Heresy Press’s new anthology, Axe: Stories That Cut Deep, gathers dazzling short fiction from some of today’s most acclaimed voices, including National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners. Inspired by Kafka’s injunction that “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us,” these thirteen stories strike at complacency with audacity and style. Joyce Carol Oates, Sherman Alexie, Chuck Palahniuk, Lionel Shriver, Andrew Doyle, Richard North Patterson, Jeffrey Ford, David Sedaris, and Alice Walker deliver tales of cruelty, compassion, delusion, and revelation—from gothic horror and biting satire to surreal fables and lyrical meditations. Across these pages, the familiar world cracks open to reveal what lies beneath: violence, longing, and the possibility of grace.

In these daring tales by celebrated and boundary-pushing authors, nothing is as it seems. Joyce Carol Oates reveals the dark roots of genius, while Sherman Alexie charts a Native scholar’s mystical return to his heritage. Bradford Morrow turns inheritance into horror; Lionel Shriver and David Sedaris skewer modern taboos, and Chuck Palahniuk exposes the dark seamy side of child sex trafficking. Jonathan Santlofer’s seductive thriller and Andrew Doyle’s hallucinatory farce explore deception and madness; Alice Walker and Elizabeth Hand deliver haunting explorations of death and grieving, while Richard North Patterson, Jeffrey Ford, and James Morrow expose beauty, compassion, and absurdity in equal measure. Provocative, poignant, and richly imaginative, these thirteen stories dare to tell uncomfortable truths.

In a spirited afterword, Junot Díaz urges readers to read “hungrily, adventurously, and blasphemously”—the perfect benediction for a compilation filled with trenchant, impactful stories.