The Rock Eaters

Book cover of The Rock Eaters: Stories

Book description

A story collection, in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, spanning worlds and dimensions, using strange and speculative elements to tackle issues ranging from class differences to immigration to first-generation experiences to xenophobia

What does it mean to be other? What does it mean…

Explore

Topics

Rock music

Genres

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

2 authors picked The Rock Eaters as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Rita Chang-Eppig

Author

Short story collections are funny things: some are strong from start to finish, and some… read as if the author wrote all the other stories over the course of a weekend after one of their stories garnered public attention. No, I will not name names.

Peynado’s The Rock Eaters is a glowing example of the former. The collection spans genres: realist, science fiction, magical realist. What all the stories have in common is Peynado’s controlled hand and breadth of imagination, not to mention her keen insights into what it’s like to exist in the real world, a world fraught with…

From Rita's list on if you find genre boundaries kind of silly.

Jacqueline Vogtman

Author

Rock Eaters broke me out of a reading slump and was the most exciting discovery for me since Her Body and Other Parties.

It’s one of those collections where, after finishing each story, I thought, “I wish I had written that!” My favorites include “The Stones of Sorrow Lake,” about a town where residents grow a rock in their bodies in response to their first grief, and “Thoughts and Prayers,” a devastating story where strange angels appear on rooftops after a school shooting.

Like Machado, Peynado writes in a range of genres that expands to sci-fi and speculative fiction,…

From Jacqueline's list on magical realism by women writers.