Matt Bell Books In Order

Publication Order of Matt Bell Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Matt Bell Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Matt Bell Collections

Publication Order of Matt Bell Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Boss Fight Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Matt Bell
Author Matt Bell was born August 29, 1980 in Saginaw, Michigan, and he studied at Bowling Green University. In 2012, he took a position at Northern Michigan University as an assistant professor in the English department.

He is the senior editor at Dzanc Books, and the founding editor of a monthly online literary magazine, The Collagist. Matt’s short fiction has also appeared in many literary magazines, including Guernica, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, Unsaid, American Short Fiction, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Willow Springs. Matt’s work have been anthologized in Best American Fantasy, The Best American Mystery Stories, and 30 Under 30: an Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers.

Matt’s debut novel, called “In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods”, was released in the year 2013. He is a Young Lions Fiction Award finalist.

“Cataclysm Baby” is the first stand alone novella and was released in the year 2012. Beset with animal-like children, environmental disaster, and failure of traditional roles, the twenty-six dads of Cataclysm Baby raise their desperate voices so they can reveal the odd stations of frustrated parenthood. This is so they can proclaim familial thrashings against the fading light of mankind’s weary planet, with its glory wild once more.

While the known world continues to vanish, it is these beleaguered and much too breakable men cling much tighter to the duties of a past that is not recoverable, even while their kids rush ahead, and evolve away.

Unflinching in the face of the apocalypse and unblinking before the complex gaze of parental love, this is a powerful chronicle of our final days, and of the tentative graces which may fill the hours of our dusk.

“In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2013. A newly-wed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a nearly uninhabited and distant lakeshore. They plan on living there simply: to trap the nearby woods, to fish in the lake, and just build their house right on the dirt between where they can raise a family.

However while their every pregnancy fails, the pregnancy obsessed husband starts raging out against this new world: the song-spun objects which his wife’s beautiful singing voice created. Like the giant sentient bear which rules the beasts of the woods, the labyrinth of memory dug into the earth under their house, and the second moon which weighs down the fabric of their starless sky.

This is a powerful exploration of the limits of marriage and parenthood—and of what happens when a marriage’s success gets measured only by the kids it produces, or the sorrow which marks their absence.

The novel builds layer after surreal layer, which creates a narrative which functions much like an incredible literary cake. This is a dark, beautiful, heart-rending, violent, and real novel.

“Scrapper” is the second stand alone novel and was released in the year 2015. Kelly scavenges for scrap metal out of the hundred thousand abandoned buildings in “the zone”, an increasingly wild landscape in Detroit. And one day he finds something much more valuable than just the copper that he has come to steal: a kidnapped boy that cries out for rescue.

Briefly celebrated as being a hero, and secretly takes on the responsibility of avenging this boy’s unsolved kidnapping, a task which is going to take him much deeper into the zone. It’s also going to put him right into a confrontation with his own past, and his long buried trauma, memories that are now made dangerous again.

Scrapper is a devastating reimagining of one of the greatest American cities, its lost houses, its boxing gyms, storefront churches, its beautiful architecture, and its shuttered factories. Anyplace that hope lingers. This novel asks: What transgressions might we allow if we thought they’d ensure the safety of our loved ones? What do we owe for our crimes, even those committed to keeping our charges safe from harm?

This novel is beautifully written, incredibly fascinating, Kelly is painstakingly rendered, and his panic driven, slow inner decay is depressingly realistic. Matt delivers a haunting and bleak read with a tremendous sense of place.

“Appleseed” is the third stand alone novel and was released in the year 2021. A breakout book exploring manifest destiny, climate change, humanity’s unchecked exploitation of natural resources, and the tiny yet powerful magic that’s contained inside of each and every apple.

In eighteenth century Ohio, a couple of brothers travel into the wooded frontier, planting their apple orchards that they plan on profiting off of in the years to come. While remaking the wilderness in their image, planning on a future civilization and settlement, the long held bonds and secrets between them are going to be tested, broken, and fractured. Possibly even healed.

Fifty years from right now, during the second half of the twenty-first century, climate change has just ravaged planet Earth. Since one company invested early in food science and genetic engineering, they own all of the world’s resources. However one growing resistance works to redistribute both power and land, and in one crucial moment for humanity’s future, an original founder of the company is going to return to headquarters, intent on destroying what he helped build.

One thousand years into the future, North America is covered in a massive sheet of ice. A lonely sentient being lives in a tech station on top of this glacier, and in a daring and apparently impossible mission, sets off to follow the homing beacon across the entire continent with the hope to find the final remnant of civilization.

Part tech thriller, part speculative epic, and part reinvented fairy tale, this is an unforgettable meditation on corporate, civic, and familial responsibility; climate change; manifest destiny; and all of the legends and myths which sustain all of us.

This is a gorgeous, strange, and sometimes harrowing read. In execution and scope, it is a breathtaking piece of fiction. Matt’s ability to weave myth and fairy tale into a story about the environment and science is a wonder to behold.