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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.