Ghosts of West Baltimore J — David Osborne

Save the Westside, save the worldOur hero, Worm, has just been released from Sinai Hospital in West Baltimore after losing an eye and suffering a soon-to-be fatal blast of radiation. A rabbi believing himself to be the messiah plans to unleash an unspeakable evil on the same Park Heights neighborhood in which our hero has been placed by the state. Meanwhile, a predatory probation officer with a proclivity for research chemicals and ultra-violence, stalks his human caseload, terrorizing his boas as sickness rots his brain. With a body full of ionized cells, expensive medicine that Medicaid won't cover, and a time-sensitive placement at a halfway house for critically injured felons, can Worm save the city, again, without violating the terms of his probation? Visceral and grounded, but with a kind of ineffable strangeness wound into it. Simmons is carving out a space that feels specifically his own. - Brian Evenson Ghosts of West Baltimore is the sequel to Ghosts of East Baltimore (Broken River Books - 2022)