Brian Evenson’s Last Days, published by Underland Press, has been selected as part of the Reference User and Services Association’s 2010 Reading List.

The Reading List annually recognizes the best books in eight genres: adrenaline (which includes suspense, thriller, and adventure), fantasy, historical fiction, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction, and women’s fiction, and is selected by the association’s Reading List Council, composed of members representing libraries across the United States.

The association praised Last Days in a statement released this week: “Through spare language, a noir sensibility, and macabre humor, Evenson crafts a compulsively readable nightmare…”

The Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, represents librarians and library staff in the fields of reference, specialized reference, collection development, readers advisory and resource sharing. RUSA is the foremost organization of reference and information professionals who make the connections between people and the information sources, services, and collection materials they need.

More praise for Last Days:

Horror magazine Fangoria chose Last Days as their Book of the Month. “You NEED to get yourself acquainted with [Brian Evenson] pronto. Remember discovering Thomas Ligotti? Or . . . that first brush with Dennis Cooper or Chuck Palahniuk? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Zack Handlen at The Onion’s AV Club called Last Days “a grim, darkly hilarious riff on blind obedience…often reading like the twisted offspring of Raymond Chandler and David Cronenberg.”

The Village Voice’s Zach Baron wrote that “the book careens past biblical satire into full-on, blood-soaked, Beckettian absurdity.”

Time Out New York chose Last Days as one of its best books of 2009: “Evenson has always enjoyed chipping away at the distinctions between reality and hallucination, and here he gives us a seemingly straightforward narrative with plenty of action, without ever indicating if what we’re reading is really happening, or just the fancies of a narrator gone mad.”

About Last Days:
Intense and profoundly unsettling, Last Days is a down-the-rabbit-hole detective novel set in an underground religious cult. Still reeling from his brutal dismemberment, detective Kline is forcibly recruited to solve a murder inside a Fundamentalist society that takes literally the New Testament idea that you should cut of your hand if it offends you. Armed only with his gun, his wits, and a gift for self-preservation, Kline must navigate a gauntlet of lies, threats, and misinformation, discovering that the stakes are higher than he thought and that his survival depends on an act of sheer will.

Last Days is available now at Amazon.com.

Tags | modern-horror, thriller