Bio
Z. A. Coe lives in South Korea, where she teaches, dances, and has adventures on her bicycle.Genres
Blurbs
You think your family life is bad? Z.A. Coe's "Hunger is the Best Sauce" follows a teenage girl's horrors and triumphs, with ruthlessly accurate attention to their nuances, in a a compelling story of small-town life.
Great cover, great blurb
Weakness is the first of the Nine Lies Books. The first chapter opens with a recurring nightmare until the reader is launched into Felix Black's reality: A grim life living in a shack beneath a railway bridge. Coe uses sparse, declarative sentences, a style to match Felix's austere life. Felix is disciplined. He exercises to the point of exhaustion almost as a punishment for self-loathing. Repeated throughout is the mantra, 'If you're too weak to live, then you deserve to die'. The twenty-eight-year-old lives a miserable existence, scrounging for food and stealing whatever he can. He is burned with a metal collar, the reason made clearer as the story unfolds. Underpinning this Spartan lifestyle is a yearning for normal relationships. He finds a romance novel and reads it even though he doesn't think much of the plot or characters. Coe includes a tongue-in-cheek bio of Dawn Starlite the books author. As funny as it is, I found it a little distracting in this otherwise taught narrative. Avery's hold and manipulation of Felix, along with others of the Wold Fang Club is revealed in this enthralling, and at time gruesome, book.
Free Book Giveaways
Hunger Is the Best Sauce (Preview)
After 15-year-old Michelle’s older brother Damien throws her into a bookcase and threatens not to intervene when his predatory friend harasses her, she realizes it’s time to leave. With both parents dead and all of Damien’s money filling the fridge with alcohol instead of food, there’s no reason to come back. She sets out to live permanently in the field that has become her refuge from Damien and his drunken friends and hopes that stolen candy bars are sustenance enough.
When she arrives, however, she finds she’s not the only one who needs the land. Sixteen-year-old J is both tender and strong, but when he sees her plight and starts protecting her, flashes of his own harrowing past begin to surface. Just how deep do his scars run? Are some things impossible to heal from?
The Inventor's Slave (Preview)
Fifteen-year-old Kayden may have two prosthetic limbs, but underneath his master’s robotic improvements, he’s still only human. Or is he? Slaves aren’t afforded any rights in this seedy city, and Kayden’s violent owner, the criminal inventor Dr. Malphanx, has no time for mercy.
When Kayden gets caught by the police and his master’s precious collateral gets confiscated, Malphanx’s brutality shifts into high gear and a series of increasingly harrowing events are set into motion. As things spiral out of control, Kayden is smacked face to face with mortality and realizes there is only one way to restore everything that has been lost—but can he survive the cost?
