Sij Books imprint: 12 books

Oh, what a wonderful e-mail! Decline of the able-bodied greeter. Carefully hidden among the potatoes. Hot pear. Tooth strikes sink. My child is pretty. Is that your thatch? U.S.S. Pajama Bottom. Ectopic fantasy. Cat refuses to swallow hair, dies young. Save all Teds. The birthday party across the...

Russell Helms tackles tornados, virginity cults, IKEA, and cube steak with grace and the mundane horror of life that plagues us all. Finessed with a dark sense of humor, Helms explores the human condition one character at a time.

Pregnant with Bobby Hartwig’s child, Thai nurse Silliporn tracks him down to Alabama where, having survived a jump from a bridge in Bangkok, Bobby’s back home taking care of stroke-victim Harold Suggs and falling in love with his gorgeous granddaughter Bee. The tiny Suggs’ house turns pressure...

Helms drives his imaginary pen through neighborhoods we may not really want to visit, but once there cannot keep our eyes from prying. From trampolines to peanut butter, The World Split Open explores the dim edges of things humorus, grotesque, and otherwise mildly frightening.

Tightly knit, these five stories weave an unholy melange of revenge and ultimate kindness—a Frankenstein tale, vignettes wired together, spanning a thousand years of language, birth, cruelty, justice, and incest.

  Disappointed by a failed mortgage, Daniel treks to the jungles of Peru for an encounter with the legendary ayahuasca. He’s been warned that his medications are a deadly mix with the juice of the sacred vine, but he’s up for the challenge anyway.

It’s 1986, and the famine machinery is humming in Ethiopia. It’s been two years since the greatest famine of the twentieth century has been uncovered with the deaths of half a million and counting. Clinic nurse Emma Smith, alone and rattled in the remote village of Godo, hears that a new nurse,...

After viciously attacking a judge, while giving him a pedicure, Jack escapes the domed city of Pan, Alabama, and begins his quest to free his secret love Lura from the grips of the Infirm, the grotesquely disabled leaders of his world—an over-the-top literary adventure in gothic Southern malaise.

Godo, Ethiopia, 1986, and Reece Myers has been shot in the head and evacuated back to Alabama, his fiancée Kristin in shock. As Reece fights to regain his life, the budding romance with fellow clinic nurse Emma back in Godo overshadows his engagement and spells trouble. As Reece recovers and reexamines life with Kristin, Emma longs for him and soon meets her own tragic fate.

Back from Ethiopia, Emma Smith wonders if the rape has resulted in pregnancy and continues to pursue a relationship with Reece Meyers, whose engagement to Kristin seems more in peril with each passing day. Confounding the dilemma is the granddaughter of Reece's neighbors, who just wants to have fun. Humorous and poignant, the series continues.

Godo, Ethiopia, 1986, and Reece Myers has been shot in the head and evacuated back to Alabama, his fiancée Kristin in shock. As Reece fights to regain his life, the budding romance with fellow clinic nurse Emma back in Godo overshadows his engagement and spells trouble. As Reece recovers and reexamines life with Kristin, Emma longs for him and soon meets her own tragic fate. 

In an alternate universe, Reece Myers finds himself in the small Ethiopian of Gwar, working with an Icelandic medical team and his interpreter Afewerki. The place seems familiar, as he conducts a health survey for his master’s degree. Nurses Svana and Eydis, tasked with weighing local children,...