Rich Shapero Knihy

Wild animus is a search for the primordial, a test of human foundations and a journey to the breaking point.

Take a delirious hyper-metaphorical ride with a love triangle into a fiery cosmos. Shapero’s outer space uncannily mirrors inner space, daring us to ditch our expectations and probe the depths of human desire.

Indulge the obsession of a dying man whose stubborn quest for an ecstatic send-off tests the liberating potentials of belief. Dare to believe in a rapturous transition between life and death that holds the potential to set us free. “Original ideas, strong prose, timelessness and universality . . . Dissolve offers a unique imagining of what might happen to the human soul after it’s left the body.” —Kirkus Reviews

Escape with a disaffected young sculptor from a desert dystopia to “heaven,” a blue ocean realm ruled by a perverse, tentacled god with a mysterious purpose. Your trust may be outraged, but dive deeper and you’ll uncover clues to the creative sea change in our ideals that could redeem a desolate world.

Blaze a trail with two wayward kids as they explore a private forest whose supernatural potentials illuminate the triumphs and follies of desperate imagination.

What does it take to show our true self to the one we love? Kell is an American botanist working in Malaysia. He meets the engaging and alluring Nitti and is instantly smitten, but getting to know her is anything but straightforward. Open and childlike one moment, guarded and invulnerable the next, she ducks and vacillates, and keeps Kell guessing why. Nitti’s mother lies paralyzed in a far corner of their home, tended by a sinister housekeeper who exerts a mystifying control over Nitti and her father. Still, Kell believes he’s found the woman of his dreams, and he perseveres. And Nitti seems to encourage him, leading him to a secret jungle sanctuary, then deeper, to the black waters of a swamp she calls “Keributan,” where a monstrous creature lurks . . . With lushly drawn metaphor and unflinching candor and empathy, Hibiscus Mask offers a gripping psychological mystery about the preconditions for love and the tragic cost of hidden identity.

Can a band of adolescents fashion a new social order? Jema, the cheerful and well-liked teenage daughter of the Governor, spends summers with her family and a group of children at a jungle retreat far from the capital. She and Kris, the Chancellor’s daughter, have been best friends since childhood. When their parents are called away to quell an uprising, a terrible fire erupts and the children have to face the challenges of survival on their own. Rangi, elected leader, imposes his recklessness on the tribe; then a troubling rift between Kris and Jema gives way to a more violent one between the boys and girls. As the conflict deepens and the barbarism of the jungle threatens to resurface, a strange parrot visits Jema, whispering cryptic utterances in her ear, daring her to shed her childish assumptions and do what the jungle requires to become a woman . . . With fable-like resonance and unflinching vision, Beneath Caaqi’s Wings imagines the tribulations of a teenage society without adults, and suggests how the passage into adulthood demands a confrontation with darker impulses that lurk inside us all.

hardcover 1st edition; like new dust jacket (amhbx12)