But now, Bianca needs a favour, and the only man she can turn to is her ex-husband. He's already broken her heart once. Can she trust him again? ALL SHE WANTS FOR CHRISTMAS The widowed Lady Elizabeth Sanderson is no longer interested in men. Her life is ordered, calm and boring: just the way she likes it. So why can't she stop thinking about billionaire bad boy Antonio Casacelli, and the way his body seems to call to hers? THE TYCOON'S CHRISTMAS CAPTIVE The last thing Marcos Casacelli needs is a ward to babysit, especially not one as spoiled and indulged as the Hollywood starlet Kat Van Buren.Kat's not just running from any scandal or heartbreak, though. Her life is at stake, and the one man who can protect her seems to hate her with a passion. THE SHEIKH'S CHRISTMAS MISTRESS Charlotte Faber falls head over heels with The Sheikh Malik Desara the moment she sees him. She thinks he loves her, too, until he propositions her... to be his mistress! How can she accept? How can she refuse?

    As they peruse covers, read stories and fragments of stories, they begin to suspect that the comics contain hidden messages and… a threat. Fiction and reality blur; sanity and madness become increasingly intertwined as the reader becomes convinced the key to their predicament is to be found between the panels of the strange books. With a dizzying array of inventive visual and narrative styles, Ex Libris continues the line of exploration and play that Madden initiated with 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. Ex Libris is a tribute to the meta-fictional tradition of writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Vladimir Nabokov, and Italo Calvino (whose novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, was the inspiration).

    But surely you've heard the story about the crocodiles who held a vote on whether or not to eat a man that had saved one of their lives? NO? Wow. Have we got some stories for you.

    The book is over 160 pages long, black and white, and contains 15 original stories blending fantasy, drama, humor, and romance.Cover by Ashe Samuels

    Seamlessly weaving the suspenseful with the macabre on every page, each story takes pleasure in taking you beyond the limits of what the human mind can endure.If you're the type of horror fan who enjoys stories that make your hair stand on end, drop this book right now. This tome of terrific terrors will take you farther than you've ever been down the rabbit hole of your worst nightmares.

    Some of the stories are inspired by true events. Find out which ones inside this scary collection. "The Girl I Married" Jonathan noticed that after marrying Jeanette, she starts acting strange. As if she is not the same girl he dated. Why is she so different and what secrets is she hiding? "I`m Sorry Daddy" After an accident at work, Mr. Williams starts developing unusual symptoms. He is turning into a monster and there is nothing to stop this. "The House Next Door part 2" Jessica decides to find out what happened to her friend Sarah. What new discoveries will she make and will the same fate befall her?

    This is the inaugural volume in an annual showcase of new talent, complimenting our annual flagship anthology. This is comics pushing all the boundaries; surreal, edgy stories of wonder that shimmer with visual style and emotional power. They are presented here in a deluxe package to introduce them to new fans of illustrated fiction.

    This stunning anthology of favorite poems visually interpreted by comic artist Julian Peters breathes new life into some of the greatest English-language poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.These are poems that can change the way we see the world, and encountering them in graphic form promises to change the way we read the poems. In an age of increasingly visual communication, this format helps unlock the world of poetry and literature for a new generation of reluctant readers and visual learners.Grouping unexpected pairings of poems around themes such as family, identity, creativity, time, mortality, and nature, Poems to See By will also help young readers see themselves differently. A valuable teaching aid appropriate for middle school, high school, and college use, the collection includes favorites from the Western canon already taught in countless English classes.Includes poems by Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, Maya Angelou, Seamus Heaney, e. e. cummings, Dylan Thomas, Christina Rossetti, William Wordsworth, William Ernest Henley, Robert Hayden, Edgar Allen Poe, W. H. Auden, Thomas Hardy, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Philip Johnson, W. B. Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Bishop, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Tess Gallagher, Stevie Smith, and Siegfried Sassoon.

    . . obsessively detailed [comics] feel like [they've] been shot straight from his brain onto the page." - Village Voice Puke Force is social satire written dark and dense across Brian Chippendale's deconstructed multiverse of walking, talking M&Ms, hamsters, and cycloptic-yet-glamorous trivia hosts. In scathingly funny single-page strips that build and build, he takes on social media narcissism, governmental propaganda, racism, and a culture of violence, skewering the malice of the right and the hypocrisies of the left. A bomb explodes in a coffee shop: the incident is played out over and over again from the perspective of each table in the shop, revisiting moments from ten and twenty years before. We see the inevitable as the characters bicker or celebrate, unaware of what's coming. Throughout this dystopic graphic novel, Chippendale uses humor and a frantic drawing style to show how the insidious nature of corporate greed and the commodification of everything have warped society into a killing machine. Sardonic and self-aware, Puke Force asks all the right questions, providing a startling and on-point take on contemporary social issues. Chippendale's artwork makes each panel a masterpiece of thrumming linework and lo-fi magic, as his storytelling wends and winds its way to a fascinating conclusion.

    The comics here are sophisticated, unusual narratives about animal musicians, mischievous children, cavemen and heavenly bodies.

    A woman drowns herself in a past affair, a tourist chases another guest into an unforeseen past, and a nonbinary academic researches postcolonial cartography. Imagining diverse futures and rewriting old mythologies, these comics delve into strange architectures, fetishism, and heartbreak.Painted in rich, sepia-toned watercolors, Apsara Engine is trans illustrator Bishakh Som's highly anticipated debut work of fiction. Showcasing a series of fraught, darkly humorous, and seemingly alien worlds—which ring all too familiar—Som captures the weight of twenty-first-century life as we hurl ourselves forward into the unknown.

    Mendoza, Mexico’s self-described king of graffiti, blesses the small town of Rosario with his sardonic wit. “Deflate your pomp or float away!” he paints on the body of an unexpectedly exhumed monk. “No intelligent life for 100 kilometers,” he proclaims on the sign that announces Rosario’s boundaries.The residents of Rosario tolerate or enjoy Mr. Mendoza’s commentary as best they can. But the town goes crazy when Mendoza announces—on the side of a pig—“Mendoza goes to heaven on Tuesday.” Each new declaration from Mendoza drives speculation about his future. Suicide? Cancer? Syphillis? All the theories were in play until the Tuesday when Mendoza transformed his life with art.Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush was originally written as a short story by Luis Alberto Urrea, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Devil’s Highway and an Edgar Award winner for his short story “Amapola.” It was published in 2002 as part of his collection Six Kinds of Sky. Artist Christopher Cardinale, whose graphic essays have appeared in the seminal magazines World War III and Punk Planet, adapted the short story to the graphic novel form.And critics are raving about the outcome. The Bloomsbury Review says, “Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush is a rich gift, an off-center, enigmatic tale with a well-coupled balance of narration and art. Urrea and Cardinale are a ‘match made in heaven.’” And Publishers Weekly adds that “this lovely comics adaptation…may have found the ideal way to present magical realism graphically.”

    Twenty-eight fables from different cultures and traditions are wonderfully adapted and illustrated in comics format by twenty-six different cartoonists. Edited by New York Times bestselling Fairy Tale Comics' Chris Duffy, this jacketed hardcover is a beautiful gift and an instant classic.

    Suggested for mature readers.

    Fueled by rage and empowered by years of experience upholding the law, the new Black Hood is a visceral, conflicted and flawed urban vigilante--but he's also the city's last hope.A gritty, modern crime noir tale that introduces readers to the newest--and deadliest--hero in the Dark Circle Comics lineup.