AJ Dunn Reads

  The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones One Saturday before Thanksgiving four Blackfeet men decide to go hunting on tribal elder land where the stumble on a herd of elk. Delighted, they fire into the herd, killing man, including a cow that is pregnant with a calf. The men think they will fill their freezers for the whole year, but are found and fined, losing their hunting rights for a period of ten years. One of the men, Lewis, killed the pregnant cow and her calf, burying it. Years later the men start dying one by one. First is Ricky, tricked by an elk that caused damage to a bunch of vehicles at a bar making it look like Ricky did it. He gets beat to death by the men in the bar. Next is Lewis, living with his white wife and dog off the reservation. Lewis starts seeing an elk woman and devises a scheme to figure out who it is, knowing that something supernatural is happening because of the elk hunt years ago. He harbors a lot of guilt over it. He suspects his co-worker and...

  Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones I love Stephen Graham Jones's writing style. It is conversational and youthful, and works well for the teenage main characters in Night of the Mannequins . The story is about Sawyer and his three friends who attempt a prank on another friend at her job in a movie theater. Previously they had all gotten her into trouble and in order to pay off her debt, she (Shanna) has to work in a theater which her friends frequent. The prank involves setting up a mannequin the group found earlier in the summer in a seat in the theater. But Sawyer sees the prank go awry when the mannequin fails to disturb the assistant manager, and actually gets up to walk out of the theater. Later that same week a tragedy befalls Shanna's family, and the group believes her to be dead. This leads Sawyer to conclude that the mannequin, Manny, is out to kill the friends because they decided not to "play" with him anymore, not to take him on adventures, ...

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones This novella tells the story of Junior, an Indian boy living with his mother and younger brother, Dino. Junior is a sleepwalker who awakens one night to see his dead father walking across the room. He believes his father, in full dancing regalia, has come back to make them a whole family again. Dino suffers from seizures and Junior thinks his father is there to protect Dino, to make him well. But this thinking changes as Junior gets into a scrape with the neighbors dogs and the four canines end up dead, torn apart. Junior starts to think his father has another purpose in returning. Dino begins to have worse seizures and marks appear on his neck. Is Junior's father trying to take Dino's life essence to make himself whole again? Junior's mother begins dating the Sheriff's deputy, which doesn't sit well with Junior, who steals the pistol from the deputy's vehicle. With the gun in hand he finds a man bent over his brother...