Moravagine


Blaise Cendrars - 1926
    Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire. Released from a hospital for the criminally insane by his starstruck psychiatrist (the narrator of the book), who foresees a companionship in crime that will also be an unprecedented scientific collaboration, Moravagine travels from Moscow to San Antonio to deepest Amazonia, engaged in schemes and scams as, among other things, terrorist, speculator, gold prospector, and pilot. He also enjoys a busy sideline in rape and murder. At last, the two friends return to Europe—just in time for World War I, when "the whole world was doing a Moravagine."This new edition of Cendrars's underground classic is the first in English to include the author's afterword, "How I Wrote Moravagine."

The Man with the Black Coat: Russia's Literature of the Absurd


Daniil Kharms - 1971
    It discloses a little-known tradition of absurdism that persisted during the Stalinist period, a testimony to both the hardiness of the Russian imagination in the face of socialist realism and the vitality of an important cultural and literary tradition.

The Best of Damon Runyon


Damon Runyon - 1945
    Stokes Company, February 24, 1938.

The Black Alchemist


Andrew Collins - 1988
    In 1985 Andrew Collins and a psychic colleague uncovered an inscribed spearhead, buried as part of an occult ritual. Claiming to have forged a telepathic link with its maker - a lone figure practising a dangerous form of black magic - the pair were directed to other desecrated holy places, unaware that their adversary was now hunting them, resulting in a confrontation leading to what have been described as disturbing displays of psychic powers. Then, in the early hours of 16th October 1987, as southern England was being hit by its first hurricane for more than two-and-a-half centuries, individuals across the country are said to have reported the same nightmare, revealing the hidden secrets of the hurricane and the power of "the black alchemist".

Krazy and Ignatz, 1916-1918: Love in a Kestle or Love in a Hut


George Herriman - 2010
    But now, with that publisher long gone and their Krazy Kat collections fetching record prices (some over $100!) among collectors, it’s time to go back and get every one of these comic-strip masterpieces back into print—re-scanned and re-retouched from original tearsheets, using 21st century digital resources. Fantagraphics will be collecting these first nine years of Sundays into three volumes comprising three years apiece, starting with this volume: the very first Sundays from 1916 through 1918, and incorporating all the original articles and special features from the first edition, including rare art, series editor Bill Blackbeard’s definitive historical overview “The Kat’s Kreation,” and updated and expanded “DeBaffler” endnotes explaining some of the arcana behind the strip’s jokes.Krazy Kat, with its eternally beguiling love triangle of kat/dog/mouse, its fantastically inventive language, and its haunting, minimalist desert décor, has consistently been rated the best comic strip ever created, and Fantagraphics’ award-winning series one of the best classic comic-strip reprint series ever published. Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918, the 11th of a projected 13 volumes collecting the entirety of the Sundays, brings us within a brick’s throw of finishing “The Komplete Kat Sundays” once and for all!

The Real Science Behind the X Files: Microbes, Meteorites, and Mutants


Anne Simon - 1999
    The science consultant with "The X-Files" takes an official and entertaining look at the science behind this sci-fi phenomenon, revealing many scientific facts that are even more bizarre than fiction.

The Desperate Hours


Joseph Hayes - 1954
    Suspense novel about a middle class family whose home is invaded by dangerous escaped convicts.

Twelve Creepy Tales


Edgar Allan PoePiotr Nater - 2012
    The Black Cat; The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven; The Tell Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, the Premature Burial and six others that are a shuddering delight to read and listen to. Turn off the lights, settle down and hear these stories read to you as only LibriVox readers can perform them. (Summary by Phil Chenevert)THE TELL-TALE HEART.THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMARTHE BLACK CAT.THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHERTHE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO.THE PREMATURE BURIALBERENICELIGEIAHOP-FROGTHE RAVENTHE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

Mount Analogue


René Daumal - 1952
    Daumal's symbolic mountain represents a way to truth that "cannot not exist," and his classic allegory of man's search for himself embraces the certainty that one can know and conquer one's own reality.

Nothing Nice to Say


Mitch Clem - 2008
    Enter Nothing Nice to Say. Mitch Clem's Nothing Nice to Say leaves no mohawked, leather-jacket-clad stone unturned in its mission to expose the awesomeness and the absurdity of punk culture. Sometimes esoteric and always hilarious, Nothing Nice is so punk you'd think the book was bound with safety pins.

The Works of Henry David Thoreau


Henry David Thoreau - 1942
    Works include:On the Duty of Civil DisobedienceA Plea for Captain John BrownWaldenWalkingA Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversWild Apples

The Island of the World


Michael D. O'Brien - 2007
    The central character is Josip Lasta, the son of an impoverished school teacher in a remote village high in the mountains of the Bosnian interior. As the novel begins, World War II is underway and the entire region of Yugoslavia is torn by conflicting factions: German and Italian occupying armies, and the rebel forces that resist themthe fascist Ustashe, Serb nationalist Chetniks, and Communist Partisans. As events gather momentum, hell breaks loose, and the young and the innocent are caught in the path of great evils; their only remaining strength is their religious faith and their families. For more than a century, the confused and highly inflammatory history of former Yugoslavia has been the subject of numerous books, many of them rife with revisionist history and propaganda. The peoples of the Balkans live on the border of three worlds: the Islamic, the orthodox Slavic East, and Catholic Europe, and as such they stand in the path of major world conflicts that are not only geo-political but fundamentally spiritual. This novel cuts to the core question: how does a person retain his identity, indeed his humanity, in absolutely dehumanizing situations? In the life of the central character, the author demonstrates that this will demand suffering and sacrifice, heroism and even holiness. When he is twelve years old, his entire world is destroyed, and so begins a lifelong Odyssey to find again the faith which the blows of evil have shattered. The plot takes the reader through Josip's youth, his young manhood, life under the Communist regime, hope and loss and unexpected blessings, the growth of his creative powers as a poet, and the ultimate test of his life. There are journeys that show him

The Starry Wisdom


D.M. Mitchell - 1994
    Science Fiction and Fantasy. Graphic Novel. Contemporary visions of cosmic transformation, mutation and madness--many inspired directly by the life and writings of H.P. Lovecraft, others reflecting his strangely presentient themes in their own bizarre subtexts. Here the primal beings of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stalk a postmodern landscape of social collapse, ethnic cleansing, genetic engineering and nuclear devastation--nightmare prophecies from his ulp pages which have now come chillingly true.

Tank Girl Collection


Alan C. Martin - 1993
    Their tank has been lost in a wager and the Australian Mafia are after their pelts. Their only hope seems to lie on the other side of the country, with Booga's estranged little brother.

The Spanish Prisoner & The Winslow Boy


David Mamet - 1999
    His dialogue--abrasive, rhythmic--illuminates a modern aesthetic evocative of Samuel Beckett. His plots--surprising, comic, topical--have evoked comparisons to masters from Alfred Hitchcock to Arthur Miller. Here are two screenplays demonstrating the astounding range of Mamet's talents.         The Spanish Prisoner, a neo-noir thriller about a research-and-development cog hoodwinked out of his own brilliant discovery, demonstrates Mamet's incomparable use of character in a dizzying tale of twists and mistaken identity. The Winslow Boy, Mamet's revisitation of Terence Rattigan's  classic 1946 play, tells of a thirteen-year-old boy accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and the tug of war for truth that ensues between his middle-class family and the Royal Navy. Crackling with wit, intelligent and surprising, The Spanish Prisoner and The Winslow Boy celebrate Mamet's unique genius and our eternal fascination with the extraordinary predicaments of the common man.