"Sam Pink is dictator of the island of the bizarre." - As You Recognize Your Transience"Reading Sam Pink will make you recognize the reptile smuggler that has always been hiding out inside your brain." - Cameron Pierce, author of Ass Goblins of Auschwitz and The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island

    Her admirers include Grace Paley, Jonathan Franzen, and Zadie Smith; as Time magazine observed, her stories are "moving . . . and somehow inevitable, as if she has written what we were all on the verge of thinking."In Varieties of Disturbance, her fourth collection, Davis extends her reach as never before in stories that take every form from sociological studies to concise poems. Her subjects include the five senses, fourth-graders, good taste, and tropical storms. She offers a reinterpretation of insomnia and re-creates the ordeals of Kafka in the kitchen. She questions the lengths to which one should go to save the life of a caterpillar, proposes a clear account of the sexual act, rides the bus, probes the limits of marital fidelity, and unlocks the secret to a long and happy life.No two of these fictions are alike. And yet in each, Davis rearranges our view of the world by looking beyond our preconceptions to a bizarre truth, a source of delight and surprise.Varieties of Disturbance is a 2007 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

    It can be downloaded as an electronic book OR you can order it in BOOK form that will be mailed to you.It can be purchased using Debit/Credit Card or PayPal account. CAUGHT SCREAMING includes over 140 pages of previously unpublished poems, private illustrations, & a blank diary section at the end of the book for buyers to add their own thoughts, poems, dreams, rants, & raves.BUY YOUR COPY TODAY!

    Hold tight as the ordinary turns extraordinary in Mark O’Rowe’s exhilarating new play. A blackly comic vision of Dublin infested with demons, from the author of Howie the Rookie.

    * 'Direct, unpretentious, humorous' SUNDAY TIMES

    Their idyllic, brief childhood together is short lived ending in hardship and heartbreak. Finding themselves alone in the world, both boys struggle to self-educate. Against the odds, Matthew Gray builds a global business empire and Luke Mbeki travels to England, in self-imposed exile, entangling himself in the anti-apartheid movement. With their paths crossing intermittently, it is only when Nelson Mandela is released from prison that Luke returns home continuing his fight for freedom alongside his comrades. Matt’s all-consuming business life continues but betrayal strikes. Leaving everything behind, he escapes to another world – an artist colony.This incredibly powerful and moving story tells how each man struggles to survive in a country deep in the throes of violent change, with friendship and families being torn apart. Matt and Luke's friendship is unimaginably tested so how does it survive in such terrifying and perilous times?

    As a single mother and inspiring artist she always managed to get by. It wasn't until she "accidentally " fell in love with a charming and romantic Atlien by the name of Ace, did she feel that her luck was changing. Things take a fast forward in their relationship and seemed to never be coming to an end, until one night Ace's past meets them in a dark alley in the mean Atlanta streets. Sage knows there is no going back from here, as she finds that you never really know a person until its too late. As her mind and heart battle it out, she's determined to keep her fairytale love story from turning into a nightmare. But what happens when Ace leaves her, and she is forced to face the truth alone? She doesn't have it all put together yet, but even after he is gone his past comes back to haunt her; demanding that she pay off his debts. Ace's mother Lillian seems to be keeping his secrets airtight as well, but reassures Sage she has nothing to fret about. Entangled in a web of love, lies, and deceit; Sage can only put her trust into her best friend Shelly. Will love conquer all for Sage or will she drown in the lies of her King?

    A New Yorker, trying not to be jaded, accompanies a cash-strapped pot grower to a “clothing optional resort” in California. A nerdy high-schooler has her first sexual experience at Geology Camp. A college student, on the night of her father’s funeral, watches a video of her bat mitzvah, hypnotized by the image of the girl she used to be . . . Frank and irreverent, Rebecca Schiff’s stories offer a singular view of growing up (or not) and finding love (or not) in today’s ever-uncertain landscape. In its bone-dry humor, its pithy observations, and its thrilling ability to unmask the most revealing moments of human interaction—no matter how fleeting—The Bed Moved announces a new talent to be reckoned with.

    

    Craig Russell, Jill Carla Schwarz, Michael Zulli, and Rrandy Broecker.

    His is a voice combining humor and pathos with an edginess creating fresh new stories that are being published in great literary journals regularly.A boy acts out at the death of his father and abandonment by his brother through a savage playground beating; a young man confronts his own troubled history when asked to hire on his girlfriend's strung-out brother in an attempt to keep him out of prison; a teenage babysitter works through a scorching-hot summer afternoon that will prove to alter her life forever; a grieving widower finds comfort in the unlikeliest of places, a recently-built casino; an itinerant farm worker visits the same former lover in South Dakota year after year while following the Harvest north; two friends search for excuses and fail to claim responsibility for their own decisions after one loses his father, and the other's house burns to the ground; and a taxidermist falls in love with the ex-wife of his high school bully and tries to convince her to marry him despite her son who seems to share his father's bullying mentality."A brilliant, sometimes heartbreaking debut by this gifted young writer and Columbia writing teacher. Cross captures the angst and tenderness of the young men and women growing up in the rust belt with little hope and less luck. The moments of grace and redemption shine through. I loved every story." —Linda Bubon, Women & Children First Bookstore"There are countless moments like this in Fires of Our Choosing, lines that appear true from the moment they’ve been written and hang in the back of the mind for days afterwards... With Fires of Our Choosing, Cross climbs boldly into the ring with the greats, if only to deliver a decisive knockout punch." —Urban Waite, Fiction Writers Review"Cross offers no apologies for his characters: their poor choices, their lack of moral fortitude, their betrayals of each other and the poverty of their surroundings and, often, themselves; he leaves these things alone. They are who they are, and if dignity has been denied them by the rest of us, including us story-tellers, it is restored by this collection. That he has undertaken to serve as their raconteur should place Cross on the radar of all the big prizes that gift those blessed with talent, compassion and fearlessness, particularly during this present moment in our history." —Ru Freeman, Huffington PostEugene Cross was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of "20 Best New Writers" and his story "Harvester's" a "Top Five Story of 2009-2010"), American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and Callalloo among other publications. His work was also listed among the 2010 Best American Short Stories' 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Chautauqua Writers' Festival, and the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago.

    Palahniuk channels both Stephen King and John Cheever in this singularly sinister and hilarious short story, straight from the passive-aggressive front lines of modern marriage, where a wife's frustration, along with the family cat, become weapons of mass destruction.Rachel married Ted because he was uncomplicated and loyal. But he was also devoted to his wretched house (done up in black granite, black appliances, even black dishware) and his first love, an old, flatulent cat named Belinda Carlisle. Once Rachel becomes pregnant, Ted reluctantly agrees to move and give up the cat. But the house doesn't sell, and Belinda Carlisle still haunts their home: every day the creature becomes fatter and more malodorous. When the house burns to the ground in a freak conflagration and the couple's daughter, April, is born blind soon thereafter, the marriage is never the same again. Only on a business trip three years later does Rachel begin to reckon with the damage.In an Orlando motel room far from Ted and April, Rachel wonders: Is her simple-minded husband more vindictive and manipulative than even Rachel could have imagined? How far will she go to keep the upper hand—a bit of emotional and physical torture, perhaps? Will she win the battle, only to lose so much else?If all is fair in love and war, there are few contemporary writers better equipped than Palahniuk to travel the extremes, right to the chilling intersection of "I do" and "I'm damned."

    High-school class reunions, in “The Walk with Elizanne” and “The Road Home,” restore their hero to youth’s commonwealth where, as the narrator of the title story confides, “the self I value is stored, however infrequently I check on its condition.” Exotic locales encountered in the journeys of adulthood include Morocco, Florida, Spain, Italy, and India. The territory of childhood, with its fundamental, formative mysteries, is explored in “The Guardians,” “The Laughter of the Gods,” and “Kinderszenen.” Love’s fumblings among the bourgeoisie yield the tart comedy of “Free,” “Delicate Wives,” “The Apparition,” and “Outage.”In sum, American experience from the Depression to the aftermath of 9/11 finds reflection in these glittering pieces of observation, remembrance, and imagination.

    Then there's a group of tales that Poe acknowledged reading, and that clearly influenced him: tales of premature burial, of a man trapped beneath a great clanging bell, of a doomed girl reborn and doomed again. To describe this book as a "must" for all admirers of Edgar Allen Poe is surely unnecessary: it's so self-evident.

    Focusing on characters both young and old, gay and straight, single and married, he discovers the dramas that are obscured by life's daily struggles. These beautifully crafted stories depict the surface of the world we all know, but go on to reveal the mysteries lurking beneath life's deceptively placid surface - the half we don't know.