A philosophy professor tests the limits of the soul and body by performing dehumanizing experiments on unwilling subjects, after the department is closed due to budget cuts.

Violent Faculties follows a philosophy professor influenced by Sade and Bataille. She is ejected by university administrators aiming to impose business strategies in the interest of profit over knowledge.

She designs a series of experiments to demonstrate the value of philosophy as a discipline, not because of its potential for financial benefit, but because of its relevance to life and death. The corpses proliferate as her experiments yield theoretical results and ethical conundrums.

She questions why it is wrong to kill humans, what is it about them that makes their lives sacred, and then attempts to find it in their bodies, their words, their thoughts, and their souls—seeking foundational truths with a knife in her home office.

Praise for Charlene Elsby

"An absorbing, twisted tale of psychosis, murder, and grief."

—Kirkus Reviews

“One of my favorite contemporary writers… Elsby’s voice winds its way into your head and smashes about like a trapped heron.”

—B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space and Burn You the Fuck Alive

“Elsby is a dark magician with words.”

—Samantha Krewulak, Horror Bound

“Charlene Elsby is in a class of her own invention—a voice to follow all the way into the dark.”

—Mila Jaroniec, author of Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover

“Elsby engulfs the reader in an oppressive interiority, draping her characters’ damaged psyches over our heads and slowly, diabolically, cinching them ‘round our necks, until all we can see is just how snugly they might fit us. Even if you think it’s you who’s getting inside these characters’ minds, rest assured, by the time you’re finished with them, you’ll never get them out of yours again.”

—David Fitzgerald, author of Troll

Charlene Elsby, Ph.D., is a data analyst and former philosophy professor. Her previous books include Hexis, Psychros, Musos, and Bedlam, as well as many academic works.

OFFICIAL RELEASE 02/27/2024

ISBN: 9781955904940