Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Wednesday, December 28 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Or fastest delivery Tuesday, December 20. Order within 13 hrs 34 mins

Arrives before Christmas

In Stock.

As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app. Want to listen? Try Audible.

[{"displayPrice":"$15.00","priceAmount":15.00,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"15","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"00","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"zvqDYkIv4YlTWTezw4lls8CbinmshzUoQnT6h7fDapyMBQDLHx7sr0f5vFV98oBLDaMmT2wtazGt7oHPSUNpWEnDIi1wiZ9xw%2B%2FktSdOxh8Bh3iHTSX6j2wUpZKyA%2FEsqrnnEqvAjPUXdbiZ8mozvg%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"},{"displayPrice":"$9.05","priceAmount":9.05,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"05","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"xpUWlzPp2bkqCHfpDC44uQ0BZOTNv8b82PirL4CWGf%2FEi9c8iXOENcW2QbDL9302LBa3cYFAn%2FnsT7ROLWsd3DJIWzvNy4lXQT6Z7BxjhNdwr2i%2B92BXCigv3Qgl%2BHLlJlgVCscv2h6nbAGxUcELDLGNzIbLXUK0vwRc220fZ%2FFmIAQ0HfB0OK1XsFWGwklC","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED"}]

$$15.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Returnable until Jan 31, 2023

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Wednesday, December 28 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Or fastest delivery Tuesday, December 20. Order within 13 hrs 34 mins

Arrives before Christmas

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by Jenson Books Inc

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$12.26
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: Prime Deals, USA

Added

Not added

$12.29
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: indoobestsellers

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

Follow the Author

Amelia Gray

Threats Paperback – February 28, 2012

by Amelia Gray (Author)

58 ratings

3.0 on Goodreads

2,368 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$9.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Paperback

"Please retry"

$15.00

$10.37

$1.18

Audio CD, Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$19.46

$12.57

$5.79

Enhance your purchase

David's wife is dead. At least, he thinks she's dead. But he can't figure out what killed her or why she had to die, and his efforts to sort out what's happened have been interrupted by his discovery of a series of elaborate and escalating threats hidden in strange places around his home―one buried in the sugar bag, another carved into the side of his television. These disturbing threats may be the best clues to his wife's death:

CURL UP ON MY LAP. LET ME BRUSH YOUR HAIR WITH MY FINGERS. I AM SINGING YOU A LULLABY. I AM TESTING FOR STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS IN YOUR SKULL.

Detective Chico is also on the case, and is intent on asking David questions he doesn't know the answers to and introducing him to people who don't appear to have David's or his wife's best interests in mind. With no one to trust, David is forced to rely on his own memories and faculties―but they too are proving unreliable.

In THREATS, Amelia Gray builds a world that is bizarre yet familiar, violent yet tender. It is an electrifying story of love and loss that grabs you on the first page and never loosens its grip.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publication date

February 28, 2012
Dimensions

5 x 0.72 x 7.5 inches
ISBN-10

0374533075
ISBN-13

978-0374533076
See all details

Amelia Gray
19
Paperback
22 offers from $2.59
Amelia Gray
74
Paperback
82 offers from $1.36
Amelia Gray
48
Paperback
37 offers from $2.95

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Amelia Gray is a sharpshooter, precise and deadly. THREATS lures the reader with its poetic sensibilities and then subverts every expectation. Before long, there will be statues of Gray in various corners of the literary world.” ―Emma Straub, author of Other People We Married

“Reading Amelia Gray is like a pyramid of rocks being built on a cloud. That's to say, it's something fantastical, dreamlike, playful, and very dangerous. You will be amazed at what this writer can do.” ―Shane Jones, author of Light Boxes

“The first time I encountered Amelia Gray's fiction, it slugged me in the jaw. The second time too, and the third. Said jaw-slugging has ensued nearly every time I've read something of hers, except for when instead it whispered sad and surprising but undeniable truths about the difficulty of intimacy and sense in the wretched blastoscape of modern life. And then it made me a grilled cheese sandwich to prove that the world can be a kind place, and it waited until I had sated myself and wiped away the crumbs before slugging me in the jaw again.” ―Doug Dorst, author of The Surf Guru and Alive in Necropolis

From the Inside Flap

David's wife is dead. At least, he thinks she's dead. But he can't figure out what killed her or why she had to die, and his efforts to sort out what's happened have been interrupted by his discovery of a series of elaborate and escalating threats hidden in strange places around his home--one buried in the sugar bag, another carved into the side of his television. These disturbing threats may be the best clues to his wife's death:

CURL UP ON MY LAP. LET ME BRUSH YOUR HAIR WITH MY FINGERS. I AM SINGING YOU A LULLABY. I AM TESTING FOR STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS IN YOUR SKULL.

Detective Chico is also on the case, and is intent on asking David questions he doesn't know the answers to and introducing him to people who don't appear to have David's or his wife's best interests in mind. With no one to trust, David is forced to rely on his own memories and faculties--but they too are proving unreliable.

In THREATS, Amelia Gray builds a world that is bizarre yet familiar, violent yet tender. It is an electrifying story of love and loss that grabs you on the first page and never loosens its grip.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ FSG Originals; Original edition (February 28, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374533075
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374533076
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.72 x 7.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #756,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,489 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #8,282 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)
- #32,384 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
58 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Amelia Gray

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

AMELIA GRAY is the author of five books, most recently Isadora. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Tin House, and VICE. She is winner of the NYPL Young Lion, of FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She lives in Los Angeles.

Customer reviews

5 star		34%
4 star		17%
3 star		8%
2 star		11%
1 star		30%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Amazon Customer

The Surreality of Love and Grief and the Everyday

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 2, 2012

Verified Purchase

"EVERYTHING GAINS SIGNIFICANCE WHEN YOU PUT IT UP ON AN ALTAR" (274)

Amelia Gray's sentences are altars, propping up objects and moments and sensations. This tongue-tyingly beautiful novel--while threaded with a smooth, albeit mysterious, narrative and a small spot-lit bundle of characters--is truly the sum of thousands of such details, carefully and lovingly and wisely suffused with significance. Gray's writing implicates such a keenly perceptive set of eyes (and ears and nerve endings) for the little things; the things swept under the benumbing rug of over-familiarity, things lost in the shuffle of daily grinds and the sheer abundance of what's on offer for human beings to notice or appreciate or to overlook or take for granted. And there's such a potent imagination and dexterous writerly skill at play with which to transmit these depictions from the inherent privacy of thought to the printed public word. She can follow the lifespan of a speck of dust in a few lines with the emotional depth that The Great Authors spend entire books carrying their Timeless Protagonists through.

There are unexpected turns and oddities and loose ends, but they're not part of some slapdash hodgepodge designed merely to set itself apart from The Normal, rather they coalesce into a larger shape and life and movement all its own, like a school of fish or a flock of birds--in this case the shape is that of a unique tale of love and grief, of confusion, paranoia, and obsession, and of memory and passing time.

"I certainly don't want you to be alarmed," Chico said, "but I'm going to ask you a lot of questions and not provide a lot of answers. I hope you appreciate my candor and relative honesty at this time." (32)

"David didn't appreciate the kind of person who would answer the simplest questions without considering the whole of the problem." (96)

The story is an ominous one. It more or less begins with the death of David's wife Franny, which is not a spoiler since it's mentioned on the back cover synopsis. Despite this major event kicking off the book, the rest is a detective story in all the best ways, both obvious and less so. The reader has to play investigator, as does David, as does as does the actual investigator, Det. Chico, as does the character who, among other things, pores over books trying to discover whether or not "the word 'you' has been linked with more devasting sentences than any other in the English language. But it's possible that 'love' is worse. I'm feeling it out. It requires some reading." (168).

Gray is truly an expert at subtle mood-building; atmospheric construction, whispers, hints, suggestions leaked out of almost imperceptibly moving lips, all balanced and thoroughly blended together with vivid, incisive descriptions. It's not obtuse or cryptic for its own sake, but breathes and radiates a carefully crafted sense of mystery. Ends are left loose in all the right places, generating an intoxicating aura of fascination, not confusion-qua-profundity, like stereotypical caricatures of avant garde art.

I sometimes imagined her, rather than typing, surgically removing all the right details with a fine scalpel and tweezers while peering through a pair of glasses with adjustable microscope lenses, and then carefully ironing over the new spaces and seams with so much well-crafted and sensitively perceived imagery, which is often idiosyncratic, yes, but steeped in so much possible meaning--lavished with the potentiality of intuition--symbology through the gut and the cerebellum alike. Sentences like altars.

The threats that David finds written on little scraps of paper are a real treat to read. And scary in ways you will not predict. I will share one with you. Now imagine finding this tucked into some odd place in your house, which you live in alone:

I WILL CROSS-STITCH AN IMAGE OF YOUR FUTURE HOME BURNING. I WILL HANG THE IMAGE OVER YOUR BED WHILE YOU SLEEP.

Despite the fact that I took down a fair amount of notes about what I wanted to write about, this book really has me stunned into silence in a lot of ways. It was just that good.

"The feeling of being swaddled as an adult was foreign and tender." (30)

This sentence really helped to put the unnamed feeling I got from reading this book into words for me. Foreign and tender. Sorrowful but comforted. What a gift. A book that makes you feel something strongly and then describes that feeling for you.

I'm running out of words, despite wanting to gush and wax poetic and philosophical. Amelia Gray writes books that comfort me and I can't seem to satisfactorily explain why, at least not right now, with it so fresh in my mind and having quickly and impatiently pushed these impressions out and onto the digital ticker-tape.

This book has it all though. Jam-packed with fantastic descriptions; I wanted to underline just about everything. Subtle symbolism for you to either pay enough attention to or not. Brilliant observations about Grief and Memory and Love and Aging. It's unique and sad and beautiful and strange and familiar and all that stuff.

Hold it tight and give it a good close look.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Eric Thomas

Its a really good read.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 11, 2012

Verified Purchase

Gray does not leave the foot on the gas here. There are times when the environment simply buzzes (oh the wasps), but luckily this is where this book soars. Gray nails the tone of a man who is spiraling into dementia, tho that spiral is so deep that he does not remember the starting point.

No fair giving any plot, because the plot doesn't really matter here. David and Franny's relationship was a gutshot for me. Here is this woman that was a simple face in the crowd to so many, but David needed so badly. His grief is palpable on the page. Franny's passing is described within couple of pages in the opening, but it remains with me. I finished the book about a week ago and it still resonates. If you have read the excerpt you can read the scene. The way David suddenly accepts that this is the last of his time with her and the way that he savors every second was very well written. It stuck with me. The rest of the book is simply setting context for the end when Gray revisits the matter.

The journey is worth it. I loved the description of the young girls at the hair salon as "fetuses" and the therapist in the garage who measures the destruction of pronouns. But its David's relationship with Franny that needs to be read. It stands up on the page. I reserve the fifth star for masterpieces, but THREATS needs to be read by many.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jessica Sullivan

Too obscure for its own good

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 24, 2016

Verified Purchase

I like surreal books when they have some semblance of cohesion - when they’re not so obscure that you’re left feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

There’s a lot to like about Threats. The atmosphere is creepy and nightmarish. The writing is vivid and grotesque. It’s more or less engaging in spite of its deliberately disjointed narrative.

Threats tells the story of David, a strange dentist whose wife recently died. David has become a person of interest in the investigation, but he can’t remember what happened - and he’s not even sure if his wife is even dead. Complicating things even further is a series of vaguely sinister threats he finds written on scraps of paper around his house.

I think I would have enjoyed this more as an arthouse film than as a novel. There would have been satisfaction in being able to truly visualize the world that Gray attempted to create. As a book, though, it wound up being too obscure for its own good, and I didn’t feel compensated for the time I put into reading it.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Traci

Read it for the writing, not the plot -- because there is none

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 27, 2013

Verified Purchase

I see lots of 4- and 5-star reviews, so I feel compelled to post a review for readers like me, who truly appreciate great writing, but still like something resembling traditional plot structure along with beautifully crafted prose.

IF you decide to read this book, hooked, like me, by the references to a mysterious and surreal story, do yourself a favor and get into this mindset from the very start: you're reading it for the sake of reading some truly lovely and interesting writing, but DO NOT expect the author to give you anything even remotely like a plot and, for the love of Mike, don't keep reading in the stubborn belief that, eventually, surely, the author will give you a few crumbs of clarity, a little bit of explanation, SOMETHING that will deliver you from the hours of suspenseful reading.

Because you're going to be left unsatisfied.

If, on the other hand, you relish the opportunity to wallow for hour upon lost hour in confusion deepening into consternation and finally crystallizing into infuriated, unreleased and unreleasable frustration, this book is for you!

I need an aspirin. And a nap.

44 people found this helpful

Helpful