Name: Some Stupid Glow
Brand: TJ Fuller
Price: 16.95 USD
Availability: InStock

TJ Fuller

Some Stupid Glow

$16.95

The characters in TJ Fuller’s debut collection are desperate. They want their lives to mean something. They seek solace in work, validation and hope in others. And they fail. A lot. The songs they sing us hit home—and they hit hard—but not without humor, grace, and some straight-up weirdness.

At times speculative and/or surreal, these stories set in the Pacific Northwest feature as many Philip Seymour Hoffmans as you can imagine, even more dream versions of yourself, aging backyard wrestlers, homeless gamblers, and much more. Let TJ tell you some tales you won’t soon forget.

Cover image for Some Stupid Glow, isbn: 9781943888313

Brian Costello

The Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs

$12.95

The Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs is a satirical, riotous story of a band trapped in suburbia and bent on changing the world. A frenzied "scene" whips up around them as they gain popularity, and the band members begin thinking big. It's a hilarious, crazy send-up of self-destructive musicians.

Cover image for The Enchanters vs. Sprawlburg Springs, isbn: 9780977199204

Keegan Jennings Goodman

The Tennessee Highway Death Chant

$13.95

In a purgatory at the banks of the Hiwasee River in southeastern Tennessee, two teenagers the garrulous John Stone and the young Jenny Evenene barrel through an endless night in a Firebird Trans Am. Jenny wakes each morning, the same morning, and chronicles the events of her final day, her memory reaching back into the recesses of mythical time, recollecting cosmogonies, eschatologies, and metamorphoses that mingle with the details of her violent end. As the two heroes drive through the night, drinking cold American beer and listening to the soothing tunes of the country music station, the dramatis personae of the process of decomposition encroach upon them from the darkness beyond the headlights: the turkey vultures that soar above them, baited by decaying corpses, are at once the successors of the sacred buzzard whose talons first massaged the earth into being and the double of the screaming chicken emblazoned on the hood of the Firebird, which is itself at once the illustrious automobile of teenage dreams, vehicle of transmigrating souls, and ancient phoenix, millennial sigil of the sun, of biochemical resurrections, and Heraclitean thunderbolt who steers all things.

Cover image for The Tennessee Highway Death Chant, isbn: 9780983186380

Susannah Felts

This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record

$9.95

When the school year at tony Nashville Arts and Science ends, Vaughn Vance ditches her upper class friends for a summer of solitude. Content to be alone and work on her photography, Vaughn’s seclusion is disrupted when she meets her new neighbor, Sophie Birch. The two form a tentative friendship, hanging out at Dragon Park with the rest of Nashville’s teens. There, the relationship deepens: Sophie becomes the subject of Vaughn’s artistic experiments and Vaughn becomes the subject of Sophie’s social experimentation as she pushes Vaughn to loosen up and let down her guard. After a fight with her mother, Sophie moves in with Vaughn and her academic parents who embrace Sophie’s wild side until the girls push each other a step too far. In her debut novel, Susannah Felts perfectly captures the feel of growing up Southern-style, the universal push-pull of adolescent limit testing, and, above all, the intoxicating power that comes with burgeoning creativity.

Cover image for This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record, isbn: 9780977199242

Mairead Case

Tiny

$14.95

Tiny is a contemporary, poetic retelling of Sophocles' Antigone, set in the mossy greens and foggy grays of the Pacific Northwest. Instead of two brothers who kill each other in a civil war, Tiny has a brother who kills himself after coming home from a far-away war. Tiny is a teenage girl, and so is understandably messed up by death, she also understands it in a way that her dad and the government just can't. Tiny misses her brother, forever, but—with the help of her best friend Izzy, boyfriend Hank, and a collective dance night held in an old artificial limb store—she escapes freezing herself in grief, too. Using different perspectives and desires, facts from plants and history, and brass knuckles and Frankie Knuckles, Tiny wonders how we mourn and move, in time.

Cover image for Tiny, isbn: 9781943888221

Samia Saleem

Degrees of Separation

$24.95

Degrees of Separation features graphic designers living in, originating from, or connected to New Orleans, Louisiana. It contains 33 detachable postcards that visually articulate the intricate nature of people’s experiences and reflections upon hurricane Katrina and its devastating aftermath. The book fits neatly into a customized sleeve featuring a typographic representation of the thematic content.

Cover image for Degrees of Separation, isbn: 9780977199228

Jonathan Messinger

Hiding Out

$13.95

Hiding Out is a collection of hilarious, sparkling stories about people avoiding the consequences of their poor decisions. A jilted lover dresses as a robot to win back the heart of an ex-girlfriend. A man builds a time machine to embrace the identity he always denied. Playful and empathic, these misadventures feature lonely hearts failing terribly to make a connection.

Cover image for Hiding Out, isbn: 9780977199235

Keegan Jennings Goodman

The Tennessee Highway Death Chant

$10.00

In a purgatory at the banks of the Hiwasee River in Southeastern Tennessee, two teenagersthe garrulous John Stone and the young Jenny Evenenebarrel through an endless night in a Firebird Trans Am. Jenny wakes each morning, the same morning, and chronicles the events of her final day, her memory reaching back into the recesses of mythical time, recollecting cosmogonies, eschatologies, and metamorphoses that mingle with the details of her violent end. As the two heroes drive through the night, drinking cold American beer and listening to the soothing tunes of the country music station, the dramatis personae of the process of decomposition encroach upon them from the darkness beyond the headlights: the turkey vultures that soar above them, baited by decaying corpses, are at once the successors of the sacred buzzard whose talons first massaged the earth into being and the double of the screaming chicken emblazoned on the hood of the Firebird, which is itself at once the illustrious automobile of teenage dreams, vehicle of transmigrating souls, and ancient phoenix, millennial sigil of the sun, of biochemical resurrections, and Heraclitean thunderbolt who steers all things.

Cover image for The Tennessee Highway Death Chant, isbn: 9781943888061

Amelia Gray

AM/PM

$12.95

If anything's going to save the characters in Amelia Gray's debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it's a John Mayer concert tee. In AM/PM, impish humor and cutting insight are on full display. Readers tour the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes, and volcano love. June wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard falls in love with a chaise lounge; Betty insists everything except flowers are a symbol of her love for her husband; Andrew talks to his house in times of crisis. Written every morning and night for two months, these brief vignettes (50 to 100 words) recall Donald Barthelme in their whimsy and subtle yet powerful emotions. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens, AM/PM mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original work of fiction.

Cover image for AM/PM, isbn: 9780982580851

Jeff Parker

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion

$9.99

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion is a collection of found poems composed of the words of professional athletes.

The content of post-game interviews and sports chatter is so often meaningless, if not insufferable, and yet there are athletes like Metta World Peace who transcend lame clichés and rote patter, who use language in surprising ways, who can be funny and shocking and insightful and alarmingly sincere pure poetry. Muhammad Ali offered dazzling displays of lexical wizardry, and Allen Iverson’s infamous practice” rant shifted the post-game press conference from the banal to the absurd.

This book is a celebration of these rare and exceptional moments. Various poetic forms and line-breaks highlight or, in the words of Deion Sanders, deem to set a candor on” the sophisticated, sublime, and surprising performances of language made by professional athletes.

Cover image for Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion, isbn: 9781943888030

Tim Kinsella

The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense

$9.99

When you feel life is a cliche, do you fight back? Tim Kinsella's strange, dream-like debut novel is filled with painfully aware characters, families, and outcasts caught in inherited rhythms of cruelty and ambivalence. Dark secrets lurk when three siblings gather for a funeral: a thoughtful dancer back at her bar, a bitter father working in a toothpaste factory, and a fist-fight addict struggling to keep his nose clean. Across town, boy is locked up in a delusional man's home. Meanwhile, a teenage runaway looks for a new life in The Legendary Shhh, a strip club recently passed down to an unprepared heir. There, in the back room, is the only escape from these derailed lives: a karaoke machine. The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense reveals the honesty that can only be heard while singing someone else's song.

Cover image for The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense, isbn: 9780983186311

John Henry IV Timmis

From the Inside

$14.95

The Menninger Foundation is a clinic, sanatorium, and psychiatric school founded in 1919. Known as a beacon of health and reform, there have also been long-running rumors of controversy, abuse, and manipulation. Legendary Hollywood starlets like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland sought treatment there, and still today, many celebrities secretly spend time there.

John Henry Timmis IV, the son of a wealthy family from Chicago’s northern suburbs, was diagnosed a psychopath after a string of rebellious misdemeanors as a teenager—possession of marijuana, prostitution, and theft. Timmis frequented the Menninger Clinic between the ages of 15 and 17. He repeatedly ran away and got recaptured, was held in solitary for extended periods, and forced to endure excruciatingly dull group therapy sessions. He recounts these experiences with adolescent braggadocio, blurring intensely personal confessions and exaggerated fantasies, in hopes of mythologizing himself and claiming a spot in the canon of rebellious youth.

Later in life, as JTIV, Timmis recorded sincere autobiographical songs in a style he deemed “Destructo-Rock,” and was acknowledged in The Guinness Book of World Records for creating the longest film ever made, The Cure for Insomnia. He passed away in 2002, leaving us his songs, the film, and this document to piece together his wild and bizarre story.

Cover image for From the Inside, isbn: 9781943888092

Amelia Gray

AM/PM

$12.95

If anything's going to save the characters in Amelia Gray's debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it's a John Mayer concert tee. In AM/PM, impish humor and cutting insight are on full display. Readers tour the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes, and volcano love. June wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard falls in love with a chaise lounge; Betty insists everything except flowers are a symbol of her love for her husband; Andrew talks to his house in times of crisis. Written every morning and night for two months, these brief vignettes (50 to 100 words) recall Donald Barthelme in their whimsy and subtle yet powerful emotions. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens, AM/PM mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original work of fiction.

Cover image for AM/PM, isbn: 9780977199273

Robert Ryan

The Inborn Absolute

$60.00

This monograph delves into the career of celebrated artist Robert Ryan. From his early roots as a musician and painter, he discovered tattooing and quickly became one of the preeminent artists in that realm. His work reveals a deep mastery of the American tattooing tradition while creating a mystical and fantastic world full of unique takes on Eastern religious iconography. The book covers two decades of stunning paintings & tattoos, interviews with art and music luminaries about his work and subject matter, detailing Ryan’s personal journey and progression as an artist.

Cover image for The Inborn Absolute, isbn: 9781943888009

William M. Arkin

History in One Act

$24.95

From national security expert, bestselling author, and award-winning journalist William Arkin comes the debut novel, History in One Act. It's a fresh retelling of 9/11, filled with revelation and insight that will shock readers into the world of al Qaeda as it grows in strength and moves forward to undertake its world-changing attacks. And it infiltrates the secret domain of American intelligence, which has its own plans, seeking to use what is coming as the means to achieve its own holy grail of national security. We all know how it ends, but as lives meet and events unfold, we come to understand that 9/11 was neither the beginning nor the end, that everyone has a reason for what they do, that individuals do matter—and, indeed, that history can be created in one act. Arkin answers questions nobody seems to be asking—even 20 years later: Why did it happen? Who were these people? Can we ever hope to defeat terrorism if we don’t understand those who wish us harm? In this unique work of “friction” (fully footnoted and based on original documents), an alternate record of true history is presented, not just peering into the minds of those involved, but into our own world—one that challenges our views of the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and the events of that momentous day. Arkin’s formidable career, as Army intelligence analyst, as human rights scholar, as military consultant, and finally as journalist, uniquely equips him to bridge two very different worlds. His expert telling shows how individuals can now wage war, where disruption comes from small groups rather than organized governments, and where nobody's hands are clean. He forces the reader to grapple with a new understanding for why this world-changing attack happened in the first place, and how our indifference to the human strivings and grievances of the perpetrators made us blind then and makes us blind today.

Cover image for History in One Act, isbn: 9781943888245

Todd Dills

Sons of the Rapture

$12.95

Billy Jones and his dad have a score to settle. Up in Chicago, Billy drowns his past in booze. In South Carolina, his father saddles up for a drive to reclaim him. Caught in this perfect storm is a ragged assortment of savants: shape-shifting doctor, despairingly bisexual bombshell, tiara-crowned trumpeter, zombie senator.

Cover image for Sons of the Rapture, isbn: 9780977199211

Blake Butler

Scorch Atlas

$14.95

In this striking novel-in-stories, a series of strange apocalypses have hit America. Entire neighborhoods drown in mud, glass rains from the sky, birds speak gibberish, and parents of young children disappear. Millions starve while others grow coats of mold. But a few are able to survive and find a light in the aftermath, illuminating what we’ve become. In The Disappeared,” a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. A boy swells to fill his parents’ ransacked attic in The Ruined Child.” Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler’s full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William H. Gass, yet imbued with Butler's own vision of the apocalyptic and bizarre.

Cover image for Scorch Atlas, isbn: 9780977199280

Devendra Banhart

Weeping Gang Bliss Void Yab-Yum

$17.95

This poetry collection is at turns surreal, pious, silly, and heartbreaking, but always true to its own logic, even as it creates and expands that logic as it goes. It's the most personal work Devendra Banhart has ever created.
It weaves together awed autobiographical sketches so that a distinct sensibility and experience emerge, while simultaneously setting the reader free to traverse an imaginative wilderness. The poems each stand on their own as distinct and bizarre singular shards, while also accruing resonance.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be Devendra? Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be yourself? This book.

Cover image for Weeping Gang Bliss Void Yab-Yum, isbn: 9781943888184

Robert Ryan

The Inborn Absolute

$30.00

This monograph delves into the career of celebrated artist Robert Ryan. From his early roots as a musician and painter, he discovered tattooing and quickly became one of the preeminent artists in that realm. His work reveals a deep mastery of the American tattooing tradition while creating a mystical and fantastic world full of unique takes on Eastern religious iconography. The book covers two decades of stunning paintings & tattoos, interviews with art and music luminaries about his work and subject matter, detailing Ryan’s personal journey and progression as an artist.

Cover image for The Inborn Absolute, isbn: 9781943888283

Alyson Beaton

Grow

$16.95

Author Alyson Beaton and illustrator K. J. Bradley created Grow to take a child (2 to 5 years of age) through a typical day, implementing a "normal" routine that is environmentally and socially sound. The sharply designed book helps parents teach children very early on how easy it is to take steps for a cleaner earth. The text focuses on words like "share" and "grow" to instill basic social concepts that resound in larger impacts, and the images encourage the child to actively participate in the daily routine and timeline that follows along the bottom of the pages. Grow was based on the idea that as a child's vocabulary develops, he or she makes connections to specific items. For example, if a child associates the word "coffee" with "Starbucks" the word "Starbucks" will likely be an association for life. Grow hopes to instill brandless, positive routines that can benefit community, health, and an awareness of self that's connected to the larger world.

Cover image for Grow, isbn: 9780977199266

Christian TeBordo

The Awful Possibilities

$14.95

After three novels, dynamic and masterful young writer Christian TeBordo, has finally collected his best short stories in The Awful Possibilities. A girl among kidney thieves masters the art of forgetting. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic child-rearing. A teen in Brooklyn, Iowa, deals with the fallout of his brother's rise to hip hop fame. Populated with the people we've all heard whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door, these brilliantly strange set pieces explode the boundaries of short fiction and locate the awe in the awful possibilities we could never have imagined.

Cover image for The Awful Possibilities, isbn: 9780977199297

Joel Craig

MAKE X

$10.00

MAKE X collects memorable work published throughout the last ten years by beloved Chicago literary magazine MAKE. Through fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and reviews, alongside new visual art portfolios, interviews, and stories from the editors, MAKE X honors a decade of storytelling and literary rabble-rousing in Chicago.

Cover image for MAKE X, isbn: 9781943888078

Tim Kinsella

Sunshine on an Open Tomb

$16.95

Set in fall 1988, Sunshine On An Open Tomb shuttles between two storylines: the creation of The CIA as a result of the Texas/Kingdom oil connection, and a love triangle involving the moon. Our narrator is the brooding runt of a political dynasty whose father is about to be appointed Prez. He is thoughtful, but has trouble expressing himself due to his many physical defects as a result of inbreeding. Desperate for content at the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, even our narrator is suddenly of interest to The Media. So after years of living freely among The Barbarians, The Family hides him away in one of its secret hideouts. Exhausted by the shape-shifting estate and his irresolvable love life, our narrator cloisters himself deep in the estate’s bunker and constructs a tomb around himself out of soup cans. Here he gets to work correcting the best-selling, so-called objective biography of The Family.

Cover image for Sunshine on an Open Tomb, isbn: 9780983186373

Mairead Case

Tiny

$9.99

Tiny is a contemporary, poetic retelling of Sophocles' Antigone, set in the mossy greens and foggy grays of the Pacific Northwest. Instead of two brothers who kill each other in a civil war, Tiny has a brother who kills himself after coming home from a far-away war. Tiny is a teenage girl, and so is understandably messed up by death, she also understands it in a way that her dad and the government just can't. Tiny misses her brother, forever, but—with the help of her best friend Izzy, boyfriend Hank, and a collective dance night held in an old artificial limb store—she escapes freezing herself in grief, too. Using different perspectives and desires, facts from plants and history, and brass knuckles and Frankie Knuckles, Tiny wonders how we mourn and move, in time.

Cover image for Tiny, isbn: 9781943888238

Leyna Krow

I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking

$9.99

In I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking the strange and the mundane collide. These are stories of strange experiences set in familiar places, and of familiar experiences set in strange places. Many of the pieces in I’m Fine take place close to home, in suburban neighborhoods, or rural communities. The settings are conventional, yet something unexpected, or even magical, is occurring. In one piece, a couple speculates about random objects that appear without reason in their backyard. In another, neighbors try to figure out if a local meth dealer is keeping a live tiger captive on his property. In other pieces, it’s the setting that’s fantastical, but the characters’ reactions that remain ordinary, like in the titular story where a journalist lost at sea and hunted by a mythical ocean creature admits to struggling with loneliness and isolation in much the same way he does even when he’s safe at home.

Although they are not directly linked by any specific character, the pieces in this collection are bound through reoccurring imagery and a shared theme of protagonists in emotional peril. There are unexpected appearances and disappearances, movement of inanimate objects, the search for something lost, the finding of something unusual. There are prophesies, dreams, unidentifiable creatures, and environmental catastrophes on a scale both large and small. There are action figures and octopuses, sullen teenagers and missing cats. At their core, these stories are imbued with mystery, oddity, humor, and empathy. They each stand on their own, but mean considerably more when read together.

Cover image for I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking, isbn: 9781943888122

Patrick Somerville

The Universe in Miniature in Miniature

$14.95

In this genre-busting book from award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville characters, stories, and stray thoughts revolve around the The Machine of Understanding Other People,” the story of a Chicago man who is bequeathed a supernatural helmet that allows him to experience the inner worlds of those around him. Through his lonely lens we peer into the mind of an art student grappling with ennui, ethics and empathy as she comes to terms with her own beliefs in a godless world. We telescope out to the story of idiot extraterrestrials struggling to pilot a complicated spaceship. We follow a retired mercenary as he tries to save his marriage and questions his life abroad. Mind-bending and cracklingly new, Somerville’s broadly appealing and uniquely imaginative constructions probe the outer reaches of sympathy, death, and love in a world seen from the inside out.

Cover image for The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, isbn: 9780982580813

Juliana Hyrri

The Nightingale That Never Sang

$18.95

For children, the world is possibility. But grown-ups would do well to remember that possibility extends to places full of light and steeped in darkness, with plenty of other spaces in between. Children are human after all, and as such, they are sometimes innocent, sometimes cruel, and frequently impossible for others to truly understand.
In her debut graphic novel, The Nightingale That Never Sang, Juliana Hyrri gives us stories that are stolen from real life, seen through a child’s eyes—and do not look away when it comes to the scary parts. If it can happen out there, it can happen within these pages, too.
Her visual style comprises the smudged, scribbled, and smooth lines one might expect from a (very) young artist, but also pulsing, boundless backgrounds painted with near-manic energy. If there is any true purity to be found here, it’s only in the reflection of how a child feels, before those feelings are tempered with adult ideas of what ought to be revealed in polite conversation.
Nightingale takes us along for the ride as children discover and dream their world, through glimpses of tadpoles and tent forts, field trips and forest ventures, stray cats and sleepovers. On the surface, these are scenes anyone might recognize from their own childhood, but it’s really a book filled with the blank spaces that grown-ups won’t talk about, scribbled over with childhood logic.

Cover image for The Nightingale That Never Sang, isbn: 9781943888269

Joel Craig

MAKE X

$30.00

MAKE X collects memorable work published throughout the last ten years by beloved Chicago literary magazine MAKE. Through fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and reviews, alongside new visual art portfolios, interviews, and stories from the editors, MAKE X honors a decade of storytelling and literary rabble-rousing in Chicago.

Cover image for MAKE X, isbn: 9780983186397

Mairead Case

See You In The Morning

$13.95

See You In the Morning is a book about three 17-year-olds, Rosie, John, and the narrator, who take care of each other one summer in a small Midwestern town. Rosie is a mystic romantic whose dad earned so much money writing screenplays that she doesn’t need an after-school job. John, Rosie’s ex, works at the roller rink in a rabbit costume and takes care of his mom when she's tired after a day cutting hair. The narrator works at a bookstore and sometimes focuses so hard on their reading that they see polka dots take over the room. John is the narrator's best and oldest friend, so now the two of them must be in love, right? Because if they aren't, why stay in town? But if they aren't, who else will ever understand? What is love and how does it work? See You In the Morning happens at diners and house shows, in paragraph-shaped poems, and the narrator's angry, tender, colorful voice.

Cover image for See You In The Morning, isbn: 9780983186359

Hunter Kennedy

The Minus Times Collected: Twenty Years / Thirty Issues (1992?2012)

$16.95

Begun as an open letter to strangers and fellow misfits, The Minus Times grew to become a hand-typed literary magazine that showcased the next generation of American fiction. Contributors include Sam Lipsyte, David Berman, Patrick DeWitt, and Wells Tower, with illustrations by David Eggers and Brad Neely as well as interviews with Dan Clowes, Barry Hannah, and a yet-to-be-famous Stephen Colbert. With sly humor and striking illustrations, The Minus Times has earned a fervent following as much for its lack of literary pretension as its sporadic appearances on the newsstand. All thirty of the nearly-impossible-to-find issues of this improvised literary almanac are now assembled for the first time, typos and all.

Cover image for The Minus Times Collected: Twenty Years / Thirty Issues (1992?2012), isbn: 9780983186328

Brielle Brilliant

The Spud

$9.99

After murdering 12 people at a bakery in Driggs, Idaho, Anthony Paxton turns the gun on himself and shoots. In the aftermath, his brother works as a deliveryman, haunted by Anthony’s journey from founding the antisocial group Damning the Damned to killing all those people. The constant replaying of those memories is only interrupted once a girl from the local high school jumps into his delivery truck with a gun of her own and no clear agenda.
Brielle Brilliant’s debut is a flash-fiction novel for fans of Natural Born Killers and Badlands, thrusting them into a world of violence, guns, sex, and existentialism. With a form inspired by great indie cinema, the story unfolds in scenes associatively, delivering an emotionally wrenching ride alongside lusty teen rebellion.

Cover image for The Spud, isbn: 9781943888177

Leyna Krow

I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking

$15.95

In I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking the strange and the mundane collide. These are stories of strange experiences set in familiar places, and of familiar experiences set in strange places. Many of the pieces in I’m Fine take place close to home, in suburban neighborhoods, or rural communities. The settings are conventional, yet something unexpected, or even magical, is occurring. In one piece, a couple speculates about random objects that appear without reason in their backyard. In another, neighbors try to figure out if a local meth dealer is keeping a live tiger captive on his property. In other pieces, it’s the setting that’s fantastical, but the characters’ reactions that remain ordinary, like in the titular story where a journalist lost at sea and hunted by a mythical ocean creature admits to struggling with loneliness and isolation in much the same way he does even when he’s safe at home.

Although they are not directly linked by any specific character, the pieces in this collection are bound through reoccurring imagery and a shared theme of protagonists in emotional peril. There are unexpected appearances and disappearances, movement of inanimate objects, the search for something lost, the finding of something unusual. There are prophesies, dreams, unidentifiable creatures, and environmental catastrophes on a scale both large and small. There are action figures and octopuses, sullen teenagers and missing cats. At their core, these stories are imbued with mystery, oddity, humor, and empathy. They each stand on their own, but mean considerably more when read together.

Cover image for I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking, isbn: 9781943888085

Mairead Case

See You In The Morning

$9.99

See You In the Morning is a book about three 17-year-olds, Rosie, John, and the narrator, who take care of each other one summer in a small Midwestern town. Rosie is a mystic romantic whose dad earned so much money writing screenplays that she doesn’t need an after-school job. John, Rosie’s ex, works at the roller rink in a rabbit costume and takes care of his mom when she's tired after a day cutting hair. The narrator works at a bookstore and sometimes focuses so hard on their reading that they see polka dots take over the room. John is the narrator's best and oldest friend, so now the two of them must be in love, right? Because if they aren't, why stay in town? But if they aren't, who else will ever understand? What is love and how does it work? See You In the Morning happens at diners and house shows, in paragraph-shaped poems, and the narrator's angry, tender, colorful voice.

Cover image for See You In The Morning, isbn: 9781943888023

Brielle Brilliant

The Spud

$14.95

After murdering 12 people at a bakery in Driggs, Idaho, Anthony Paxton turns the gun on himself and shoots. In the aftermath, his brother works as a deliveryman, haunted by Anthony’s journey from founding the antisocial group Damning the Damned to killing all those people. The constant replaying of those memories is only interrupted once a girl from the local high school jumps into his delivery truck with a gun of her own and no clear agenda.
Brielle Brilliant’s debut is a flash-fiction novel for fans of Natural Born Killers and Badlands, thrusting them into a world of violence, guns, sex, and existentialism. With a form inspired by great indie cinema, the story unfolds in scenes associatively, delivering an emotionally wrenching ride alongside lusty teen rebellion.

Cover image for The Spud, isbn: 9781943888160

John Henry IV Timmis

From the Inside

$9.99

From the Inside is the autobiographical account of a rebellious adolescent's run-ins with—and attempted escapes from—the law, an abusive and uninterested family, the Menninger Clinic sanitarium, budding teenage sexuality, and, among the many other expected consequences of youthful deviance, the inner-workings of one’s own medicated and shifting mind. Much like the narrators of The Outsiders and Over the Edge before him, John Henry Timmis IV recounts these experiences with an adolescent braggadocio, blurring intensely personal confessions and exaggerated fantasies, in hopes of mythologizing himself and claiming a spot in the canon of rebellious youth. The major difference is: in Timmis's case, it all actually happened... Or did it? Timmis passed away in 2002 and no one in his family or those mentioned in the book (that could be found) agreed to comment on its authenticity. From the Inside has therefore been treated as a found object, left entirely unedited aside from the changing of names and an added introduction from Plastic Crimewave. It is ultimately up to you, the reader, to parse out what is man, myth, and self-assigned legend.

Cover image for From the Inside, isbn: 9781943888115

Lindsay Hunter

Daddy's

$14.95

Lindsay Hunter tells the stories no one else will in ways no one else can. In this down and dirty debut she draws vivid portraits of bad people in worse places. A woman struggles to survive her boyfriend's terror preparations. A wife finds that the key to her sex life lies in her dog’s electric collar. Two teenagers violently tip the scales of their friendship. A rising star of the new fast fiction, Hunter bares all before you can blink in her bold, beautiful stories. In this collection of slim southern gothics, she offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read.

Cover image for Daddy's, isbn: 9780982580882

Zachary Schomburg

Mammother

$9.99

The people of Pie Time are suffering from God’s Finger, a mysterious plague that leaves its victims dead with a big hole through their chests. In each hole is a random consumer product. Mano Medium, a sensitive, young cigarette-factory worker in love, does his part by quitting the factory to work double-time as Pie Time’s replacement barber and butcher, and by holding the things found in the holes of the newly dead. However, the more people die, the bigger Mano becomes. XO, the power-hungry corporation bent on overtaking Pie Time, and Father Mothers, the bumbling priest, have their own ideas about how to capitalize on God’s Finger. By contrast, and powered by honoring his own lost loves, Mano fights to resist this exploitation by teaching death to those who can’t afford to survive it. As Pie Time and Mano both grow irrevocably, Mano must make a decision about how he can best fit into his own life. With a large cast of unusual characters, each struggling with their own complex and tangled relationships to death, money, and love, Mammother is a fabulist's tale of how we hold on and how we let go in a rapidly growing world.

Cover image for Mammother, isbn: 9781943888139

Blake Butler

Scorch Atlas

$14.95

In this striking novel-in-stories, a series of strange apocalypses have hit America. Entire neighborhoods drown in mud, glass rains from the sky, birds speak gibberish, and parents of young children disappear. Millions starve while others grow coats of mold. But a few are able to survive and find a light in the aftermath, illuminating what we’ve become. In The Disappeared,” a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. A boy swells to fill his parents’ ransacked attic in The Ruined Child.” Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler’s full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William H. Gass, yet imbued with Butler's own vision of the apocalyptic and bizarre.

Cover image for Scorch Atlas, isbn: 9780982580868

Christian TeBordo

The Awful Possibilities

$14.95

After three novels, dynamic and masterful young writer Christian TeBordo, has finally collected his best short stories in The Awful Possibilities. A girl among kidney thieves masters the art of forgetting. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic child-rearing. A teen in Brooklyn, Iowa, deals with the fallout of his brother's rise to hip hop fame. Populated with the people we've all heard whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door, these brilliantly strange set pieces explode the boundaries of short fiction and locate the awe in the awful possibilities we could never have imagined.

Cover image for The Awful Possibilities, isbn: 9780982580875

Zachary Schomburg

Mammother

$17.95

The people of Pie Time are suffering from God’s Finger, a mysterious plague that leaves its victims dead with a big hole through their chests. In each hole is a random consumer product. Mano Medium, a sensitive, young cigarette-factory worker in love, does his part by quitting the factory to work double-time as Pie Time’s replacement barber and butcher, and by holding the things found in the holes of the newly dead. However, the more people die, the bigger Mano becomes. XO, the power-hungry corporation bent on overtaking Pie Time, and Father Mothers, the bumbling priest, have their own ideas about how to capitalize on God’s Finger. By contrast, and powered by honoring his own lost loves, Mano fights to resist this exploitation by teaching death to those who can’t afford to survive it. As Pie Time and Mano both grow irrevocably, Mano must make a decision about how he can best fit into his own life. With a large cast of unusual characters, each struggling with their own complex and tangled relationships to death, money, and love, Mammother is a fabulist's tale of how we hold on and how we let go in a rapidly growing world.

Cover image for Mammother, isbn: 9781943888108

Luc Dardenne

On the Back of Our Images

$21.95

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne are giants in contemporary world cinema, steadfastly radical in both principles and approach. Their films tackle social and political issues by focusing keenly on the intimate stories of individuals locked into their fates by unjust systems. Now available for the first time in English, this two volume set collects over 20 years of Luc's journals as the brothers work through their films, along with the shooting scripts of these films.
For creative people in any discipline, this is the document of a master artist’s mind at work, measuring sustained introspection against true and constant engagement in the lived world.
Filmmakers will get extended lessons on conceptualization, collaboration, and execution. Students and fans of contemporary cinema will gain insight to the thought and effort that's behind each image.

Cover image for On the Back of Our Images, isbn: 9781943888146

Jeff Parker

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion

$14.95

Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion is a collection of found poems composed of the words of professional athletes.

The content of post-game interviews and sports chatter is so often meaningless, if not insufferable, and yet there are athletes like Metta World Peace who transcend lame clichés and rote patter, who use language in surprising ways, who can be funny and shocking and insightful and alarmingly sincere pure poetry. Muhammad Ali offered dazzling displays of lexical wizardry, and Allen Iverson’s infamous practice” rant shifted the post-game press conference from the banal to the absurd.

This book is a celebration of these rare and exceptional moments. Various poetic forms and line-breaks highlight or, in the words of Deion Sanders, deem to set a candor on” the sophisticated, sublime, and surprising performances of language made by professional athletes.

Cover image for Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion, isbn: 9780983186342

Zach Plague

boring boring boring boring boring boring boring

$14.95

A mysterious gray book drives Ollister and Adelaide’s twisted po-mo relationship. When it goes missing, they go nuts: he plots revenge against art patriarch The Platypus while she obsesses over their anti-love affair. Meanwhile, the other art school scenesters experiment with bad drugs, bad sex, and bad ideas. When a punk named Punk shows up with a potent sex drug, the whole wild crowd gets caught up in the gravitational pull of The Platypus’ sinister White Ball, where a confused art terrorism cell threatens a ludicrous and hilarious implosion. With an unerring, unflinching eye for satire, Zach Plague’s brilliant hybrid of image and text lampoons the art world and those boring enough to fall into its traps. Featuring dynamic graphic text on every page, boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is an intrigue of mundane proportion.

Cover image for boring boring boring boring boring boring boring, isbn: 9780977199259

Cavar

Failure to Comply

$18.95

How far would you go to have real freedom? To have true autonomy of both mind and body? The narrator of Failure to Comply wants self-determination at all costs, and they want you to know what it did, in fact, cost them. Their story is just a little hard to convey, as they're not entirely sure where, or even when, they are.

Set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future, this literary sci-fi novel presents a world where humans have been unshackled from disease and their basest desires thanks to the genetic engineering and societal supervision of RSCH—an inscrutable entity with unimaginable power (including the ability to literally shape reality). In RSCH's march toward perfecting the species, however, there are "deviants" (including LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities) who are fighting for a different vision of humanity. But where can they find hope when horror abounds, projected into their own bodies and minds by RSCH?

Cover image for Failure to Comply, isbn: 9781943888290

Tim Kinsella

The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense

$14.95

Reunited for a funeral and leery of one another, a family compares splintered memories. Will bathes his grandmother. Mel gives her wig a haircut. Norman is not prepared to take over his father’s club. Jesse has never known how old he is. They each cope with limited options and murky desires. An irreducible collage, as intuitive as it is formal, The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense drifts between story lines and perspectives. Long bus rides through a post-industrial Gothic Midwest, Classic Rock, and compulsive brawls hum a requiem for the late night life of Stone Claw Grove.

Cover image for The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense, isbn: 9780983186304

Patrick Somerville

The Universe in Miniature in Miniature

$14.95

From award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville comes this genre-busting novel-in-stories that leaps between small-town suburbs and the outer reaches of outer-space. A cast of outcasts—including the world's angriest mercenary, a sad surrealist, and a messianic alcoholic lawyer—bind together in this surprisingly warm exploration of love and identity in the post-millennial world.

Cover image for The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, isbn: 9780982580899

Tim Kinsella

Sunshine on an Open Tomb

$9.99

Set in fall 1988, Sunshine On An Open Tomb shuttles between two storylines: the creation of The CIA as a result of the Texas/Kingdom oil connection, and a love triangle involving the moon. Our narrator is the brooding runt of a political dynasty whose father is about to be appointed Prez. He is thoughtful, but has trouble expressing himself due to his many physical defects as a result of inbreeding. Desperate for content at the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, even our narrator is suddenly of interest to The Media. So after years of living freely among The Barbarians, The Family hides him away in one of its secret hideouts. Exhausted by the shape-shifting estate and his irresolvable love life, our narrator cloisters himself deep in the estate’s bunker and constructs a tomb around himself out of soup cans. Here he gets to work correcting the best-selling, so-called objective biography of The Family.

Cover image for Sunshine on an Open Tomb, isbn: 9781943888054

Cavar

Failure to Comply

$9.99

How far would you go to have real freedom? To have true autonomy of both mind and body? The narrator of Failure to Comply wants self-determination at all costs, and they want you to know what it did, in fact, cost them. Their story is just a little hard to convey, as they're not entirely sure where, or even when, they are.

Set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future, this literary sci-fi novel presents a world where humans have been unshackled from disease and their basest desires thanks to the genetic engineering and societal supervision of RSCH—an inscrutable entity with unimaginable power (including the ability to literally shape reality). In RSCH's march toward perfecting the species, however, there are "deviants" (including LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities) who are fighting for a different vision of humanity. But where can they find hope when horror abounds, projected into their own bodies and minds by RSCH?