From the bestselling author of the generation-defining classic Fight Club comes the tale of Madison Spencer, the liveliest and snarkiest dead girl in the universe. Welcome to Purgatory. Chuck Palahniuk style. "Palahniuk doesn't write for tourists. He writes for hard-core devotees drawn to the wild, angry imagination on display and the taboo-busting humor." — The New York Times After a botched Halloween ritual, Madison Spencer, the snarkiest dead girl in the universe, finds herself trapped in Purgatory, otherwise known as Earth. The upside: she is no longer subject to physical limitations (she can pass through doors and walls). The downside: well, she's still dead. Her first stop is her parents' luxurious apartment, where she encounters her grandmother ghost. For Madison, the encounter triggers memories of the awful summer she spent upstate. As she revisits the painful truth of what transpired over those months, her saga of eternal damnation takes on a new and sinister meaning. It turns out, Madison and her parents have always been key elements of Satan's master plan—doomsday. Praise for DOOMED: "Palahniuk doesn't write for tourists. He writes for hard-core devotees drawn to the wild, angry imagination on display and the taboo-busting humor." — The New York Times "With his love of contemporary fairy tales that are gritty and dirty rather than pretty, Palahniuk is the likeliest inheritor of Vonnegut's place in American writing."— San Francisco Chronicle "Few authors have captured the pathologies of modern life quite like Palahniuk." -- Rocky Mountain News "Like Edgar Allen Poe, Palahniuk is a bracingly toxic purveyor of dread and mounting horror. He makes nihilism fun." — Vanity Fair CHUCK PALAHNIUK's twelve bestselling novels —Damned , Tell-All , Pygmy , Snuff , Rant , Haunted , Diary , Lullaby , Choke , Invisible Monsters , Survivor , and Fight Club —have sold more than five million copies in the United States. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees , published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction . He lives in the Pacific Northwest. www.chuckpalahniuk.net november 1, 12:01 a.m. pst Life Begins at Preconception: A Prelude Posted by Hadesbrainiacleonard@aftrlife.hell  Good and evil have always existed. They always will. It’s only our stories about them that ever change. In the sixth century b.c. the Greek lawmaker Solon journeyed to the Egyptian city of Sais and brought back the following account of the end of the world. According to the priests at the temple of Neith, a cataclysm will sweep the Earth with flames and poisonous smoke. In a single day and night an entire continent will founder and sink into the sea, and a false messiah will lead all of humanity to its doom. The Egyptian seers predicted that the Apocalypse will begin on a quiet night, on a lofty hilltop perched high above the kingdom of Los Angeles. There, the ancient oracles sing, a lock will snap open. Among the great walled houses of Beverly Crest, a stout bolt will slide aside. As recorded by Solon, a hinged pair of security gates will swing wide apart. Below these, the realms of Westwood and Brentwood and Santa Monica await, sleeping, laid out in a spider’s web of streetlights. And as the last clock tick of midnight echoes away, within those wide-open gates will dwell only darkness and silence until an engine can be heard rumbling to life, and two lights will seem to lead that noise forward. And from out of that gateway will issue a Lincoln Town Car which slouches forth to begin its slow descent down the hairpin curves of upper Hollywood Boulevard. That night, as depicted in ancient prophecy, is tranquil, without a breath of wind; nevertheless, with the Lincoln’s slow progress a tempest begins to mount in its wake. As it descends from Beverly Crest to the Hollywood Hills, the Lincoln stretches as long and black as the tongue of someone strangled by a noose. With pink smears of streetlights sliding down the burnished black shell of it, the Town Car shines like a scarab escaping a tomb. And at North Kings Road the lights of Beverly Hills and Hancock Park blink and go dark, not house by house but blocks and blocks of the grid are blotted out in their entirety. And at North Crescent Heights Boulevard, the neighborhood of Laurel Canyon is obliterated; not merely the lights but the noise and late-night music are vanquished. Any shimmering proof of the city is erased as the car flows downhill, from North Fairfax to Ogden Drive to North Gardner Street. And thus does darkness wash over the city, following in the shadow of the sleek car. And so, too, does a brutal wind follow. As foretold by the priests of ages past, this gale makes thrashing mops of the towering palm trees along Hollywood Boulevard, and these sweep the sky. Their clashing fronds cast down horrible, soft shapes that land with screams against the pavement. With beady caviar eyes and