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A wide range of bestselling and acclaimed writers from masters of noir to literary lights explore… the milieu of drug culture in this eye-opening series New York Journal of Books From Lee Child to William T Vollmann Joyce Carol Oates to Sherman Alexie Eric Bogosian to actor James Franco many of the finest contemporary writers of fiction weigh in on the lure and destruction of drug use society s ambiguous relationship to drug culture and criminal behavior with short stories that are alternately harrowing funny sad or scary but always original and gripping The Cocaine Chronicles edited by Gary Phillips and Jervey Tervalon Contributors include Lee Child Laura Lippman Ken Bruen and Susan Straight Urban gritty and raw noir Harlan Coben The Speed Chronicles edited by Joseph Mattson Contributors include William T Vollmann Sherman Alexie James Franco and Megan Abbott Deserves great praise for the audacity of the topic the depth of the discussion the diversity of voices and plain old good storytelling New York Journal of Books The Heroin Chronicles edited by Jerry Stahl Contributors include Eric Bogosian Lydia Lunch Ava Stander and Gary Phillips An impressive array of writers these tales of chasing the dragon with corollaries often violent and savage will satisfy devotees of noir fiction and outsider are alike Publishers Weekly The Marijuana Chronicles edited by Jonathan Santlofer Contributors include Joyce Carol Oates Lee Child Raymond Mungo and Rachel Shteir Joyce Carol Oates is in a rare class of her own So too are other contributors to this collection including Lee Child and the always enjoyable Raymond Mungo Kirkus Reviews
The Failure is a picaresque novel set in Los Angeles about two guys who conceive and badly execute a plan… to rob a Korean check-cashing store in order to finance the prototype for an impossibly ridiculous Internet application James Greer one of the nimblest and most multilayered American fiction writers has with his latest novel The Failure pulled off a sublime and shivery-smooth literary hat-trick-cum-emotional-gotcha I defy anyone to come up with an equation to explain how this book s first impression as a ridiculously clever funny crime story can gradually disclose a metanovel built from far more encyclopedic scratch only to reveal upon its conclusion a central overriding thought so heartfelt literally it trembles your lower lip This is one stunning piece of work --Dennis Cooper author of Ugly Man James Greer s The Failure is such an unqualified success both in conception and execution that I have grave doubts he actually wrote it --Steven SoderberghJames Greer is the author of the novel Artificial Light Akashic Books which won a California Book Award for Best Debut Novel and the nonfiction book Guided By Voices A Brief History Grove Press a biography of the band for which he once played bass guitar He is currently working with director Steven Soderbergh on a rock musical about Cleopatra starring Catherine Zeta-Jones He lives in Los Angeles
Trinie Dalton s voice is so charming in these stories and they fly right by so it takes a… little time to realize how deftly she is talking about death and sex and fear and love and fur and slumber parties how lightly she touches upon heaviness making an imprint so gentle you don t know it s there until later when the story floats back up in your memory light as a butterfly or a blood-oil lilypad in the bath --Aimee Bender Trinie Dalton is as radically original a young writer as I ve ever come across a post-punk post-apocalyptic post-everything sensibility casting spells of willed innocence against the powers of darkness she knows terrifyingly well --David Gates These charming stories vibrate with innocence and awe Trinie Dalton is an effortless purveyor of wonder strangeness and love She is a writer of high spirits and unguarded vision and this debut collection is an absolute pleasure to read --Ben Marcus In Wide Eyed a wonderfully eccentric and vibrant collection Trinie Dalton showcases her ability to put a fresh spin on the world leading the reader into places never explored--sometimes dreamlike sometimes nightmarish always riveting Her vision is wholly unique and memorable --Jill McCorkleIn Trinie Dalton s tweaked vision of reality psychic communications between herself and Mick Jagger The Flaming Lips Marc Bolan Lou Reed and Pavement are daily occurrences Animals also populate this book beavers hamsters salamanders black widows owls llamas bats and many more are characters who befriend the narrator This collection of stories is told by a woman compelled to divulge her secrets fantasies and obsessions with native Californian animals glam rock icons and horror movies among other things With a setting rooted in urban Los Angeles but colored by mythic tales of beauty borrowed from medieval times Shakespeare and Grimm s fairy tales Wide Eyed makes the difficulties of surviving in a contemporary American city more palatable by showing the reader that magic and escape is always possible Stories include Hummingbird Moonshine in which the narrator s frustrated hunt for authentic religion in botanicas and science books culminates in a spiritual connection made with a hummingbird In Oceanic she resolves to marry a manatee after a drunken pre-party for her best friend s wedding In Tiles four vignettes about bloody accidents in tiled bathrooms intermingle with scenes from Dalton s favorite scary movies Featuring oddball prose in the traditions of Dalton s literary heroes--Denton Welch Robert Walser and Jane Bowles--these stories have a dreamy imaginative quality that reveal a peculiar state of mental ecstasy To be inside the mind of Trinie Dalton is to be escorted into bliss
Wide Awake in the Pelican State -- which mimics the title of Dinty W. Moore's contribution to the collection --… brings together twenty-one of the finest modern writers who claim Louisiana as home, having lived all or some part of their lives in the Pelican State. Each author shares the knack of telling a good story, a Louisiana tradition that dates back two hundred years to the tales told by African American griots and the stories swapped among Mississippi river workers on boats, in taverns, and around campfires.Though united by talent and place, these writers speak with inflections that vary by gender, race, education, religion, and time spent elsewhere. Their stories are also richly diverse, ranging from Ernest Gaines's humorous portrait of black culture in rural Louisiana to Tim Parrish's aching depiction of white working-class family life in Baton Rouge, from Ellen Gilchrist's acerbically funny rendering of wealthy New Orleans bankers to Richard Ford's flinty unfolding of a father-son relationship in the marshy netherworld south of the Crescent City. The pieces span the full swath of Louisiana experience, be it the life of a Vietnamese refugee in Lake Charles or the miraculous appearance of the image of Jesus on a refrigerator in Holly Springs.In addition to their Louisiana-rooted inspiration and highest regard for craft, the stories in Wide Awake in the Pelican State share a deep humanity. These are stories about people -- noble and nefarious, some living high and others down on their luck -- as they fathom the tragic depths and comic heights of love, betrayal, family, change, and life writ large.Contributors to Wide Awake in the Pelican State: John Biguenet, James Lee Burke, Robert Olen Butler, Kelly Cherry, Moira Crone, Albert Belisle Davis, Charles deGravelles, John Dufresne, Richard Ford, Ernest J. Gaines, Louis Gallo, Tim Gautreaux, Norman German, Ellen Gilchrist, Joan Arbour Grant, Shirley Ann Grau, Dinty W. Moore, Tim Parrish, Tom Piazza, Nancy Richard, James Wilcox.
For Tributes, Conjunctions invited a number of contemporary writers to pay homage to American literary masters who made something possible… for them—whether that was the act of writing itself, writing a certain book, writing in a particular manner, or living in a way that was consonant with the act of writing. This is an anthology of personal enthusiasms, a colloquium Whitman might have seen as a progress of vistas. John Sayles offers an appreciation of Nelson Algren, Robert Creeley of Edwin Arlington Robinson, Nathaniel Mackey on Walt Whitman. And then there’s Rick Moody on John Cheever, Ben Marcus on Dr. Seuss, Mona Simpson on Henry James, Ana Castillo on Anaïs Nin, Anne Waldman on Jack Kerouac, Lydia Davis on Edward Dahlberg. All in all, forty-five authors share compelling tales of their adopted literary parentage.
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from thousands published in literary magazines over the previous… year. The winning stories come from a mix of established writers and emerging voices, and are uniformly breathtaking. They are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired their stories, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction."The Tomb of Wrestling," Jo Ann Beard, Tin House "Counterblast," Marjorie Celona, The Southern Review "Nayla," Youmna Chlala, Prairie Schooner "Lucky Dragon," Viet Dinh, Ploughshares "Stop ’n’ Go," Michael Parker, New England Review "Past Perfect Continuous," Dounia Choukri, Chicago Quarterly Review "Inversion of Marcia," Thomas Bolt, n+1 "Nights in Logar," Jamil Jan Kochai, A Public Space "How We Eat," Mark Jude Poirier, Epoch "Deaf and Blind," Lara Vapnyar, The New Yorker "Why Were They Throwing Bricks?," Jenny Zhang, n+1 "An Amount of Discretion," Lauren Alwan, The Southern Review "Queen Elizabeth," Brad Felver, One Story "The Stamp Collector," Dave King, Fence "More or Less Like a Man," Michael Powers, The Threepenny Review "The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies," Jo Lloyd, Zoetrope "Up Here," Tristan Hughes, Ploughshares "The Houses That Are Left Behind," Brenda Walker, The Kenyon Review "We Keep Them Anyway," Stephanie A. Vega, The Threepenny Review "Solstice," Anne Enright, The New YorkerPrize Jury for 2018: Fiona McFarlane, Ottessa Moshfegh, Elizabeth Tallent
"Santos-Febres and 13 other contributors of Puerto Rican heritage take full advantage of San Juan's wide range of disparities between… rich and poor, weak and powerful, tourists and residents, in this fine addition to Akashic's noir anthology series."--Publisher's Weekly"I have never been to San Juan, Puerto Rico, but I traveled some of its streets in these stories. Of course, the city is more than noir. That's what I love about the Akashic Noir stories, these are not the Tourist Bureau stories of the city. They are gritty, sometimes nasty, sometimes gross, but always interesting."- Tonstant Weader Reviews"San Juan Noir is a brilliantly polished literary gem that showcases life on the fringes of society. Every tale glows in its own darkness, piercingly tugging at the remnants of human decency. We must do better, it screams. Yes, we must. Highly recommended."-- Jamaica GleanerAkashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Brand-new stories by: Wilfredo J. Burgos Matos, Ernesto Quiñonez, Mayra Santos-Febres, José Rabelo, Luis Negrón, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Ana María Fuster Lavín, Janette Becerra, Manolo Núñez Negrón, Tere Dávila, Edmaris Carazo, Alejandro Álvarez Nieves, Charlie Vázquez, and Manuel A. Meléndez. Translated by Will Vanderhyden.From the introduction by Mayra Santos-Febres:"Puerto Rico is often portrayed as sandy beaches, casinos, luxury hotels, relaxation, and never-ending pleasure--a place that satisfies all senses and appetites.Yet the city of San Juan is much more than that. The capital of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is the oldest Spanish settlement in all the territories and colonies of the United States. Since Puerto Rico is economically dependent on the US, the financial downturn of 2008 hit us hard. Many Puerto Ricans have left the island, looking for a better life. Crime has risen and the black market has thrived. As in many crises, art, music, and literature have also flourished. Never before has there been so much literary production. We have responded to our crisis with many stories to tell. And, especially in these times, many of those stories are noir...I hope these stories spark your imagination, and reveal a side of Puerto Rico otherwise obscured by the tourist trade and preconceptions. Maybe it will also pique your curiosity, and you will come visit our 'pearl of the Caribbean.'"
Mosaicos Urbanos un opera che raccoglie parte degli scritti dell autore dal 2011 a oggi Sono… narrazioni e variazioni sul tema dell amore e dell esistenza lo smarrimento e i sentimenti contraddittori sempre presenti nell essere umano Un po di prosa poetica e un po di poesia incidentale Molti racconti del libro sono stati premiati o hanno ottenuto riconoscimenti speciali in svariati concorsi letterari
This volume edited by Carl Bode in collaboration with Malcolm Cowley presents the essential Emerson selected from… works that eloquently express the philosophy of a worldly idealist The Portable Emerson comprises essays including History Self-Reliance The Over-Soul Circles and The Poet Emerson s first book Nature in its entirety twenty-two poems including Uriel The Humble-Bee and Give All to Love orations including The American Scholar The Fugitive Slave Law and John Brown English Traits complete and biographical essays on Plato Napoleon Henry David Thoreau Thomas Carlyle and others
Men are the ones gifted with all sorts of power in our society but a dirty little secret is… that so many of them long to strip themselves of this power to be tied down gagged spanked taken and owned They want to ease the burdens of manliness if only for a little while to be ordered to do all the naughty things of which they ve dreamed Please Ma am shows some of the tantalizing possibilities out there for sniveling men and the women who love them Best-selling erotica editor Rachel Kramer Bussel has gathered together top voices in the genre including Stephen Elliott Alison Tyler Dominic Santi and many more In Please Ma am men willingly submit to the deliciously dominant women who entertain their deepest desires and give them the treatment they crave
First published in 1963 in East Germany They Divided the Sky tells the story of a young couple… living in the new socialist East Germany whose relationship is tested to the extreme not only because of the political positions they gradually develop but very concretely by the Berlin Wall which went up on August 13 1961 The story is set in 1960 and 1961 a moment of high political cold war tension between the East Bloc and the West a time when many thousands of people were leaving the young German Democratic Republic the GDR every day in order to seek better lives in West Germany or escape the political ideology of the new country that promoted the farmer and peasant state over a state run by intellectuals or capitalists The construction of the Wall put an end to this hemorrhaging of human capital but separated families friends and lovers for thirty years The conflicts of the time permeate the relations between characters in the book at every level and strongly affect the relationships that Rita the protagonist has not only with colleagues at work and at the teacher s college she attends but also with her partner Manfred an intellectual and academic and his family They also lead to an accident attempted suicide that send her to hospital in a coma and that provide the backdrop for the flashbacks that make up the narrative Wolf s first full-length novel published when she was thirty-five years old was both a great literary success and a political scandal Accused of having a decadent attitude with regard to the new socialist Germany and deliberately misrepresenting the workers who are the foundation of this new state Wolf survived a wave of political and other attacks after its publication She went on to create a screenplay from the novel and participate in making the film version More importantly she went on to become the best-known East German writer of her generation a writer who established an international reputation and never stopped working toward improving the socialist reality of the GDR
"To buy books would be a good thing," observed Arthur Schopenhauer, "if we also could buy the time to read… them." All devoted readers long for more time to spend with their books, and the next best thing to buying time is making the most of the available moments. Great Short Short Stories: Quick Reads by Great Writers offers that opportunity. An outstanding collection of 30 brilliant short stories, each just six or fewer pages in length, it provides the chance to absorb an entire story (or two or three) in just one sitting.Well-known tales from masters of the short-story genre include: Mark Twain, "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"; Franz Kafka, "A Country Doctor"; Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado"; Guy de Maupassant, "A Piece of String"; Stephen Crane, "The Veteran"; Kate Chopin, "A Pair of Silk Stockings"; plus works by Dickens, O. Henry, Chekhov, Wilde, and many others. Includes 2 selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "A White Heron" and "Cask of Amontillado."
An instant attraction, a lingering look, the electric touch of skin on skin, moments of passion that are unforgettable....if the… first two Brown Sugar collections left you wanting more, then slip into Brown Sugar 3, as 19 of today's top writers reveal what happens when opposites attract. The first Brown Sugar anthology and its follow-up, Brown Sugar 2, were literary and commercial successes. Brown Sugar won the Gold Pen Award for Best Short Story Collection. Now Brown Sugar 3: When Opposites Attract brings you more original stories about desire -- be it impulsive, forbidden, or simply unexpected. As insightful as they are sexy, these selections range from subtly romantic to raw and raunchy, from conventional to seriously kinky. You'll satisfy your taste for brown sugar in this deliciously naughty collection.
As a bestselling author and successful publisher of Strebor Books, Zane's name is synonymous with popular fiction -- especially erotica.… Her website, Eroticanoir.com, gets over a million hits a year from around the world, and her fans look forward to every one of her publishing ventures with eager anticipation. Chocolate Flava is the first in a series of collections of great erotic fiction edited by Zane, the reigning queen of erotica. Based on the Featured Erotica section of her website, Chocolate Flava gathers twenty-five sizzling tales from some of the most talented -- and dedicated -- writers of erotica working today. This is a his-and-her collection. There are stories specifically written with female readers in mind, and others written expressly for men. Among the contributors are names already familiar to readers of erotica, such as Reginald Harris, Robert Edison Sandiford, Jonathan Luckett and, of course, Zane -- as well as emerging voices, such as Geneva Barnes and Robert Scott Adams. What they all have in common is that they are great at what they do, and have been handpicked by Zane -- an editor who knows a hot story when she sees it. Zane wanted stories "that took risks, that explored unique situations, that were creative beyond compare." She wanted to show that men and women can equally express themselves through the medium of erotic fiction. She wanted stories that would turn her on. This collection of selected sexy short stories will turn you on, too.
Ruins has been selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program!A true believer is faced with a… choice between love for his family and the Cuban Revolution."Daring, tough, and deeply compassionate, Achy Obejas's Ruins is a breathtaker. Obejas writes like an angel, which is to say: gloriously . . . one of the Cuba's most important writers." --Junot Diaz, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction"In the Havana of Ruins, scarcity can only be fought with ingenuity, and the characters work very hard at the exquisite art of getting by. The plot rests on the schemes of its weary, obsessive, dreamy hero--a character so brilliantly drawn that he can't be dismissed or forgotten. A tender and wildly accurate portrait, in a gem of a novel." --Joan Silber, author of The Size of the World"Obejas evinces a new, focused lyricism as she penetrates to the very heart of the Cuban paradox in a story as pared down and intense as its narrator's life." --Booklist (*starred review*)"Compassionate and intriguing . . . Obejas plays out [the book's] conflicts in measured, simple prose, allowing her descriptions of the mundane--houses, food, dominoes--to illuminate a setting filled with heartbreak, confusion and decay . . . At her best, Obejas controls the mixture of humor and pathos that suffuse this poor community." --Los Angeles Times"Ruins is a beautifully written novel, a moving testament to the human spirit of an unlikely hero who remains unbroken even as the world collapses around him . . . A fine literary achievement, it's Achy Obejas at her very best." --El Paso Times"[A] superb novel . . . Highly recommended." --Library Journal"[An] honest and superbly written book." --Miami Herald"With the deft and evocative detail of a poet's, Obejas's prose is as illuminating and honest as her struggling protagonist." --Publishers WeeklyUsnavy has always been a true believer. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, he was just a young man and eagerly signed on for all of its promises. But as the years have passed, the sacrifices have outweighed the glories and he's become increasingly isolated in his revolutionary zeal. His friends openly mock him, his wife dreams of owning a car totally outside their reach, and his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter haunts the coast of Havana, staring north.In the summer of 1994, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government allows Cubans to leave at will and on whatever will float. More than 100,000 flee--including Usnavy's best friend. Things seem to brighten when he stumbles across what may or may not be a priceless Tiffany lamp that reveals a lost family secret and fuels his long repressed feelings . . . But now Usnavy is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Revolution that has shaped his entire life.Achy Obejas is the author of various books, including the award-winning novel Days of Awe and the best-selling poetry chapbook This Is What Happened in Our Other Life. She is the editor of Akashic's critically acclaimed crime-fiction anthology Havana Noir, and the translator (into Spanish) for Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Currently, she is the Sor Juana Writer in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago. She was born in Havana and continues to spend extended time there.
In the fourteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer, who served three kings as a customs official and special envoy, virtually invented English… poetry. He did so by wedding the language of common speech to metrical verse, creating a medium that could accommodate tales of courtly romance, bawdy fabliaux, astute psychological portraiture, dramatic monologues, moral allegories, and its author’s astonishing learning in fields from philosophy to medicine and astrology. Chaucer’s accomplishment is unequalled by any poet before Shakespeare andin The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Cressidaranks with that of the great English novelists. Both The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Cressida are presented complete in this anthology, in fresh modern translations by Theodore Morrison that convey both the gravity and gaiety of the Middle English originals. The Portable Chaucer also contains selections from The Book of Duchess, The House of Fame, The Bird's Parliament, and The Legend of Good Women, together with short poems. Morrison's introduction is vital for its insights into Chaucer as man and artist, and as a product of the Middle Ages whose shrewdness, humor, and compassion have a wonderfully contemporary ring. .
Get an inside look at Algonquin s outstanding forthcoming fiction with the Spring 2018 Algonquin Reader Discover… the inspiration behind each book through an original essay by the author Then enjoy a short preview of each novel The books featured in this issue are The Optimistic Decade by Heather Abel On Sale May 2018Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories by Kelly Barnhill On Sale February 2018Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison On Sale April 2018Remind Me Again What Happened by Joanna Luloff On Sale June 2018The Price of the Haircut Stories by Brock Clarke On Sale March 2018Southernmost by Silas House On Sale June 2018 Cover illustration by Mark Hoffmann
Tell It Slant is a bold, luscious first novel by Beth Follett, publisher of one of Canada's most exciting and… respected small presses, Pedlar Press. The novel tells - slantedly, of course - the story of Nora Flood, a young woman who lives between two sets of voices: those of her own fragmented desires and the internalized voices of western culture, which have always denigrated or refused her deepest desires. She struggles with these contradictory forces, overwhelmed, at times mute, seeking the roots of her psychosexual malaise, searching for the possibility of her own true voice, caught in an obsession that drags her away from the exploration of her own appetites and hungers into its sterile heart. But through the interventions of Djuna Barnes, creator of the literary Nora Flood of Barnes' novel Nightwood, this Nora begins to slip between the cracks and fissures of obsession to shape a life of her own. With language that is lush and startling and a shape that is disjointed and elliptical, Tell It Slant is a brave and beautiful book.
?A northern gothic noir, The City Still Breathing is an acid-washed love letter to the 1980s. A body is found… on the side of a highway. Naked, throat slashed, no identification. It disappears from the back of a police van and begins a strange odyssey, making its way, over the course of one early winter night, around a northern Ontario town and through the lives and dreams of eleven very different people. These eleven people - from the police officers who retrieve the body to the teenager who carries it away to the young woman planning to strike out for Toronto and Sudbury's local drug dealer - are all damaged in some way, and eventually, through the body itself, are brought together in a strange moment of violence.
Two novels, two young women at the frontiers of sex. Like a series of Penthouse letters penned by Kathy Acker,… Lie With Me recounts a woman's sexual escapades, picking up random men in bars for a series of increasingly extreme encounters, hoping to understand love from the far side of sluttiness. In The Way of the Whore, Mira, an introverted Jewish girl obsessed with Jean Genet, allows herself to be seduced by the sex industry, determined to find meaning in her tormented relationships with cruel men. Tamara Faith Berger's first two novels have been languishing out of print. They were scandalous when they were first published; substantially revised and returned to print, they're just as titillating and troubling now.