Under the Sea

By: Mark Leidner

Narrated by: Luna Cross

Under the Sea is Mark Leidner’s debut story collection published by Tyrant Books in 2018 and named a best book of the year by Buzzfeed, Spinoff, and The New Statesman.

In the gripping opener “Bad-Asses”, a naive drug dealer’s stash is stolen, leading her to unleash her inner bad-ass as she tries to recover it. In the bizarre and hilarious “21 Extremely Bad Breakups”, each breakup is more absurd than the last: lovers get side-swiped by speeding busses, play paper-rock-scissors with each others lives, cause an asteroid to destroy the planet, and more. In “Under the Sea”, a woman with one day to live has an affair with a loser she picks up at a video game arcade. In the unbelievably epic “Avern-Y6”, a despondent insect gets shitfaced at the brink of a colony-wide civil war, only to learn he has an role to play in history after all. A social outcast going off on some teens in a bougie café, a depressed man in a physical fight with an interdimensional void, a middle-school student waxing memoiristic about heartbreak, a self-defeating academic sending a career-ending email - indelible characters are the heart of every story’s wild ride in Under the Sea.

Praise:

“Equal parts hilarity and horror…virtuosic.” (New York Times)

“Poetic and extraordinarily strange.” (Buzzfeed)

“An intriguing literary page-turner.” (Curator)

About the author:

Mark Leidner is is a Georgia-born writer of books and films. His latest book is 2018’s Under the Sea, and his latest film is the 2019 sci-fi thriller Empathy, Inc. He resides in Atlanta and is @markleidner on Twitter and Instagram.

©2018 Tyrant Books (P)2019 Talking Book

Fantastic collection

i love short story collections especially when there this good
Because each story was so different it really kept it interesting
My top picks are badass,under the sea and avern y6 will have you seeing bugs in a new light
Luna’s narration is excellent highly recommended
I received a free review audiobook and voluntarily left this review

Awesome, Profound , Entertaining

Really great book of short stories for an audiobook. Had fun with every story. Luna Cross did a great job of making them all unique. Cool.

thoroughly enjoyable

...the interplay of every story is masterful and gave me cause to go back and re-read, which is not common for me.