The Insides

“With The Insides, Jeremy P. Bushnell doesn’t so much mash genres together as slice them apart to find the filets. It’s a literary urban fantasy with sharp things to say about the way we live now, darkened by a touch of Scandinavian rich and urgent and weird, a novel that defies categorization but demands to be consumed.”—Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore“The Insides begins with all the freewheeling magic and humor of The Weirdness, then ups the ante with danger, suspense, and rich emotional resonance. If you love fierce, witchy leading ladies, facing down evil, and traveling to strange realms that will explain your life before they haunt you forever, this is the book for you.” —Alyssa Harad, author of Coming to My Senses   Ollie Krueger’s days as a punk kid practicing street magic are are mostly behind her. Now she’s a butcher at Carnage, a high-end restaurant offering deconstructed takes on meat. On busy nights Ollie and her partner, Guychardson, race to see who can produce the most finished cuts. Ollie’s the better butcher, but somehow Guychardson always wins ... and Ollie thinks maybe it’s because the mysterious knife he uses is magic.   Before she knows it, Ollie’s interest in the knife has thrown her square in the path of a dangerous ex-marine called “Pig” and his hired psychic, Maja, who are on the hunt for the knife too—who want it so badly, in fact, that they might kill for it.   Now, magic is back in Ollie’s life and she’s being chased through New York City, with the fabric of space-time tattering around her and weird inter-dimensional worms squirming their way into her kitchen.  And before it's all over she’s going to need to face up to the Possible Consequences of some bad decisions, to look at the uncomfortable truths that she stuffed away long ago, deep down ...  inside . . .