Fear and What Follows is a riveting, unflinching account of the author's spiral into racist violence during the latter years of desegregation in 1960s and 1970s Baton Rouge. About the memoir, author and editor Michael Griffith writes, "This might be a controversial book, in the best way--controversial because it speaks to real and intractable problems and speaks to them with rare bluntness."The narrative of Parrish's descent into fear and irrational behavior begins with bi...

Tim Parrish’s “The Critic” is a slightly surrealist account of the fraught, yet creative relationship cultivated between artists and critics. We meet a music critic who has devoted his entire life to covering the career of an elusive, Bob Dylan-esque musician referred to as “The Twerp.” But as the critic begins to hear The Twerp’s voice everywhere, we learn his vocation may have turned the corner into obsession.Tim Parrish is a professor in The Department of English at Virginia Tec...

Fear and What Follows is a riveting, unflinching account of the author's spiral into racist violence during the latter years of desegregation in 1960s and 1970s Baton Rouge. About the memoir, author and editor Michael Griffith writes, “This might be a controversial book, in the best way—controversial because it speaks to real and intractable problems and speaks to them with rare bluntness.”The narrative of Parrish's descent into fear and irrational behavior begins with big...

The Jumper is an old-fashioned, modern novel both dark and funny. Its central character, Jimmy Strawhorn, grows up on a ranch in West Texas thinking he’s an orphan but is summoned to Baton Rouge, where he discovers his past is stranger than he can imagine.Jimmy tries to navigate his urge to jump from high places, his fear of falling in love, and a complex family history full of deceit and racial ambiguity. At the same time, two other eccentric main characters, named Sandra...

Trapped in deadly showdowns, courtroom trials, and dangerous secrets, the Women's Murder Club must fight for their lives in this thriller by the world's #1 bestselling author.In a deadly late-night showdown, San Francisco police lieutenant Lindsay Boxer fires her weapon and sets off a dramatic chain of events that leaves a police force disgraced, a family destroyed, and Lindsay herself at the mercy of twelve jurors.During a break in the trial, she retreats ...

This eclectic, funny, and moving book tracks a life lived in music and words. Paul Quarrington ruminates on the bands of his childhood; his restless youth, spent playing bass with the cult band Joe Hall and the Continental Drift; and his incarnation, in middle age, as rhythm guitarist and singer with the band Porkbelly Futures.Ranging through rock ’n’ roll, the blues, folk, country and soul, he explores how songs are made, how they work, and why they affect us so d...

Thirty teen voices - flirting, mocking, musing, some fun, some serious, on subjects as different as loss, texting and (yes) spaceships. Monologues for practice, class, audition and performance from the author of "Monologues for Teens and Twenties". NOTE: Certain of these pieces - based on experiences of actual teens - address difficult issues which may be considered "Adult" by some readers.

Super senior sleuth Ivy Malone is spunkier than Miss Marple, with a curiosity that just won't quit. That inquisitiveness has gotten her into plenty of trouble, including murder, mayhem, and a place on a mini-Mafia hit list.Now Ivy's headed across the country with a stray cat and God as her only companions. But just when she thinks she's safe, two dead bodies turn up-discovered by Ivy, of course. A flock of emus, a survivalist outpost, and paintball are just a few of the strange thi...

The first graphic novel—a mesmerizing fictional chronicle of a universal American experience.Through a quartet of four interwoven stories, A Contract With God express the joy, exuberance, tragedy, and drama of life on the mythical Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx. This is the legendary book that launched a new art form and reaffirmed Will Eisner as one of the great pioneers of American graphics.

What’s a novelist supposed to do with contemporary culture? And what’s contemporary culture supposed to do with novelists? In The Ecstasy of Influence, Jonathan Lethem, tangling with what he calls the “white elephant” role of the writer as public intellectual, arrives at an astonishing range of answers.A constellation of previously published pieces and new essays as provocative and idiosyncratic as any he’s written, this volume sheds light on an array of topics from sex in...

Until his death aged thirty-three in 1982, Lester Bangs wrote wired, rock 'n' roll pieces on Iggy Pop, The Clash, John Lennon, Kraftwerk, Lou Reed. As a rock critic, he had an eagle-eye for distinguishing the pre-packaged imitation from the real thing; written in a conversational, wisecracking, erotically charged style, his hallucinatory hagiographies and excoriating take-downs reveal an iconoclast unafraid to tell it like it is. To his journalism he brought the talent of a great a renegad...

Drooling fanatic, n. 1. One who drools in the presence of beloved rock stars. 2. Any of a genus of rock-and-roll wannabes/geeks who walk around with songs constantly ringing in their ears, own more than 3,000 albums, and fall in love with at least one record per week.With a life that’s spanned the phonographic era and the digital age, Steve Almond lives to Rawk. Like you, he’s secretly longed to live the life of a rock star, complete with insane talent, famous friends, and hotel ro...