The Crying of Lot 49 [suggested by Uzma Ali]
Suffused with rich satire, chaotic brilliance, verbal turbulence and wild humour, The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover’s estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting The Crying of Lot 49.
One of Pynchon’s shortest novels and one of his best.
The book has a Wikipedia page.
About the Author
Author’s Wikipedia page.
Author’s website.
Shortlisted for this month
This month Uzz’s other two suggestions (based on a theme of “weird novels”) were:
The Poem-Skull
So, what if you’re a lazy text-hopping millennial with no direction?
So, what if you’re trapped in a loveless marriage to an asexual software designer who is on the brink of creating personalized gods/operating systems for computer users?
So, what if it turns out that half your peer group are actually sadistic villains hell-bent on eradicating art and beauty as we know it from the world?
So, what if a supernatural, poem-spouting skull sidekick appears on your kitchen counter one day?
So, what if art had to save the world?!?!
All the answers and more, including sadistic children’s singers, N.A.S.A.-themed adult entertainment, criminal pet owners, and prehistoric enthusiasts, await you in The Poem-Skull. [Product description from Amazon]
About the Author
A fairly scant Internet presence. The best I could find is his Goodreads Author page.
Grudge Punk
Grudgehaven: “A city lost to the darkness, where acid rain drums on a hundred thousand corrugated iron rooftops and cold, mechanized eyeballs squint out of every filth-smeared window.”
From the twisted mind of author John McNee come nine tales of brutality and betrayal from a city like no other.
A granite detective has a date with destiny at a motel made of flesh. A severed hand is on a desperate mission to ruin somebody’s evening. While a mob war reaches its bloody climax, the Mayor is up to his neck in dead prostitutes.
And Clockwork Joe? He just wants to be a real boy.
Bizarro Press proudly presents the latest in dieselpunk-bizarro-horror-noir. This…
…is GrudgePunk [Product description from Amazon.com]
About the Author
Once again, almost nil Internet presence – seems to be “a thing” with indie authors. What might have been his Wikipedia page is taken by a Canadian career diplomat of the same name and there is no disambiguation. So again I fall back on his Goodreads Author page.