book

Eric Williams ericwphoto.com

Talking metaphor, Wilderness and Custer’s corpse

mtungate / CC BY-SA 2.0

How do we make it go?

A Cajun-flavored sampling of things that go bump in the night

When you think about it, post-Katrina Louisiana creates the perfect setting for a horror tale. Storm-ravaged bayous and flooded levees—along with an already prevalent culture of the supernatural—certainly make the environs of the Deep South ripe for an ill-intentioned bogeyman or two. So sets the scene for local author Ania Ahlborn's first novel, Seed, which takes the hot-ticket items of demonic possession and sinister children and tosses them into a musty, kudzu-covered Southern Gothic blender.

Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small

Everything anyone ever wanted to know about Merge Records and more lies inside this nearly 300-page congratulatory volume. Twenty years after its creation by Superchunk's Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan, the North Carolina label celebrates its triumph over recording industry standards—and rightly so—with photos, first-person accounts and a compilation CD (which, strangely, neglects the early days).