Cornelius: The Merry Life of a Wretched Dog by Marc Torices

Horrifying and hilarious, Cornelius the dog is a spectacular trainwreck—you just can’t look away.  Cornelius is a fumbling loser, the butt of everyone’s jokes. When his friend Alspacka is kidnapped, the subsequent criminal investigation turns into a dramatic and emotional ordeal, upending Cornelius’s life. Torn between his desire to be a writer and his immense guilt over his cowardly role in Alspacka’s abduction, Cornelius is a classic Faustian figure: an aspiring artist so hungry for success that he will pay any price. Rarely does a book so delightfully defy categorization. Cornelius is an experience: a farcical collage that reads like a drug-fueled fever dream, an intense emotional pendulum oscillating between psychological horror and slapstick comedy—a real roller coaster. And truthfully, Cornelius is all this and more: a brand, a phenomenon, a way of life. From the singular mind of Marc Torices comes a surreal, carefully curated universe, complete with its own icons, mythology, and