All these tales take place in fantastic, eerie landscapes and are narrated in surreal, stylized voices. Carrington (House of Fear, etc.) creates not characters and situations, but abstract concepts, which often result in stories that lack warmth and the power to engage. The effect is intellectually impressive but emotionally unsatisfying. In the pieces that do come to life, though, the abstract merges with reality in a chillingly mesmerizing blend. In "White Rabbits," after a first visit to her mysterious, leprous neighbors in New York, the narrator concludes her frightful tale: "I stumbled and ran, choking with horror; some unholy curiosity made me look over my shoulder... and I saw her waving... and as she waved... her fingers fell off and dropped to the ground like shooting stars." The novella "The Stone Door" is the highlight of the volume. The magically unfolding fable tells of Zacharias, a 20th century Hungarian Jew who is destined to voyage beyond the boundaries of time to the shores of ancient Mesopotamia, and open the great stone door of the mountain Kescke to release his true love. This modern fairy tale burns with the passion and purpose that is often missing in the shorter, intellectualized works. Illustrated.

    Coot cat Reverend Ivan Stang, high holy of the Church of the SubGenius, has compiled a bestiary of American creeps and crazies so that you can write to them and receive mail that is weird, horrible, wonderfully absurd, or a combination of all three. Each entry has a paragraph or two and the last known mailing address of some fringe loonies. The book is only current through 1988, though; the only thing wrong with it is that it's high time for an update--with URLs, of course. Let's see ... there are catalogs of perpetual motion machines; brochures from South American flying saucer cults; something called "The Battle Cry of Aggressive Christianity" (Christian, not likely--aggressive, you bet); and bizarre roundups such as "News of the Weird," the Church of Beaver Cleaver, and so on. What makes this book so funny is the author's willingness to list (and ridicule) any group, no matter how repulsive. This means, too, that High Weirdness contains a group to offend everyone; consider yourself warned. In fact, if you aren't offended by some of these groups, you must be pretty offensive yourself. So there.

    Both exasperating and moving, cherished by its readers, it has its origins in the author's attempt to come to terms with the death of his young wife Alix, whose presence both haunts and gives meaning to every page. Having failed to write his intended novel (The Great Fire of London), instead Roubaud creates a book that is about that failure, but in the process opens up the world of the creative process. This novel stands as a lyrical counterpart of the great postmodern masterpieces by fellow Oulipians Georges Perec and Italo Calvino. First published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1991, now available again.

    Though he was the writer most admired within the surrealist group itself, very little of his work has been previously translated. This, the first authorized collection, assembles his finest work—his novel, Death to Pigs and to the Field of Glory, poems, polemical and critical writings, and unclassifiable works like "Natural History" and "The Round-the-World Calendar of Tolerable Inventions."This volume will also include the first detailed biography of Péret to appear in English, based on sources only recently brought to light. Octavio Paz has described Péret's writings as "among the most original and most savage of our era." Breton wrote, "Humor here gushes from its source."At last, the source is available in English.

    A limited hardback of 50 copies only, in full colour throughout, and with introduction and notes newly translated into English. Also includes a full mini-gallery of the original EIMEI NIJUHASSHUUKU.THE NEW ATROCITIES IN BLOOD has never before been published in English; the original Japanese edition is long out-of-print, and used copies fetch prices of $150 and upwards.

    A heroically scaled assault on narrative and causality.... Ulysses-like." KIRKUS"More science fiction than a detective novel, not the usual cynical detective novel, but the big story of the early twentieth century throughout Europe, with the streets and brothels of Budapest at its center.... A fascinating mosaic of the underworld of Budapest, as well as a fantastic heist story." International Noir Fiction