He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a customized Jaguar hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life. She liberates trees from city sidewalks and transplants them to the forest, paints smiles on the faces of church statues, and “borrows” cars to remind their owners that life is fleeting—here today, gone tomorrow! A chance meeting between the two turns into a madcap, whirlwind romance, and Harold learns that life is worth living. Harold and Maude started as Colin Higgins’ master’s thesis at UCLA Film School, and the script was purchased by Paramount. The film, directed by Hal Ashby, was released in 1971 and it bombed. But soon this quirky, dark comedy began being shown on college campuses and at midnight-movie theaters, and it gained a loyal cult following. This novelization was written by Higgins and published shortly after the film’s release but has been out of print for more than 30 years. Even fans who have seen the movie dozens of times will find this companion valuable, as it gives fresh elements to watch for and answers many of the film’s unresolved questions.

    Life's losers, an astonishing number of whom seem to be writers, can bring their manuscripts to the library, where they will be welcomed, registered and shelved. They will not be read, but they will be cherished. In comes Vida, with her manuscript. Her book is about her gorgeous body, in which she feels uncomfortable. The librarian makes her feel comfortable, and together they live in the back of the library until the trip to Tijuana changes them in ways neither of them had ever expected.

    ...y no se lo trago la tierra won the first national award for Chicano literature in 1970 and has become the standard literary text for Hispanic literature classes throughout the country. It is now an award-winning, motion picture entitled And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him.... and the Earth did not devour him / Tomás Rivera --from Voices of the fields: children of migrant farmworkers tell their stories / S. Beth Atkin --Christmas / Langston Hughes --Children for hire / Verena Dobnik and Ted Anthony --First confession / Frank O'Connor --Aria: a memoir of a bilingual childhood / Richard Rodriguez

    A man is distressed. A thief scampers over rooftops. A child is in danger. A harangued salesclerk weeps. A dog save the day.The intriguing story of The Sopping Thursday is unlike any other Edward Gorey book, both because of its unique gray-and-black illustrations and because it has a happy ending (if one is to dismiss any worry about the child featured in the last frame). In just thirty images and thirty short lines of text, Gorey manages to create a complex tableau of characters and a plot worthy of film noir.

    

    Trouble I owed. Trouble I’m glad I had.” This is Hanaway speaking. Hanaway—a new kind of hero for the Old West. He’s tall, long-jawed, stubble-bearded, covered with dust. He ain’t handsome but he’s pleasant. Even when he rides into a Cowtown on a dead man’s errand: clean up the dirty business surrounding the Kittrick Consolidated Gold Mine. Nothing stops Hanaway—not the sheriff, not the town, not a killer, not even a pretty little lady named Carrie. Man From the Desert, Luke Short’s engrossing novel of a big man with a big conscience—as big as the West.

    Omnibus of three novels.

    This collection of her inspirational writings reflects faith and wisdom distilled from a lifetime of experience.

    Caught between the indifference of her father, the excitement of her social-climbing mother, and her prodigal boyfriend's militancy, Yoruba persuades her sister debutantes to challenge the aging doyennes in one of the most sidesplitting scenes in American literature.Nominated for a Pulitzer in 1972, Killens's uproarious satire captures the conflicts within black society in the 1960s. The Cotillion is the fourth title in Coffee House Press's acclaimed Black Arts Movement series.John Oliver Killens was born in Macon, Georgia in 1916. Co-founder of the Harlem Writers Guild, he taught at Howard and Columbia Universities. His other novels include And Then We Heard the Thunder, and The Great Black Russian.