Name: boneyard
Brand: Stephen Beachy
Price: 6.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Robert Dean Lurie

Begin the Begin

$19.95

Robert Dean Lurie’s biography is the first completely researched and written since R.E.M. disbanded in 2011. It offers by far the most detailed account of their formative years—the early lives of the band members, their first encounters with one another, their legendary debut show, early tours in the back of a van, initial recordings, their shrewdly paced rise to fame. The people and places of the American South are crucial to the R.E.M. story in ways much more complex and interesting than have been presented thus far, says Lurie, who explores the myriad ways in which the band’s adopted hometown of Athens, Georgia, and the South in general, have shaped its members and the character and style of their art. The South is more than the background to this story; it plays a major role: the creative ferment that erupted in Athens and gripped many of its young inhabitants in the late 70s and early 80s drew on regional traditions of outsider art and general cultural out-thereness, and gave rise to a free-spirited music scene that produced the B-52’s and Pylon, and laid the ground for R.E.M.’s subsequent breakout success. Lurie has tracked down and interviewed numerous figures in the band’s history who were under-represented in or even absent from earlier biographies, and they contribute previously undocumented stories and cast a fresh light on the familiar narrative.

Robert Dean Lurie

Begin the Begin

$9.99

Robert Dean Lurie’s biography is the first completely researched and written since R.E.M. disbanded in 2011. It offers by far the most detailed account of their formative years—the early lives of the band members, their first encounters with one another, their legendary debut show, touring out of the back of a van, initial recordings, their shrewdly paced rise to fame. The people and places of ‘the South’ are crucial to the R.E.M. story in ways much more complex and interesting than have been presented thus far, says Lurie, who explores the myriad ways in which the band’s adopted hometown of Athens, Georgia, and the South in general, have shaped its members and the character and style of their art. The South is more than the background to this story; it plays a major role: the creative ferment that erupted in Athens and gripped many of its young inhabitants in the late 70s and early 80s drew on regional traditions of outsider art and general cultural out-thereness, and gave rise to a free-spirited music scene that produced the B-52’s and Pylon, and laid the ground for R.E.M.’s subsequent breakout success. Lurie has tracked down and interviewed numerous figures in the band’s history who were under-represented in or even absent from earlier biographies, and they contribute previously undocumented stories as well as casting a fresh light on the familiar narrative.

Cover image for Begin the Begin, isbn: 9781891241697

Stephen Beachy

boneyard

$6.99

In this unusual collaborative novel,” Jake Yoder, a precocious boy caught between Amish culture and the modern world, sits in his middle-school classroom writing stories at the behest of a stern but charismatic teacher. Jake's stories feature children who are crushed, imprisoned, and distorted, and yet somehow flailing around with a kind of bedazzled awe, trying to find a way out. His characters wander through Amish farms, one-room schoolhouses, South American plains, mental institutions, exotic cities, and prisons; his sentences seem constructed to the beat of an obsessive internal rhythm, and his prose is often haunting and beautiful. The strange logic and disturbing shifts in Jake’s tales reveal a young boy processing intense emotional experiences in the wake of his mother's suicide and his own proximity to the schoolroom shootings at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in 2006. Jake imagines fantastic journeys, magical transformations, and rock stardom as alternatives, it seems, to his own grim reality and the limitations of his life among the Amish. Novelist Stephen Beachy frames Jake's work with commentary from both himself and editor Judith Owsley Brown, in which they offer their very different views on Amish culture, literary context, the use of psychoactive medications for children, Stephen's own mental health, and the reality of Jake Yoder's unverified existence.

Cover image for boneyard, isbn: 9781891241840

David Nichols

Dig

$9.99

David Nichols tells the story of Australian rock and pop music from 1960 to 1985 formative years in which the nation cast off its colonial cultural shackles and took on the world.

Generously illustrated and scrupulously researched, Dig combines scholarly accuracy with populist flair. Nichols is an unfailingly witty and engaging guide, surveying the fertile and varied landscape of Australian popular music in seven broad historical chapters, interspersed with shorter chapters on some of the more significant figures of each period. The result is a compelling portrait of a music scene that evolves in dynamic interaction with those in the United States and the UK, yet has always retained a strong sense of its own identity and continues to deliver new stars and cult heroes to a worldwide audience.

Dig is a unique achievement. The few general histories to date have been highlight reels, heavy on illustration and short on detail. And while there have been many excellent books on individual artists, scenes and periods, and a couple of first-rate encylopedias, there’s never been a book that told the whole story of the irresistible growth and sweep of a national music culture. Until now . . .

Cover image for Dig, isbn: 9781891241611

David Nichols

Dig

$35.00

David Nichols tells the story of Australian rock and pop music from 1960 to 1985 formative years in which the nation cast off its colonial cultural shackles and took on the world.

Generously illustrated and scrupulously researched, Dig combines scholarly accuracy with populist flair. Nichols is an unfailingly witty and engaging guide, surveying the fertile and varied landscape of Australian popular music in seven broad historical chapters, interspersed with shorter chapters on some of the more significant figures of each period. The result is a compelling portrait of a music scene that evolves in dynamic interaction with those in the United States and the UK, yet has always retained a strong sense of its own identity and continues to deliver new stars and cult heroes to a worldwide audience.

Dig is a unique achievement. The few general histories to date have been highlight reels, heavy on illustration and short on detail. And while there have been many excellent books on individual artists, scenes and periods, and a couple of first-rate encylopedias, there’s never been a book that told the whole story of the irresistible growth and sweep of a national music culture. Until now . . .

Cover image for Dig, isbn: 9781891241260

Stacey Levine

Dra—

$6.99

A new edition of a classic of contemporary American literature, first published in 1997 by Sun & Moon Press but unavailable in recent years.

Dra-, the nondescript heroine of this grim, hilarious fiction, might have fallen through the same hole as Lewis Carroll's Alice, only now, 130 years later, there's no time for frivolity, just the pressing need to get a job. In a sealed, modern Wonderland of "small stifled work centers, basements and sub-basements, night niches, and training hutches connected by hallways just inches across," Dra- seeks employment . . . This labyrinthine journey is brilliantly mimicked in the architecture of the prose. Levine creates cozy little warrens, small safe spaces made of short clear sentences, then sends the reader spiraling down long broken passages, fragmented by colons and semi-colons which give a halting, lurching gait to our progress. A quest, a comedy of manners, and a parable, Dra- is, above all else, a philosophical novel concerned with the most basic questions of living.”Matthew Stadler, reviewing the original edition in The Stranger, 1997.

Cover image for Dra—, isbn: 9781891241833

Stacey Levine

Dra—

$13.95

A new edition of a classic of contemporary American literature, first published in 1997 by Sun & Moon Press but unavailable in recent years.

Dra, the nondescript heroine of this grim, hilarious fiction, might have fallen through the same hole as Lewis Carroll's Alice, only now, 130 years later, there's no time for frivolity, just the pressing need to get a job. In a sealed, modern Wonderland of "small stifled work centers, basements and sub-basements, night niches, and training hutches connected by hallways just inches across," Dra seeks employment . . . This labyrinthine journey is brilliantly mimicked in the architecture of the prose. Levine creates cozy little warrens, small safe spaces made of short clear sentences, then sends the reader spiraling down long broken passages, fragmented by colons and semi-colons which give a halting, lurching gait to our progress. A quest, a comedy of manners, and a parable, Dra is, above all else, a philosophical novel concerned with the most basic questions of living.

Cover image for Dra—, isbn: 9781891241314

Lisa MacKinney

Dressed in Black

$9.99

The first full-length history of the Shangri-Las, one of the most significant—and most misunderstood—pop groups of the 1960s.

Sisters Mary and Betty Weiss, together with twins Mary Ann and Marguerite Ganser, were schoolgirls when they formed the Shangri-Las in 1963, and had a meteoric rise to fame with songs like “Leader of the Pack” and “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” Their career was cut short for reasons largely beyond their control, derailed by the machinations of Mafia-linked record executives, and heartbreak and tragedy followed. Historian Lisa MacKinney marshals an impressive array of new evidence to tell the Shangri-Las’ story, dispelling many myths and long-standing mysteries along the way.

Equally importantly, Dressed in Black radically rewrites the accepted narrative of the Shangri-Las’ place in rock history. As young women, they were permitted little agency within a male-dominated industry that viewed teenagers as fodder to be manipulat-ed and exploited by producers, songwriters, and label owners. For decades, this has served as an excuse for critics to deny the musical input of the group members, to trivialize the Shangri-Las as a "girl group," and to assign their work a lesser rank in the canon of "authentic" rock and roll. MacKinney’s great achievement here is to foreground the Shangri-Las’ considerable abilities and musicality, and establish the centrality of their performance of their songs to the group’s underappreciated artistic achievement.

This is not to deny the critical role in the group’s success of professional songwriters (including Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry) and writer/producer George ‘Shadow’ Morton, a pioneering and eccentric figure whose self-mythologizing has generated a level of obfuscation that rivals that of the Shangri-Las themselves. MacKinney’s clear-sighted account reveals Morton in a completely new light—and as part of a complex ecosystem of musical relationships. Morton wrote and produced highly emotional material specifically for the Shangri-Las because he knew they had the skills to make his mini-operas not only believable, but enthralling. The group members, particularly Mary Weiss, channeled personal anguish into their extraordinary performances, which are central to the songs’ impact—no less so than for such classic singers as Ella Fitzgerald and Elvis Presley, who also relied on producers and songwriters for their body of work. The Shangri-Las’ impassioned delivery elicited a massive response from their audience of fellow teenagers at the time and has continued to connect profoundly with audiences ever since. MacKinney backs up these arguments with in-depth analysis of key Shangri-Las’ recordings, and makes a powerful case that their achievements warrant a far more prominent place for the Shangri-Las in the history of popular music.

Lisa MacKinney

Dressed in Black

$24.95

The first full-length history of the Shangri-Las, one of the most significant—and most misunderstood—pop groups of the 1960s.

Sisters Mary and Betty Weiss, together with twins Mary Ann and Marguerite Ganser, were schoolgirls when they formed the Shangri-Las in 1963, and had a meteoric rise to fame with songs like “Leader of the Pack” and “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” Their career was cut short for reasons largely beyond their control, derailed by the machinations of Mafia-linked record executives, and heartbreak and tragedy followed. Historian Lisa MacKinney marshals an impressive array of new evidence to tell the Shangri-Las’ story, dispelling many myths and long-standing mysteries along the way.

Equally importantly, Dressed in Black radically rewrites the accepted narrative of the Shangri-Las’ place in rock history. As young women, they were permitted little agency within a male-dominated industry that viewed teenagers as fodder to be manipulated and exploited by producers, songwriters, and label owners. For decades, this has served as an excuse for critics to deny the musical input of the group members, to trivialize the Shangri-Las as a "girl group," and to assign their work a lesser rank in the canon of "authentic" rock and roll. MacKinney’s great achievement here is to foreground the Shangri-Las’ considerable abilities and musicality, and establish the centrality of their performance of their songs to the group’s underappreciated artistic achievement.

This is not to deny the critical role in the group’s success of professional songwriters (including Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry) and writer/producer George ‘Shadow’ Morton, a pioneering and eccentric figure whose self-mythologizing has generated a level of obfuscation that rivals that of the Shangri-Las themselves. MacKinney’s clear-sighted account reveals Morton in a completely new light—and as part of a complex ecosystem of musical relationships. Morton wrote and produced highly emotional material specifically for the Shangri-Las because he knew they had the skills to make his mini-operas not only believable, but enthralling. The group members, particularly Mary Weiss, channeled personal anguish into their extraordinary performances, which are central to the songs’ impact—no less so than for such classic singers as Ella Fitzgerald and Elvis Presley, who also relied on producers and songwriters for their body of work. The Shangri-Las’ impassioned delivery elicited a massive response from their audience of fellow teenagers at the time and has continued to connect profoundly with audiences ever since. MacKinney backs up these arguments with in-depth analysis of key Shangri-Las’ recordings, and makes a powerful case that their achievements warrant a far more prominent place for the Shangri-Las in the history of popular music.

Cover image for Dressed in Black, isbn: 9781959163077

Stacey Levine

Frances Johnson

$6.99

From the get-go, it's clear that something strange is afoot in Munson, the fictional Florida hamlet where Stacey Levine's new novel, Frances Johnson, takes place. A volcano seethes on the outskirts of town, strange animals skitter in the shadows, and a dense brown fog has settled overhead. Pets and people vanish. Unfurling over a period of days leading up to the town's annual dance, the story follows 38-year-old Frances's mounting restlessness, as she must decide whether to take control of her life or cede it to the murky future the community has designated for her. Though the novel hinges on a familiar plot point will Frances remain in Munson, or escape to the world at large? it's the only trace of convention to be found in this hypnotic book, which transforms its setting into a tableau of exotic menace.

Stacey Levine

Frances Johnson

$14.00

From the get-go, it's clear that something strange is afoot in Munson, the fictional Florida hamlet where Stacey Levine's new novel, Frances Johnson, takes place. A volcano seethes on the outskirts of town, strange animals skitter in the shadows, and a dense brown fog has settled overhead. Pets and people vanish. Unfurling over a period of days leading up to the town's annual dance, the story follows 38-year-old Frances's mounting restlessness, as she must decide whether to take control of her life or cede it to the murky future the community has designated for her. Though the novel hinges on a familiar plot point will Frances remain in Munson, or escape to the world at large? it's the only trace of convention to be found in this hypnotic book, which transforms its setting into a tableau of exotic menace.

Cover image for Frances Johnson, isbn: 9781891241291

Mark Terrill

Great Balls of Doubt

$14.00

Great Balls of Doubt gathers 96 of Mark Terrill’s poems and prose poems from limited-edition chapbooks and broadsides (many now sold out or no longer in print) and from hard-to-find journals and magazines, as well as his recent, previously uncollected work. Lavishly illustrated with 25 drawings by Jon Langford, Great Balls of Doubt delivers images and sentiments ranging from the real to the surreal to the elegiac, with no shortage of humor along the way. “Doubt is an unpleasant condition,” Voltaire once remarked, “but certainty is absurd.”

Cover image for Great Balls of Doubt, isbn: 9781891241666

Colin B Morton

Great Pop Things

$6.99

The comic strips of Colin B. Morton and Chuck Death deliver an irreverent, heartfelt, and devastatingly funny history of rock and roll. Like Monty Python at its best, their version is surreal and ridiculous - yet somehow everything in it rings true. According to Morton and Death, the bass player in Led Zeppelin was Jean-Paul Sartre. And despite having been able to think up brilliant titles for their first three albums, Led Zeppelin were stuck for what to call the fourth one - so they put a load of prunes on the front. In strip after strip, Morton & Death pinpoint the absurdities and oddities of rock history. In the process, they often come closer to its truth than conventional accounts do, as well as being far more entertaining. As for the drawings, their caricatures of rock stars from Mick Jagger to Frank Zappa, Johnny Rotten to Courtney Love, are in themselves worth the price of admission.

Colin B Morton

Great Pop Things

$22.95

The comic strips of Colin B. Morton and Chuck Death deliver an irreverent, heartfelt, and devastatingly funny history of rock and roll. Like Monty Python at its best, their version is surreal and ridiculous - yet somehow everything in it rings true. According to Morton and Death, the bass player in Led Zeppelin was Jean-Paul Sartre. And despite having been able to think up brilliant titles for their first three albums, Led Zeppelin were stuck for what to call the fourth one - so they put a load of prunes on the front. In strip after strip, Morton & Death pinpoint the absurdities and oddities of rock history. In the process, they often come closer to its truth than conventional accounts do, as well as being far more entertaining. As for the drawings, their caricatures of rock stars from Mick Jagger to Frank Zappa, Johnny Rotten to Courtney Love, are in themselves worth the price of admission.

Cover image for Great Pop Things, isbn: 9781891241086

Clinton Walker

Highway to Hell

$9.99

The definitive account of AC/DC's rise to fame, when the ribald lyrics and charismatic stage presence of singer Bon Scott, along with the guitar work of Angus and Malcolm Young, defined a new, highly influential brand of rock and roll. Drawing on many interviews and featuring a gallery of rare photos, Clinton Walker traces the band's career through the life of their original front man, from small-time gigs to international success, up to Scott's shocking death in 1980. AC/DC's undiminished superstar status (they're the fourth-bestselling band of all time), and their indelible influence on a succession of genres from metal to grunge to rap, ensure that Bon Scott's presence continues to be felt strongly. HIGHWAY TO HELL offers the full story of this seminal rock figure. A consistent seller since it was first published here in 2001, HIGHWAY TO HELL has been updated for this edition. New details that have come to light in recent years about the last hours of Scott's life have been added, enabling the author to dispel persistent rumors and myths and once more set the record straight.

Clinton Walker

Highway to Hell

$9.99

Clinton Walker's biography of Bon Scott is the definitive account of the life of the iconic rocker, tracing his musical apprenticeship in bubblegum pop band the Valentines and blues-rockers Fraternity through to joining up with Angus and Malcolm Young in AC/DC, where his racy lyrics, unique vocal style, and sheer charisma helped define a new, highly influential brand of rock and roll. Drawing on many first-person interviews and featuring a gallery of rare images, Clinton Walker traces AC/DC's career through the life of their original front man, from the Scottish roots he shared with the Youngs to small-time gigs to recording studios and international success, right up to Scott's shocking death in 1980, just as the band were getting the worldwide recognition they'd worked for so tirelessly. Wild speculation about how Scott died has surfaced periodically in the intervening years and flared up again recently. For this edition, Clinton Walker re-examines the evidence surrounding Scott’s death, investigates these recurring claims, and concludes that such conspiracy theories have no basis in fact. The result underlines Highway to Hell’s status as the authoritative version of the life—and untimely death—of one of rock’s greatest characters.

Clinton Walker

Highway to Hell

$26.95

Clinton Walker's biography of Bon Scott is the definitive account of the life of the iconic rocker, tracing his musical apprenticeship in bubblegum pop band the Valentines and blues-rockers Fraternity through to joining up with Angus and Malcolm Young in AC/DC, where his racy lyrics, unique vocal style, and sheer charisma helped define a new, highly influential brand of rock and roll. Drawing on many first-person interviews and featuring a gallery of rare images, Clinton Walker traces AC/DC's career through the life of their original front man, from the Scottish roots he shared with the Youngs to small-time gigs to recording studios and international success, right up to Scott's shocking death in 1980, just as the band were getting the worldwide recognition they'd worked for so tirelessly. Wild speculation about how Scott died has surfaced periodically in the intervening years and flared up again recently. For this edition, Clinton Walker re-examines the evidence surrounding Scott’s death, investigates these recurring claims, and concludes that such conspiracy theories have no basis in fact. The result underlines Highway to Hell’s status as the authoritative version of the life—and untimely death—of one of rock’s greatest characters.

Cover image for Highway to Hell, isbn: 9781959163039

Clinton Walker

Inner City Sound

$29.95

The bands that spearheaded the late 1970s punk scene in Australia-the Saints, Birthday Party, Radio Birdman, and the Go-Betweens-are among the most important of their time. Inner City Sound is the classic account of the explosive development of that scene. Original articles from fanzines and newspapers, together with almost 300 photographs, vividly portray the creative ferment of the period and the dozens of bands that sprang up in the wake of the pioneers. First published in late 1981, Inner City Sound soon fell out of print. It became a lost classic, so sought after that it has been bootlegged like the rare singles listed in its discography. This new edition contains 32 extra pages of articles, photos, and discographic data, which take the story through to 1985, when Nick Cave, the Go-Betweens, the Triffids, and others began to break through internationally.

Cover image for Inner City Sound, isbn: 9781891241185

Camden Joy

Lost Joy

$4.99

Lost Joy collects the writing that first brought Camden Joy wide attention in the mid-90s, when he wheatpasted his manifestoes” around New York, excoriating the music industry and celebrating unsung geniuses of rock and roll. Joy’s voiceheartfelt, mocking, lyrical, razor-sharpearned comparisons to the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Nick Hornby. Rooted in DIY zine culture, his rants prefigure the unfettered public expression of personal views that would explode with the rise of the Internet, and enact in words what Banksy would later achieve in art. Joy’s groundbreaking early fiction, in which his characters often invoke musicians and songs, is also included here. These haunting stories explore the many ways in which we use music to communicate our feelings and make sense of our memories.

Camden Joy

Lost Joy

$15.95

Lost Joy collects the writing that first brought Camden Joy wide attention in the mid-90s, when he wheatpasted his manifestoes” around New York, excoriating the music industry and celebrating unsung geniuses of rock and roll. Joy’s voiceheartfelt, mocking, lyrical, razor-sharpearned comparisons to the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Nick Hornby. Rooted in DIY zine culture, his rants prefigure the unfettered public expression of personal views that would explode with the rise of the Internet, and enact in words what Banksy would later achieve in art. Joy’s groundbreaking early fiction, in which his characters often invoke musicians and songs, is also included here. These haunting stories explore the many ways in which we use music to communicate our feelings and make sense of our memories.

Cover image for Lost Joy, isbn: 9781891241062

Lucy Sante

Maybe the People Would Be the Times

$9.99

In his second collection (after Kill All Your Darlings, 2007), Luc Sante pays homage to Patti Smith, Rene Ricard, and Georges Simenon; traces the history of tabloids; surveys the landscape that gave birth to the Beastie Boys; explores the back alleys of vernacular photography; sounds a threnody for the forgotten dead of New York City.

The glue holding the collection together is autobiography. Every item carries deep personal significance, and most are rooted in lived experience, in particular Sante's youth on the Lower East Side of New York in the fertile 1970s and '80s. He traces his deep engagement with music, his experience of the city, his progression as an artist and observer, his love life and ambitions. Maybe the People Would Be the Times is organized as a series of sequences, in which one piece leads into the next. Memoir flows into essay, fiction into critical writing, humor into poetry, the pieces answering and echoing one another, examining subjects from multiple vantages. The collection shows Sante at his most lyrical, impassioned, and imaginative, a writer for whom every assignment brings the challenge of inventing a new form.

Lucy Sante

Maybe the People Would Be the Times

$22.95

In his second collection (after Kill All Your Darlings, 2007), Luc Sante pays homage to Patti Smith, Rene Ricard, and Georges Simenon; traces the history of tabloids; surveys the landscape that gave birth to the Beastie Boys; explores the back alleys of vernacular photography; sounds a threnody for the forgotten dead of New York City.

The glue holding the collection together is autobiography. Every item carries deep personal significance, and most are rooted in lived experience, in particular Sante's youth on the Lower East Side of New York in the fertile 1970s and '80s. He traces his deep engagement with music, his experience of the city, his progression as an artist and observer, his love life and ambitions. Maybe the People Would Be the Times is organized as a series of sequences, in which one piece leads into the next. Memoir flows into essay, fiction into critical writing, humor into poetry, the pieces answering and echoing one another, examining subjects from multiple vantages. The collection shows Sante at his most lyrical, impassioned, and imaginative, a writer for whom every assignment brings the challenge of inventing a new form.

Cover image for Maybe the People Would Be the Times, isbn: 9781891241574

Stacey Levine

Mice 1961

$9.99

FINALIST, 2025 PULITZER PRIZE IN FICTION

NAMED IN WASHINGTON POST'S "50 NOTABLE WORKS OF FICTION" IN 2024

“Stacey Levine’s fiction is unlike anything else. Peculiar, vivid, preternaturally alert to the strangeness of the human condition, Mice 1961 is terrific.”—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

A novel set in the Cold War era about two orphaned half-sisters, a boarder, and the neighbors who surround them, a stylized and startling depiction of lives lived at a high pitch of emotion in the shadow of global catastrophe (from the Pulitzer Prize jury's citation).

Stacey Levine's Mice 1961 recounts a pivotal day in the fraught relationship of two orphaned sisters through the eyes of their obsessively observant housekeeper, Girtle. Will Jody be able to cope if her younger sibling Mice, subject to constant harassment in their community for her unusual appearance and habits, leaves home? How will their all-watching companion convey her fierce attachment to them both? As a Greek chorus of local characters cavort and joke their way through a neighborhood party, the sisters and their ardent admirer cross paths with an unsettling stranger, leading to momentous changes for all. Set in southern Florida at the height of cold-war hysteria, Mice 1961 is a powerful meditation on belonging, conformity and otherness.

Stacey Levine

Mice 1961

$17.95

FINALIST, 2025 PULITZER PRIZE IN FICTION

NAMED IN WASHINGTON POST'S "50 NOTABLE WORKS OF FICTION" IN 2024

“Stacey Levine’s fiction is unlike anything else. Peculiar, vivid, preternaturally alert to the strangeness of the human condition, Mice 1961 is terrific.”—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

A novel set in the Cold War era about two orphaned half-sisters, a boarder, and the neighbors who surround them, a stylized and startling depiction of lives lived at a high pitch of emotion in the shadow of global catastrophe (from the Pulitzer Prize jury's citation).

Stacey Levine's Mice 1961 recounts a pivotal day in the fraught relationship of two orphaned sisters through the eyes of their obsessively observant housekeeper, Girtle. Will Jody be able to cope if her younger sibling Mice, subject to constant harassment in their community for her unusual appearance and habits, leaves home? How will their all-watching companion convey her fierce attachment to them both? As a Greek chorus of local characters cavort and joke their way through a neighborhood party, the sisters and their ardent admirer cross paths with an unsettling stranger, leading to momentous changes for all. Set in southern Florida at the height of cold-war hysteria, Mice 1961 is a powerful meditation on belonging, conformity and otherness.

Cover image for Mice 1961, isbn: 9781959163015

Lucy Sante

My Heart & I Agree

$9.99

In her third collection, Lucy Sante learns to dance by watching Soul Train, dissects the image of the cowboy, reads the telephone book, visits famous writers, tours dead factories, wonders whatever happened to the revolution, plunges into the vast sea of discarded snapshots, asks whether “surrealist photography” might be a redundancy, imagines Andy Warhol’s unmade movie, traces how Bob Dylan wrote his songs, observes the transience of all things with the Kinks.

While many of the pieces here were written on commission for magazines, publishers, and art catalogs, Sante’s writing always coheres around an enduring set of concerns: cities, social progress, photography, the semi-popular arts, and the detritus of daily life. Beginning with poems and concluding with fiction and memoir, the collection is divided into segments based on affinity. The first stretches back to the night of a century and a half ago; the second traces the long fall of utopian hopes over the last fifty years; the third observes great narrative travelers on their roads; the fourth is all image and flash; the fifth has a rhythm track running under it. There are hit singles here, as well as album cuts, non-LP B-sides, import-only EPs, and at least one bootleg.

Lucy Sante

My Heart & I Agree

$21.95

In her third collection, Lucy Sante learns to dance by watching Soul Train, dissects the image of the cowboy, reads the telephone book, visits famous writers, tours dead factories, wonders whatever happened to the revolution, plunges into the vast sea of discarded snapshots, asks whether “surrealist photography” might be a redundancy, imagines Andy Warhol’s unmade movie, traces how Bob Dylan wrote his songs, observes the transience of all things with the Kinks.

While many of the pieces here were written on commission for magazines, publishers, and art catalogs, Sante’s writing always coheres around an enduring set of concerns: cities, social progress, photography, the semi-popular arts, and the detritus of daily life. Beginning with poems and concluding with fiction and memoir, the collection is divided into segments based on affinity. The first stretches back to the night of a century and a half ago; the second traces the long fall of utopian hopes over the last fifty years; the third observes great narrative travelers on their roads; the fourth is all image and flash; the fifth has a rhythm track running under it. There are hit singles here, as well as album cuts, non-LP B-sides, import-only EPs, and at least one bootleg.

Cover image for My Heart & I Agree, isbn: 9781959163176

Jon Langford

Nashville Radio

$29.95

Beyond his work as a musician, Jon Langford has attracted attention as a visual artist in recent years. Nashville Radio is the first collection of his art. It reproduces 215 paintings, as well as song lyrics and autobiographical writings. The book includes a CD of Langford performing 18 of the printed songs. Langford’s song-paintings” fuse portraiture with imagery derived from folk art, Dutch still life, classic Western wear, and the cold, cold warall instilled with his trademark sardonic wit. He applies this distinctive style to the depiction of American musical icons like Bob Wills, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash, but also to more ghostly, marginal figuresblindfolded cowboys, astronauts, and dancerswho are jerked around by success and exploitation, fame and neglect. Underlying his work is a deep love of musical lore, twinned with fierce opposition to the death-dealing tendencies in the culture of his adopted homeland, from the killing off of authentic popular music by mass-marketed drivel to the embrace of capital punishment as a response to social ills. Langford’s work offers an alternative perspective, recalling a time when great visionaries and pioneers thrived at the heart of the mainstreamand the lid wasn’t on so tight.”

Cover image for Nashville Radio, isbn: 9781891241192

Robert Dean Lurie

No Certainty Attached

$9.99

For almost thirty years, the Church have crafted music that blends a rich variety of styles in a beautiful, multi-layered sound. They have encompassed pop, psychedelic, progressive, and straight-ahead rock, yet always remain distinctive, thanks to the inimitable vocals and lyrics of front man Steve Kilbey. Based on extensive interviews and featuring over 70 rare photographs, No Certainty Attached is the first comprehensive biography of Kilbey and his band. It charts their personal and musical ups and downs: the commercial heights of The Unguarded Moment and Under the Milky Way, the creative breakthroughs of the Priest = Aura album and Kilbey s underappreciated solo work, followed by the band s struggle to survive in the wake of bad business decisions and their singer s drug indulgences. One obsessive American fan attempts to get to the heart of the story, abetted by Kilbey himself, his family, band members, and friends and foes alike. What emerges is a compelling portrait of an artist and a band clinging steadfastly to their muse in the face of external and internal obstacles and the transformative power of the music they have created.

Robert Dean Lurie

No Certainty Attached

$24.95

For almost thirty years, the Church have crafted music that blends a rich variety of styles in a beautiful, multi-layered sound. They have encompassed pop, psychedelic, progressive, and straight-ahead rock, yet always remain distinctive, thanks to the inimitable vocals and lyrics of front man Steve Kilbey. Based on extensive interviews and featuring over 70 rare photographs, No Certainty Attached is the first comprehensive biography of Kilbey and his band. It charts their personal and musical ups and downs: the commercial heights of The Unguarded Moment and Under the Milky Way, the creative breakthroughs of the Priest = Aura album and Kilbey s underappreciated solo work, followed by the band s struggle to survive in the wake of bad business decisions and their singer s drug indulgences. One obsessive American fan attempts to get to the heart of the story, abetted by Kilbey himself, his family, band members, and friends and foes alike. What emerges is a compelling portrait of an artist and a band clinging steadfastly to their muse in the face of external and internal obstacles and the transformative power of the music they have created.

Cover image for No Certainty Attached, isbn: 9781891241222

Mary Fortune

Nothing But Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging

$9.99

A murderer is identified by a team of oxen. A dead man rises from a watery grave to indict his killer. A phantom hearse gliding through Melbourne’s slums foretells violent death. A seamstress turns detective to avenge her friend’s homicide. A locked-tent mystery.

Such are the themes of Mary Fortune’s ingenious and dramatic crime stories. Between 1865 and 1910 she wrote over 500 of them; they comprise the first ever detective fiction series written by a woman. Set in the outback, on the goldfields, and in the burgeoning metropolis of Melbourne, they offer a vivid account of life and death in colonial-era Australia. Fortune tackled subjects such as murder, armed robbery, bootlegging, and sexual violence with a frankness unprecedented for a woman in the 19th century, in styles ranging from melodrama and Gothic horror to social realism and what is now called noir. This book brings together 17 of her finest stories, edited and introduced by literary historians Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown.

Born in Ireland in 1832, Fortune arrived in Australia during the gold-rush, which she observed firsthand and depicted in many of her stories. A brief, bigamous marriage to a policeman gave her inside knowledge to write about crime, and over the next 40 years her prolific output was serialized under the title The Detective’s Album in the mass-circulation Australian Journal. She often lived precariously—struggling with alcohol, unable to prevent her son drifting into a life of crime—and preserved her privacy by publishing under pseudonyms. Her anonymity meant that when she died in 1911 she was almost lost to literary history. Only recently have Mary Fortune’s true identity and her extraordinary life story emerged.

This collection, together with a simultaneously published biography, will confirm Mary Fortune’s status as a trailblazing crime writer.

“The themes of marriage, murder, and gendered violence resonate with contemporary concerns. The writing is beautiful, complex, and thrilling . . . From the small towns of the goldfields to the arid yet lush landscape of the outback, and back to society living in Melbourne, these stories will enthral you.”—Candice Fox

Mary Fortune

Nothing But Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging

$19.95

A murderer is identified by a team of oxen. A dead man rises from a watery grave to indict his killer. A phantom hearse gliding through Melbourne’s slums foretells violent death. A seamstress turns detective to avenge her friend’s homicide. A locked-tent mystery.

Such are the themes of Mary Fortune’s ingenious and dramatic crime stories. Between 1865 and 1910 she wrote over 500 of them; they comprise the first ever detective fiction series written by a woman. Set in the outback, on the goldfields, and in the burgeoning metropolis of Melbourne, they offer a vivid account of life and death in colonial-era Australia. Fortune tackled subjects such as murder, armed robbery, bootlegging, and sexual violence with a frankness unprecedented for a woman in the 19th century, in styles ranging from melodrama and Gothic horror to social realism and what is now called noir. This book brings together 17 of her finest stories, edited and introduced by literary historians Lucy Sussex and Megan Brown.

Born in Ireland in 1832, Fortune arrived in Australia during the gold-rush, which she observed firsthand and depicted in many of her stories. A brief, bigamous marriage to a policeman gave her inside knowledge to write about crime, and over the next 40 years her prolific output was serialized under the title The Detective’s Album in the mass-circulation Australian Journal. She often lived precariously—struggling with alcohol, unable to prevent her son drifting into a life of crime—and preserved her privacy by publishing under pseudonyms. Her anonymity meant that when she died in 1911 she was almost lost to literary history. Only recently have Mary Fortune’s true identity and her extraordinary life story emerged.

This collection, together with a simultaneously published biography, will confirm Mary Fortune’s status as a trailblazing crime writer.

“The themes of marriage, murder, and gendered violence resonate with contemporary concerns. The writing is beautiful, complex, and thrilling . . . From the small towns of the goldfields to the arid yet lush landscape of the outback, and back to society living in Melbourne, these stories will enthral you.”—Candice Fox

Cover image for Nothing But Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging, isbn: 9781959163091

Katherine Spielmann

Now Is the Time to Invent!

$19.99

Now Is the Time to Invent offers a definitive portrait of the vibrant indie-rock scene that flourished in the mid-1980s and reached its creative peak in the 1990s. More than 60 profiles and interviews, taken from the pages of the acclaimed independent music magazine Puncture and illustrated with many rare photographs, cover all the major contributors to a lastingly influential musical movement.

It’s impossible to determine a single starting point for indie rock, but here it is found in the scintillating psychodramas Kristin Hersch conjured up for Throwing Muses and the deadpan, genre-busting, proto-slacker anthems of Camper Van Beethoven, and followed through to the critical triumphs of Sleater-Kinney and Neutral Milk Hotel more than a decade later. Along the way, it takes in such pioneering artists as P.J. Harvey, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Bikini Kill, Nick Cave, Beck, Cat Power, Fugazi, Mekons, Pavement, Belle & Sebastian, Meat Puppets, My Bloody Valentine, Sebadoh, the Breeders, Jeff Buckley, Guided by Voices, Will Oldham, Hole, Flaming Lips, the Magnetic Fields, and many more.

Katherine Spielmann

Now Is the Time to Invent!

$29.95

Now Is the Time to Invent offers a definitive portrait of the vibrant indie-rock scene that flourished in the mid-1980s and reached its creative peak in the 1990s. More than 60 profiles and interviews, taken from the pages of the acclaimed independent music magazine Puncture and illustrated with many rare photographs, cover all the major contributors to a lastingly influential musical movement.

It’s impossible to determine a single starting point for indie rock, but here it is found in the scintillating psychodramas Kristin Hersch conjured up for Throwing Muses and the deadpan, genre-busting, proto-slacker anthems of Camper Van Beethoven, and followed through to the critical triumphs of Sleater-Kinney and Neutral Milk Hotel more than a decade later. Along the way, it takes in such pioneering artists as P.J. Harvey, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Bikini Kill, Nick Cave, Beck, Cat Power, Fugazi, Mekons, Pavement, Belle & Sebastian, Meat Puppets, My Bloody Valentine, Sebadoh, the Breeders, Jeff Buckley, Guided by Voices, Will Oldham, Hole, Flaming Lips, the Magnetic Fields, and many more.

Cover image for Now Is the Time to Invent!, isbn: 9781891241673

Jon Langford

Skull Orchard Revisited

$19.95

BOOK + CD PACKAGE. Jon Langford is best known for the music he creates with the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, but he has gained increasing acclaim for his visual art, too, over the past decade.

Nashville Radio, his first book+CD of paintings, writing, and music (Verse Chorus Press, 2005) was a sprawling, jam-packed collection full of punk energy. For this book, Langford has created a highly personal portrait of Wales, where he was born and raised. It incorporates a CD featuring the author's rare solo album Skull Orchard; originally released in 1998 on a label that promptly went bankrupt, and revamped and extended with live material (and a Welsh male voice choir) for this edition. The song lyrics, at once autobiographical and fanciful, are illustrated in a series of "word paintings" scattered throughout the book, which also includes an A to Z of Welsh culture and history (personal and general), thematically related etchings and paintings, family photographs, and Langford's first published fiction, a dystopian fable about a whale and a dolphin.

Cover image for Skull Orchard Revisited, isbn: 9781891241307

Stephen Beachy

Some Phantom/No Time Flat

$2.99

A pair of novellas, lyrical, haunting, and bleak, that offer an unsparing yet emotionally rich vision of contemporary America. In Some Phantom an unnamed woman arrives in a strange city, fleeing a violent relationship. She begins to explore the city and its inhabitants and takes a job teaching disturbed children, but finds her own mental stability becoming more and more precarious. A marriage of The Turn of the Screw and Carnival of Souls, Some Phantom poses questions about the line between memory and madness, between fantasy and abuse.

These questions are further elaborated in No Time Flat, which follows Wade, a boy living a somewhat isolated existence with his elderly parents on the American plains, as he makes his way through a childhood marked by playground shootings and mysterious strangers. Wade then becomes a wanderer himself, inhabiting a sparse landscape of fleeting connections, lost children, and unformulated crimes.

Cover image for Some Phantom/No Time Flat, isbn: 9781891241925

Hugh Raffles

The Book of Unconformities

$9.99

From the author of lnsectopedia, a powerful exploration of loss, grief, endurance, and the absences that permeate the present.

Unconformities are gaps in the geological record, physical evidence of breaks in time. For Hugh Raffles, these holes in history are also fissures in feeling, knowledge, memory, and understanding. In this endlessly inventive, riveting book, Raffles enters these gaps, drawing together threads of geology, history, literature, philosophy, and ethnography to trace the intimate connections between personal loss and world historical events, and to reveal the force of absence at the core of contemporary life.

Through deeply researched explorations of Neolithic stone circles, Icelandic lava, mica from a Nazi concentration camp, petrified whale blubber in Svalbard, the marble prized by Manhattan's Lenape, and a huge Greenlandic meteorite that arrived in New York City along with six Inuit adventurers in 1897, Raffles shows how unconformities unceasingly incite human imagination and investigation yet refuse to conform, heal, or disappear.

A journey across eons and continents, The Book of Unconformities is also a journey through stone: this most solid, ancient, and enigmatic of materials, it turns out, is as lively, capricious, willful, and indifferent as time itself.

Hugh Raffles

The Book of Unconformities

$22.95

From the author of lnsectopedia, a powerful exploration of loss, grief, endurance, and the absences that permeate the present.

Unconformities are gaps in the geological record, physical evidence of breaks in time. For Hugh Raffles, these holes in history are also fissures in feeling, knowledge, memory, and understanding. In this endlessly inventive, riveting book, Raffles enters these gaps, drawing together threads of geology, history, literature, philosophy, and ethnography to trace the intimate connections between personal loss and world historical events, and to reveal the force of absence at the core of contemporary life.

Through deeply researched explorations of Neolithic stone circles, Icelandic lava, mica from a Nazi concentration camp, petrified whale blubber in Svalbard, the marble prized by Manhattan's Lenape, and a huge Greenlandic meteorite that arrived in New York City along with six Inuit adventurers in 1897, Raffles shows how unconformities unceasingly incite human imagination and investigation yet refuse to conform, heal, or disappear.

A journey across eons and continents, The Book of Unconformities is also a journey through stone: this most solid, ancient, and enigmatic of materials, it turns out, is as lively, capricious, willful, and indifferent as time itself.

Cover image for The Book of Unconformities, isbn: 9781891241734

David Nichols

The Go-Betweens

$9.99

When Robert Forster and Grant McLennan formed the Go-Betweens in Brisbane in 1977, they were determined to be different. They were angular, spare, and poetic when crashing directness was the prevailing style. Their heroes were Dylan, Creedence, and Television, when it was more fashionable to cite the Stooges and the New York Dolls. Their attitude was as punk as anyone’s, but their lyrical guitar pop stood in sharp contrast to the trends of the day.

The Go-Betweens story is a fascinating one. With cornerstone drummer Lindy Morrison and, later, additional members Robert Vickers and Amanda Brown the band recorded six albums in the 1980s that are among the finest work of the decade, and earned them a reputation as the ultimate cult band.” And as one reviewer of the original 1997 edition of this book noted, Unlike most rock groups, the Go-Betweens had personalities as well as talent”which makes for a compelling read, even if you’re not yet a fan.

David Nichols relates the Go-Betweens story with wit and verve, and for this edition he completely updated the book, adding chapters on the members’ subsequent solo careers in the 1990s, the subsequent reuniting of Forster and McLennan under the Go-Betweens name, and the band’s flourishing second life in the new millennium, tragically cut short by the sudden death of Grant McLennan in 2005.

David Nichols

The Go-Betweens

$24.95

The Go-Betweens recorded six albums that are among the finest work of the 1980s, earning them a reputation as the ultimate cult band and the lasting esteem of their peers, from R.E.M. to Sleater-Kinney. In 2000 they returned to making records--and received the best reviews of their career. David Nichols relates their story with wit and verve, and since the Go-Betweens had personalities as well as talent, their biography is compelling reading, not just for committed fans but for anyone interested in the current music scene. I loved this book, raved Jonathan Lethem. How elegant that the dark-horse band lavished with obsessive and loving attention by David Nichols should be the one whose weird and lovely depths can truly sustain and reward it the life-altering Go-Betweens.

Cover image for The Go-Betweens, isbn: 9781891241161

John Andrew Fredrick

The King of Good Intentions

$6.99

Set in Los Angeles in the early 90s, the novel chronicles the early days of an indie band as they meet, practice, make their first record, and get their first break/big gig. It’s also the story of the the flowering love affair between John and Jenny, the two charming if troubled guitarists/singers in the band. John is by day a misanthropic substitute teacher in the zany, sometimes horrific LA Unified School District; Jenny is an mysterious recovering child prodigy. Along the way, the couple and their bandmates make momentous discoveries about themselves and the Hollywood milieu in which they struggle to succeed, a world peopled by narcissistic actors, wannabe screenwriters, pretentious musicians, weirdo fans, crazy neighbors -- and an emu.

The King of Good Intentions was originally to have been published by Henry Rollins’s 2.13.61 press in 1999. When Rollins decided henceforth to publish only his own work, Fredrick set the novel aside to focus on his musical and teaching career. Now it will finally make its long overdue debut.

John Andrew Fredrick

The King of Good Intentions

$14.95

Set in Los Angeles in the early 90s, the novel chronicles the early days of an indie band as they meet, practice, make their first record, and get their first break/big gig. It’s also the story of the the flowering love affair between John and Jenny, the two charming if troubled guitarists/singers in the band. John is by day a misanthropic substitute teacher in the zany, sometimes horrific LA Unified School District; Jenny is an mysterious recovering child prodigy. Along the way, the couple and their bandmates make momentous discoveries about themselves and the Hollywood milieu in which they struggle to succeed, a world peopled by narcissistic actors, wannabe screenwriters, pretentious musicians, weirdo fans, crazy neighbors -- and an emu.

The King of Good Intentions was originally to have been published by Henry Rollins’s 2.13.61 press in 1999. When Rollins decided henceforth to publish only his own work, Fredrick set the novel aside to focus on his musical and teaching career. Now it will finally make its long overdue debut.

Cover image for The King of Good Intentions, isbn: 9781891241109

Camden Joy

The Last Rock Star Book

$6.99

Camden Joy’s hero can’t wrap up the quickie biography of rock star Liz Phair he’s been commissioned to write. Instead, the shaky author finds himself recounting the troubled events of his own life. His ex-girlfriend (who just might be the illegitimate daughter of dead Rolling Stone Brian Jones), Liz Phair (whom he’s never met), and a mystery girl seen looting a shop in an old newspaper photo all start to blur together in his mind. If only he could get closer to his subject before the assignment spins out of control, maybe he’d have a shot at the distinction he feels he deserves . . .

First published in 1998, The Last Rock Star Book has become an underground cult classic.

Camden Joy

The Last Rock Star Book

$14.95

Camden Joy's hero is writing a quickie bio of rock star Liz Phair, but increasingly finds himself recounting his own troubled life. His ex-girlfriend (possibly Brian Jones's illegitimate daughter); Liz Phair (whom he's never met); and a mystery girl in an old photo all start to blur together. Joy's novel is a witty and cogent meditation on celebrity and obsession.

Cover image for The Last Rock Star Book, isbn: 9781891241079

Mark Swartz

The Music Never Died

$9.99

Sixteen irreverent and inventive fictions that riff on rock and rap mythology to envisage alternate paths for music legends who died young.

What if Biggie Smalls had survived the assassin’s bullets and reinvented hip-hop with the help of an avant-garde luminary? If Amy Winehouse had shaken off her demons and channeled her inner Barbra Streisand into a new life on a tropical island? If Jeff Buckley had been pulled alive from the Mississippi by a devilish hand and become a pioneer of Southern black metal?

With accompanying illustrations by Jeb Loy Nichols, Mark Swartz’s stories imagine what might have happened to these stars and more—including Jimi Hendrix, Gram Parsons, Janis Joplin, Marvin Gaye, Lhasa de Sela, Lil Peep, and Jim Morrison—if their untimely deaths had been averted, or somehow had not been the end of their lives. Booklist praised Mark Swartz’s fiction for its “lithe satirical humor, impressive intellectual dimension, and sly provocation,” and these qualities are on full display in these at once heartfelt and borderline absurd tales.

Mark Swartz

The Music Never Died

$16.95

Sixteen irreverent and inventive fictions that riff on rock and rap mythology to envisage alternate paths for music legends who died young.

What if Biggie Smalls had survived the assassin’s bullets and reinvented hip-hop with the help of an avant-garde luminary? If Amy Winehouse had shaken off her demons and channeled her inner Barbra Streisand into a new life on a tropical island? If Jeff Buckley had been pulled alive from the Mississippi by a devilish hand and become a pioneer of Southern black metal?

With accompanying illustrations by Jeb Loy Nichols, Mark Swartz’s stories imagine what might have happened to these stars and more—including Jimi Hendrix, Gram Parsons, Janis Joplin, Marvin Gaye, Lhasa de Sela, Lil Peep, and Jim Morrison—if their untimely deaths had been averted, or somehow had not been the end of their lives. Booklist praised Mark Swartz’s fiction for its “lithe satirical humor, impressive intellectual dimension, and sly provocation,” and these qualities are on full display in these at once heartfelt and borderline absurd tales.

Cover image for The Music Never Died, isbn: 9781959163053

Mark Terrill

Ultrazone

$9.99

“A helter-skelter rush of delights . . . a slapstick horror-fantasy romp that sometimes achieves real depth and poignancy”—ALAN MOORE

William S. Burroughs is dead and buried, but he can find no rest. His ghost is roaming the backstreets of Tangier in search of a missing manuscript. During his chaotic years there in the 1950s Burroughs not only wrote Naked Lunch, he also spewed out a mass of much darker material he then lost — hundreds of pages in which he wrestled with his demons. He fears his longtime nemesis, the Ugly Spirit, has been lurking in those pages ever since — and is now emerging from its slumber.

To help him find and destroy the infected manuscript before the Ugly Spirit can spread its evil in the world, Burroughs enlists fellow ghosts and old Tangier pros Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin, Joseph Dean and Brian Jones, as well as an inept witch, an elderly sorcerer, and a gang of macaque monkeys. Their adventures — often comic, sometimes ghastly — involve vanishing corpses, a magic carpet, giant black centipedes—and a word virus about to go pandemic.

Mark Terrill

Ultrazone

$17.95

“A helter-skelter rush of delights . . . a slapstick horror-fantasy romp that sometimes achieves real depth and poignancy”—ALAN MOORE

William S. Burroughs is dead and buried, but he can find no rest. His ghost is roaming the backstreets of Tangier in search of a missing manuscript. During his chaotic years there in the 1950s Burroughs not only wrote Naked Lunch, he also spewed out a mass of much darker material he then lost — hundreds of pages in which he wrestled with his demons. He fears his longtime nemesis, the Ugly Spirit, has been lurking in those pages ever since — and is now emerging from its slumber.

To help him find and destroy the infected manuscript before the Ugly Spirit can spread its evil in the world, Burroughs enlists fellow ghosts and old Tangier pros Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin, Joseph Dean and Brian Jones, as well as an inept witch, an elderly sorcerer, and a gang of macaque monkeys. Their adventures — often comic, sometimes ghastly — involve vanishing corpses, a magic carpet, giant black centipedes—and a word virus about to go pandemic.

Cover image for Ultrazone, isbn: 9781959163114

Mekons

Waiting in the Bar

$24.95

The autobiography in words and images of a legendary art-punk band’s early years.

Fueled by the DIY punk aesthetic, the Mekons emerged from the Leeds university art scene in 1977 with the firm belief that anybody could do it — so they did. Their first singles (“Never Been in a Riot” and “Where Were You?”) are now underground classics, and their 1979 debut album, The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen, widely derided as “amateurish” at the time, is about to receive the deluxe box set treatment from Fire Records.

Waiting at the Bar collects writing by various Mekons about their early years and first recordings along with around 100 photographs and flyers. It also features contributions from longtime musical comrades such as Jon King (Gang of Four), as well as filmmaker Adam Curtis, who put together for this book a documentary sequence of still images from the weeks in 1977 when the Mekons first took shape.

Cover image for Waiting in the Bar, isbn: 9781959163008

Gilbert Rogin

What Happens Next? and Preparations for the Ascent

$17.95

The republication of two of Gilbert Rogin's most popular novels - 'What Happens Next' and 'Preparations for the Ascent' - brings to a new generation of readers the comedy, pathos and keen observation that made him a favourite contributor to the New Yorker in the 1960s and 1970s.

Cover image for What Happens Next? and Preparations for the Ascent, isbn: 9781891241277

Ian D. Marks

Wild About You!

$29.95

The astonishing outpouring of rock 'n' roll in the 1960s in Australia and New Zealand gave birth to such iconic bands such as the Easybeats, the Masters Apprentices, Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, the Purple Hearts, and the Missing Links. It also launched the careers of a generation of musicians who would go on to greater, international fame with their later groups (the Bee Gees, AC/DC, Little River Band, and more). Wild About You! includes chapters on 35 bands that made the scene, as well as the editors' list of the top 100 beat and garage songs of the era. Heavily illustrated throughout, and with a detailed discography, this is the definitive work on these bands, and compulsory reading for 60s obsessives and garage band enthusiasts worldwide.