New Releases

Porcelain and Pink - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). Originally appearing in the January 1920 issue of The Smart Set, Porcelain and Pink was the earliest of the stories Fitzgerald would later reprint in a book-length collection. Porcelain and Pink is a comic one-act play. The plot involves a young woman in a bathtub and a case of mistaken identity. The story is a bit of a lark, a one-act burlesque that opens with a splendidly droll parody of stage directions, featuring a blue porcelain bathtub.

The Lees of Happiness - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). A newlywed young woman named Roxanne and her short story-writing husband Jeffery begin married life in a home of their own, looking forward to many years of happiness and success. However, sudden tragedy strikes when Jeffery becomes blind and paralyzed due to a blood clot in his brain.

Mr. Icky - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). Mr. Icky is a whimsical and lighthearted play written by F. Scott Fitzgerald centered around a man named Mr. Icky. In a quick and droll manner, interactions between the cast summarize several pivotal moments in Mr. Icky's life.

May Day - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). Published as a novelette in The Smart Set in July, 1920, May Day relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year, during the "general hysteria" which inaugurated the Jazz Age. The story uses the May Day Riots of 1919 as historical backdrop. During these events, as the lower-class is fighting for certain causes, a group of privileged Yale alumni meet for a dance.

Jack London's The Master of Mystery is set in a Native American fishing village in Alaska. A woman has lost her most valuable possession: the blankets of a deceased Englishman. The culprit must be found, but what makes matters more complicated is that the local shaman has fallen out of favor, forcing a feared shaman from outside the village to come to their aid.

The Jelly-Bean - one of the stories, which entered in a collection of eleven short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald Tales of the Jazz Age (1922). This is a Southern story, with the setting laid in the small Lily of Tarleton, Georgia. Fitzgerald wrote that he had "a profound affection for Tarleton, but somehow whenever I write a story about it I receive letters from all over the South denouncing me in no uncertain terms." Written shortly after his first novel was published, the author also collaborated with his wife on certain scenes.

Il Sud degli Stati Uniti è un luogo fondato su fatti di sangue e di oblio. Titus Crown, ex agente dell'FBI e primo sceriffo nero della contea di Charon, Virginia, ha sempre vissuto questa verità sulla sua pelle. E a un anno esatto dalla nomina, in quella che tutti considerano una cittadina tranquilla, l'antica violenza riemerge: un insegnante di liceo viene ucciso con un colpo di fucile da un ex studente, Latrell Macdonald, subito abbattuto da un agente sui gradini della scuola. Prima di morire, il giovane ha il tempo di urlare un'ultima frase: "Guardategli nel telefono".

Tradotti per la prima volta in italiano da Raul Ciannella, questi nove racconti rappresentano una selezione della migliore fantascienza contemporanea spagnola e latino-americana. Il tema che unisce le storie di quest’antologia è il corpo: corpo biopolitico e artificiale, umano e animale, desiderato e rifiutato. María Angulo Ardoy descrive le vicende di due scienziati giapponesi in pensione, ridotti a esuberi in un paese che non si cura più degli anziani. César Mallorquí intreccia le storie parallele di un cane pastore e un sistema di sorveglianza satellitare costretto a infrangere i limiti della sua stessa programmazione.

Quante vite può contenere una sola esistenza? Quando Hero De Vera arriva negli Stati Uniti dalle Filippine, dove è nata e cresciuta, ne ha già attraversate molte: a dispetto del silenzio ostinato, i suoi pollici rotti parlano di un passato tutt'altro che semplice. Il suo mutismo si deve a una lunga abitudine, ma anche alla volontà di concentrarsi sulla costruzione di una nuova vita, nella comunità filippina in California dove è emigrata grazie all'aiuto dei suoi zii, Paz e Pol: anche loro si sono lasciati alle spalle traumi e dolori che ancora li inseguono, con un carico di ricordi, affetti, responsabilità di cui non riescono a liberarsi.

Efren “Chino” Flores has just moved back to the Bay Area from Seattle, jumping from sublet to sublet. In Washington, he was a beloved middle school biology teacher with a loving wife and a child on the way until a stunning loss changed his life. Now he’s working temp jobs and struggling to put himself back out into the world. But there to nurture Chino is a coterie of new and old friends and lovers who form a protective web around him.

A favorite of longtime Harry Crews fans, The Knockout Artist (1988) portrays Eugene Talmadge Biggs, a young boxer from rural Georgia whose champion rise is diverted by a vulnerability, or gift, for knocking himself unconscious. As he begins to exploit his talents, the notorious Knockout Artist journeys a hero’s descent into the New Orleans underworld and meets characters who have long since checked their morals at the door. The unforgettable climax shows Crews at his virtuoso best, when Eugene confronts his truth, and sets out to claim his freedom and win his own self-respect.

La lista de sospechosos de tanta desgracia y vergüenza nacional incluye al presidente Plutarco Elías Calles, al fundador de la crom, Luis N. Morones, a la renombrada madre Conchita, y a una serie de oscuros personajes encumbrados del clero de México, quienes organizaron un boicot comercial a nivel nacional para poner de rodillas al gobierno y cerraron los templos para privar de consuelo espiritual a la feligresía y enardecerla.

Mink is a witness, a shape shifter, compelled to follow the story that has ensnared Celia and her village, on the West coast of Vancouver Island in Nuu’Chahlnuth territory. Celia is a seer who—despite being convinced she’s a little “off”—must heal her village with the assistance of her sister, her mother and father, and her nephews. While mink is visiting, a double-headed sea serpent falls off the house front during a fierce storm. The old snake, ostracized from the village decades earlier, has left his terrible influence on Amos, a residential school survivor.

This debut collection of poems, composed with no thought to commercial publication and discovered by Green Writers Press by happenstance, addresses events in the poet's life that every listener can relate to—friendships, the beginning, middle, and end of romantic relationships, and the death of a loved one. And they do so with “stiletto-sharp” metaphors—“rosebuds stillborn in the falling snow”—and wry observations —“Trying Again: Like an old shoe comfortable for a while but still causing blisters”—that evoke from the listener a knowing nod and sometimes an outright laugh.

Marcellus, le poulpe grognon aux cœurs tendres. Les pieuvres sont des créatures remarquables. Ce n'est pas Marcellus, pensionnaire de l'aquarium de Sowell Bay, qui dirait le contraire. Avec ses aptitudes extraordinaires, il a vite compris comment s'extraire de son bassin pour aller fureter dans la cafétéria –; mais jamais il n'aurait envisagé de lever un tentacule pour aider ces humains limités qui l'entourent.

Dr. Wolfgang Pike would love nothing more than to finish the requiem he’s composing for his late wife, but the ending seems as hopeless as the patients dying a hundred yards away at the Waverly Hills Tuberculosis sanatorium. If he can’t ease his own pain with music, he tries to ease theirs—but his boss thinks music is a waste, and in 1920s Louisville, the specter of racial tensions looms over everything. When a retired concert pianist arrives, Wolfgang is thrust into an orchestra of the most extraordinary kind that emerges to change everything.

It’s taken Chef Josie Babineaux six months to reconcile the debts left from her husband Brian’s gambling along with her broken heart. But now with a promising tourist season heating up and a travel magazine declaring her the spice queen of the bayou, she may be able to save her family’s historic Cajun restaurant. Repairing her relationship with her daughter, Minnow, while hiding the true reason she left her husband is a bigger issue.

Jack Kerouac’s archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work published in his lifetime there has been a rich stream of posthumous writing that is far from tapped. This collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive, and as a companion to Paul Maher Jr.'s Becoming Kerouac, spans Kerouac’s adult life, from a journal written at age seventeen to autobiographical reflections a few years before his death.

When summoned to Georgetown, South Carolina, sisters Mariah Clark and Sabrina Holland both assume their ailing grandfather's health has gotten worse. Neither expects their grandmother's undeniable request—save the family restaurant. Mariah is at a crossroad in her life. After being dumped by her husband and forced to walk away from their diner that she helped rescue from bankruptcy, bitter feelings consume her. Even though the restaurant has been in the family for eighty-six years, giving her all to another struggling business isn't something she wants to do.

Ernesto and Elena Vega arrive in Mexico City where Ernesto works on a construction site until he is discovered by a local lucha libre trainer. At a time when luchadores—Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes—were treated as daredevils or rockstars, Ernesto finds fame as El Rey Coyote, rapidly gaining name recognition across Mexico. Years later, in East Los Angeles Freddy Vega is struggling to save his father’s gym while Freddy’s own son Julian is searching for professional and romantic fulfillment as a Mexican American gay man refusing to be defined by stereotypes.