The Americana Psychorama: Collected Stories

by Kieran Shea

Darkly comic and wickedly incisive, Kieran Shea’s The Americana Psychorama is an assemblage of stories portraying a delightfully bleak but all-too-familiar America. A suburban man stumbles into more than he bargained for when he steals a neighboring teenager’s drug stash. A teenage boy acts out when his widower father brings home a much younger clone of his mother. A thief discovers that karma can be both swift and random. And more than one couple finds their interpersonal conflict suddenly overshadowed by the malevolent outside forces they face. In settings that run the gamut from the historical west to a near-future post-apocalypse, the characters of these stories—whether felons or lovers, dockhands or diplomats, vigilantes or frauds, monsters or artificial life forms, con men or survivors, fathers or sons—are all, in some way, blindsided by the easy corruptions and outlandish hostilities of everyday life. Mixing styles, genres, and lengths, The Americana Psychorama presents Kieran Shea’s short-story writing at its best. Unique, brash, and wholly original. Praise for THE AMERICANA “These short, sharp stabs of the knife showcase a writer intent on showing us life in the cracks of the American dream. There are crimes, gallows humor, and the type of characters you wouldn’t want to pick up hitchhiking. Shea will give you a shot of 100 proof, served in a dirty ashtray and lit on fire. And you’ll love it.” —Eric Beetner, author of All The Way Down “Shea puts more heart and guts into a single story than most writers do a novel.” —Nik Korpon, author of Wear Your Home Like a Scar

196 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 6, 2021

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fine - I didn’t feel as though any part of it was exceptionally interesting or humorous or insightful. There were two stories that were interesting to me and one that was a clear rip off of a Black Mirror episode (and KS if you wrote that story before Black Mirror you should get your money for it).