Rabid Storyteller

The beauty of any work by renowned author Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Survivor) is that you know no matter how provocative or bizarre the tale, at some point it’s going to take a sharp left into even stranger territory. Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey (Doubleday) tells the tale of Buster Casey, who may or may not be responsible for one of the deadliest outbreaks of rabies in history. Written as an oral biography, the style intentionally gives Palahniuk’s prose a contradictory, fragmented quality, but where the author shines — besides his incredible twists and concepts — is in his obsessive attention to minutiae, while being everything from satirist to activist. Whether it’s discussing bites, coins, "party crashing” or time travel, for Palahniuk, the devil is truly in the details.