Mostly Dead Things

'Messed-up families, scandalous love affairs, art, life, death and the great state of Florida in one delicious, darkly funny package. Kristen Arnett is a wickedly talented and a wholly original voice' Jami Attenberg

'There's a gunslinger cool to every sentence . . . Kristen Arnett is the queen of the Florida no one has ever told you about' Alexander Chee

'The writing is subtle and meditative, with the tactile weight of dense fur' The New Yorker

One Florida morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into her family's taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business while the rest of the Morton family falls apart.

Her mother decides to process her feelings by making aggressively lewd and increasingly disturbing art pieces with her dead husband's taxidermied animals. Her brother withdraws and struggles to cope. His wife - who is also the only person Jessa has ever been in love with - walks out without a word. Meanwhile, numb with lack of sleep and too much alcohol, Jessa starts to seek less-than-legal ways of generating income to keep the shop afloat.

The Mortons have reached tipping point. But for the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people she calls family truly are and, ultimately, how she fits alongside them.