The Pleasures of the Damned


Book Description

The Pleasures of the Damned is a selection of the best poetry from America's most iconic and imitated poet, Charles Bukowski. Celebrating the full range of the poet's extraordinary sensibility and his uncompromising linguistic brilliance, these poems cover a lifetime of experience, from his renegade early work to never-before-collected poems penned during the final days before his death. Selected by John Martin, Bukowski's long-time editor and the publisher of the legendary Black Sparrow Press, this stands as what Martin calls 'the best of the best of Bukowski'.




Circus of the Damned


Book Description

When a powerful centuries-old vampire hits Anita Blake's town, a battle of the undead ensues.




The Book of Idle Pleasures


Book Description

The Art of Doing Nothing meets The Dangerous Book for Boys in this charming celebration of simple delights. In The Book of Idle Pleasures, the United Kingdom's expert Idlers Tom Hodgkinson and Dan Kieran stand up for the simple pleasures in life . . . by lying down for a nap. With its tongue firmly in its cheek, The Book of Idle Pleasures renounces our world of ever-growing consumer overload in favor of the timelessly true adage that the best things in life really are free. Clever and sometimes all too true in its reflections on 100 simple pastimes--among them slouching, skipping stones, staring out the window, doodling, and, natch, taking a nap--The Book of Idle Pleasures is a charming celebration of simple pleasures for the sake of pleasure itself, making it a soothing antidote for our nonstop culture and an ideal restorative against the costly confusion of our daily existence.




Essential Bukowski


Book Description

Edited by Abel Debritto, the definitive collection of poems from an influential writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, and acutely observant writing has left an enduring mark on modern culture. Few writers have so brilliantly and poignantly conjured the desperation and absurdity of ordinary life as Charles Bukowski. Resonant with his powerful, perceptive voice, his visceral, hilarious, and transcendent poetry speaks to us as forcefully today as when it was written. Encompassing a wide range of subjects—from love to death and sex to writing—Bukowski’s unvarnished and self-deprecating verse illuminates the deepest and most enduring concerns of the human condition while remaining sharply aware of the day to day. With his acute eye for the ridiculous and the troubled, Bukowski speaks to the deepest longings and strangest predilections of the human experience. Gloomy yet hopeful, this is tough, unrelenting poetry touched by grace. This is Essential Bukowski.




Guilty Pleasures


Book Description

Meet Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, in the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series that “blends the genres of romance, horror and adventure with stunning panache”(Diana Gabaldon). Laurell K. Hamilton’s bestselling series has captured readers’ wildest imaginations and addicted them to a seductive world where supernatural hungers collide with the desires of the human heart, starring a heroine like no other... Anita Blake is small, dark, and dangerous. Her turf is the city of St. Louis. Her job: re-animating the dead and killing the undead who take things too far. But when the city’s most powerful vampire asks her to solve a series of vicious slayings, Anita must confront her greatest fear—her undeniable attraction to master vampire Jean-Claude, one of the creatures she is sworn to destroy... “What The Da Vinci Code did for the religious thriller, the Anita Blake series has done for the vampire novel.”—USA Today




You Get So Alone at Times


Book Description

Charles Bukowski examines cats and his childhood in You Get So Alone at Times, a book of poetry that reveals his tender side. The iconic tortured artist/everyman delves into his youth to analyze its repercussions. “The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter




sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way


Book Description

One of the most recognizable poets of the last century, Charles Bukowski is simultaneously a common man and an icon of urban depravity. He uses strong, blunt language to describe life as he lives it, and through it all charts the mutations of morality in modern America. Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way is a treasure trove of confessional poetry written towards then end of Bukowski’s life. With the overhang of failing health and waning fame, he reflects on his travels, his gambling and drinking, working, not working, sex and love, eating, cats, and more. Sifting Through is Bukowski at his most meditative – published posthumously, it’s completely non-performative, and gets to the heart of Bukowski’s lifelong pursuit of natural language and raw honesty. We recommend you read this as Bukowski wrote: by sifting through the madness for what hits you as the word, the line, the way.




The Book of the Damned


Book Description

"Time travel, UFOs, mysterious planets, stigmata, rock-throwing poltergeists, huge footprints, bizarre rains of fish and frogs-nearly a century after Charles Fort's Book of the Damned was originally published, the strange phenomenon presented in this book remains largely unexplained by modern science. Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you"--Taken from Good Reads website.




What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire


Book Description

“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire is the second posthumous collection from Charles Bukowski that takes readers deep into the raw, wild vein of writing that extends from the early 1970s to the 1990s.




Charles Bukowski, King of the Underground


Book Description

This critical study of the literary magazines, underground newspapers, and small press publications that had an impact on Charles Bukowski's early career, draws on archives, privately held unpublished Bukowski work, and interviews to shed new light on the ways in which Bukowski became an icon in the alternative literary scene in the 1960s.