing budget. Pre-publication digital/print advertising across trade venues. Featured galley at ALA Annual and BEA 2015. Multi-stage consumer digital/print advertising One national print consumer facing advertisement. Facebook and AdWords advertising. Consumer-facing pre-pub galley distro via Goodreads. IndieBound White Box mailing.