Better Living Through Alchemy (paperback)

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Better Living Through Alchemy, a novel by Evan J. Peterson.


An occult detective story set in a weirder Seattle. Psychic Kelly Munn is hired to investigate a magical drug that kills people in strange ways.

TAKE DRUGS, BE GOD

Kelly Mun is a private detective... with an uncanny sense of smell. She runs Non-Linear Investigations with her cousin Critter, using psychic and esoteric methods to try to earn a living. When a mysterious businesswoman hires them to find the source of a deadly new street drug called bardo, Kelly’s life gets even stranger than usual in this occult-noir Seattle.

​The monsters are incidental.

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR

“Street drugs meet street magic in this freshly weird-boiled short novel! It was quite a trip (if you know what I mean)!” (Nick Mamatas, author of Love is the Law and The Second Shooter)

“This is not your usual detective story and not your typical detective. In Better Living Through Alchemy, we are gifted with an exceptional story filled with remarkable characters. Peterson can provoke the kind of chilling unease that reverberates like an echo in the middle of the night.” (Ann VanderMeer, editor of The Weird, The Time Traveler’s Almanac, Sisters of the Revolution, and The Big Book of Science Fiction)

“Honestly, I haven’t had this much fun with a bizarre, occult detective getting into trouble since Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. But the noir overtones give this a sharp grittiness that lurks behind the fun that Adams never had.” (Tobias Buckell, author of The Stranger in the Citadel and Shoggoths in Traffic and Other Stories)

“A totally hilarious hardboiled detective novel with wit, pathos, compassion, global religious deities, and arcane monsters from beyond our ken. What’s not to like?” (Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies and Others and Questionable Practices)

“Evan Peterson’s Better Living Through Alchemy is a deliciously creepy, fast-paced romp through a Seattle—altered by the magic of deities and mortals—I’m glad I’ve never had to visit. This is a noir detective story like none you’ve ever read, a wicked confection of body horror and arcane knowledge. Peterson’s characters are unforgettable, and I’m waiting eagerly for a sequel.” (Susan Palwick, author of The Necessary Beggar and Flying in Place)

“Evan J. Peterson’s outstanding novel kicks all of the PI, crime-solving, supernatural tropes in the teeth with Better Living Through Alchemy! Kelly and Critter are the perfect crime-fighting duo, each wonderfully weird in their own way. If you love supernatural mysteries, do yourself a favor and pick this book up, take it home, and demolish it!” (Annie Carl, author of My Tropey Life and Nebula Vibrations and editor of Soul Jar: Thirty-One Fantastical Stories by Disabled Authors)

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FORMAT
trade paperback
​
AUTHOR
Evan J. Peterson

COVER ILLUSTRATION
Matthew Cunningham​

COVER DESIGN & EDITING
Scott Gable

OTHER FORMATS
ebook | hardcover

THEMES
occult fantasy, hard-boiled crime, weird fiction

SAMPLE

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Evan J. Peterson
​Evan J. Peterson was brought to life in Miami, Florida. He’s an author and game writer whose works include Drag Star! (Choice of Games), the world’s first drag performer RPG, as well as the books The PrEP Diaries and METAFLESH and the game The Road to Innsmouth: Arkham Horror. His writing has appeared in Weird Tales, PseudoPod, Queers Destroy Horror, Nightmare Magazine, and Best Gay Stories. When he’s not creating Weird stories and inventing new monsters, Evan is a writing coach, film buff, tarot reader, pole dancer, and collector of malevolent plants. Everything you’ve heard about Florida is true. 
Find out more at www.evanjpeterson.com.