Adult novels
My first novel, The Cipher, was chosen to inaugurate the Abyss line of novels from Dell, books that were meant to be dark, strange, and different. More novels followed for Dell/Delacorte – Bad Brains, Skin, and Strange Angels. Kink was published by Henry Holt; Extremities, a collection of my short fiction, came out from Four Walls Eight Windows. In all of these novels, the exigencies of art and the thrust and hunger of human behavior struggle and entwine in the characters’ lives; some are more fortunate than others in the eventual outcomes. And all of these books and stories are, yes, dark, strange and different.
Some readers familiar with these novels were surprised when it seemed that I’d deliberately turned away from horror to write YA. What I’d done is what I always do: write what interests and excites me in the given moment, and figure out later where to place it on the map. (Not everything that interests and excites me makes it to the “published” plane – a novel I wrote called All the Way, about a disaffected photographer making a particularly parlous spiritual pilgrimage, has never been published. You follow the work, you take your chances.)
My latest novel for adults, Under the Poppy, is a love story that takes place in a reimagined Victorian era, set in a brothel, and complicated by spycraft and puppets. Under the Poppy was published in 2010 by Small Beer Press. (It has its own blog here.)
It’s disingenuous to say that there is no difference between the novels meant specifically for adults and those meant for younger readers: the difference, to me, is not in tone or language or even in choice of subject — one of my YAs in particular, Going Under, is strange and dark indeed, and all of them have their freight of pain and confusion; to write otherwise would only be a lie — but I think the difference lies in my care for the eventual reader. I’m somewhat gentler in the way I speak to younger people; to adults, well. By the time you grow up you should know how to take a punch, right?
These books are available online from your preferred bookseller(s). Signed copies are available in limited quantities; please email kathe AT kathekoja.com.
THE CIPHER
This powerful first novel is as thought-provoking as it is horrifying. — Publishers Weekly
Kathe Koja is a lot of things, not the least of which is a byline you should take to heart; this is one of the hottest names to turn up in years. – F&SF
An extremely impressive first novel and quite a powerful work. The Cipher deserves to be read by all fans of cutting-edge horror fiction. – Rave Reviews
Bram Stoker Award
Philip K. Dick Award finalist
Locus Award, Best First Novel
BAD BRAINS
[A] brave and successful feat of storytelling that happens to be purely terrifying….Koja flashes from literary fiction to genre horror to artistic speculation so fast the reader has barely recovered from one attack before the next begins. – Rick Kleffel, San Francisco Examiner
Kathe Koja is a bad trip rising [who] drags hardcore horror into the present. –Village Voice Literary Supplement
SKIN
Fresh and astonishing, harsh yet beautiful…[Koja's] a mistress of vivid metaphor and skewed perspective. – Washington Post Book World
Skin delivers an unexpectedly poignant critique of the S&M undercurrents and unconscious death drives that fuel the industrial music scene’s jagged edges. – SPIN
A dark and frightening work by a major talent whose prose reads like a collaboration between Clive Barker and William S. Burroughs. Highly recommended. — Library Journal
STRANGE ANGELS
Splendidly written, impossible after the first page to lay aside. It’s the best parable I know about the relationship between critical and creative imaginations.– Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A shattering, humbling, literary tour de force. — Metro Times
KINK
Vastly provocative … Expertly explores the erotic and the obsessional, [Koja] presents us with a number of pared-to-the-bone truths. –Cleveland Plain Dealer
You really shouldn’t like Kathe Koja’s latest characters. …[Y]et Koja draws you into their game, their voyeurism, with every word of Kink. – Detroit News
An erotic, epistemological thriller. It almost watches us secretly. - Review of Contemporary Fiction
EXTREMITIES
Koja’s provocative story lines and evocative prose combine reality with invention, the supernatural with the everyday. – New York Times Book Review
Kathe Koja’s prose is a glittering scalpel; her stories operate in a dreamlike theater where the heart is revealed but not a single drop of blood is gratuitously shed. – Jonathan Lethem
Reminiscent of Poe and Calvino … Koja uses her considerable gift for sensory description to real purpose. – Publishers Weekly
