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Virtual Event – Women of Horror
July 26, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Magic City Books is proud to welcome a special panel event celebrating “Women of Horror” and featuring Emily Beyda, author of The Body Double and Julianne Pachico, author of The Anthill in conversation with Emily Hughes from Tor Nightfire
This free virtual event will be hosted on the Zoom platform and Facebook Live. To register in advance for the event on Zoom visit: https://magiccitybooks.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nf1RL3cXT8mRG__5Z-a4cw.
After registering you will receive a confirmation email with details on how to join the event on July 26 at 7:00 pm CT.
Both of the featured books are available for sale at Magic City Books or online.
The Body Double: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/the-body-double/560
The Anthill: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/the-anthill/561
About The Body Double
A dark, glittering debut novel echoing Hitchcock’s Vertigo, The Body Double is the suspenseful story of a young woman who is recruited by a stranger to give up her old life and identity to impersonate a reclusive Hollywood star.
A strange man discovers our nameless narrator selling popcorn at a decrepit small-town movie theater and offers her an odd and lucrative position: she will forget her job, her acquaintances, even her name, and move to Los Angeles, where she will become the body double of the famous and troubled celebrity Rosanna Feld. A nervous breakdown has forced Rosanna out of the public eye, and she needs a look-alike to take her place in the tabloid media circus of Hollywood. Overseen by Max, who hired her for the job, our narrator spends her days locked up in a small apartment in the hills watching hidden camera footage of Rosanna, wearing Rosanna’s clothes, eating the food Rosanna likes, practicing her mannerisms, learning to become Rosanna in every way. But as she makes her public debut as Rosanna, alarming questions begin to arise. What really caused Rosanna’s mental collapse? Will she ever return? And is Max truly her ally, or something more sinister?
Emily Beyda is a Los Angeles native who for the past three years has written the popular Dear Glutton advice column in The Austin Chronicle. A graduate of Texas State’s M.F.A. program, she currently resides back in L.A. The Body Double is her first novel.
About The Anthill
A wildly original blend of social horror and razor sharp satire, The Anthill is a searing exploration of privilege, racism, and redemption in the Instagram age.
Lina has come home to the country of her childhood. Sent away from Colombia to England after her mother’s death twenty years before, she’s searching for the one person who can tell her about their shared past. She’s never forgotten Matty–her childhood friend and protector who now runs The Anthill, a day care refuge for the street kids of Medellín. Lina begins volunteering there, but her reunion with Matty is not what she hoped for. She no longer recognizes Medellin, now rebranded as a tourist destination, nor the person Matty has become: a guarded man uninterested in reliving the past she thought they both cherished.
As Lina begins to confront her memories and the country’s traumatic history, strange happenings start taking place at The Anthill: something is violently scratching at the inside of the closet door, the kids are drawing unsettling pictures, and there are mysterious sightings of a small, dirty boy with pointy teeth. Is this a vision of the boy Lina once knew, or something more sinister? Did she bring these disturbances with her? And what will her search for atonement cost Matty?
Julianne Pachico is the author of The Lucky Ones. She grew up in Cali, Colombia, and lived there until she was eighteen. She has a PhD in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in England, where she is now a lecturer. Her story “Honey Bunny” appeared in The New Yorker, and two of her stories have been anthologized in Best British Short Stories 2015. In 2015 she was long-listed for the Sunday Times EFT Short Story Award and in 2017 she was short-listed for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.