In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a novel about how far we will go in order to protect our loved ones.The sound of children's speech has become lethal. In the park, adults wither beneath the powerful screams of their offspring. For young parents Sam and Claire, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther. But they find it isn't so easy to leave someone you love, even as they waste away from ...

'I wake up and I have to make the right choice,' he said.Master-stylist Ben Marcus returns with a wonder-cabinet of brain-rearranging stories. From the horrifyingly strange to the deeply touching, each story is a literary masterclass unlikely to leave the reader unchanged.From parent/child relationships thrown agonisingly off kilter, to intensely moving scenarios of dependence and emotional crisis; from left-alone bodies to new scientific frontiers,...

The story of the simple skateboard is part thriller, part underground, underdog success tale. It’s chock-full of innovations, far-out graphic artistry, and ever-more-incredible hot-dogging feats. And the story’s told in this book with contributions from the stars themselves—Tony Hawk, Stacey Peralta, Jeff Ho, the Dogtown Z-Boys, and more. Beautifully illustrated with historical posters, ads, and memorabilia along with new action photography, studio skateboard shots, and unique portraits of...

Ben Marcus has received numerous awards for his groundbreaking fiction, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes. In The Flame Alphabet, Marcus creates a chilling world where the speech of children is killing their parents. After being forced to leave their daughter Esther to fend for herself, Sam and Claire end up at a government lab intent on creating non-lethal speech. But when Sam discovers the truth about what's going on there, he realizes reuni...

Ben Marcus achieved cult status and gained the admiration of his peers with his first book, The Age of Wire and String. With Notable American Women he goes well beyond that first achievement to create something radically wonderful, a novel set in a world so fully imagined that it creates its own reality.On a farm in Ohio, American women led by Jane Dark practice all means of behavior modification in an attempt to attain complete stillness and sile...

The short story is a barometer for the state and shape of literature. New American Stories presents the boldest, most innovative and most resonant fiction coming out of the American literary scene.Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet and Leaving the Sea, has here curated an anthology that gives the lay of the literary land. From established masters of the form like Don DeLillo and Lydia Davis to neoteric trailblazers such as Rebecca Curtis and Rachel ...

Whether you’re a beginner trying to get started or an experienced surfer looking to take it to the next level, The Surfing Handbook gives you the tips you need to maximize your performance on the water, with guidance on training and conditioning, technique and style, safety and etiquette, and gear. Written by veteran pro surfing journalist Ben Marcus, this guide is illustrated with instructional photos and drawings, providing step-by-step instructions, background history—as well a...

Ben Marcus returns with a collection of timely dystopian visions of alienation in a modern world. Here a hapless, corporate drone finds love after being disfigured from testing his employer’s newest nutrition supplement; a father starts to suspect that his son’s precocity has turned sinister; and two architects in a failing marriage must consider the ethics of artificially inciting emotion as they construct a memorial to a terrorist attack. It’s these characters and others that over the co...

The history of the surfboard is one of innovation---innovation that has in turn shaped the sport of surfing. The Art of the Surfboard follows this history, from the first "wave-riding" redwood planks crafted by ancient Hawaiians to the vacuum-sealed, lightweight, "plastic fantastic" technological marvels of today.Beautifully illustrated with historical prints and engravings, as well as the latest surf photography and detailed closeups, this book documents the surfboards evolution a...

In The Age of Wire and String, hailed by Robert Coover as "the most audacious literary debut in decades," Ben Marcus weilds together a new reality from the scrapheap of the past. Dogs, birds, horses, automobiles, and the weather are some of the recycled elements in Marcus's first collection—part fiction, part handbook—as familiar objects take on markedly unfamiliar meanings. Gradually, this makeshift world, in its defiance of the laws of physics and language, find...

This book tells the story of how fossil fuel use is altering the climate of our planet and adversely affecting the Earth's ecosystems and our ability to produce food, both of which are necessary to sustain civilization. The book addresses common questions regarding the science of climate change and why we should trust the warnings of climate scientists, rather than those who try to cast doubt on the science of climate change. To reinforce this, the first part of the book describes ...

“In twenty-nine separate but ingenious ways, these stories seek permanent residence within a reader. They strive to become an emotional or intellectual cargo that might accompany us wherever, or however, we go. . . . If we are made by what we read, if language truly builds people into what they are, how they think, the depth with which they feel, then these stories are, to me, premium material for that construction project. You could build a civilization with them.” —Ben Marcus, from the I...