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.

    In the cut-throat world of weekly trash mags, Nina thrives on the adrenalin of out-bidding her rivals for scandalous photo sets, scoring exclusive rights to Australia's A-list weddings and having the most influential celebrity managers on speed-dial. But in her personal life, things aren't quite as glossy. Just as she's back on the single scene, all her friends start getting up the duff faster than you can say, 'Welcome to Nappy Valley'. While Nina spends her days managing her magazine's multi-million-dollar budget and stalking Kim Kardashian's every move, they're managing their minuscule maternity leave allowance and stalking their local daycare waiting list. Suddenly she feels like she's being rejected from a club she doesn't even want to join. With a reality TV show in the works and a Facebook feed overflowing with endless baby updates, Nina heads to New York on an impromptu girls' trip to get away from it all - but little does she know that things are about to get a whole lot more complicated...

    

    It happened at midnight on September 21st, 1940, the landing being made at the small fishing town of Granville, in Normandy. The landing party consisted of a detective-sergeant of the Metropolitan Police (V Division), a young French woman schoolteacher and an ugly mongrel dog named Formidable. They were considerately brought ashore by the Germans themselves. George Ormerod was the detective sergeant in question, not the most imaginative of policemen, but, true to his name, most resolute in his investigations. (An ormer is a notably tenacious shell-fish of the English Channel.) While the war is being lost all around him, Ormerod remains obsessed with the mundane murder of a young woman in Wandsworth, even pursuing his investigations amongst the returning and bewildered troops. How the investigation blazed a savage trail through rural Normandy and led to Nazi-occupied Paris, and how Marie- Thérèse Velin and her often ruthless Resistance allies become involved with George Ormerod are questions Leslie Thomas answers as his tale unfolds. In Ormerod's Landing, an exciting and ironic tale of Britain and France in the early years of the war, he once again creates a tender, farcical world in which his unique humour and irony flourish.

    In this mock autobiographical collection his mischievous drawings capture life's anxieties and ambitions from the mundane to the surreal. Here, at last, is The Truth about beer, doctors, shadow puppets, lunch, dolphins, boredom, and supernatural forces. Seductively strange and addictively amusing, this edgy little book welcomes the uninitiated and rewards the faithful.

    The Warming is coming. The ocean ice they have lived and hunted on for generations is melting, and they must flee to the safety of an unknown land before they all drown. In this powerful tale of survival at the end of an Ice Age, the young hunter, Attu, must choose between saving his clan or saving Rika, the golden-eyed healer he is forbidden to love.Show more Show less --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    That is what troubles animal-phobic, robotics engineer Smith who just got married. He learns that his bride’s dream is to have a farm where there are lots of animals and she can rescue ex-race horses to retrain and find them new homes. But according to a Meyers-Briggs Personality Test that they took for fun, their marriage is doomed. There is only one problem: the newlyweds took the test after the wedding. Whether Smith is chasing a cow named Pork Chop through the woods with a rope, getting locked in a tack room by the family pony, being snubbed by his wife’s dog, or unsuccessfully trying to modernize their barn using the latest technology, the odds are stacked against him. It seems like everything with four legs is out to get him. Will the animals win, forcing Smith to admit defeat, or will he fight to keep his family and the farm together? Enjoy the true, warm, and frequently hilarious stories of Smith’s journey along the bumpy road from his urban robotics lab to a new life on a rural Virginia farm.

    Abigail Martin has everything: beauty, money, a loving husband, and a fabulous house in the village of Sixpenny Cross. But Abigail is denied the one thing she craves... A baby. When a gypsy offers to change her life, will Abigail accept? Can she deal with the shattering consequences that threaten to send her world spinning out of control?

    Not for long. By 1919, White Russians were fighting the Bolsheviks (Reds) for control of their country, and Winston Churchill (then Minister for War) wanted to see Communism 'strangled in its cradle'. So a volunteer R.A.F. squadron, flying Sopwith Camels and DH9 bombers, went there to duff up the Reds. 'There's a splendid little war going on,' a British staff officer told them. 'You'll like it.' Looked like fun. But the war was neither splendid nor little. It was big and it was brutal, a grim conflict of attrition, marked by cruelty, betrayal and corruption. Before it ended, the squadron wished that both sides would lose. If that was a joke, nobody was laughing. "A Splendid Little War" tests the pilots' gallows humour in a world of armoured trains and elegant barons, gruesome religious sects and anarchist guerrillas, unreliable allies and pitiless enemies. The comedy of this war, if it exists, is very bleak. Derek Robinson is at once our finest living comic novelist and a master of military fiction. Biggles was never like this.

    Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.

    He’s taken to hospital for treatment. Then people start trying to assassinate him.The man has to find out why, how to get them to stop, and what the CIA has to do with all this. There’s also the little problem of working out who he used to be, and why that changed. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Piper and best friend Lance are trying to find him…Jonathon Fairfax – still the world’s most socially awkward hero – is back. If only he knew.‘A hugely entertaining novel … a surprising, yet strangely fitting, progression to the Jonathon Fairfax story.’ Scott Pack (former head buyer for Waterstones)Pick up the latest Jonathon Fairfax novel – sequel to two Amazon bestsellers: The Perpetual Astonishment of Jonathon Fairfax (‘A comic gem’ Stylist, ‘You can’t help being tickled’ The Guardian, Bath Novel Award shortlist) and Jonathon Fairfax Must Be Destroyed (‘A funny, daft-yet-relatable, nerve-jangly thriller’ Emerald Street).*That’s a trashcan or dumpster, for American readers.The Jonathon Fairfax novels can be read in any order.

    Donald Trump. Ivanka Trump. Hillary Clinton. Oprah. Barack Obama. Paul Ryan. Joe Biden. John Kerry. And a cast of thousands as the story behind the headlines you can't believe is exposed. Part political thriller, part soap opera, partially insane. The Deepest State was a viral hit - and this edition has the EXCLUSIVE, never before seen short story, "Enter the Bidenverse." Here's what they're saying about The Deepest State: "One of the greatest threads in Twitter history" – Richard Metzger "An amazing read" – A. Whitney Brown "Just keeps getting more amazing" – Jon Cryer "Amazing well written and riveting" – Merrill Markoe "This… is glorious" – Joy Reid "Epic, epic thread" – Jill Lawrence "A Twitter thread for the ages" – Marsha Warfield "Fucking brilliant" – Jeff Jarvis "Fantastic." – Steven Boyer "The most gorgeous thing I have read in a long time" – Penelope Patsuris "Good times" – Eliza Skinner "Comedy gold" – PJ Manney

     The red flag was that he said he was Satan. But the deal was good: Listen to Satan’s story in exchange for some donuts. And Doug only half-fulfilled his part of the bargain. But maybe he should have listened better, because during his friend Bryce’s next scheme (theft with light to moderate treason—the usual), Doug and the rest of his friends—Lulu (the fun one) and Charlene (the not fun one)—end up with a powerful artifact, a small metal cube with world-ending power that Lulu decorated with bunnies. And now everyone wants the bunny cube, which means Doug, Bryce, Lulu, and Charlene are being pursued by an insane supermodel general, an army of sadists, a vast criminal organization, a smaller, more-in-startup-mode criminal organization, and an unstoppable killing machine—the worst kind of killing machine. Doug and his friends may be a bunch of losers who aren’t particularly smart or good at anything, but they have one thing going for them: a really cool name for their mercenary group. And now it’s up to Hellbender to save the world—well, what’s left of it. It’s pretty ruined and war-torn already. But, you know, they live there, so they kind of need it. It’s a mess, but that’s what you get for listening to Satan. Or half-listening.

    Translated in Kannada by: Ravi BelagereOne of the best pieces of historical fiction. A very existential novel about the revolt of 1857 in British India.

    A short time later we find him up to his chin in the embrace of a lovely lady outlaw. He’s able to get himself untangle, only to come face to face with nearly a half ton of stolen Civil War gold, which the great State of Texas has placed a claim on. JL and his Ranger partner, Spade Carson, become involved with the gang seeking to recover the gold and a rival gang seeking to take it, by whatever means necessary. A sweet young lass is right in the middle of the fray, and Tate is of course, in no way immune to the charms of Eve. From Odessa to El Paso, there is no safety for Tate and Carson. Ambushes, night raids, and lust for the yellow gold, keep the two Rangers living on the raw gritty edge. But they must keep going forward because there’s no going back.