Meanwhile, Ripley’s label, Galaxy Records, is preparing a secret merger agreement that would create the largest record conglomerate in the world. Trouble arises when rumors spread that Ripley and Simon are withholding Ripley’s new album in hopes of renegotiating his contract.When Simon and Judd are shot on the famed Grand Ole Opry stage during the filming of Ripley’s new music video, no one is more upset than Ripley—especially as everyone assumes the shots were meant for him. While Simon’s life hangs in the balance, Judd seeks help from Megan Olsen, Simon’s right hand and Ripley’s day-to-day manager. The two set off on a high-powered chase to disclose the real motive behind the shootings and spare Ripley from a second murder attempt.Not unlike John Grisham’s legal thrillers and Michael Crichton’s science-based thrillers, Stuart Dill’s “music industry thriller” can now be added to the literary lexicon. Murder on Music Row leads readers through a maze of twists and turns that connect Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, and London in a behind-the-scenes look at an industry where there are no limits in the pursuit of money, power, and fame.

    In his Palm Sunday sermon, the Vicar explains that Christ's crucifixion and redemption are taking place every day. He little suspects that, before the week's out, he and his entire congregation will be caught up in a latter-day Passion story which will tear apart their lives.

    Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously unpublished poems, Search Party is the essential compilation of this beloved poet's work. Edited by his son, Sebastian Matthews, and William Matthews's friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly (who also introduces the book), Search Party is an excellent introduction to the poet and his glistening riffs on twentieth-century topics from basketball to food to jazz.

    Where men stood tall and lived rough. But that West is no more. In its place Shann Ray finds washedup basketball players, businessmen hiding addictions, and women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up in these men. A son struggles to accept his father’s apologies after surviving a childhood of beatings. Two men seek empty basketball hoops on a snowy night, hoping to relive past glory. A bull rider skips town and rides herd on an unruly mob of passengers as he searches for a thief on a train threading through Montana’s Rocky Mountains. In these stories, Ray grapples with the terrible hurt we inflict on those we love, and finds that reconciliation, if far off, is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefine the contours of the American West, American Masculine is a deeply felt and fiercely written ode to the country we left behind.

    His first affections move from a young kitchen girl in the Jewish ghetto who fills his glass tall with scarce milk to a restless married woman, an undercover spy, and a frail woman who can't escape her past suffering. It is Ivan Kl

    Quiet, cultivated, efficient, head of the political science department at a Scottish university. His uneventful days are measured out with scrupulous care until Alicia Anna Davie laughs in his face one afternoon--and his ordered world crumbles about him.There is another side to Ian Laidlaw, a side that matches the scarred horror of the left side of his face, mangled in youth by a vicious hound. This side draws Alicia into a bizarre relationship; but as she toys with ugliness and danger, Laidlaw becomes locked into an obsessive passion at once disorienting and hideously destructive. Alicia's crime is the carelessness of youth--Laidlaw's punishment reflects the dislocation of his universe.

    For now, he’s squatting in a collapsing house, working as a stone mason, driving a jacked up pickup truck that he crashes into everything. As a close friend Ods in his sleep, Lee falls into a three-way relationship with two college girls, June Doom and K Neon. F250 is a novel equal parts about growing up, and being torn apart."Bud Smith is Nick Hornby if you strapped him to a Tesla coil and launched him into a Sun made of Poetry." --Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and some for the Day

    Ben’s one-time best friend, Peter Aaron, begins to retrospectively investigate the transformation that led Ben from his enviable stable life, to one of a recluse. Both were once intelligent, yet struggling novelists until Ben’s near-death experience falling from a fire escape triggers a tumble in which he becomes withdrawn and disturbed, living alone and building bombs in a far-off cabin. That is, until he mysteriously disappears, leaving behind only a manuscript titled Leviathan, pages rustling in the wind.

    The novel's protagonist, living at a time that might be the present in a city that might be anywhere, has decided for reasons of mental hygiene to keep a detailed record of his thoughts, words, and deeds. Very quickly, however, the project begins to absorb his entire life, as the increasingly meticulous recording of experience threatens to supplant experience itself. To make matters worse, what he records offers its own grist for worry: his devoted wife suddenly grows secretive, his equally devoted mistress turns evasive, his frustratingly independent son might or might not be visiting that same mistress behind his back, and his closest friend begins acting in mysterious ways (and is it just his imagination, or is this friend having clandestine meetings with his wife?). His ever more convoluted perceptions breed a dark muddle of suspicion, leading to a climax that is at once intensely funny and excruciatingly poignant.

    He’s also L.A.’s most successful gas station franchise owner. But no one can quite seem to figure out what makes him tick. Not the LAPD, who have long since granted him full immunity. Not his boss, who scrutinizes him with covert psychologists. Not the corporate spies who infiltrate his stations. And certainly not the encroaching FBI, who know only that Trang is involved in something big and dangerous and that time is running out.

    Four pretty boys from Los Angeles, they were supposed to be the next big thing, future kings of rock and roll. But something happened on the way to glory, and now, two years later, along with their coke-fueled, mohawked female manager, they have washed up in Amsterdam for the final show of their doomed and dismal European tour. The singer has become a born-again Buddhist who preaches from the stage, the bass player's raging eczema has turned his hands into a pulpy mess, the drummer is a sex-fiend tormented by the misdeeds of his porn-king father, and the guitar player -- the only talented one -- is thoroughly cowed by the constant abuse of his bandmates. As they stumble through their final day together, the Blood Orphans find themselves on a comic tour of frustration, danger, excitement, and just possibly, redemption.

    These two astounding essays are among the most profound studies of the effects of mind-expanding drugs written in this century. Contains the complete texts of The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell , both of which became essential for the counterculture during the 1960s and influenced a generation's perception of life.

    "A terse, polemical and often violent book that follows Mark, a disaffected American everyman, through the trailer parks, bedrooms, dive bars and strip joints of humdrum Youngstown, Ohio during the final two hours leading up to the dawn of America's supposed 'War on Terror.'... America's finest literary pariah? You bet"--Dazed & Confused. "This alarmingly well written book is a new voice that has rankled more than enough people back home in America. This vitriolic stance against Bush, God and War is just the book we should be reading in today's climate"--Scarecrow.

    in the tradition of Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and Terry Southern." —David Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Review"Should be as well known as anything by Cormac McCarthy, Steve Erickson, or Jim Harrison." —Paul DiFilippo, Barnes & Noble Review“Rudolph Wurlitzer takes no prisoners. An uncompromising, wild, and woolly tale.”—Sam Shepard“Sam Beckett with a six-gun and a sack of rattlesnakes.”—Gary Indiana"Where has Rudy Wurlitzer been for the last fifteen years? The mental traveler who gave us Nog and the Two-Lane Blacktop screenplay takes another vision quest, this time into the Old American West. His mapping of mythic and sacred landscapes and his ability to distinguish between different tribal world-views makes this a truly revealing conversation."—KCRW's BookwormIn his fifth novel, Rudolph Wurlitzer has written a classic tale of the Western frontier and created one of his most memorable characters in Zebulon, a mountain man whose view of life has been challenged by a curse from a mysterious Native American woman whose lover he inadvertently murdered.The Drop Edge of Yonder begins in the mountains of Colorado and ends in the far reaches of the Northwest, a journey that includes the beginnings of a Mexican revolution, a voyage across the Gulf of Mexico to Panama, and up the coast of California to San Francisco and the gold fields. Along the trail, Zebulon becomes involved in a series of tragic love triangles, witnesses the death of his mother and father, and confronts the age-old questions of life, love, and death.Rudolph Wurlitzer is the author of the novels Nog, Flats, Quake, and Slow Fade, and the nonfiction book, Hard Travel to Sacred Places. Among his twelve produced screenplays are Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Two Lane Blacktop, Voyager, Walker, and Little Buddha.

    A musical drama biopic chronicling P.T. Barnum (played by Hugh Jackman) and his founding of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, this December 2017 film features a stunning soundtrack by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul of La La Land and Dear Evan Hansen fame. Our songbook features piano/vocal/guitar arrangements of 9 songs including the Golden Globe-winning "This Is Me" and: Come Alive * From Now On * The Greatest Show * A Million Dreams * Never Enough * The Other Side * Rewrite the Stars * Tightrope. Also includes full-color scenes from the movie.