SUDDEN DEATH begins with a brutal tennis match between the bawdy Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo that could decide the fate of the world. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII behead Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time. Across the ocean in Mexico, conquistador Hernán Cortés and his Mayan translator and lover, La Malinche, scheme and conquer, not knowing that their domestic comedy will change the world. And in a remote Mexican colony, a bishop reads Thomas More’s UTOPIA and thinks it’s a manual.

Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker and a secretary at the Moorehead boys’ prison, is consumed with resentment and self-loathing that she tempers with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. She also spends her nights and weekends shoplifting and stalking a prison guard named Randy. When the bright and beautiful Rebecca Saint John arrives as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and unable to resist what appears to be a budding friendship. 

A woman creeps through the ductwork of a quiet home. A medical procedure reveals an object of worship. A carnivorous reptile divides and cauterizes a town. Amelia Gray's curio cabinet expands in GUTSHOT, where isolation and coupling are pushed to their dark and outrageous edges. A master of the macabre, Gray's work is not for the faint of heart or gut.

As a 16-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan.” Her testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row. Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans just outside her bedroom window. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter.