The Crazy Bunch


Book Description

From a prize-winning poet, a new collection that chronicles a weekend in the life of a group of friends coming of age in East Harlem at the dawn of the hip-hop era Willie Perdomo, a native of East Harlem, has won praise as a hip, playful, historically engaged poet whose restlessly lyrical language mixes "city life with a sense of the transcendent" (NPR.org). In his fourth collection, The Crazy Bunch, Perdomo returns to his beloved neighborhood to create a vivid, kaleidoscopic portrait of a "crew" coming of age in East Harlem at the beginning of the 1990s. In poems written in couplets, vignettes, sketches, riffs, and dialogue, Perdomo recreates a weekend where surviving members of the crew recall a series of tragic events: "That was the summer we all tried to fly. All but one of us succeeded."




Dead Souls


Book Description

For readers of Roberto Bolaño's Savage Detectives and Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent, this "sublime" and "delightfully unhinged" metaphysical mystery disguised as a picaresque romp follows one poet's spectacular fall from grace to ask a vital question: Is everyone a plagiarist? (Nicolette Polek, author of Imaginary Museums). A scandal has shaken the literary world. As the unnamed narrator of Dead Souls discovers at a cultural festival in central London, the offender is Solomon Wiese, a poet accused of plagiarism. Later that same evening, at a bar near Waterloo Bridge, our narrator encounters the poet in person, and listens to the story of Wiese's rise and fall, a story that takes the entire night—and the remainder of the novel—to tell. Wiese reveals his unconventional views on poetry, childhood encounters with "nothingness," a conspiracy involving the manipulation of documents in the public domain, an identity crisis, a retreat to the country, a meeting with an ex-serviceman with an unexpected offer, the death of an old poet, a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost, an entanglement with a secretive poetry cult, and plans for a triumphant return to the capital, through the theft of poems, illegal war profits, and faked social media accounts—plans in which our narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated. Dead Souls is a metaphysical mystery brilliantly encased in a picaresque romp, a novel that asks a vital question for anyone who makes or engages with art: Is everyone a plagiarist?




The Crazy Bunch


Book Description

From a prize-winning poet, a new collection that chronicles a weekend in the life of a group of friends coming of age in East Harlem at the dawn of the hip-hop era Willie Perdomo, a native of East Harlem, has won praise as a hip, playful, historically engaged poet whose restlessly lyrical language mixes "city life with a sense of the transcendent" (NPR.org). In his fourth collection, The Crazy Bunch, Perdomo returns to his beloved neighborhood to create a vivid, kaleidoscopic portrait of a "crew" coming of age in East Harlem at the beginning of the 1990s. In poems written in couplets, vignettes, sketches, riffs, and dialogue, Perdomo recreates a weekend where surviving members of the crew recall a series of tragic events: "That was the summer we all tried to fly. All but one of us succeeded."




Dick Turnip


Book Description

Dick Turnip and his nasty gang miss a birthday party after stealing the cake.




The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4


Book Description

In the dynamic tradition of the BreakBeat Poets anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT celebrates the embodied narratives of Latinidad. Poets speak from an array of nationalities, genders, sexualities, races, and writing styles, staking a claim to our cultural and civic space. Like Hip-Hop, we honor what was, what is, and what's next.




The Crazy Bunch


Book Description

From a prize-winning poet, a new collection that chronicles a weekend in the life of a group of friends coming of age in East Harlem at the dawn of the hip-hop era Willie Perdomo, a native of East Harlem, has won praise as a hip, playful, historically engaged poet whose restlessly lyrical language mixes "city life with a sense of the transcendent" (NPR.org). In his fourth collection, The Crazy Bunch, Perdomo returns to his beloved neighborhood to create a vivid, kaleidoscopic portrait of a "crew" coming of age in East Harlem at the beginning of the 1990s. In poems written in couplets, vignettes, sketches, riffs, and dialogue, Perdomo recreates a weekend where surviving members of the crew recall a series of tragic events: "That was the summer we all tried to fly. All but one of us succeeded."




Firefly Lane


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . . now a #1 Netflix series! In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable. So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness. Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend. . . . For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship—jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test. Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It's about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you—and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you'll never forget . . . one you'll want to pass on to your best friend.




Where a Nickel Costs a Dime


Book Description

Poems offer a direct look at the harshness of urban life, including drugs, AIDS, and violence




My Kind of Crazy


Book Description

Everybody needs someone who gets their crazy Hank Kirby can't catch a break. He doesn't mean to screw up. It just happens. Case in point: his attempt to ask out the girl he likes literally goes up in flames when he spelled "prom" in sparklers on Amanda Carlisle's lawn...and nearly burns down her house, without ever asking her the big question. Hank just wants to pretend the incident never happened. And he might've gotten away with it—except there is a witness. Peyton Breedlove, brooding loner and budding pyromaniac, saw the whole thing, and she blackmails Hank into an unusual friendship. Sure, Hank may be headed for his biggest disaster yet, but it's only when life falls apart that you can start piecing it back together. "Funny, authentic, and, at turns, heartbreaking."—Jessi Kirby, author of Things We Know by Heart and Moonglass "I had so much fun reading this book."—Adi Alsaid, author of Never Always Sometimes and Let's Get Lost




Love That Bunch


Book Description

The early work of the pioneering feminist cartoonist plus her acclaimed new story “Dream House" Aline Kominsky-Crumb immediately made her mark in the Bay Area’s underground comix scene with unabashedly raw, dirty, unfiltered comics chronicling the thoughts and desires of a woman coming of age in the 1960s. Kominsky-Crumb didn’t worry about self-flattery. In fact, her darkest secrets and deepest insecurities were all the more fodder for groundbreaking stories. Her exaggerated comix alter ego, Bunch, is self-destructive and grotesque but crackles with the self-deprecating humor and honesty of a cartoonist confident in the story she wants to tell. Collecting comics from the 1970s through today, Love That Bunch is shockingly prescient while still being an authentic story of its era. Kominsky-Crumb was ahead of her time in juxtaposing the contradictory nature of female sexuality with a proud, complicated feminism. Most important, she does so without apology. One of the most famous and idiosyncratic cartoonists of our time, Kominsky-Crumb traces her steps from a Beatles-loving fangirl, an East Village groupie, an adult grappling with her childhood, and a 1980s housewife and mother, to a new thirty-page story, “Dream House,” that looks back on her childhood forty years later. Love That Bunch will be Kominsky-Crumb’s only solo-authored book in print. Originally published as a book in 1990, this new expanded edition follows her to the present, including an afterword penned by the noted comics scholar Hillary Chute.