The Loving Dead

by Amelia Beamer

Overview

Kate and Michael are roommates living in the Oakland hills, working at the same Trader Joes supermarket. A night of drunken revelry changes their lives forever, but not in the way that anyone would expect. A slow-spreading plague of zombie-ism breaks out at their house party, spreading amongst their circle of friends, and simultaneously through the Bay Area. This zombie plague — an STD of sorts — is spread through sex and kissing, turning its victims into mindless, horny, voracious killers. Thrust into extremes by this slow- motion tragedy, Kate and Michael are forced to confront the choices they’ve made in their lives, and their fears of commitment, while trying to stay alive and reunite in the one place in the Bay Area that’s likely to be safe and secure from the zombie hoards: Alcatraz.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597801942
Publisher:	Night Shade
Publication date:	07/01/2010
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Amelia Beamer works as an editor and reviewer for Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field. She has won several literary awards and has published fiction, poetry, and scholarship in a number of venues. Her first novel The Loving Dead, with zombies and a Zeppelin, will be published in July 2010 from Night Shade Books, and has been called, "a zombie novel like none other" by Peter Straub, "really kind of hot, in a very creepy way," by Christopher Moore, and "appallingly vivid and unrelentingly suspenseful" by Tim Powers.

Editorial Reviews

Blood, guts, and sex intermingle in this stylish debut from Locus editor Beamer. A California party turns bad when the spread of a brain-eating STD leaves roommates Kate and Michael struggling to deal with a houseful of zombies. Oblivious Oakland authorities ignore the escalating crisis as aggressively promiscuous and ravenous zombies keep popping up. Finally, the desperate friends make a plan to flee to a zombie-proof haven while fearing that some of their acquaintances may already be infected. Contemporary touches like a surprisingly useful iPhone app and overthe-top moments of frantically alternating sex and gore make for a sick, funny romp that only falters at the end, which mostly occurs offstage. The cleverness of the set pieces balances the unsatisfying resolution for an entertaining and original take on the zombie apocalypse. (July)

Publishers Weekly

The novel's tone seesaws between arch humor and straightforward horror, occasionally at the cost of narrative tension. But the dialogue is sharp, and there's a nifty coda that will leave readers eager to see more from this promising newcomer.
—The Washington Post

Elizabeth Hand