Long a celebrated West Coast cult figure, Kate Braverman now gives voice to Squandering the Blues, a distinctive and uncompromising collection of characters living out urban fairy tales and nightmares in the highly atmospheric landscape of Los Angeles.

    And that's only part of the story. Dr. Harry Wolper, an aging Noble Prize-winning biologist, is attempting to create life-specifically, to re-create his adored late wife by implanting her clone in a loving but reluctant 19-year-old nymphomaniac, and do it before his conventional son can have him committed to an asylum. Creator is a love story, a comedy, a zany account of science running amok, and a moving and tragic account of our biological and imaginative limitations and the struggle we wage against them. Creator was turned into a feature film starring Peter O'Toole and Mariel Hemingway.

    Captivated by Delia, Travis watches her attempt to find a place for herself in the socially stunted, gossip-driven town. Delia's secrets go beyond what Travis can understand, but he believes that he alone can save her--a belief that not only forces him to grow up fast, but one that builds to a dangerous and disturbing climax. In trying to free Delia from her past, Travis leads her into a shocking present and a most uncertain future.In a work at once honest, chilling and compulsively addictive, author Sterling Watson has created a time and place where rock 'n' roll hums from AM radios, steam rises from a secluded riverbed and violent summer storms threaten the peace of silent nights. Watson's characters are brought vividly to life through Travis's touching, powerful and intensely personal voice. A dark and evocative coming of age tale, Sweet Dream Baby begins steeped in innocence and ends in a dramatically different place."I can't remember a book that sneaked up and grabbed me the way Sweet Dream Baby did. It's a real shocker by a very good writer." --Elmore Leonard"Sterling Watson's Sweet Dream Baby is one of the finest novels I've read in years, an incandescent blend of gothic noir, Faulknerian dreamscape and bittersweet coming-of-age story. Months after reading it, it haunts me still." -Dennis Lehane"Sterling Watson's Sweet Dream Baby brings us the words and music, the tastes and smells of that special time-as well as its heartache and secret shame. I was utterly absorbed in these fierce pages." -Fred Chappell, author of Look Back All the Green Valley"Sweet Dream Baby is a beautiful book. Sterling Watson is surehanded and telling in a story that is as elegiac as it is gripping." -Michael Connelly, author of Chasing the Dime"Some delicious page-turning."-Kirkus ReviewsA Book Sense 76 Top 10 SelectionNamed to Top Ten Crime Books of 2002, Toronto Globe and Mail"Watson proves himself a first-rate storyteller."-Publishers Weekly"A comprehensive work of art that is as thought-provoking as it is disturbing."-Orlando Sentinel

    Returning to the Paris hotel where he spent his honeymoon six years earlier, he decides to take what seems like the only way out - suicide. But a chance encounter with a Russian in a similar predicament leaves Nick with an unlikely obligation to fulfil, one that will take him to Italy, and offer him a chance at something like redemption. www.kevinwignall.com

    As the perspective shifts among the characters - spanning fifteen years, returning to Israel and then going back again to the Midwest - Osnat tries (and often fails) to belong. Danit Brown gives us an irreverent portrait of a young woman for whom finding a foothold in the world is an obsession, a challenge, and a great adventure.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    How did he allow the other person to die? How did he help the other person to hang himself to death? He was terribly upset about this. The moment his eyes saw a rope in any form he used to remember everything.........

    Colleen Dugan works for the other one—not on Capitol Hill, but in a Chicago skyscraper that overlooks Lake Michigan, among coworkers with little to do but field calls from angry constituents while the future of the nation gets decided elsewhere. In the coming weeks, Colleen will navigate the perils of costumed protestors, thuggish union reps, vacuous interns, trifling bureaucrats, dirty tricks by the senator’s Republican rival, and the unexpected discovery of a scandalous secret that will give her the power to change the course of the election and shape her own fate—though not necessarily for the better. A quarter-life crisis viewed from the ghostly perspective of the Founding Fathers, this is a hilarious and heartbreaking story about American politics and the difficult business of being a good citizen: walking the tricky line between self-sacrifice and self-sabotage, between doing your part and knowing your place.

    Her novels and short stories speak to women and men about their most intense relationships and heartfelt feelings.In this collection of five short stories and a novella, Ms. Godwin is at her best. In the title novella, "Mr. Bedford," a young would-be writer spends time in England under the strange and watchful eye of a rather unusual elderly couple; in "Amanuensis," a charming college student cares for a famous but blocked novelist, with unpredictable results; and in "The Angry Year," a rebellious student is drawn to two different kinds of men until she discovers what she has been running to and from.

    The isolation is all but unbearable until a mysterious tenant moves into the house at the bottom of the hill. James Dunford has come from America but he won’t say why. He spends his days fixing up the old cottage and walking the beach with a stray dog that showed up on his doorstep.As the weeks pass, Tara tries to get to know James, but he resists her at every turn. And it's not until a local villager recognizes him from the news that she realizes his visit might be about more than just a vacation. On the night of a big storm, Tara finally confronts James about why he is there. But how can she expect him to be honest when she, too, is hiding her own dark secret?Set against the backdrop of the Hunger Strikes in Northern Ireland, Sunsets Never Wait is a story about love, loss, and the risks of hanging on to the past. No matter how much the world has let you down, there’s always a possibility for second chances.

    

    "PINK STEAM is not kitschy, it is a culturally astute document of the real written by a master at the height of her powers"--Jennifer Moxley. The intimate secrets of Dodie Bellamy's life--sex, shoplifting, voyeurism, and writing are illuminated in Bellamy's incredibly tailored latest work where true confession bleeds into high theory into trash cinema. PINK STEAM barges beyond the cliches of gendered experience; unafraid of the personal, unabashed by politics and sex, Bellamy makes confusion her OK Corral. Dodie Bellamy is the author of CUNT-UPS and FEMININE HIJINX, both available at SPD.

    Powers Unlocked. An Alliance is Born.Ten thousand years ago, the Furies nearly exterminated all life in the universe before being defeated by a coalition of worlds led by the Olympians.Or so everyone thought.Now they're back, and a new reign of terror has begun.

    

    Culling over 300 pages of some of today's most thrilling writers, The Best of 2.13.61 Publications hallmarks our company's ten year existence. Excerpts include new material from Henry Rollins and Hubert Selby, Jr, as well as excerpts from Henry Miller's love letters, Nick Zedd's hilarious nihilistic New York urban spelunkings, Ian Shoales' undeniably witty social commentaries and so much more.

    Families, homes, lovers, marriages -- the safe havens they have been taught to depend on no longer guarantee shelter or stability.ONE WAY OR ANOTHER introduces Peter Cameron as an extraordinary writer, one distinguished not only by his prose, which is always abundantly witty and pitch-perfect, but also by a rare generosity of heart.Included in this book are two stories that were selected for the O. HENRY PRIZE STORIES: "Homework," first published in The New Yorker, and "Excerpts from Swan Lake," first published in The Kenyon Review.