counterpoint - amo agency by Amo Noh

Coun t e r poi n t sof t sk ull press sierr a club book s

winter 2012

coun terpoint

Jubilee Hitchhiker The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan

Vibrant and gritty, an epic biography of novelist and poet Richard Brautigan

William Hjortsberg

Confident and robust, Jubilee Hitchhiker is a comprehensive biography of late novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, author of many books, including Trout Fishing in America and A Confederate General from Big Sur. When Brautigan took his own life in September of 1984, his close friends and a network of artists and writers were devastated though not entirely surprised. To many, Brautigan was shrouded in enigma, erratic and unpredictable in his habits and lifestyle. But his career was formidable, an inspiration to young writers like William Hjortsberg trying to get their start. Brautigan’s career wove its way through both the Beat-influenced San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s and the “Flower Power” hippie movement of the 1960s; while he never claimed direct artistic involvement with either period, Jubilee Hitchhiker also delves deeply into the spirited times in which Brautigan lived. As Hjortsberg guides us through his search to uncover Brautigan as a man, the reader is pulled deeply into the writer’s world. Ultimately this is a work that seeks to connect the Brautigan known to his fans with the man who ended his life so abruptly in 1984, revealing the close ties between his writing and the actual events of his life. Part history, part biography, and part memoir, Jubilee Hitchhiker etches the portrait of a man destroyed by his genius.

978-1-58243-790-3 Cloth 7" x 10" 896 pages

MARKETING • National print media campaign targeting The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and other important reviewers of literary biography • National radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Author Tour: Seattle, Billings, Portland, and San Francisco • Online marketing campaign targeting literary blogs and websites • Promotion on the author’s website: www.williamhjortsberg.com

Of Note • The author was a close friend of Brautigan and has based this biography on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to his archives • The author’s debut book, Falling Angel, was nominated for Best First Mystery Novel by the Mystery Writers of America

Excerpt from Jubilee Hitchhiker Richard Brautigan never heard his final gunshot. Traveling three times the speed of sound, the Winchester Western Super X .44 magnum hollow point exploded up through the poet’s head, destroying his face, dislodging his wire-rimed eyeglasses, blasting off the back of his skull. Continuing on, the bullet tore a hole in the molding above a corner window, struck a 1x4 nailed inside, and fell back into the space within the wall. At the same instant, all dreams, fears, hopes and ambition erased forever, brain disintegrated, the nerves of his spinal cord disconnected, Brautigan’s knees buckled and his body dropped straight down, as the weapon, a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Model 28 revolver, flew from his lifeless hand. He was dead before he hit the floor.

$37.50 Biography territory: WE january

William Hjortsberg is the author of eight books, including Alp, Gray Matters, and Falling Angel, as well as the screenplays “Legend” and “Thunder & Lightning.” He lives in Montana with his wife, painter Janie Camp.

3 Photo courtesy of the author

The Little Russian Susan Sherman

The Little Russian spotlights an exciting new voice in historical fiction, an assured debut that should appeal to readers of Away by Amy Bloom or Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. The novel tells the story of Berta Alshonsky, who revels in childhood memories of her time spent with a wealthy family in Moscow—a life filled with salons, balls, and all the trappings of the upper class—very different from her current life as a grocer’s daughter in the Jewish townlet of Mosny. So when a mysterious and cultured wheat merchant walks into the grocery, Berta’s life is forever altered. She falls in love, unaware that he is a member of the Bund, The Jewish Worker’s League, smuggling arms to the shtetls to defend them against the pogroms sweeping the Russian countryside. Married and established in the wheat center of Cherkast, Berta has recaptured the life she once had in Moscow. So when a smuggling operation goes awry and her husband must flee the country, Berta makes the vain and foolish choice to stay behind with her children and her finery. As Russia plunges into war, Berta eventually loses everything and must find a new way to sustain the lives and safety of her children. Filled with heartstopping action, captivating characters, and a world seeped in war and violence, The Little Russian is poised to capture readers as one of the hand-selling gems of the season.

978-1-58243-772-9 Cloth 6" x 9" 384 pages

A richly drawn portrait of the persecution of the Russian Jewish population, and the emergence of a modern, independent woman

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines as well as the top literary journals • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR at top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in literary and historical fiction outlets • Promotion through social media including Facebook, Good Reads, Poets & Writers, and Redroom.com • West Coast author tour

Of Note • Sherman was the co-creater of the immensely popular Disney show That’s So Raven

$25.00 Fiction territory: W january

Excerpt from The Little Russian “Is that what you wanted?” “No. Or rather I didn’t know what I wanted. I suppose I just wanted to make her happy.” “And what about your father?” “He was an educated man. He read to me when I was little and taught me to play chess and told me scary stories.” Berta laughed. “What kind of stories?” “Mostly ones about dybbuks and golems and vampires.” “Weren’t you frightened?” “Of course, but that was the point. I wanted to be frightened. Once he told me about the blue man who lived under our house. I used to dream about him. I remember he had sharp teeth and an evil smile. I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but I was pretty sure he was up to no good. After that I wouldn’t go to sleep without a lamp. My father took me under the house to show me there was no one there, but it didn’t do any good. I still wouldn’t go bed without the lamp.” “And what happened to him?” “The blue man? I expect he’s still there.” “Under the house?” Hershel looked out across a field where peasants in belted tunics were moving up the furrows in careless concert, their long-handled scythes cutting swaths of ripe wheat, their heads bent to the task. “Under every house.”

Susan Sherman is a former Chairman of the Art Department of Whittier College, a small liberal arts university once attended by President Richard Nixon. She is also the co-creator of That’s So Raven, one of the most successful television shows for children in the history of the Disney Network. This is her first novel.

5 © J.K. Lavin

Appetites

Drink the Bitter Root

Why Women Want

A Search for Justice and Healing in Sub-Saharan Africa

Caroline Knapp Introduction by Gail Caldwell

Gary Geddes

Now with an introduction by Gail Caldwell, the national bestseller that Salon calls “the smartest anorexia memoir ever written” In Appetites, Caroline Knapp confronts Freud’s famous question, “What do women want?” and boldly reframes it, asking instead: How does a woman know, and then honor, what it is she wants in a culture bent on shaping, defining, and controlling her desires? Knapp, best-selling author of Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs, has turned her brilliant eye towards how a woman’s appetite—for food, love, work, and pleasure—has become a battlefield. She uses her own experiences with anorexia as a powerful exploration of what can happen when we are divorced from our most basic hungers—and offers her own success as testament to the joy of saying “I want.” Provocative, important, and deeply familiar, Appetites beautifully—and urgently—challenges all women to learn what it is to feed both the body and the soul.

revised edition MARKETING • National “Back in Print” campaign • Top markets radio campaign • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in specific topic area • Gail Caldwell’s introduction is set to deliver in July

Praise for Appetites “With signature tenacity and grace, Knapp’s posthumous offering . . . tackles at its very root the question—the conundrum—of women’s desires.” —Elle “This searing examination of the love-hate relationship women have with their bodies is a poignant portrait of hunger in its various forms—and an important part of the writer’s brilliant legacy.” —Glamour

An unforgettable tale of violence, shame, and redemption

Drink the Bitter Root is an international story about the ethical and environmental footprint world nations are leaving in Africa in their determined efforts to destabilize and loot the continent. In the spirit of Robert Kaplan and Samantha Power, Gary Geddes sets out in search of justice, healing, and reconciliation. He begins his journey at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, then travels to Rwanda, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Somaliland, crossing Lake Victoria and the Great Rift Valley, where human life began. Geddes’ quest takes the form of an intimate personal travelogue. Although he confronts the dark realities of abduction, rape, mutilation, and murder, drawing on painful encounters, interviews, and adventures that occur along the way, Geddes also brings back amazing stories of survival and unexpected moments of grace. His poet’s eye and self-deprecating humor draw us ever more deeply into the lives of some amazing Africans, while never forgetting the complicity we all feel in the face of tragic events unfolding there. In the words of author and Africanist Ian Smillie, Drink the Bitter Root is not only poignant, literate, and funny, but also “a deeply textured journey without maps into the unexplored rifts of sub-Saharan Africa, the human experience, and the psyche. It’s also the masterful handling of a full palette.”

MARKETING • National print and radio campaign targeting human rights and political outlets • Outreach to the author’s extensive journalist and activist contacts • Marketing materials to coincide with the African Studies Association’s annual meeting in November, at which the author will present findings related to this book

Of Note

“Riveting . . . a tribute to her strength.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

Of Note

• He is the author of more than 35 books

• Knapp’s titles have sold over 250,000 copies, and Appetites has sold over 50,000 copies in cloth and trade paper • Gail Caldwell’s memoir about her friendship with Knapp, Let’s Take the Long Way Home has sold over 45,000 copies since August 2010

978-1-58243-808-5 Trade Paper 5.5" x 8" 224 pages

$14.95 Memoir/Women’s Studies Territory: W January

Caroline Knapp is the author of Alice K’s Guide to Life as well as the bestselling books, Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs. She lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts and died in June 2002 at the age of 42.

978-1-58243-788-0 Cloth 6" x 9" 304 pages

$28.00 history territory: US january

• He has been awarded the E.J. Pratt Medal, the National Poetry Prize, the America’s Best Book Award in 1985, the Writers’ Choice Award, the National Magazine Gold Award, and the Gabriela Mistral Prize for service to literature

Gary Geddes is an internationally acclaimed travel writer who has been compared to Bruce Chatwin, Michael Ondaatje, and William Least Heat-Moon. He has written and edited more than thirty-five books, which have sold close to half a million copies in seven languages. His memoir Sailing Home and his travelogue Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things were both Canadian bestsellers.

7 © Mark Morelli

Photo courtesy of the author

The Still Point

Half in Love

A Novel

Surviving the Legacy of Suicide

Amy Sackville

Linda Gray Sexton The frozen memories of an Arctic explorer catapult his great-grand-niece into a world of distance, sadness, and adventure

A vivid and daring exploration of survival, “Linda Sexton’s beautiful book is a cry for health and sanity.” —Erica Jong

At the turn of the twentieth century, Arctic explorer Edward Mackley sets out to reach the North Pole and vanishes into the icy landscape without a trace. He leaves behind a young wife, Emily, who awaits his return for decades, her dreams and devotion gradually freezing into rigid widowhood. A hundred years later, on a sweltering mid-summer’s day, Edward’s great-grand-niece Julia moves through the old family house, attempting to impose some order on the clutter of inherited belongings and memories from that ill-fated expedition, and taking care to ignore the deepening cracks within her own marriage. But as afternoon turns into evening, Julia makes a discovery that splinters her long-held image of Edward and Emily’s romance. Long-listed for the Orange Prize, The Still Point is a captivating literary debut, masterfully told in the language of the heart.

After the agony of witnessing her mother’s multiple—and ultimately successful—suicide attempts, Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of the acclaimed poet Anne Sexton, struggles with an engulfing undertow of depression. Here, with powerful, unsparing prose, Sexton conveys her urgent need to escape the legacy of suicide that consumed her family—a topic rarely explored, even today, in such poignant depth. Linda Gray Sexton tries multiple times to kill herself— even though as a daughter, sister, wife, and most importantly, a mother, she knows the pain her act would cause. But unlike her mother’s story, Linda’s is ultimately one of triumph. Through the help of family, therapy, and medicine, she confronts deepseated issues and curbs the haunting cycle of suicide she once seemed destined to inherit.

Praise for The Still Point

Praise for Half in Love

“Sackville wields language like a wand . . . Her prose reminds us of the pleasure in being carried to far-off worlds by words alone: the feat feels magical, not technical.” —The New York Times Book Review

“This book looks into the workings of the suicidal mind in a way that isn’t easily forgotten, raising provocative questions about how we approach and treat the severely mentally ill.” —The New York Times Book Review

MARKETING

“The array of deep emotions here make it impossible not to sympathize with the author . . . Sexton’s second memoir is a valuable examination of a dark and complicated subject.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

• Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in specific topic area

now in paperback MARKETING • National “Now in Paperback” campaign • Top markets radio campaign • Online campaign targeting literary blogs and websites, including sites geared toward Arctic adventure

Of Note • Long-listed for the 2010 Orange Prize

now in paperback

“Sackville drifts seamlessly between past and present in her beautifully written debut.” —Publishers Weekly “Not only do all the moving parts hold together, but a new fictional voice emerges here as well; not harsh, brash and shiny, not overly self-conscious and sentimental—somewhere between the calm beauty we expect from novels that invoke Victorian England and the raw edges of modern life.” —Los Angeles Times

“A vivid and inspiring story.” —Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind and Nothing Was the Same

• Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize • Selected as one of the Financial Times’ Books of the Year for 2010 • Selected as one of the Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year for 2010

978-1-58243-800-9 Trade paper 6" x 9" 320 pages

$15.95 Fiction territory: USCO January

Amy Sackville was born in 1981. She studied English and Theatre Studies at Leeds, and went on to an MPhil in English at Exeter College, Oxford. Last year she completed the MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. This is her first novel.

978-1-58243-799-6 Trade paper 6" x 9" 336 pages

$15.95 Memoir territory: USCO January

• National “Now in Paperback” campaign • Top markets radio campaign

Of Note • Sexton’s previous memoir about her mother, Searching for Mercy Street, was hailed as “heroic” (New York Newsday) and called a “ravishing portrait” (Susan Cheever) and a “courageous journey” (People)

Linda Gray Sexton is the daughter of Pulitzer Prize– winning poet Anne Sexton. She has written four novels, and her first memoir, Searching for Mercy Street, was published to widespread acclaim. She lives in California.

9 © Peter Schiazza

Photo courtesy of the author

Early Warming

I Have Seen the Future

Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North

A Life of Lincoln Steffens

Nancy Lord

Peter Hartshorn A critically acclaimed examination of global climate change

now in paperback MARKETING • National “Now in Paperback” campaign • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 environmental and political markets • Outreach to environment, nature, and climate-change blogs and websites • Promotion on the author’s website: www.nancylord.alaskawriters.com

Of Note

In Shishmaref, Alaska, new seawalls are constructed while residents navigate the many practical and bureaucratic obstacles to moving their entire island village to higher ground. Farther south, inland hunters and fishermen set out to grow more of their own food—and to support the reintroduction of wood bison, an ancient species well suited to expected habitat changes. First Nations people in Canada team with conservationists to protect land for both local use and environmental resilience. In Early Warming, Alaskan Writer Laureate, Nancy Lord, takes a frontline look at how communities in the North—where global warming is amplified and climate-change effects are most immediate—are responding with desperation and creativity. This beautifully written and measured narrative takes us deep into regions where the indigenous people who face life-threatening change also demonstrate impressive conservation ethics and adaptive capacities. Underpinned by a long acquaintance with the North and backed with scientific and political sophistication, Lord’s vivid account brings the challenges ahead for us all into ice-water clarity.

The biography of a literary giant who transformed the function of journalists from little-educated collectors of news to professional investigators In 1901, Lincoln Steffens, an internationally known and respected political insider, went rogue to work for McClure’s Magazine. Credited as the proverbial father of muckraking reporting, Steffens quickly rose to the top of McClure’s team of investigative journalists, earning him the attention of many powerful politicians who utilized his knack for tireless probing to battle government corruption and greedy politicians. A mentor of Walter Lippmann, friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and advisor of Woodrow Wilson, Steffens is best known for bringing to light the Mexican Revolution, the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times, and the Versailles peace talks. Now, with print journalism and investigative reporters on the decline, Lincoln Steffens’ biography serves as a necessary call to arms for the newspaper industry. Peter Hartshorn’s extensive research captures each detail of Steffens’ life—from his private letters to friends to his long and colorful career—and delves into the ongoing internal struggle between his personal life and his overpowering devotion to the “cause.”

Praise for I Have Seen the Future Praise for Early Warming “Though [Lord] deftly weaves pertinent scientific and political information throughout, her account’s power stems from her on-site observations, lyrical descriptions of the land and sea, and sensitive interviews of local officials and natives whose insight and experience humanize an otherwise vast and arcane subject . . . An eloquent and important dispatch.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Absorbing . . . A biography that is prodigiously researched, fantastically interesting and extremely well–written. Steffens would have been pleased by how well Hartshorn has turned him inside out.” —The New York Times Sunday Book Review “Well-researched and well-written.” —The Wall Street Journal “Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review)

• Author was the acting Alaska Writer Laureate • A recipient of two fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts, Nancy Lord is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and a previous Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholar in nonfiction

978-1-58243-802-3 Trade paper 6" x 9" 256 pages

$15.95 Environment territory: WE january

978-1-58243-807-8 trade paper 6" x 9" 416 pages

$19.95 Biography territory: W january

Nancy Lord, based in Homer, Alaska, is the author of three

Peter Hartshorn

short fiction collections and four literary nonfiction books. She has been awarded two fellowships from the Alaska State Council on the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and residencies at a number of artist communities. She served as Alaska’s Writer Laureate and teaches part-time for the University of Alaska.

known biography James Joyce and Trieste. He holds an MA in English

now in paperback MARKETING • National “Now in Paperback” campaign • Top markets radio campaign • Online marketing campaign focusing on literary and journalism blogs and websites

Of Note • Includes black-and-white photos • Lincoln Steffens, one of the most famous practitioners of the journalistic style called “muckraking,” specialized in investigating government and political corruption

is the author of the internationally

from Northeastern University. Currently a professor at the Showa Institute, he lives in Boston.

11 © Linda Smogor

Delirium How the Sexual Revolution Polarized America and Fuels Our Political Wars Nancy L. Cohen Americans are coming to wonder what happened to hope and change. How did we get here, to this divisive paralysis, in what was supposed to be a new era of progressive change? How did we get from Barack Obama’s historic victory in 2008, to the Republican sweep of Congress just two years later, to the Republicans’ unexpected post-election preoccupation with gays, sex, birth control, and abortion? From the Age of Nixon to the Age of Obama, one of the prime forces fueling America’s political wars has been the reaction against the sexual revolution and the progressive movements which emerged from it, most notably feminism and gay rights. In Delirium, Nancy L. Cohen charts the birth of the sexual counterrevolution: how conflicts about sex, women’s rights and women’s roles, gay civil rights, and family values drove Americans into irreconcilable camps, polarized national politics, split and remade our political parties, and unhinged the nation. It explores a determining facet of our political debate and will become required reading as we enter the 2012 presidential election season.

978-1-58243-801-6 Cloth 6" x 9" 356 pages

A groundbreaking investigation of a shadow movement deep within both parties that is responsible for our current political upheaval

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in specific topic area • Three city author tour • Promotion through the author’s website: www.nancylcohen.com

Of Note • Cohen contributes regularly to The Los Angeles Times and The Huffington Post • Author is a consultant to nonprofits, specializing in economic and environmental policy

$27.00 Current Events territory: W February

Nancy L. Cohen is a historian, author, and contributor to The Huffington Post. She is the author of two books, including The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914. She has held positions as a visiting assistant professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two daughters, and four stepchildren.

12 © Jonathan Vandiveer

The Zone

1616

A Prison Camp Guard’s Story

The World in Motion

Sergei Dovlatov | Translated by Anne Frydman Out of print for more than a decade, The Zone is satirical, wry, witty, and full of the unexpected

back in print MARKETING

Written in Sergei Dovlatov’s unique voice and unmatched style, The Zone is a satirical novelization of Dovlatov’s time as a prison guard for the Soviet Army in the early 1960s. Snapshots of the prison are juxtaposed with the narrator’s letters to Igor Markovich of Hermitage Press in which he urges Igor to publish the very book we’re reading. As Igor receives portions of the prison camp manuscript, so too does the reader. Arguably Dovlatov’s most significant work, The Zone illuminates the twisted absurdity of the life of a prison guard: “Almost any prisoner would have been suited to the role of a guard. Almost any guard deserved a prison term.” Full of Dovlatov’s trademark dark humor and dry wit, The Zone’s narrator is an extension of his author, and the book fittingly begins with the following disclaimer: “The names, events, and dates given here are all real. I invented only those details that were not essential. Therefore, any resemblance between the characters in this book and living people is intentional and malicious. And all fictionalizing was unexpected and accidental.” What follows is a complex novel that captures two sides of Dovlatov: the writer and the man.

Praise for The Suitcase

• National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines as well as the top literary journals, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, and Words Without Borders • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign to Russian culture and literature websites

“Several decades after emigrating from the Soviet Union, the author discovered the battered suitcase he had brought with him gathering dust at the back of a closet. Rummaging through its contents provided the inspiration for this engaging collection of stories in which Dovlatov acts as narrator. All are delivered with an exquisite sense of timing, and ironic humor counterpoints the seriousness of their united theme: the woeful failing of Soviet socialism.” —Publishers Weekly 978-1-58243-748-4 Trade paper 5.5" x 8.5" 176 pages

$15.95 Fiction territory: USCO February

Sergei Dovlatov was born in Ufa, Bashkiria (U.S.S.R.), in 1941. He dropped out of the University of Leningrad after two years and was drafted into the army, serving as a guard in highsecurity prison camps. In 1965 he began to work as a journalist, first in Leningrad and then in Tallinn, Estonia. After a period of intense harassment by the authorities, he emigrated to the United States in 1978. He lived in New York until his death in 1990.

14 Photo courtesy of The Wylie Agency

Thomas Christensen Combining riveting storytelling with more than a hundred stunning color images, 1616 reveals a captivating glance into a revolutionary year in history The world of 1616 was a world of motion. Enormous galleons carrying silk and silver across the Pacific created the first true global economy, and the first international megacorporations were emerging as economic powers. In Europe, the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes marked the end of an era in literature, as the spirit of the Renaissance was giving way to new attitudes that would lead to the Age of Revolution. Great changes were also taking place in East Asia, where the last native Chinese dynasty was entering its final years and Japan was beginning its long period of warrior rule. Artists there, as in many parts of the world, were rethinking their connections to ancient traditions and experimenting with new directions. Women everywhere were redefining their roles in family and society. Slave trading was relocating large numbers of people, while others were migrating in search of new opportunities. The first tourists, traveling not for trade or exploration but for personal fulfillment, were exploring this new globalized world. Thomas Christensen illuminates this extravagant age by focusing on a single riotous year. Woven with color images and artwork from the period, 1616 tells the surprising tales of the men and women who set the world on its tumultuous course toward modernity.

Of Note

978-1-58243-774-3 Cloth 7" x 10" 288 pages

$35.00 History territory: W February

• Author was the co-translator of the national bestseller Like Water for Chocolate and his translation of Ballets Without Music, Without Dancers, Without Anything was a finalist for the PEN America West Translation Award. • More than 100 stunning illustrations

Thomas Christensen’s previous books include New World/ New Words: Recent Writing from the Americas, A Bilingual Anthology, The U.S.-Mexican War, and The Discovery of America and Other Myths as well as translations of books by such authors as Laura Esquivel, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Alejo Carpentier, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. He is director of publications at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and lives with his wife in Richmond, California.

15 © Ellen Christensen

A Lovesong for India Tales from the East and West Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

In this expansive story collection, acclaimed writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala continues her lifelong meditation on East and West. Set in India, England, and New York City, A Lovesong for India reveals what unites us across oceans, cultures, and lifetimes. In “Innocence,” an older couple, whose social standing is marred from a decades-old scandal, rents out rooms in their Delhi home for both companionship and income. Isolated and battling blame and guilt, the couple becomes deeply invested in the lives of their two tenants. With the addition of a third renter—a beautiful and provocative woman from England—tensions in the household push the story to its feverish conclusion. The story “Talent” finds Jhabvala in New York City reflecting on the friction between family and societal expectations. Magda is a talent scout whose entire life is her work until she meets Ellie, a singer whose immense ability and unguarded personality captivate Magda. Soon Ellie is integrated into Magda’s extended family for better or worse. Remarkable and unwavering, this collection is the hallmark of Jhabvala’s celebrated career and a testament to her “balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty.” (The New York Times)

A true master at the top of her form, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala returns to embrace the full breadth of life in her celebration of East and West

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines as well as the top literary journals • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in literary and historical fiction outlets • Promotion through social media, including Facebook, Good Reads, Poets & Writers, and Redroom.com

Of Note • Jhabvala is the recipient of the Booker Prize, a MacArthur fellowship, and her screenplays for Merchant-Ivory Productions have earned two Academy Awards • This is the author’s first story collection in eight years

Praise for My Nine Lives “Each work has her hallmark of balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty.” —The New York Times Book Review “After 17 books thorny with existential and intellectual issues, Jhabvala has unleashed her imagination to rewrite her own past. In nine pieces of ‘autobiographical fiction’ set in New York, London, and India, septuagenarian Jhabvala imagines alternative paths her life might have taken . . . Each story is sinewy with compressed emotion and intellectual energy, as well as the poignancy of a thwarted search for love. Each can stand on its own as a finely crafted example of an accomplished storyteller’s art.” —Publishers Weekly “One is dazzled but tantalized by veiled fragments of a life that might have been.” —Guardian

978-1-58243-792-7 Cloth 5.5" x 8.5" 224 pages

$26.00 Short Stories territory: US February

“Jhabvala is spellbinding, whether she’s writing her celebrated fiction or Academy Award–winning screenplays . . . In episodes set in London, New York, and India, in both the humblest and most opulent of abodes, she portrays artists, philosophers, politicians, and alcoholics. Jhabvala name-drops Chekhov, and this is no pretension given the grace of her spiraling plots, the depth of her psychology, the elegance of her humor, the subtlety of her eroticism, and her masterfully concise descriptions of imperiled households, eccentric personalities, sexual enthrallment, unexpected alliances, and transcendent love.” —Library Journal

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is the author of nineteen books. She is the recipient of the Booker Prize, a MacArthur fellowship, and has been honored with an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jhabvala’s screenplays for Merchant-Ivory Productions have earned two Academy Awards. Jhabvala and her husband divide their time between Delhi and New York. 16

17 © James Ivory

The Lankavatara Sutra Translation and Commentary

Classic Bestselling Sutras from from Red Red Pine Pine More Sutras Over 30,000 copies sold

Red Pine A new translation into English of the greatest Sutra of all

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on Buddhist and academic publications, including Buddhadharma, Tricycle, Shambhala Sun, Parabola, Religion & American Culture • Top markets radio campaign • Author tours independently each year

Having translated The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra, and following with The Platform Sutra, Red Pine now turns his attention to perhaps the greatest Sutra of all. The Lankavatara Sutra is the holy grail of Zen. Zen’s first patriarch, Bodhidharma, gave a copy of this text to his successor, Hui-k’o, and told him everything he needed to know was in this book. Passed down from teacher to student ever since, this is the only Zen sutra ever spoken by the Buddha. Although it covers all the major teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, it contains but two teachings: that everything we perceive as being real is nothing but the perceptions of our own mind and that the knowledge of this is something that must be realized and experienced for oneself and cannot be expressed in words. In the words of Chinese Zen masters, these two teachings became known as “have a cup of tea” and “taste the tea.” This is the first translation into English of the original text used by Bodhidharma, which was the Chinese translation made by Gunabhadra in 443 CE and upon which all Chinese Zen masters have relied ever since. In addition to presenting one of the most difficult of all Buddhist texts in clear English, Red Pine has also added summaries, explanations, and notes, including relevant Sanskrit terms on the basis of which the Chinese translation was made. This promises to become an essential text for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding or knowledge of Zen.

Of Note

The Diamond Sutra RED PINE Said to contain answers to all questions of delusion and dualism, The Diamond Sutra is the Buddhist teaching on the “perfection of wisdom” and cuts through all obstacles on the path of practice. As Red Pine explains: “The Diamond Sutra may look like a book, but it’s really the body of the Buddha. It’s also your body, my body, all possible bodies. But it’s a body with nothing inside and nothing outside. It doesn’t exist in space or time. Nor is it a construct of the mind. It’s no mind. And yet because it’s no mind, it has room for compassion. This book is the offering of no mind, born of compassion for all suffering beings. Of all the Sutras that teach this teaching, this is the diamond.” 978-1-58243-256-4 | TRADE PAPER | $19.95

The Heart Sutra The Womb of Buddhas RED PINE The Heart Sutra is Buddhism in a nutshell. It has had the most profound and wide-reaching influence of any text in Buddhism. This short text covers more of the Buddha’s teachings than any other scripture, and it does so without being superficial or hurried. Although the original author is unknown, he was clearly someone with a deep realization of the Dharma. Divided into four parts and broken into thirty-five lines to make it easier to study or chant, and containing a glossary of names, terms, and texts, The Heart Sutra is a wise book of deep teaching and destined to become the standard edition of this timeless statement of Mahayana truth. 978-1-59376-082-3 | TRADE PAPER | $14.95

• Pine was awarded a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship to work on Mountain and Rivers of Chinese Poetry and the 2010 Asian Literature Award from the American Literary Translators Association for In Such Hard Times

978-1-58243-791-0 Cloth 6" x 9" 256 pages

$30.00 eastern Religion territory: W February

Red Pine (Bill Porter) was born in Los Angeles in 1943

18 © Julie Anand

and attended graduate school at Columbia University. An acclaimed translator, his published works include three major Buddhist texts: The Platform Sutra, The Diamond Sutra, and The Heart Sutra. He is also the author of Zen Baggage, Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits. Red Pine has lived in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and has traveled extensively in China, visiting Zen temples and seeking out hermits. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

The Platform Sutra The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng RED PINE The Platform Sutra occupies a central place in Zen (Ch’an) Buddhist instruction for students and spiritual seekers worldwide. And unlike the other Sutras, which transcribe the teachings of the Buddha himself, this presents the autobiography of Hui-neng, the controversial sixth patriarch of Zen, and his understanding of the fundamentals of a spiritual and practical life. Hui-neng’s instruction still matters—the seventh-century school of Sudden Awakening that he founded survives today, continuing to influence the Rinzai and Soto schools of contemporary Zen. 978-1-59376-177-6 | TRADE PAPER | $16.95 19

A Hole in the Ground Owned by a Liar

A rollicking piece of noir packed with explosions, death threats, and one very unlikely hero

Daniel Pyne Lee, a high school shop teacher in Evergreen, Colorado, managed to survive his messy divorce only to hurtle into what some might call a full-on midlife crisis. Looking for a way to spend his weekends and the now painfully long summer vacation, Lee buys a gold mine off the internet—a real, honest-to-God mine, complete with tall tales of riches, a history of disappointment, and a couple of Pakistani-by-way-of-Jackson-Hole prospectors willing to kill for its contents. With the frequently unwanted help of a band of locals, Lee becomes a weekend warrior, attempting to work the mine and keep himself distracted from his other midlife disturbances. There are the Pakistanis, of course, along with his mercurial brother Grant, just released from prison, who is trying in his typically perilous way to pull Lee from his midlife funk. There is his ex-wife Lorraine and her slick husband, Stan Beachum, and the lovely yet mysterious Rayna, the first woman Lee’s wanted to date since his divorce. In Daniel Pyne’s sharp, fun, and raucous style, A Hole in the Ground Owned by a Liar is part mystery and part gold-infused tall tale with a cast of refreshingly quirky characters and one highly unexpected payout.

978-1-58243-797-2 Trade paper Original 6" x 9" 256 pages

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines as well as the top literary journals • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in literary and fiction outlets • Promotion though the author’s website: www.sandblast.com

Of Note • The title comes from a Mark Twain quote: “A mine is a hole in the ground owned by a liar” • Twentynine Palms was published by Counterpoint

$16.95 fiction territory: WE February

Praise for Twentynine Palms “Character is key in this deliciously edgy thriller, screenwriter Pyne’s first novel . . . With dialogue that sings and action that sizzles, this is a prime candidate for the big screen.” —Kirkus (starred review) “Pyne sure-footedly blazes a fresh trail through Chandler country in this taut, expertly wrought desert noir. Twentynine Palms will leave you buzzing like a heat-dazed cricket.” —Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here and All About Lulu “Character is everything in this debut . . . In the book’s best scene, Jack returns to Hollywood, still on the run, for a bit part in a major film. Pyne, who is a successful screenwriter, limns a wonderfully plausible look at a showbiz-sound-stage moment: a clash between a loony director who speaks only quasi-mystical gibberish and an idiot box-office titan channeling De Niro. Twentynine Palms is great fun.” —Booklist

Daniel Pyne, a visiting professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Film and a writing advisor for the Sundance Institute, is the author of the novel Twentynine Palms. Pyne wrote the acclaimed scripts for The Manchurian Candidate, Pacific Heights, and Fracture, among others. He lives in Los Angeles.

21 © Katie Pyne

This Vacant Paradise

An Extravagant Hunger

A Novel

The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher

Victoria Patterson

Anne Zimmerman “Patterson beautifully parses the consequences of one woman’s fall in this memorable, penetrating, fully achieved novel.” —The New York Times Book Review Story Prize and California Book Award finalist Victoria Patterson revisits Newport Beach in This Vacant Paradise, examining the intersections of economics, class, race, sex, and family expectations during the mid-1990s. Esther lives with her grandmother, a virulent matriarch who controls her family with her wealth. Esther knows that an advantageous marriage replete with social standing, familial and peer approval, and financial rewards, will alleviate her struggles. College dropout at the “ripe” age of thirty-three, fashion boutique clerk, caregiver for a drug-addicted brother, Esther is also aware that beauty and an uncanny savvy foretell success. All is well until she begins a tumultuous love affair with Charlie, a local college professor known for his unconventional ideals as much as for his golf game and good looks.

In An Extravagant Hunger, time slows and is relished, and the turning points and casual strolls of M.F.K. Fisher’s life are unwrapped and savored. From the Berengaria that washed her across the sea to France in 1929, to Le Paquis, the Swiss estate that later provided a backdrop for some of the most idyllic and fleeting moments of her life, Anne Zimmerman exquisitely captures the breadth and stories of Fisher’s love for food and her love for family and men. Exploring Fisher’s lonely and formative time in Europe with her first husband; her subsequent divorce and re-marriage to her creative spark plug, Dillwyn Parrish, and his tragic suicide; the story of M.F.K. Fisher’s life becomes as vibrant and passionate as her prolific words on wine and cuisine. Letters and journal entries piece together a dramatic life, but An Extravagant Hunger steps further, bridging the gaps between personal notes and her public persona, filling in the silences by offering an engaging and unprecedented intuitive commentary. With a passion of her own, Anne Zimmerman is the cheerful witness, lingering beside M.F.K. Fisher through her most dramatic and productive years.

MARKETING

Praise for An Extravagant Hunger

• National “Now in Paperback” campaign • Top markets radio campaign

“Patterson’s debut novel is surprisingly sophisticated and nuanced . . . [with] echoes of Nathanael West and early Bruce Wagner.” —Publishers Weekly

“Fisher’s hopeless struggle for happiness and her soap opera-worthy love life—as well as Zimmerman’s careful attention to detail and suspenseful pacing—will keep readers turning these pages.” —The Washington Post

“This Vacant Paradise is that truly rare thing, a first novel that arrives with its writer working at the height of her intellectual gifts and creative powers.” —Jane Vandenburgh, author of Architecture of the Novel and A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century

“In her sympathetic yet critical biography of the life behind Fisher’s celebrated writings, Zimmerman finds a passionate woman defined by ‘lifelong hungers’ . . . Focused, smart, and engaging.” —Publishers Weekly

978-1-58243-805-4 Trade paper 6" x 9" 320 pages

978-1-58243-804-7 Trade paper 6" x 9" 352 pages

Praise for This Vacant Paradise

now in paperback MARKETING • National “Now in Paperback” campaign • Top markets radio campaign • Online campaign targeting literary blogs and websites • Promotion on the author’s website: www.victoriapatterson.net

Of Note • Author’s short story “Johnny Hitman” was listed in the 100 Distinguished Stories in The Best American Short Stories 2009 • Author’s first book was a finalist for the Story Prize and the Commonwealth Club Award

“Patterson writes with the exuberance of a natural storyteller. Her cast is rich, her narrative sinuous and masterfully structured.” —San Francisco Chronicle “With echoes of a modern-day House of Mirth , Patterson’s elaborate tale examines the complexities and contradictions of society, family, and personal desire.” —Booklist

$15.95 Fiction territory: WE february

Victoria Patterson is the author of the story collection Drift, which was a finalist for the Commonwealth Club Award and the Story Prize. Her work has appeared in various publications and journals, including the Los Angeles Times, Orange Coast Magazine, and The Southern Review. She lives with her family in Southern California and teaches through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and as a visiting assistant professor at UC Riverside.

22 © Chris Patterson

A brilliant portrait of M.F.K. Fisher and the heartbreak and happiness that catapulted her to creative success

$16.95 Biography territory: WE february

now in paperback

• Online marketing campaign targeting food, cooking, and literary blogs and websites • Promotion on the author’s blog: www.poeticappetite.blogspot.com

Of Note • Author had extensive and unprecedented access to M.F.K. Fisher’s estate and archives • Includes black-and-white photos

Anne Zimmerman

holds an MA from San Diego State University, where her thesis was a biographical study of the life of M.F.K. Fisher. She has spent exhaustive time researching Fisher at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College and is a food enthusiast and contributor to Culinate.com. She lives in San Francisco.

23 © Chris Hardy

Every Night is a Saturday Night The Rock ’n’ Roll Life of Legendary Sax Man Bobby Keys

Legendary saxophonist for The Rolling Stones tells his story the way he plays his horn— with gleeful abandon

Bobby Keys | with Bill Ditenhafer introduction by keith richards Born in Slaton, Texas, some fifteen miles southeast of Lubbock, Bobby Keys has lived the kind of life that qualifies as a rock ’n’ roll folktale. In his early teens, Keys bribed his way into his neighbor Buddy Holly’s garage band rehearsals. He took up the saxophone because it was the only instrument left unclaimed in the school band, and he convinced his grandfather to sign his guardianship over to Crickets drummer J.I. Allison so that he could go on tour as a teenager. Keys spent years on the road during the early days of rock ’n’ roll with hitmakers like Bobby Vee and the various acts on Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars Tour, followed by decades as a top touring and session sax man for the likes of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, George Harrison, John Lennon, and onto, most famously, his gig with The Rolling Stones from 1970 onward. Every Night is a Saturday Night finds Keys setting down, the many tales of an overthe-top rock ’n’ roll life told in his own inimitable voice. Augmented by exclusive interviews with famous friends and fellow travelers like Keith Richards, Joe Cocker, and Jim Keltner, Every Night is a Saturday Night paints a unique picture of the coming-of-age of rock ’n’ roll itself while celebrating how Keys’ raw talent and outsized personality have elevated him from sideman to icon. 978-1-58243-783-5 Cloth 6" x 9" 272 pages

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in specific topic area • Author tour: New York City, Nashville, Memphis, Austin, Los Angeles, and San Francisco

Of Note • Keys is best known as the saxophone player for The Rolling Stones

$25.00 Memoir territory: W march

Bobby Keys has been an in-demand session and touring saxophone player since the 1950s. He has toured and recorded with The Rolling Stones since 1970, and has played on record or onstage with Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly’s Crickets, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, Warren Zevon, and Sheryl Crow, among many others. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Excerpt from Every Night is a Saturday Night First time I heard Buddy Holly play was for the grand opening of a gas station just half a block away from where my grandparents lived in Slaton, Texas. I was 12 years old. Buddy and his guys were playing on the back of a cotton trailer with the sides taken off, just a flatbed wagon. That was the first time I’d ever heard anyone play an electric guitar live. I remember I was just laying in bed and suddenly I heard this music—and of course I’d heard this type of music on the radio before, but this wasn’t on the radio, man, this was somewhere outside my house! So I jumped up and went outside and there he was. I remember the bass player, Joe B. Mauldin, had a standup bass with different colored strings, and I remember he had his fingers taped with Band-aids because he was just slappin’ the bass, man. The whole thing was just like … I don’t know, it was like a mountain had just fallen on me. And right then and there I knew I wanted to have something to do with that music. There was just this power, just something about it, and I thought, well, by golly, they’re doing it right here in Slaton, so, you know, it must be available! And that just kinda lit a fuse that started burning then, and it’s still burning now.

Bill Ditenhafer is the former editor of Nashville Lifestyles magazine and has worked as a features writer, arts writer, critic and editor at weekly newspapers from Nashville, Tennessee to Warsaw, Poland. He lives in Nashville with his wife and two children.

25 ©

Photo courtesy of the author

The Mountain and the Fathers

A haunting exploration of the male identity and the American West

Growing Up on the Big Dry Joe Wilkins The Mountain and the Fathers explores the life of boys and men in the unforgiving, harsh world north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana in a drought afflicted area called the Big Dry, a land that chews up old and young alike. Joe Wilkins was born into this world, raised by a young mother and elderly grandfather following the untimely death of his father. That early loss stretches out across the Big Dry, and Wilkins uses his own story and those of the young boys and men growing up around him to examine the violence, confusion, and rural poverty found in this distinctly American landscape. Ultimately, these lives put forth a new examination of myth and manhood in the American West and cast a journalistic eye on how young men seek to transcend their surroundings in the search for a better life. Rather than dwell on grief or ruin, Wilkins’ memoir posits that it is our stories that sustain us, and The Mountain and the Fathers, much like the work of Norman MacLean or Jim Harrison, heralds the arrival of an instant literary classic.

978-1-58243-794-1 Cloth 6" x 9" 240 pages

Excerpt from The Mountain and the Fathers MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines as well as the top literary journals • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews with major history and memoir-oriented outlets • Promotion through the author’s blog: www.joewilkins.org

Of Note • Wilkins was the 2011 Obsidian Prize in Fiction winner and was a special mention for the Pushcart Prize, as well as a finalist for the 2010 PEN Center USA and National Magazine awards

$26.00 Natural History; Memoir territory: WE March

Joe Wilkins lives with his wife and two young children on the north Iowa prairie, where he teaches writing at Waldorf College. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, the Sun, Orion, and Slate. His work has won numerous awards and honors, and he is the winner of the Richard J. Margolis Award of Blue Mountain Center, which goes to “a promising new journalist or essayist whose work combines warmth, humor, wisdom, and concern with social justice.”

26 ©

There is so much I do not remember. And part of me wants to say, what of it? What does it mean, anyway, to remember? If a coyote clacks its yellow teeth in the night, if a cross of oil breaks and scatters the light, if I am alone or not alone—what does it matter? The light broke one way or another. That coyote must be dust. My father is in Montana still and is dust. And me? I am no longer that sad, round-headed boy. No longer, if I ever was, scared and alone. Though I did not rise to see my father, I tell myself it does not matter. Or do I, like a boy, pretend? It goes like this: my wife and I are on our way home from visiting friends in Chicago. My wife is driving. It is evening, our headlights hollowing the dark along this flat, straight, Midwestern freeway. And I am resting in the passenger seat, my forehead on the cool window glass. Just out of Moline, I see beyond the fence line the quick blink and turn of yellow eyes—and like that I am a small boat drifting back a muddy, snow-melt river of miles and years; like that I am a broken-hearted, fatherless boy in the lonely-making distances of the interior; like that I want more than anything to rise and look again on my father. We leave and never leave. We grow up and never grow up. We grieve and grieve and grieve. But sometimes, we remember too, we turn and face that grief. Remembering is the opposite of pretending, it is the beginning of telling the truth to yourself about yourself. Yet I know too—why did my grandfather, gentle cowboy that he was, have his hat on inside? Why the anointing then, when my father was already hours dead?—memory is never enough. Memory spins and skitters, winks in the dark. Like an oil slick, memory fails and rainbows the light. It is in the currents of story that the boy begins to understand. That the boy becomes a man. Becomes a better man. In story we learn to live like human beings in the dark houses of our bodies. For beyond anything we can do we are alone in there. And we rightly spite that lonesome darkness. We reach out with what it is we have, fumble for the hand of the other—mother, brother, sister, lover, son—give to them our heart, our story.

Empires of Food

The Other Shoe

Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

A Novel

Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas

Matt Pavelich

We are what we eat, the profound truth about how civilization has played out on the world stage Using the colorful diaries of a sixteenth-century merchant as a narrative guide, Empires of Food vividly chronicles the fate of people and societies for the past 12,000 years through the foods they grew, hunted, traded, and ate—and offers fascinating, and devastating, insights into what to expect in years to come. In energetic prose, agricultural expert Evan D.G. Fraser and journalist Andrew Rimas capture the flavor of places as disparate as ancient Mesopotamia and imperial Britain, taking us from the first city in the once-thriving Fertile Crescent to today’s overworked breadbaskets and rice bowls in the United States and China. A fascinating, fresh history told through the prism of the dining table, Empires of Food offers a grand scope and a provocative analysis of the world today, indispensable in this time of global warming and food crises.

Praise for Empires of Food

trade paper

“A panoramic overview . . . plenty of enlightening stories . . . Spanning the whole of human civilization, this is a compelling read.” —Kirkus (starred review)

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines, with a focus on environmental publications • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 environmental and political markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews

Of Note • Both authors have contributed extensively to major publications and academic journals

Photo courtesy of the author

Henry Brusett is the only one who can explain the mysterious death of Calvin Teague. He’s the only one who truly knows how the young man came to be bloodied and lifeless on his land in Montana’s vast backcountry. But Henry won’t say anything. His silence and its ripple across his small community form the heart of Matt Pavelich’s engrossing second novel, The Other Shoe. Henry never wanted much more than a family and his days spent as a sawyer deep in the wilderness. But by middle age Henry is divorced, disabled, and isolated on a remote plot of land in Montana. After years of self-imposed loneliness, Henry meets Karen, who’s half his age and knows nothing but her own willful solitude. Their union is the unlikeliest of bonds, a mix of comfort and guilt for Henry who believes he’s too old for Karen. But it’s also the spark of his undoing, a decision that leads him toward one of his greatest regrets. As members of Henry and Karen’s small town try to both uncover and cover-up the truth surrounding Calvin Teague’s untimely death, The Other Shoe moves toward the inescapable and shines in the rarity of Pavelich’s assured and haunting style.

“With the flavor of Jared Diamond, Empires of Food thoughtfully weaves religion, military history, and science into a historical arc of how food undergirds civilizations’ rise and fall.” —Jennifer 8. Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Praise for Our Savage

“Evan Fraser and Andrew Rimas vividly recreate centuries of spicefilled ships and grain silos to show that, while the pen and the gun may be the visible tools of diplomacy, the knife and fork are often the true instruments of human change.” —Sasha Issenberg, author of The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy

“Difficult to classify, this striking, perplexing first novel is made up of stories that swirl around its strange protagonist and his picaresque adventures . . . Pavelich’s stylistic flourishes and cunning vignettes give the novel flair.” —Publishers Weekly

978-1-58243-793-4 Trade paper 6" x 9" 320 pages

978-1-58243-795-8 Trade paper Original 6" x 9" 320 pages

$16.95 Social History territory: USC March

Evan D.G. Fraser is an adjunct professor of geography at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and Senior Lecturer at the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds in the UK. His research is on farming, climate change, and the environemnt. He lives in Yorkshire Dales with his wife and children. 28

A harrowing novel about honesty, resilience, and ruin in the Montana backcountry

Andrew Rimas is the managing editor at the Improper Bostonian magazine. He is a frequent contributor to Boston magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine and The Boston Globe.

“Our Savage is an extraordinary book. I don’t know of anything like it in our literature . . . Matt Pavelich is uncommonly vital and original.” —Evan S. Connell, author of Mr. Bridge

$16.95 fiction territory: USC March

trade paper original MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines as well as the top literary journals • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in literary and fiction outlets • Author tour in the Pacific Northwest, as well as participation at the Missoula and Helena, Montana Book Festivals

Of Note • Our Savage was published by Counterpoint

Matt Pavelich is the author of the novel Our Savage and the short story collection Beasts of the Forest, Beasts of the Field, which won the Montana First Book Award. Awarded Michener and Montana Arts Council fellowships, he lives in Montana.

29 © Riley Pavelich

The Breaking Point

The Briefcase

Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles Stephen Koch

Hiromi Kawakami | Translated by Allison Markin Powell “Simply a masterpiece-a spellbinding page-turner that finally unravels the whole story behind the Hemingway–Dos Passos break.” —Ronald Radosh When American authors John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway went to Spain in 1937 to witness the Spanish Civil War firsthand, the devastation they encountered was far from impersonal: As Spain was unraveling thread by thread, so was the relationship between these two literary titans. They had arrived in Spain as comrades, leftist writers-in-arms. But a real-life literary mystery unfolded when Dos Passos’ friend José Robles—a Spanish-born Johns Hopkins professor—disappeared. Written from a novelist’s eye for detail, The Breaking Point is the story of two lives at the intersection of friendship and murder, of love and death, and of literature and history.

Praise for The Breaking Point

back in print

“A deeply thoughtful, trenchant examination . . . A whopping good literary tale . . . explored here by a master of the literary and the political.” —Kirkus (starred review) “[A] riveting account of a time when personality, ideology, and war all collided.” —Library Journal

MARKETING • National “Back in Print” and “Movie tie-in” campaign • Top markets radio campaign • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in specific topic area

“An unlovely portrait of the engagé artist as useful idiot. Its small drama leads directly to all the big questions about the nature of the Spanish Civil War . . . A series of vividly rendered scenes connected by intelligent commentary.” —George Packer, The New Yorker

A love story brimming with melancholic beauty between a woman and her teacher

Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, “Sensei,” in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him “Sensei” (“Teacher”). He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship—traced by Kawakami’s gentle hints at the changing seasons—develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to an enjoyable sense of companionship, and finally into a deeply sentimental love affair. As Tsukiko and Sensei grow to know and love one another, time’s passing comes across through the seasons and the food and beverages they consume together. From warm sake to chilled beer, from the buds on the trees to the blooming of the cherry blossoms, the reader is enveloped by a keen sense of pathos and both characters’ loneliness.

trade paper original Praise for Manazuru “The Manazuru of Kawakami’s is a dream state as much as a place . . . Captivating and suspenseful.” —Booklist

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines as well as the top literary journals, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, and Words Without Borders • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign targeting Japanese culture and literature websites

978-1-58243-798-9 Trade reprint 5.5" x 8" 320 pages

$15.95 Biography territory: USC march

Stephen Koch, the former head of the Writing Division of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, is the author of numerous books including Double Lives and The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop. He lives in New York City.

978-1-58243-599-2 Trade paper Original 5.5" x 8.5" 208 pages

$15.95 Japanese literature territory: USC march

Of Note • Manazuru won the Japan Literature Foundation Award from the Japanese Literature Publishing and Promotion Center

Hiromi Kawakami is the author of God and Manazuru, which won the Japan Literature Foundation Award. She is the recipient of the Pascal Short Story Prize for New Writers and the Akutagawa Prize. Her stories and essays are widely published in Japan, where she taught biology and is now a member of the Science Fiction Research Association. She lives in Japan. Allison Markin Powell is a literary translator and edi-

30 Photo courtesy of the author

tor in New York City. She has translated works by Osamu Dazai, Kaho Nakayama, and Motoyuki Shibata, and she was the guest

31 © Tomorhiro Muta

Featured Food Books From Counterpoint

Ripe The Search for the Perfect Tomato Arthur allen The inimitable, versatile tomato has conquered the cuisines of Spain and Italy, and serves as America’s most popular garden delicacy. Arthur Allen understands the spell of the tomato and he’s our guide to its dramatic story. Combining reportage, archival research, and innumerable anecdotes, here is a story that will resonate from the greenhouse to the dinner table. 978-1-58243-426-1 | Trade Paper | $15.95

Edible Landscaping Text and Photographs by Rosalind Creasy Drawing on the author’s decades of research and experience, this book presents everything you need to know to create an inviting home landscape that will yield mouthwatering vegetables, fruits, nuts, and berries. This highly anticipated new edition of the groundbreaking classic presents the latest design and how-to information in a glorious full-color format, featuring more than 300 inspiring photographs. 978-1-57805-154-0 | Trade Paper | $39.95 | A Sierra Club Book

Bringing It to the Table On Farming and Food Wendell Berry | introduction by michael pollan Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry’s caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence. Drawn from over thirty years of work, this collection joins bestsellers The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver as essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. 978-1-58243-543-5 | Trade Paper | $14.95

Seeds of Change Six Plants that Transformed Mankind Henry Hobhouse A highly original take on the history of six commercial plants, Seeds of Change illuminates how sugar, tea, cotton, the potato, quinine, and the coca plant have shaped our past. In this fascinating account, Henry Hobhouse explains the consequences of these plants with attention-grabbing historical moments. Seeds of Change is a captivating and invaluable addition to our understanding of modern culture. 978-1-59376-049-6 | Trade Paper | $17.95

BOTANICAL PRINTS Henry Evans | Foreword by Wilfrid Blunt Botanical Prints presents a vast array of Evans’s work and goes one step further by providing excerpts from the artist’s notebook, which illuminate not only the physical processes he used but also the brilliant mind that created both the prints and the prose. 978-1-58243-637-1 | Trade Paper | $24.95

Ginger And Ganesh Adventures in Indian Cooking, Culture, and Love Nani Power On a quest to learn authentic Indian cuisine, Nani Power discovers the recipe for friendship, love, and a perfect chai masala. Through the senses of the kitchen, Power re-examines her own path as a woman. She takes the reader into a culture, a cuisine, and the female psyche, with recipes and stories from each chapter revealing the struggles of modern women. Along the way, she also manages to fall in love when she least expects it. 978-1-58243-725-5 | Trade Paper | $15.95

Featured Music Titles More Sutras from Soft from Skull RedPress Pine

Bring the Noise 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip Hop SIMON REYNOLDS

sof t sk ull press

Bring the Noise weaves together interviews, reviews, essays, and features to create a critical history of the last twenty years of pop culture, juxtaposing the voices of many of rock and hip hop’s most provocative artists—Morrissey, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, The Stone Roses, P.J. Harvey, Radiohead— with Reynolds’s own passionate analysis. From grunge to grime, from Madchester to the Dirty South, Bring the Noise chronicles hip hop and alternative rock’s competing claims to be the cutting edge of innovation and the voice of opposition in an era of conservative backlash. 978-1-59376-401-2 | TRADE PAPER | $16.95

Appetite for Self-Destruction The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age STEVE KNOPPER For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the epic story of the precipitous rise and fall of the modern recording industry, from an author who has been writing about it for more than ten years. With unparalleled access to those intimately involved in the music world’s highs and lows— including Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning, and more than 200 others—Steve Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry’s wild ride through the past three decades. 978-1-59376-269-8 | TRADE PAPER | $16.95

I’m in the Band Backstage Notes from the Chick in White Zombie SEAN YSEULT I’m In the Band charts White Zombie’s rise from the gritty music scene of New York’s Lower East Side in the eighties to arena headliners during the nineties alternative-explosion that followed in Nirvana’s wake, while sharing the unlikely story of a female musician who won the respect and adoration of male metal musicians and fans. From 1985 to 1996, Sean Yseult was the sole woman not only in White Zombie, but in the entire metal scene: bands, roadies, managers, you name it—with the exception of girlfriends and groupies, Yseult was in a world by herself. 978-1-59376-299-5 | TRADE PAPER | $22.95 35

Mistaken

The new novel by the Academy Award– winning writer and director, already an international bestseller

Neil Jordan “I had been mistaken for him so many times that when I heard he had died it was as if part of myself had died too.” So begins Mistaken, the new best-selling novel from the master of gothic fiction, Neil Jordan. Kevin and Gerald were two boys growing up on opposite sides of the Dublin economic divide. Though they had never met, they shared a growing awareness of each other through episodes of mistaken identity. Yet Kevin was doubly haunted, living next door to the one-time residence of Bram Stoker, and the shadow of both a vampire and Gerald stretch far across his early years. For a time, the boys’ doppelganger paths would cross innocently enough—one stealing the other’s unwitting girlfriend, or being called out to in the street—until a family tragedy sends them both down a much darker path. “Mistaken comes complete with a plot as precise and as crafted as that of the finest thriller, filtered through an insistent narrative voice that holds the stricken reader as if at gunpoint. For all the revelation and the anger, it is the writing, the linguistic artistry that ultimately leaves one gasping. Be warned: this is a great international novel, a great Irish novel, and, most of all, a great Dublin novel that thoughtfully heeds Joyce and then breaks free the way a child eventually shrugs off even the most loving and beloved of parents.” —The Irish Times

Of Note

Praise for Mistaken

• Jordan is an Academy Award–winning writer and director for Interview with a Vampire

“Irish fiction needed a cohesively great novel, pulsing with darkness, intelligence, and revelation. Here it is.” —The Irish Times

• He is currently the creator and executive producer of the Showtime series, The Borgias

“Written with great skill, confidence, and vim . . . utterly convincing: full of subtlety, delicate, piercing prose, charming, lively dialogue and descriptive passages that are poetic, witty, and acute. At times it has the pace of a thriller . . . a powerful, involving, and beautifully written book about identity and loss.” —Financial Times “A poignant symmetry—perfectly marrying form and content, mood and imagery, time and place . . . unputdownable.” —The Scotsman “The novel breathes with life.” —Guardian

978-1-59376-433-3 Trade paper Original 5.5" x 8.25" 320 pages

$15.95 fiction territory: US January

“Mistaken is a powerfully atmospheric book, which turns Dublin into a murky maze of madness and melancholy.” —Daily Mail “A level-headed love letter to the capital runs through the book and it echoes Ulysses in its intimate knowledge of the streets, transport system, and pubs.” —The Sunday Times

Neil Jordan is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including The Past, The Dream of a Beast, Sunrise with Sea Monster, Shade, and Night in Tunisia, a collection of short stories which won the Guardian Fiction Prize. He has written, directed and produced a large number of award–winning films, including The Crying Game, Michael Collins, Interview with a Vampire, The End of the Affair, and Ondine. He is currently the creator and executive producer of the Showtime series, The Borgias. He lives in Dublin. 36

37 ©

William S. Burroughs vs. The Qur’an

Love, InshAllah The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women

Michael Muhammad Knight

Edited by Nura Maznavi & Ayesha Mattu One writer’s journey for inspiration takes him on an unexpected exploration of hero worship, religious authority, and the creative process

trade paper original MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines

When Michael Muhammad Knight sets out to write the definitive biography of his “Anarcho-Sufi” hero and mentor, writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (a.k.a. Hakim Bey), he makes a startling discovery that changes everything. At the same time that he grows disillusioned with his idol, Knight finds that his own books have led to American Muslim youths making a countercultural idol of him, placing him on the same pedestal that he had given Wilson. In an attempt to forge his own path, Knight pledges himself to an Iranian Sufi order that Wilson had almost joined, attempts to write the Great American Queer Islamo-Futurist Novel, and even creates his own mosque in the wilderness of West Virginia. He also employs the “cut-up” writing method of Bey’s friend, the late William S. Burroughs, to the Qur’an, subjecting Islam’s holiest scripture to literary experimentation. William S. Burroughs vs. The Qur’an is the struggle of a heroworshiper without heroes, the meeting of religious and artistic paths, and the quest of a writer as spiritual seeker.

Full of warmth and wit, real-life love stories from American Muslim women whose romances are as individual as they are In this groundbreaking collection, American Muslim women writers sweep aside stereotypes to share their real-life tales of flirting, dating, and sex. Their stories show just how varied the search for love can be—from singles’ events and college flirtations to arranged marriages, all with a uniquely Muslim twist. These heartfelt tales are filled with passion and hope, loss and longing. One follows the quintessential single woman in the big city as she takes a chance on a Muslim speed-dating event. Another tells of a shy student from a liberal college town who falls in love online and must reveal her secret to her conservative family. A third recounts a Southern girl who surprises herself by agreeing to an arranged marriage, unexpectedly finding the love of her life. These compelling stories of love and romance create an irresistible balance; this is at once heart-warming and tantalizing, revealing and deeply moving.

trade paper original MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines

• Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets

• Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in specific topic area

• Online campaign featuring blogs, podcasts, and interviews

• Outreach to festivals and fairs like Taking it to the Streets (IMAN), Muslim Fest Toronto, Mosque Cares/Islamic Society of NA, and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

• Outreach to festivals and fairs like Taking it to the Streets (IMAN), Muslim Fest Toronto, and Mosque Cares/Islamic Society of NA

978-1-59376-415-9 Trade paper Original 5.5" x 8.25" 256 pages

$15.95 biography territory: W january

Michael Muhammad Knight is a novelist, essayist, and journalist. He converted to Islam at 16, after reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and traveled to Islamabad at age 17 to study at a madrassa. His the author of The Taqwacores, Impossible Man, Osama Van Halen and Journey to the End of Islam. Knight lives in New York.

978-1-59376-428-9 Trade paper Original 5.5" x 8.25" 256 pages

$15.95 anthology territory: W february

• Promotion through the authors’ website: https://loveinshallah.com

Of Note • Maznavi was a Fulbright Scholar in 2003

Ayesha Mattu is a human rights consultant, photographer, and writer. She was selected a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the UN Alliance of Civilizations and the ASMA Society in 2009. She lives in San Francisco. Nura Maznavi is a civil rights attorney and writer. She was raised in Los Angeles and now lives in San Francisco.

39 Photo courtesy of the author

Photo courtesy of the editors

A Theory of Small Earthquakes

“A smart, sexy, funny, wrenching, delicious story of lust and trust and love and family.” —Anne Lamott

Meredith Maran

“Any woman who has fought the odds to make a happy, healthy family will relate to Alison Rose, whose redemption is at stake in this inventive, addictive novel. A Theory of Small Earthquakes teaches us something new about love and sex, jealousy and loyalty, and, most importantly, motherhood.” —Ayelet Waldman, author of Bad Mother and Red Hook Road In her ten previous nonfiction books, Meredith Maran has trained her journalistic eye on the subtle dance between the political and the personal. Now Maran brings her provocative gaze to her debut novel—a family story spanning two decades, set against the social, political, and geological upheavals of the Bay Area. Eager to escape her damaging past and chart her own future, Alison Rose is powerfully drawn to Zoe, a free-spirited artist who offers emotional stability and a love outside the norm. After many happy years together, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake deepens fissures in the two women’s relationship, and Alison leaves Zoe for a new, “normal” life with a man. Alison’s son is the outcome of both of these complicated relationships, and the three parents strive to create a life together that will test the boundaries of love and family in changing times.

978-1-59376-430-2 Trade paper Original 5.5" x 8.25" 352 pages

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines as well as the top literary journals • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in literary fiction outlets • Promotion through social media • Promotion through the author’s website: www.meredithmaran.com • Three city author tour

Of Note • My Lie was named a best book of 2010 by the San Francisco Chronicle and Dirty was named the best book by them in 2003 • This has already garnered praise from Ayelet Waldman and Anne Lamott • This strikes a balance between “The Kids Are All Right” and Jodi Picoult’s Sing You Home

Praise for A Theory of Small Earthquakes “In this groundbreaking novel, Meredith Maran tells the story of a woman drawn to two lovers, each of whom speaks to a different aspect of her desire, and of the unlikely family the three of them create. With rare honesty and courage, Maran asks us to consider whether sexuality can be defined by gender preference, or if—as this blunt story proposes—it is as shifting and stormy as the trembling ground beneath our feet.” —Joyce Maynard, author of The Good Daughters and At Home in the World

$15.95 fiction territory: W February

Meredith Maran is an award–winning journalist and the author of several books, including My Lie, Class Dismissed, and What It’s Like to Live Now. Maran is a contributor to People, Self, Family Circle, More, Mother Jones, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Salon.com. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and mother of two grown sons, she lives in Oakland with her wife. 40

41 © www.lisakeatingphotography.com

Energy Flash

Nameless Dame

A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture

Murder on the Russian River

Simon Reynolds

Bart Schneider The story of rave culture and techno music from an insider and journalist who dosed up and blissed out

trade paper original MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines including The New York Times, The Village Voice, Spin, Rolling Stone, Slate, Salon, and GQ • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, podcasts, and interviews for music and culture enthusiasts • Promotion on the author’s websites: blissout.blogspot.com, energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com, energyflashinfohype.blogspot.com

Ecstasy did for house music what LSD did for psychedelic rock. Now, in Energy Flash, journalist Simon Reynolds offers a revvedup and passionate inside chronicle of how MDMA (“ecstasy”) and MIDI (the basis for electronica) together spawned the unique rave culture of the 1990s. England, Germany, and Holland began tinkering with imported Detroit techno and Chicago house music in the late 1980s, and when ecstasy was added to the mix in British clubs, a new music subculture was born. A longtime writer on the music beat, Reynolds started watching—and partaking in—the rave scene early on, observing firsthand ecstasy’s sense-heightening and serotonin-surging effects on the music and the scene. In telling the story, Reynolds goes way beyond straight music history, mixing social history, interviews with participants and scene-makers, and his own analysis of the sounds with the names of key places, tracks, groups, scenes, and artists. He delves deep into the panoply of rave-worthy drugs and proper rave attitude and etiquette, exposing a nuanced musical phenomenon. Read on, and learn why nitrous oxide is called “hippy crack.”

Praise for Energy Flash “Energy Flash is a labor of love.” —The Washington Post “A classic chronicle of the nineties rave movement.” —Rolling Stone “An impressively detailed and well-informed chronology of the last decade’s transatlantic nightclub soundtrack.” —Newsday

From the best-selling author comes a murder mystery infused with pot, poetry, and an endless array of lies The Russian River Valley—laid-back, marijuana-steeped, and off-the-grid—is the backdrop for Bart Schneider’s new mystery featuring the tough and dogged detective Augie Boyer. Augie takes a break from the bite of another Minnesota winter by visiting the California homestead of his longtime friend Bobby Sabbatini, who is celebrating the opening of his poetry-infused tavern, Ginsberg’s Galley. But Augie’s notoriety precedes him, and his arrival is met with a trip to a murder scene. Ruthie Rosenberg, a local who has fallen into a life of drugs and dependence, has been found at The Last Judgment Campground, shot twice in the head. At the request of Deputy Jesse Coolican, who’s loved Ruthie for years, Augie promises to investigate the case himself. No sooner than he starts to ask questions, Augie discovers the trail leading to Ruthie’s killer—or killers—is tangled with politics, religion, bold-faced lies, and suspicious double-lives. Even his closest friends are part of the fray. Is Ruthie’s murder the work of a copycat? An escalated statement by the religious right? Only an outsider can discover the painful truth—and Augie must work quickly before the insular community buries the truth deep among its ever-growing secrets.

“Devastatingly persuasive . . . Accomplished, rich and ambitious . . . [This novel] is hard to get out of your system.” —Chicago Tribune “Passionate . . . Suspense derives from a single decision hanging in the air, unobtrusive at first but growing more urgent day by day.” —Los Angeles Times

978-1-59376-407-4 Trade paper Original 6" x 9" 512 pages

978-1-59376-435-7 trade paper original 6" x 9" 304 pages

Simon Reynolds is a consulting editor at Spin magazine. He is also the author of Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock, The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock ’n’ Roll, Totally Wired, and Bring the Noise.

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets

Praise for Beautiful Inez

“Lucid, comprehensive, and smart.” —Simon Frith, The Village Voice $15.95 Music territory: USCO march

trade paper original

$15.95 fiction territory: Usco march

• Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in specific topic area

Of Note • Schneider has reviewed books for the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and New York Newsday. He reviews regularly now for the San Francisco Chronicle

Bart Schneider is the author of the novels Blue Bossa, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Secret Love, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Beautiful Inez; and The Man in the Blizzard. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

43 Photo courtesy of the author

Madonna and Me

Women writers take on the ultimate icon

Women Writers on the Queen of Pop selected and edited by Laura Barcella Foreword by Jessica Valenti For nearly thirty years, Madonna has been at the center of the media spotlight. She has sold more than two hundred million records worldwide, launched her own record label, headlined an Oscar-award–winning film, authored bestselling books for both adults and children, inspired global street–fashion trends, and instigated international debates over a range of feminist issues from sexual fetish to adoption ethics. Masterfully harnessing her talent and power to navigate her ascent to stardom, she has become the very definition of iconic. She has also been a constant companion. In Madonna and Me, more than forty women write about Madonna’s influence on their lives. No subject goes unexplored—from sex and money to fashion and identity, the stories are just as brazen, bold, and balls-to-the-wall as Madonna. They explore the evolution of her chameleonlike personas—material girl and “boy-toy” tartlet, kooky Kabbalist and savvy businesswoman, siren and mother— and her impact on culture as a groundbreaking feminist. Of course, not all women worship at her altar, and likewise the essays in Madonna and Me are brutally honest, funny, engaging, and real. They delve into the hearts, souls, memories, and moments of contemporary women, celebrating the ways in which Madonna has inspired us and challenged us, pushing us to be bolder, edgier, braver versions of ourselves.

978-1-59376-429-6 Trade paper Original 6" x 9" 272 pages

MARKETING • National print review campaign focusing on top 20 dailies and magazines • Radio campaign targeting shows at NPR and top 10 markets • Online campaign featuring blogs, posts, podcasts, and interviews in specific topic area • Promotion through the author’s website: www.laurabarcella.com

Of Note • Author was a contributor to BITCHfest: Ten Years of Culture Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2006) • Author has contributed to The Village Voice, Salon, San Francisco Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, CNN.com, MSN.com, and many others • Contributors include: Caroline Leavitt, Cintra Wilson, Emily Nussbaum, Gloria Feldt, Rebecca Traister, Susan Shapiro, and Wendy Shanker

$16.95 anthology territory: USC march

Madonna and Me was selected and edited by Laura Barcella , a Madonna devotee since the age of six. A veteran journalist, she has covered pop culture, lifestyles, and women’s issues in more than forty magazines, newspapers and websites, including The Village Voice, Salon.com, Time Out New York, ELLEGirl, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

45 Photo courtesy of the author

Fall 2011 Highlights Lightning People A Novel CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN Christopher Bollen’s debut captures the atmosphere of anxiety and loss that exists in post-9/11 Manhattan. This is a story of the city itself and the interconnected lives of those attempting to navigate both Manhattan and their own morality. SEPTEMBER | 978-1-59376-419-7 | CLOTH | $25.00

The Book of Books The Radical Impact of the King James Bible 1611–2011 MELVYN BRAGG The King James Bible has often been called the “Book of Books,” both in itself and in what it stands for. Since its publication in 1611, it has been the best-selling book in the world, and many believe, it has had the greatest impact. The Book of Books reveals the extraordinary and still-felt impact of a work created 400 years ago. SEPTEMBER | 978-1-58243-781-1 | CLOTH | $28.00

How the World Works NOAM CHOMSKY Four indispensible Chomsky classics, with more than half a million copies in print, now in a single volume. Made up of intensively edited speeches and interviews, this collection offers something not found anywhere else: pure Chomsky, with every dazzling idea and penetrating insight intact, delivered in clear, accessible, reader-friendly prose. SEPTEMBER | 978-1-59376-427-2 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $18.00

Fall 2011 Highlights Every Third Thought A Novel in Five Seasons JOHN BARTH “Barth’s antic eye for character is undiminished . . . Urbane, discursive, and humorous, often bawdy and never sentimental, these stories would be an accessible way for new readers to discover Barth, and his fans, of course, will eat this up.” —Publishers Weekly OCTOBER | 978-1-58243-755-2 | CLOTH | $24.00

Too Much to Dream A Psychedelic American Boyhood PETER BEBERGAL | Foreword by PETER COYOTE Too Much to Dream places the story of a young man’s drug addiction inside the larger history of psychedelics and popular culture. Bebergal’s story gives a personal face to the examination of our cultural history, offering a radical vision regarding the complex relationship between drug addiction, popular culture, and religious experience. OCTOBER | 978-1-59376-382-4 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $15.95

Heidegger’s Glasses A Novel THAISA FRANK Part love story, part thriller, part meditation on how the dead are remembered and history presented, with threads of Heidegger’s philosophy woven throughout, the novel evocatively illustrates the Holocaust through an almost dreamlike state. Thaisa Frank deftly reconstructs the landscape of Nazi Germany from an entirely original vantage point. OCTOBER | 978-1-58243-769-9 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $15.95

9/11: The Simple Facts

Ghosts of Afghanistan

ARTHUR NAIMAN with gregg roberts and the ae 911 truth for wtc technical help

Hard Truths and Foreign Myths JONATHAN STEELE

Incredible as it seems, the government’s version of what happened on September 11, 2001, can’t possibly be true. Without engaging in any speculation or conjecture, this book proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt. SEPTEMBER | 978-1-59376-424-1 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $12.00

Steele compares the challenges facing the Obama Administration as it seeks to find an exit strategy with those the Kremlin faced in the 1980s, and he cautions that military victory will elude the West just as it eluded the Kremlin. He explains how negotiations today could stop the tragedies of civil war and foreign intervention that have afflicted Afghanistan for decades. OCTOBER | 978-1-58243-787-3 | CLOTH | $26.00

Apricot Jam And Other Stories ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN Written after Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia, these stories weave and shift inside their shared setting, illuminating the Russian experience under the Soviet regime. Available for the first time in English, Apricot Jam and Other Stories is a striking example of Solzhenitsyn’s singular style and only further solidifies his place a strue literary giant. SEPTEMBER | 978-1-58243-602-9 | CLOTH | $28.00 46

Uncanny Valley Adventures in the Narrative LAWRENCE WESCHLER Shuttling between cultural comedies and political tragedies, Lawrence Weschler’s articles have long intrigued readers. He examines everything, from the ordinary to the extraordinary, and his insights are illuminating. Weschler proves yet again that the “world is strange, beautiful, and connected.” (The Globe and Mail) OCTOBER | 978-1-58243-757-6 | CLOTH | $26.00 47

Fall 2011 Highlights The Love Lives of the Artists Five Stories of Creative Intimacy DANIEL BULLEN In this engrossing examination, Daniel Bullen sheds light on the love lives of Lou Andreas-Salomé and Rainer Maria Rilke; Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe; Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir; Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. NOVEMBER | 978-1-58243-775-0 | CLOTH | $28.00

Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers—An American Tale of Sex and Wonder MIKE EDISON A wild and uncompromising history of four famous magazines and the outlaws behind them, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! is the first book to rip the sheet off the myth-making machine of Hugh Hefner and Playboy, and reveal the doomed history of Hefner’s arch rival, Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, whose messiah complex and heedless spending fueled the greatest riches-to-rags story ever told.

Current & Selling Leavings Poems WENDELL BERRY Berry’s life is a long witness of love and celebration, and he writes as a poet of deep intimacy with the natural world and the lost heart of our country. With his family and friends, he continues the devotion that had him saying almost thirty years ago, “What I stand for is what I stand on.” 978-1-58243-624-1 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $14.95

This River A Memoir JAMES BROWN “A beautifully crafted and intensely moving book. Without artifice or pretension— without false moves of any sort—James Brown goes after the biggest literary game: death, love, children, degeneration, hopelessness, hope. I read this book straight through, in one spellbound sitting, and I will read it again in a week or two. It is so good.” —Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried 978-1-58243-721-7 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $14.95

NOVEMBER | 978-1-59376-284-1 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $15.95

Nature of the Beast

A Graphic Novel ADAM MANSBACH AND DOUGLAS McGOWAN artwork by owen brozman From the author of Go the F to Sleep, this is a graphic novel with “cult classic written all over it.” Shot through with sly social commentary and eye-popping action and populated with the most bizarre—yet utterly compelling—cast of characters in recent memory, Nature of the Beast is a stunning visual and literary tour de force.

The Great Frustration Stories SETH FRIED Channeling Steven Millhauser by way of George Saunders, The Great Frustration is a sparkling debut, equal parts fable and wry satire. Fried’s stories suggest that we are at our most compelling and human when wrestling with the most frustrating aspects of both the world around us and of our very own natures. 978-1-59376-416-6 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $14.95

NOVEMBER | 978-1-59376-245-2 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $16.95

The Silver Lotus A Novel THOMAS STEINBECK Steeped in the rich culture of the Orient and set against the burgeoning trading routes of the Pacific Rim, The Silver Lotus presents Steinbeck’s most moving and textured narrative to date. Readers will be drawn to this rich historical tapestry that examines how industry, adventure, and love served as the building blocks of the thriving California waterfront.

The End of Boys PETER BROWN HOFFMEISTER The End of Boys is one man’s journey to the very brink of sanity and back. A harrowing and heartbreaking account of the trauma of adolescence and the redemption available to us all, if only we choose to find it. 978-1-59376-420-3 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $14.95

NOVEMBER | 978-1-58243-778-1 | CLOTH | $25.00

East Hill Farm Seasons with Allen Ginsberg GORDON BALL In honest and vivid prose, Ball offers a rare intimate glimpse of the poetic pillar of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg, as a striving and accessible human being at home, on the farm, and in the world. “Ball has been marvelously placed as a participant and observer of many extraordinary art situations.” —Allen Ginsberg 48

DECEMBER | 978-1-58243-776-7 | CLOTH | $26.00

Andes MICHAEL JACOBS Michael Jacobs journeys across seven different countries, from the balmy Caribbean to the inhospitable islands of the Tierra del Fuego, through the relics of ancient civilizations and the remnants of colonial rule, retracing the footsteps of previous travelers. On his way, Jacobs uncovers the stories of those who have shared his fascination and discovers the secrets of a region steeped in history, science, and myth. 978-1-58243-737-8 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $24.95 49

Current & Selling The Last of the Live Nude Girls A Memoir SHEILA McCLEAR Drawing from her experience as one of the last live nude girls of New York, Sheila McClear pulls the curtain back on the closed society of peep shows, a world wary of outsiders and accessible only to those who have worked inside it. This is a redemptive narrative of modern life on the fringes of society in New York City. 978-1-59376-400-5 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $14.95

Current & Selling The Blue Light Project A Novel TIMOTHY TAYLOR Spanning a four-day hostage situation in the not-to-distant future, The Blue Light Project looks on as a city unravels and three lives intersect in unlikely ways. As events turn to chaos, Taylor paints a powerful picture of the sinister side of our interconnected world, taking us on a dizzying journey. The result is a gripping work of dark brilliance. 978-1-59376-402-9 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $15.95

Ashes of the Earth A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America ELIOT PATTISON Thirty years after global holocaust, the colony of Carthage still struggles to build its new world. While steam engines and other early industrial technology have empowered its economy, the fragile society is undermined by secret crimes, rifts between generations, government censorship, and a legacy of casting out those who suffer from radiation sickness. 978-1-58243-644-9 | CLOTH | $26.00

The Adjustment SCOTT PHILLIPS The critically acclaimed author of The Ice Harvest returns to true noir form, illuminating the birth of a postwar American criminal. “Noir crime . . . has found a sterling new champion in Phillips.” —The New York Times Book Review “I simply can’t wait to see what Scott Phillips will do next.” —Richard Russo 978-1-58243-730-9 | CLOTH | $25.00

Cascadia’s Fault The Earthquake and Tsunami That Could Devastate North America JERRY THOMPSON | INTRODUCTION BY SIMON WINCHESTER A riveting investigation into one of the least understood yet potentially most devastating natural disasters facing our country. In light of the recent massive quakes in Japan, Haiti, and Mexico, Cascadia’s Fault warns us about an impending crisis almost unprecedented in modern history—an earthquake that would affect some of the most densely populated portions of the West Coast. 978-1-58243-643-2 | CLOTH | $26.00

The Doper Next Door My Strange and Scandalous Year on Performance-Enhancing Drugs ANDREW TILIN What happens to a regular guy who dopes? Surprised to learn pro athletes aren’t the only ones taking performance-enhancing substances, journalist Andrew Tilin goes in search of the average juicing Joe, hoping to find a few things out: Why would a normal person take these substances? Where do folks get them? Does the stuff really work? 978-1-58243-715-6 | CLOTH | $25.00

Slow Death by Rubber Duck

Too Much Crazy

The Secret Danger of Everyday Things RICK SMITH AND BRUCE LOURIE

TOM TOMORROW | FOREWORD BY MICHAEL MOORE

“A thoughtful look at how pollution has shifted over the years from something tangible and transparent (industrial pollutants as the cause of acid rain) to something abstract and nuanced (BPA’s links to breast cancer). The challenges this change presents . . . should be of serious concern to us all.” —O, the Oprah Magazine

This latest anthology collects Tomorrow’s work from 2008–2011 along with neverbefore-seen pieces. “That Tom Tomorrow breathes fire goes without saying. But he’s also one of the funniest political cartoonists alive.” —Dave Eggers 978-1-59376-410-4 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $14.95

978-1-58243-702-6 | TRADE PAPER | $15.95

The Horse That Leaps Through Clouds A Tale of Espionage, the Silk Road, and the Rise of Modern China ERIC ENNO TAMM Two epic journeys along the Silk Road, past and present, offer a riveting and cautionary tale about the breathtaking rise of China. “Tamm has written a grand sweep of a narrative . . . At its core, this is a journey into the soul of the Middle Kingdom, and the roots of modern China.” —Wade Davis 50

978-1-58243-734-7 | CLOTH | $30.00

Buskers The On-the-Streets, In-the-Trains, Off-the-Grid Memoir of Two New York City Street Musicians HETH WEINSTEIN AND JED WEINSTEIN In Buskers, Heth and Jed recount their turbulent, drug- and crime-filled adolescence in the nowhere-land of New Jersey, their valiant attempts to achieve rock ’n’ roll success through traditional channels, and their unexpected path to circumventing the outmoded music industry. 978-1-59376-412-8 | TRADE PAPER ORIGINAL | $14.95

Backlist Highlights

MINIATURES OF A ZEN MASTER

THE RIVER OF HEAVEN

DEUS EX MACHINA ANDREW FOSTER

EARLY DAYS IN THE RANGE OF LIGHt

SECRETS AND WIVES

GHOSTED

978-1-58243-536-7

BUSON, ISSA, AND SHIKI

978-1-58243-601-2

WITH LEGENDARY

OF MORMON POLYGAMY SANJIV BHATTACHARYA

BISHOP-STALL

ROBERT AITKEN TRADE PAPER $14.95

THE HAIKU OF BASHO, ROBERT AITKEN 978-1-58243-710-1 TRADE PAPER

ALTSCHUL

TRADE PAPER $14.95

$15.95

LIVING WITHOUT GOD

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR

ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS,

SECULARISTS, AND THE UNDECIDED

RONALD ARONSON 978-1-58243-530-5 TRADE PAPER $15.95

ART OF THE COMMONPLACE

100 FRESH TAKES ON

FAMILIAR SAYINGS AND QUOTATIONS

J.G. BALLARD

978-1-58243-570-1 TRADE PAPER $15.95

TRADE PAPER $16.95

Long Time Leaving

978-1-59376-295-7

978-1-58243-707-1

Roy Blount, Jr.

$16.95

Trade Paper

TRADE PAPER $15.95

CAROLINE BLACKWOOD Trade Paper

STOLEN PLEASURES SELECTED STORIES

Dispatches from Up South

978-1-58243-458-2 $15.95

OF GINA BERRIAULT GINA BERRIAULT

EDITED BY LEONARD GARDNER

LAST OF THE CURLEWS

KNIGHT OF SWORDS IAN BRECKON

THE LOS ANGELES DIARIES

DOUBLES

978-1-58243-735-4

TRADE PAPER

JAMES BROWN

978-1-58243-507-7

FRED BODSWORTH TRADE PAPER $14.95

978-1-58243-742-2 $14.95

A MEMOIR

978-1-58243-720-0 TRADE PAPER $14.95

$15.95

IMAGINATION IN PLACE

978-1-59376-078-6

978-1-58243-706-4

$14.95

978-1-58243-408-1

NEVER BREATHE A WORD

TRADE PAPER

A Novel

Trade Paper

978-1-58243-616-6

978-1-58243-740-8

$15.95

Trade Paper $15.95

COCAINE NIGHTS

TRADE PAPER

Wendell Berry

DANIEL ARNOLD

SHAUGHNESSY

$24.95

978-1-58243-604-3

Hannah Coulter

MOUNTAINEERS

TRADE PAPER

JULIAN BAGGINI

WENDELL BERRY 978-1-59376-007-6

SHOULD YOU JUDGE THIS BOOK BY ITS COVER?

ENCOUNTERS

THE HIDDEN WORLD

Jayber Crow A Novel

Black Flies

A Novel

WENDELL BERRY

Wendell Berry

Shannon Burke

TRADE PAPER

Trade paper

Trade Paper

$14.95

978-1-58243-160-4 $15.95

978-1-59376-191-2 $14.95

A NOVEL

NIC BROWN

TRADE PAPER $15.95

LASCIVIOUS SOMETHING/ROADKILL CONFIDENTIAL/THAT PRETTY PRETTY; OR THE RAPE PLAY

DOWN AND DERBY

THE SHOOTING PARTY

ROLLER DERBY

ISABEL COLEGATE

978-1-59376-414-2

978-1-59376-274-2

SHEILA CALLAGHAN Trade Paper $17.95

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO ALEX “AXLES OF EVIL”

COHEN AND JENNIFER

“KASEY BOMBER” BARBEE TRADE PAPER $15.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-593-0 TRADE PAPER $14.95

Backlist Highlights

MRS. BRIDGE

Backlist Highlights

EVAN S. CONNELL

LOST IN UTTAR PRADESH

SLEEPING WHERE I FALL

JAMES SALTER

978-1-58243-483-4

PETER COYOTE

AFTERWORD BY 978-1-58243-568-8 TRADE PAPER $14.95

EVAN S. CONNELL Trade Paper $16.95

ORIGINAL SKIN

ROUTE 19 REVISITED

SNAKE LAKE

DEEPLY ROOTED

JOHN MILTON

A CHRONICLE

OF THE HUMAN HIDE

CALLING

978-1-58243-649-4

FARMERS IN THE AGE

DAVID HAWKES

978-1-58243-496-4

978-1-58243-739-2

TRADE PAPER $19.95

MARYROSE CUSKELLY TRADE PAPER $15.95

THE CLASH AND LONDON MARCUS GRAY

978-1-59376-293-3 TRADE PAPER

JEFF GREENWALD TRADE PAPER $15.95

$17.95

UNCONVENTIONAL OF AGRIBUSINESS

LISA M. HAMILTON 978-1-58243-586-2 TRADE PAPER

A HERO OF OUR TIME 978-1-58243-713-2 TRADE PAPER $16.95

$15.95

THE ECOLOGY OF WISDOM

THE SUITCASE

SERGEI DOVLATOV

CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE JESUS JERK

GALEN ROWELL’S SIERRA NEVADA

LATE NIGHTS ON AIR

Love All the People

THE EDEN HUNTER

Heat and Dust

EDITED BY ALAN

Trade Paper

978-1-59376-263-6

EDITORS OF SIERRA CLUB

ELIZABETH HAY 978-1-58243-480-3

Bill Hicks

SKIP HORACK

978-1-58243-015-7

WRITINGS BY ARNE NAESS DRENGSON AND BILL DEVALL

978-1-58243-883-2 $14.95

978-1-58243-592-3

TONY DuSHANE TRADE PAPER $14.95

TRADE PAPER

COMPILED BY THE BOOKS

A SIERRA CLUB BOOK 978-1-57805-163-2

A NOVEL

TRADE PAPER $14.95

The Essential Bill Hicks 978-1-59376-201-8 Trade Paper $16.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-609-8 TRADE PAPER $15.95

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Trade paper $14.95

CLOTH

$16.95

$29.95

Jonathan Evison

Swallow the Ocean

TOWARDS ANOTHER SUMMER

JOY OF MAN’S DESIRING

Gloryland

RADIANCE

The Old Capital

The Taqwacores

Trade Paper

Laura M. Flynn

978-1-58243-582-4

JEAN GIONO

978-1-57805-175-5 TRADE PAPER

LOUIS B. JONES

A new translation by

Knight

All About Lulu 978-1-59376-196-7 $14.95

EXPLORING THE MARVELS

A Memoir

978-1-58243-461-2 Trade Paper $15.95

JANET FRAME TRADE PAPER $14.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-565-7 TRADE PAPER $15.95

shelton johnson

$15.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-736-1 CLOTH $24.00

Yasunari Kawabata J. Martin Holman 978-1-59376-032-8 Trade paper $15.95

Michael Muhammad 978-1-59376-229-2 Trade Paper $12.95

Backlist Highlights

THE BREAK OF NOON

ALL NEW PEOPLE

JOE JONES

978-15376-285-8

978-1-58243-054-6

ANNE LAMOTT

NEIL LaBUTE

Trade Paper $13.95

ANNE LAMOTT TRADE PAPER $13.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-003-8 TRADE PAPER $14.00

LEGEND OF THE FIRE SPIRITS

ROBERT LEBLING 978-1-58243-632-6 Trade Paper $16.95

ARE WE THERE YET?

51/50

SPACE AND TIME

FOR US SURRENDER IS OUT OF THE QUESTION

MATTHIESSEN AND

NEVER-ENDING WAR

KRISTEN McGUINESS

978-1-58243-560-2

TRADE PAPER

$15.95

A ZEN JOURNEY THROUGH PETER MURYO

PETER CUNNINGHAM

DEAD IN THE DREGS

BROKEN GLASS

A BOOK OF SILENCE

SERIES EDITED

PETER LEWIS

978-1-59376-273-5

978-1-58243-613-5

JONATHAN LETHEM BY SEAN HOWE

DEEP FOCUS SERIES 978-1-59376-278-0 TRADE PAPER

A BABE STERN MYSTERY 978-1-58243-548-0 TRADE PAPER $14.95

ALAIN MABANCKOU TRADE PAPER $13.95

978-1-59376-265-0

$29.95

$15.95

TRADE PAPER

ADVENTURES OF A SINGLE LIFE

978-1-59376-413-5 $15.95

The Good Fairies of New York

TRADE PAPER

978-1-58243-434-6

W. S. MERWIN

978-1-59376-223-0

978-1-93336-836-8

$15.95

MICHAEL MEWSHAW Trade Paper $16.95

A MEMORIAL ANTHOLOGY 978-1-58243-732-3 TRADE PAPER $14.95

ZACHARY MEXICO TRADE PAPER $16.95

LILLIAN HELLMAN A LIFE WITH FOXES

Lonely Werewolf Girl

LOVE IN INFANT MONKEYS

TRADE PAPER

the Middle of Nowhere

FUTURE OF BOOKS

DEBORAH MARTINSON

978-0-97966-366-6

LYDIA MILLET

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF ALLEN GINSBERG AND GARY SNYDER

TRADE PAPER

978-1-58243-533-6

$15.00

Debra Marquart 978-1-58243-363-9 Trade Paper $15.95

WRITERS ON THE

EDITED BY JEFF MARTIN AND C. MAX MAGEE 978-1-59376-404-3 TRADE PAPER $14.95

TRADE PAPER

CHINA UNDERGROUND

THE LATE AMERICAN NOVEL

Growing Up Wild in

JOHN McNALLY

LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS

the Horizontal World

987-1-59376-143-1

A NOVEL

BETWEEN TERROR AND TOURISM

DAVID MARKSON

THE LAST NOVEL

AFTER THE WORKSHOP

SARA MAITLAND

$13.95

MAC McCLELLAND

978-1-58243-630-2 TRADE PAPER

THEY LIVE

A STORY FROM BURMA’S

THE MAGICAL

AND SCOUNDRELS 978-1-58243-315-8 TRADE PAPER $17.95

Martin Millar Trade Paper $16.95

STORIES

978-1-59376-252-0 $14.95

EDITED BY BILL MORGAN

Martin Millar Trade Paper $13.95

COLD EARTH SARAH MOSS

978-1-58243-579-4 Trade Paper $14.95

TRADE PAPER $16.95

Backlist Highlights

THE TYPEWRITER IS HOLY

HOW TO BE INAPPROPRIATE

JARRETTSVILLE

ANCIENT FUTURES

UNCENSORED HISTORY OF

978-1-59376-253-7

CORNELIA NIXON 978-1-58243-512-1

FOR A GLOBALIZING

THE COMPLETE,

THE BEAT GENERATION BILL MORGAN

978-1-58243-738-5

DANIEL NESTER TRADE PAPER $14.95

A NOVEL

TRADE PAPER $15.95

TRADE PAPER

LESSONS FROM LADAKH

THE SHEIKH’S BATMOBILE

ROAD TO HEAVEN

TWENTYNINE PALMS

I, JUDAS

WORLD

POP CULTURE IN THE

CHINESE HERMITS BILL PORTER

DANIEL PYNE

978-1-59376-421-0

HELENA NORBERG-HODGE A SIERRA CLUB BOOK 978-1-57805-162-5 TRADE PAPER

$15.95

$16.95

THE AGE OF PERSUASION

STRANGE AS THIS WEATHER HAS BEEN

Bone Rattler

EYE OF THE RAVEN

ATE OUR CULTURE

ANN PANCAKE

Colonial America Eliot Pattison

AMERICA

HOW MARKETING TERRY O’REILLY

AND MIKE TENNANT 978-1-58243-724-8 TRADE PAPER

A NOVEL

978-1-59376-166-0 TRADE PAPER $15.95

A Mystery of

978-1-58243-464-3 trade paper $14.95

IN PURSUIT OF AMERICAN MUSLIM WORLD

RICHARD POPLAK 978-1-59376-292-6 TRADE PAPER

ENCOUNTERS WITH

978-1-58243-523-7 TRADE PAPER $15.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-573-2 TRADE PAPER $14.95

JAMES REICH

Trade Paper $15.95

$15.95

POSTPUNK INTERVIEWS

ONE D.O.A., ONE ON THE WAY

A LITERARY BIBLE AN ORIGINAL

CHILDREN OF THE SUN

ELIOT PATTISON

SIMON REYNOLDS

MARY ROBISON

DAVID ROSENBERG

978-1-59376-297-1

TRADE PAPER

A MYSTERY OF COLONIAL

978-1-58243-701-9 $15.95

TOTALLY WIRED AND OVERVIEWS

978-1-59376-286-5 $16.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-561-9 TRADE PAPER $14.95

TRANSLATION

978-1-58243-619-7 TRADE PAPER $26.95

MAX SCHAEFER Trade Paper $15.95

$16.95

LANDED TIM PEARS

THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN COLORING BOOK

Time

TRADE PAPER

978-1-59376-409-8

978-1-58243-622-7

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-729-3 $14.95

PASTOR BRETT PIRKLE TRADE PAPER $9.95

Paris

A Journey Through

WALKS THROUGH LOST PARIS

Jesus Land A Memoir

SEARCHING FOR MERCY STREET

BUMMER

THE MORE I OWE YOU

LEONARD PITT

HEART OF HISTORIC PARIS

978-1-58243-354-7

MOTHER, ANNE SEXTON

JANICE SHAPIRO 978-1-59376-296-4

MICHAEL SLEDGE

TRADE PAPER $29.95

A JOURNEY INTO THE LEONARD PITT 978-1-59376-103-5 TRADE PAPER $22.95

Julia Scheeres Trade Paper $14.95

MY JOURNEY BACK TO MY LINDA GRAY SEXTON 978-1-58243-744-6 TRADE PAPER

AND OTHER STORIES

TRADE PAPER $14.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-576-3 TRADE PAPER $15.95

$15.95

Backlist Highlights

THE STING (DEEP FOCUS)

MATTHEW SPECKTOR 978-1-59376-279-7 Trade paper $12.95

THE ETIQUETTE OF FREEDOM

GARY SNYDER, JIM HARRISON, AND THE PRACTICE OF THE WILD GARY SNYDER AND JIM HARRISON EDITED BY PAUL EBENKAMP 978-1-58243-629-6 CLOTH WITH DVD

Backlist Highlights

THE PRACTICE OF THE WILD

RIPRAP AND COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS

EDITION

A NEW EXPANDED GARY SNYDER

978-1-58243-638-8 TRADE PAPER

[YOU] RUINED IT FOR EVERYONE!

LEGACY OF SECRECY THE LONG SHADOW OF

SEX, DEATH & OYSTERS

978-1-58243-636-4

A POCKET HISTORY OF SEX IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

978-1-59376-288-9

LAMAR WALDRON WITH

WORLD TOUR

$14.95

JANE VANDENBURGH

$14.95

978-1-58243-535-0

978-1-58243-555-8

GARY SNYDER TRADE PAPER

A MEMOIR

978-1-58243-559-6

MATTHEW VINCENT TRADE PAPER

TRADE PAPER

$14.95

THE JFK ASSASSINATION THOM HARTMANN TRADE PAPER $24.95

$15.95

A HALF-SHELL LOVER’S

ROBB WALSH

TRADE PAPER $15.95

$28.00

NEGATIVE SPACE

TAKING BACK GOD

978-1-58243-642-5

HOS, HOOKERS, CALL GIRLS, AND RENT BOYS

$12.95

LIFE, LOVE, MONEY, AND SEX

LEORA TANENBAUM

ROBERT STEINER TRADE PAPER

PROFESSIONALS WRITING ON EDITED BY DAVID HENRY

STERRY AND R.J. MARTIN, JR.

978-1-59376-241-4 TRADE PAPER

AMERICAN WOMEN

THE CREED OF VIOLENCE

EQUALITY

978-1-58243-618-0

RISING UP FOR RELIGIOUS

978-1-58243-708-8 TRADE PAPER

BOSTON TERAN Trade paper $14.95

$16.95

SONG OF MYSELF

AND OTHER POEMS BY WALT WHITMAN WALT WHITMAN SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY ROBERT HASS, WITH A LEXICON OF THE POEM BY ROBERT HASS AND PAUL EBENKAMP

978-1-58243-711-8

$15.95

TRADE PAPER

THE UNCROWNED KING

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

THE GLEN ROCK BOOK OF THE DEAD

OF WILLIAM RANDOLPH

MORTUARY TECHNICIAN

978-1-58243-634-0

THE SENSATIONAL RISE HEARST

KENNETH WHYTE 978-1-58243-554-1 TRADE PAPER $17.95

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A MICHELLE WILLIAMS 978-1-59376-298-8 TRADE PAPER

MARION WINIK TRADE PAPER $12.95

$14.95

a complicated kindness

THE FLYING TROUTMANS

MARRY OR BURN STORIES

ARCHITECTURE OF THE NOVEL

Speaking Treason Fluently

CORVUS

DEAR DAWN

Kicking in

MIRIAM TOEWS

978-1-58243-598-5

JANE VANDENBURGH

Reflections from an

ESTHER WOOLFSON 978-1-58243-583-1

HER OWN WORDS

RICHARD WIRICK

A Novel

978-1-58243-322-6 TRADE PAPER

$15.95

A NOVEL

978-1-58243-531-2 TRADE PAPER $14.95

VALERIE TRUEBLOOD TRADE PAPER $15.95

A WRITER’S HANDBOOK 978-1-58243-597-8 TRADE PAPER $15.95

Anti-Racist

Angry White Male Tim Wise

978-1-59376-207-0 Trade Paper $16.95

A LIFE WITH BIRDS

TRADE PAPER $15.95

AILEEN WUORNOS IN AILEEN WUORNOS

EDITED BY LISA KESTER

AND DAPHNE GOTTLIEB 978-1-59376-290-2 TRADE PAPER $16.95

Stories

978-1-59376-280-3 TRADE PAPER $14.95

Index 9/11: The Simple Facts, 46

Brown, Nic, 53

Empires of Food, 28

Holman, J. Martin, 55

Leavings, 49, 52

51/50, 57

Bummer, 59

End of Boys, The, 49

Horack, Skip, 55

Lebling, Robert, 56

1616, 15

Burke, Shannon, 53

Energy Flash, 42

Horizontal World, The, 56

Legacy of Secrecy, 61

Buskers, 51

Etiquette of Freedom, The, 60

Legend of the Fire Spirits, 56

Evans, Henry, 32

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys, 60

Hose That Leaps Through Clouds, The, 50

Lethem, Jonathan, 56

Naess, Arne, 54

Lewis, Peter, 56

Naiman, Arthur, 46

Lightning People, 46

Nameless Dame, 43

Lillian Hellman, 56

Nature of the Beast, 48

Literary Bible, A, 59

Negative Space, 60

Little Russian, The, 4–5

Nester, Daniel, 58

Living Without God, 52

I, Judas, 59

Flying Troutmans, The, 60

A Adjustment, The, 50

After the Workshop, 57

Caldwell, Gail, 6

Every Night is Saturday Night, 24–25

Age of Persuasion, The, 58

Callaghan, Sheila, 53

Every Third Thought, 47

Howe, Sean, 56

Aitken, Robert, 52

Capitalism Papers, The, 48

Evison, Jonathan, 54

How the World Works, 46

All About Lulu, 54

Cascadia’s Fault, 51

Extravagant Hunger, An, 23

How to Be Inappropriate, 58

All New People, 56

Children of the Sun, 59

Eye of the Raven, 58

Altschul, Andrew Foster, 52

China Underground, 57

Ancient Futures, 58

Chomsky, Noam, 46

Andes, 49

Christensen, Thomas, 15

Appetite for Self-Destruction, 35

Cocaine Nights, 52

Appetites, 6

Cohen, Alex “Axles of Evil,” 53

Apricot Jam, 46

Cohen, Nancy, 12–13

Architecture of the Novel, 60

Cold Earth, 57

Are We There Yet?, 57

Colegate, Isabel, 53

Arnold, Daniel, 52

Complicated Kindness, A, 60

Aronson, Ronald, 52 Arthur, Allen, 32

Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk, 54

Art of the Commonplace, 52 Ashes of the Earth, 50

B Baggini, Julian, 52 Ball, Gordon, 48 Ballard, J.G., 52 Barbee, Jennifer “Kasey Bomber,” 53

Between Terror and Terrorism, 57 Bhattacharya, Sanjiv, 53 Bishop-Stall, Shaughnessy, 53 Black Flies, 53 Blackwood, Caroline, 53 Blount, Roy, Jr., 53 Blue Light Project, 51 Bodsworth, Fred, 53 Bollen, Christopher, 46 Bone Rattler, 58 Book of Books, The, 46 Book of Silence, A, 56 Botanical Prints, 32

Norberg-Hodge, Helena, 58

Sexton, Linda Gray, 9, 59

Flynn, Laura M., 54

Lord, Nancy, 10

For Us Surrender is Out of the Question, 57

Imagination in Place, 52

Los Angeles Diaries, The, 53

I’m in the Band, 35

Frame, Janet, 54

Lost in Uttar Pradesh, 54

Intelligent Design Coloring Book, The, 58

Lourie, Bruce, 50

Love in Infant Monkeys, 57

Frank, Thaisa, 48 Fraser, Evan D.G., 28 Fried, Seth, 49

Love All the People, 55

Coyote, Peter, 54

Gardner, Leonard, 52

Creasy, Rosalind, 32

Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, 16–17, 55

Geddes, Gary, 7

Creed of Violence, The, 60

Joe Jones, 56

Ghosted, 53

Cunningham, Peter, 57

John Milton, 55

Ghosts of Afghanistan, 47

Cuskelly, Maryrose, 54

Johnson, Shelton, 55

Ginger and Ganesh, 33

Jones, Louis B., 55

Giono, Jean, 54

Jordan, Neil, 36–37

Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!, 47

Glen Rock Book of the Dead, The, 61 Gloryland, 55

Joy of Man’s Desiring, 54 Jubilee Hitchhiker, 2–3

M Mabanckou, Alain, 56 Madonna and Me, 44–45 Magee, C. Max, 56 Maitland, Sara, 56 Mander, Jerry, 48 Mansbach, Adam, 48 Maran, Meredith, 40–41 Markson, David, 56 Marquart, Debra, 56

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 46

Phillips, Scott, 50

Song of Myself, 61

William S. Burroughs vs. The Qur’an, 38

Pine, Red, 18–19, 59

Speaking Treason Fluently, 61

Winik, Marion, 61

Pirkle, Pastor Brett, 58

Spektor, Matthew, 60

Wirick, Richard, 61

Pitt, Leonard, 58

Steele, Jonathan, 47

Wise, Tim, 61

Platform Sutra, The, 17

Steinbeck, Thomas, 48

Woolfson, Esther, 61 Wuornos, Aileen, 61

Kicking In, 61

Mattu, Ayesha, 39

Powell, Allison, 31

Strange as This Weather Has Been, 58

Knapp, Caroline, 6

Maznavi, Nurah, 39

Power, Nani, 33

Suitcase, The, 54

McClanahan, Ed, 50

Practice of the Wild, The, 60

Swallow the Ocean, 54

McClear, Sheila, 50

Pyne, Daniel, 20–21, 59

Drink the Bitter Root, 7

McNally, John, 57

DuShane, Tony, 54

Hawkes, David, 55

LaBute, Neil, 56

Hay, Elizabeth, 55

Lament for the Makers, 57

Heart Sutra, The, 19

Lamott, Anne, 56

Heat and Dust, 55

Landed, 58

Heidegger’s Glasses, 48

Lankavatara Sutra, The, 18

Hicks, Bill, 55

Last Novel, The, 56

Hjortsberg, William, 2–3

Last of the Curlews, 53

Hobhouse, Henry, 33

Edison, Mike, 47

Pears, Tim, 58

Porter, Bill, 18–19, 59

Hass, Robert, 61

Brown, James, 49, 53

Snyder, Gary, 60

Matthiessen, Peter Muryo, 57

Hartshorn, Peter, 11

Still Point, The, 8

Taking Back God, 60

Radiance, 55

Tamm, Eric Enno, 50

Rape Play, The, 53

Tanenbaum, Leora, 60

Reich, James, 59

Taqwacores, The, 55

Reynolds, Simon, 42, 59

Taylor, Timothy, 51

Rimas, Andrew, 28

Tennant, Mike, 58

Ripe, 32

Teran, Boston, 60

Millet, Lydia, 57

Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, 60

The Live, 56

Miniatures of a Zen Master, 52

River of Heaven, The, 52

Theory of Small Earthquakes, A, 40–41

Mistaken, 36–37

Road to Heaven, 59

This River, 49

Roberts, Gregg, 46

This Vacant Paradise, 22

Hoffmeiser, Peter Brown, 49

Last of the Live Nude Girls, The, 50

Moore, Michael, 51 More I Owe You, The, 59

Robison, Mary, 59

Thompson, Jerry, 51

Hole in the Ground Owned by a Liar, A, 20–21

Late American Novel, The, 56

Morgan, Bill, 57, 58

Rosenberg, David, 59

Tilin, Andrew, 51

Late Nights on Air, 55

Moss, Sarah, 57

Route 19 Revisited, 55

Toews, Miriam, 60

Mewshaw, Michael, 57 Mexico, Zachary, 57 Millar, Martin, 57

Whyte, Kenneth, 61 Wilkins, Joe, 26–27 Williams, Michelle, 61

Y [You] Ruined it for Everyone, 61 Yseult, Sean, 35

Z Zimmerman, Anne, 23 Zone, The, 14

Merwin, W.S., 57

Whitman, Walt, 61

Pavelich, Matt, 27

Keys, Bobby, 24–25

Drengson, Alan, 54

Weschler, Lawrence, 47

Snake Lake, 55

Greenwald, Jeff, 55

McGuiness, Kristen, 57

Weinstein, Jed, 51

Pattison, Eliot, 50, 58

Stolen Pleasures, 52

Koch, Stephen, 30

Weinstein, Heth, 51

Smith, Rick, 50

Poplak, Richard, 59

McGowan, Douglas, 48

Walsh, Robb, 61

Patterson, Victoria, 22

Martinson, Deborah, 56

Knopper, Steve, 35

Edible Landscaping, 32

Slow Death by Rubber Duck, 50

Kester, Lisa, 61

Hartmann, Thom, 61

Broken Glass, 56

Paris, 58

Great Frustration, The, 49

Down and Derby, 53

Eden Hunter, The, 55

Sleeping Where I Fall, 54

Sting, The, 60

McClelland, Mac, 57

Bring the Noise, 35

Pancake, Ann, 58

Pollan, Michael, 33

Knight of Swords, 53

Ecology of Wisdom, The, 54

Sledge, Michael, 59

Martin, R.J., Jr., 60

Harrison, Jim, 60

Ebenkamp, Paul, 61

Silver Lotus, The, 48

Kawakami, Hiromi, 31

Hannah Coulter, 52

Bringing It to the Table, 33

Walks Through Lost Paris, 58

Gray, Marcus, 55

Down Among the Dead Men, 61

Briefcase, The, 31

Waldron, Lamar, 61

Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century, A, 61

Dovlatov, Sergei, 14, 54

East Hill Farm, 48

Vincent, Matthew, 61

Should You Judge This Book by It’s Cover, 52

Martin, Jeff, 56

Hamilton, Lisa M., 55

Breckon, Ian, 53

Other Shoe, The, 29

Vandenburgh, Jane, 60, 61

Kawabata, Yasunari, 55

Doubles, 53

Early Warming, 10

Original Skin, 54

Shooting Party, The, 53

Gottlieb, Daphne, 61

Knight, Michael Muhammad, 38, 55

Break of Noon, The, 56

O’Reilly, Terry, 58

Uncrowned King, The, 61

Sherman, Susan, 4–5

Sterry, David Henry, 60

Half in Love, 9

Early Days in the Rage of Light, 52

One D.O.A., One on the Way, 59

Sheikh’s Batmobile, The, 59

Marry or Burn, 60

Doper Next Door, The, 51

Breaking Point, The, 30

Old Capital, The, 55

Shapiro, Jane, 59

Good Fairies of New York, The, 57

Ditenhafer, Bill, 24–25

Bragg, Melvyn, 46

Typewriter is Holy, The, 58

Long Time Leaving, 53

Jesus Land, 59

Diamond Sutra, The, 17

Secrets and Wives, 53

Twentynine Palms, 59

I Just Hitched in From the Coast, 50

Galen Rowell’s Sierra Nevada, 54

Devall, Bill, 54

Searching for Mercy Street, 59

Trueblood, Valerie, 60

I Have Seen the Future, 11

Corvus, 61

Deus Ex Machina, 52

Schneider, Bart, 43

Towards Another Summer, 54

Sex, Death & Oysters, 61

Jayber Crow, 52

Delirium, 12–13

Scheeres, Julia, 59

Totally Wired, 59

Nixon, Cornelia, 58

Gage, Richard, 46

Berriault, Gina, 52

Schaefer, Max, 59

Too Much to Dream, 47

Lonely Werewolf Girl, 57

Connell, Evan S., 54

Deeply Rooted, 55

Sackville, Amy, 8

Too Much Crazy, 51

Uncanny Valley, 47

Love Song for India, A, 16–17

Bebergal, Peter, 47

Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, The, 57

Jarrettsville, 58

Dear Dawn, 61

Mrs. Bridge, 53

Tomorrow, Tom, 51

Never Breathe a Word, 53

Barth, John, 47

Rowell, Galen, 54

Love InshAllah, 39

Dead in the Dregs, 56

Mountains and the Fathers, The, 26–27

Seeds of Change, 33

Jacobs, Michael, 49

Barcella, Laura, 44–45

Berry, Wendell, 33, 49, 52

Index

Contact Information COUNTERPOINT 1919 Fifth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 t: 510-704-0230 f: 510-704-0268 www.counterpointpress.com

For review copies and publicity inquiries, contact: publicity@counterpointpress.com

For permission requests, contact: permissions@counterpointpress.com

For subsidiary and translation rights, contact: rights@counterpointpress.com

For general information, contact: info@counterpointpress.com

For domestic sales inquiries, contact:

For international sales inquiries, contact: United Kingdom & Ireland The Perseus Books Group UK 69-70 Temple Chambers 3-7 Temple Avenue United Kingdom ECAY 0HP t: 011 44 0207-353-7771 f: 011 44 0207-353-7786 enquiries@perseusbooks.co.uk Canada Sales and Marketing Publishers Group Canada 599 College Street, Unit 402 Toronto, Ontario M6G 1A9 Canada t: 416-934-9900 f: 416-934-1410

AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND Camilla Dorsch Scribo Group 18 Rodborough Road French Forest NSW/Australia 2086 t: 61 (0)2 9021 8179 f: 61 (0)2 9975 5599 orders@scribo.au FOR ALL OTHER TERRITORIES Publishers Group Worldwide International Sales Department 841 Broadway, 4th Floor New York, NY 10003 t: 212-614-7973 f: 212-614-7866 Elizabeth Shramko International Sales Assistant elizabeth.shramko@pgw.com

The publication dates, specifications, and prices in this catalog are subject to change without notice.

Publishers Group West 1700 Fourth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 t: 800-788-3123 f: 800-351-5073 orderentry@perseusbooks.com www.pgw.com

ISBN 978-1-58243-811-5

9 781582 438115

90000