Lambda Literary Award finalist

A tattooed young man regains consciousness in the Don Jail, charged with his friend's murder. An anti-social office clerk falls for a handsome bike courier and abandons his former life. An Ojibwe teen hunts for her kidnapped girlfriend in an illegal sex trade ring and seeks revenge. This is the intense reality of The Dirt Chronicles, Kristyn Dunnion's stunning debut story collection. In these linked tales, urban outlaws in Toronto map out their plans to take over the world while living collectively in an abandoned chair factory, destined for demolition according to a real estate gentrification plan. Their community is infiltrated by the King, a dirty cop bent on obliterating the city's defiant underclass and exterminating the group's rogue members; in order to survive, they may have to betray what they value most: autonomy, friendship, and newly discovered concepts of freedom.

Audacious and loud, The Dirt Chronicles is a thrashing three-chord rejection of mainstream culture and the powers-that-be, and a combustible homage to class rebellion.

There's pushing and shoving and the sticks come out: bodies jerk and twitch. Feet shoot out from underneath; they kick and slide to the killer music ... I see Digit's back, he's still eating the rest of that cake in the corner. He's licking icing off that butcher knife, and men are yelling at him. He turns, slowly, knife raised, and there's a loud pop. A sound that cracks over top of the music and Digit's head snaps backwards; there's a dark spot spreading across his chest. The knife goes flying and his body lands by the sink. He convulses, red spurts streak the walls and broken window behind him. Kids scream. A girl beside me vomits. There's that pig we hate. The King is standing over there, gun still raised, the smell of it burning my nostrils. The King turns and stares at me. He sees me see.