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The New Yorker on LIGHTNING PEOPLE:

“Bollen excels at creating an atmosphere of Manhattan-specific dread, and certain scenes, particularly the account of a struggling actor’s going-away party, are tragicomic masterpieces.”

Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief, on THE GREAT FRUSTRATION:

“Seth Fried has a wildly humorous imagination, but also sharp technical skills and beauty of language that weaves deep examinations of self and humanity into the inner folds of his crazy worlds. He’s channeling Saunders by way of Barthelme and Kafka, but also clearing a whole new territory of his own. Listen up and open this book: Seth Fried is the future of fiction.”

I, Judas

Judas Iscariot is the historical symbol of betrayal. But what really happened at the Garden of Gethsemane? What really compelled Judas to hang himself from a tree? I, Judas reimagines Iscariot’s relationship to Jesus Christ and explores Judas’s orchestration of the elaborate con of the divinity of Jesus Christ, subverting the legend of Judas as he inhabits some of our most notorious literary and historic figures in their darkest hours. Custer, Sexton, Van Gogh: These famous suicides converge through the figure of Judas in a cutting-edge piece of fiction that exposes the dangers of seeking universal truths in myth.

James Reich was born in 1971 in Stroud, England. Writer. Also artist, and founding member of post-punk band Venus Bogardus. James Reich lectures on ‘Literature and the Posthuman’, and ‘Dada and Anti-Art’. Recent Venus Bogardus albums including ‘Spitting at the Glass’ and ‘Tourist’ are available for download via Amazon.com. He has lived in the USA since 2009.

Praise for I, Judas

“This one’ll have you clenched in a fetal position for a century, relieved only by the occasional orgasms of its mellifluous prose. You have to be strong to read this book: it rains fireballs.” —Andrei Codrescu, author of Whatever Gets you through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments

“Reading I, Judas, I found myself often provoked, occasionally disgusted or even enraged, and always riveted. It’s not often that a book or a writer not only confounds my expectations, but makes me question a set of assumptions I didn’t even know I held.” —Julie Powell, author of Julie and Julia

Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers-An American Tale of Sex and Wonder

A wild and uncompromising history of four infamous magazines and the outlaws behind them, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! is the first book to rip the sheet off of the sleazy 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 — on a legendary flop of a movie paid for with bags of cash, a porn magazine for women, and a pie-in-the sky scheme for a portable nuclear reactor —fueled the greatest riches to rags story ever told.

The adventure begins in the early 1950s and rips through the tumultuous ’60s and ’70s —when Hustler’s Larry Flynt and Screw’s Al Goldstein were arrested dozens of times, recklessly pushing the boundaries of free speech, attacking politicians, and putting unapologetic filth front and center — through the 1990s when a sexed-up culture high on the Internet finally killed the era when men looked for satisfaction in the centerfold. As America goes, so goes it’s porn.

Along the way we meet many unexpected heroes—John Lennon, Lenny Bruce, Helen Gurley Brown, and the staff of Mad magazine among them—and villains—from Richard Nixon and the Moral Majority to Hugh Hefner himself, whose legacy, we learn, is built on a self-perpetuated lie.

Gilgamesh

Before the Bible and legendary figures like Hercules, King Arthur, and Beowulf, there was Gilgamesh. As the king of Uruk, a city in ancient Mesopotamia, Gilgamesh protected his people from harm, battling a multitude of fierce demons with the steadfast help of his brother, Enkidu.

But Gilgamesh’s reign faced the ultimate challenge from the power-hungry goddess Ishtar, who proposed marriage only to be unceremoniously spurned by Gilgamesh. Ishtar’s rage led Gilgamesh to his greatest battle, a battle that shook Gilgamesh to his core and led him to travel further than any other man—to the land of the gods on a quest to find immortality.

Written down on cuneiform tablets nearly five thousand years ago, Gilgamesh’s story was originally recorded in the form of an epic poem. In this bold retelling of the ancient legend—presented for the first time in graphic novel form—graphic novelist Andrew Winegarner revitalizes the ultimate adventure story. His illustrations breathe new life into the story of humanity’s first hero, and the result is a page-turning take on the world’s oldest epic poem.

Andrew Winegarner is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and currently teaches art. His first graphic novel, Peaceful Warrior, is an adaptation of Dan Millman’s bestseller, Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Winegarner lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Nature of the Beast

An alien race of religious extremists plan to honor their deity through the ritualistic annihilation of our planet. The only man who knows this is Milan Marlowe, an unstoppable media baron who sees opportunity everywhere.

Earth’s only move is to engage the invaders according to their holy law and issue The Challenge of the Heretic—a winner-take-all gladiator battle for our right to exist. Marlowe launches Beast Wars, a televised interspecies tournament designed to select Earth’s mightiest champion. On a decadent private island, sharks, lions, gorillas, and polar bears square off to the delight of screaming fans oblivious to the sky-high stakes.

Enter Bruno Bolo—single father, blues belter, and alligator wrestler from the swamps of Florida. Beset by personal demons, corporatized killer sharks, Yeats-quoting pit fighters, and looming alien eradicators, Bruno will emerge as our desperate planet’s final hope.

Adam Mansbach‘s most recent book, Go the Fuck to Sleep, was a #1 New York Times bestseller. Published in thirty-six languages, it is forthcoming as a feature film from Fox 2000. His novels include The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award, and the cult classic Angry Black White Boy, which is taught at more than a hundred universities. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, GQ, Esquire, The Believer, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

Douglas Mcgowan is a filmmaker, record producer, and lifelong comic book fan.

Owen Brozman lives in Brooklyn. This is his first graphic novel.

Lascivious Something/Roadkill Confidential/That Pretty Pretty; Or, The Rape Play: Three Plays

Sheila Callaghan is one of the most distinctive playwrights working in the theater today. Fiercely political, unblinkingly experimental, yet emotionally true, her writing is a refreshing combination of the compelling and the controversial.

This volume collects three of her most recent plays to date. It includes: Lascivious Something, a heart-rending and “profoundly disturbing” (TimeOut New York) exploration of failed love and shattered idealism at the dawn of the Reagan era, it follows a lapsed activist’s attempt to start life anew on a vineyard in Greece and what happens when the woman he left behind tracks him down; Roadkill Confidential, a noir-ish meditation on brutality and the intersection between fear and art, focused on an artist who uses the corpses of dead animals found on the side of the road as the medium for her creations; and That Pretty Pretty; Or, the Rape Play, “variously a rant, a riff, a rumble—about our notions of naturalism, objectification, perversity, and beauty” (The New Yorker), the play “imagines the collective unconscious of a culture where girls never stop going wild” (The New York Times).

Praise for Sheila Callaghan:

“[Callaghan] push(es) her audience’s buttons with an aggressive treatment of some of the darker corners of the human psyche.” —The New York Times

“Sheila Callaghan seems to have put third-wave feminism, Gen-Y gender confusion and macho writerly clichés in a blender set to high speed.” —TimeOut New York

“[Callaghan’s] plays defy categorization. They are sexy, punky, smart, sophisticated, literate, edgy, tightly woven, big, crass, witty, exquisite. They swell with moments of the unreal but never let go of a narrative thread. They expand and contract to underscore everyday grit and epic ache.” —American Theater

“Post-feminist punk incursions into the poetic turf of early Sam Shepard.” —LA Weekly

“Callaghan has a keen sense of language as an act of aggression.” —Los Angeles Times

“[Callaghan’s] playful sense of language and her attunement to her characters are enthralling.” —TimeOut Chicago

Sheila Callaghan is the author of numerous plays and has taught playwriting at Columbia University, among other programs. She is the recipient of the Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Whiting Writers Award, and has received fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. She lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

Lightning People

Christopher Bollen

Joseph Guiteau is a working actor who moved to New York to escape a tragic family history in the Midwest. Wandering through a city transformed by the attacks of September 2001, he frequents gatherings of conspiracy groups, trying to make sense of world events and his own personal history. Looming over his life is a secret that threatens to undermine his new marriage to Del, a snake expert at a city park, whose work visa is the only thread keeping her from deportation back to her native Greece.

The new marriage influences the lives of those around them: William, a dark and troubled actor whose sanity is fading as quickly as his career, leading him to perform increasingly desperate acts; Madi, a young entrepreneur who will have to face the moral complications of a business made successful by the outsourcing of American jobs to India; and her brother Raj, Del’s former lover, a promising photographer whose work details the empty rooms of an increasingly alienated city.

Christopher Bollen’s first novel captures the atmosphere of anxiety and loss that exists in Manhattan. It is a story of the city itself, and the interconnected lives of those attempting to navigate both Manhattan and their own mortality.

Praise for Lightning People

“Ambitious . . . a nervy debut illuminated by flashes of insight.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Bollen’s intricate, humid Lightning People deftly combines paranoia and high drama with the mundane ache of real relationships, real weather, and a very real New York City. He delves into the the haunting mythologies we truly can’t escape, while somehow capturing the sweetness of why we come together anyway.” —Miranda July

“Smart and rich with the spirit of our age, with keen insight into human emotions and why we do the things we do. So readable.” –Douglas Coupland

“Christopher Bollen’s Lightning People is a tour de force that calls to mind The Great Gatsby. Bollen writes with both humor and humanity, as he paints a canvas of love, loss, and youth in New York, and beyond. By the end, I felt I knew these people, these beautiful lightning people, and I felt myself caring for them in ways I hadn’t anticipated.” —Vendela Vida, author of The Lover’s

Download a free ebook of Peter Brown Hoffmeister’s The End of Boys, September 11–19, from Amazon.

In his first book, Peter Brown Hoffmeister demonstrates not only the strength of his writing but also his fearlessness when confronting the trauma of his childhood. With sobering honesty and gripping narrative, Hoffmeister has created a memoir masterpiece, one that will leave the reader shocked at its content while thankful for a story that can turn such raw pain into something beautiful.

The cover of the memoir immediately demonstrates the perilous state of Hoffmeister’s childhood. The family photograph is a striking image of two young, blond boys – one inhaling a cigarette with deep concentration (Peter), the other looking on, completely mesmerized (his brother).  And one need not question where their parents are – their mother is the supplier of the cigarette, a way to “make us artists like Picasso,” Peter confides.

The End of Boys is filled with gripping and disturbing anecdotes from Peter’s past, including being asked by his mother to kill a neighborhood cat to perpetually participating in fights, drug-use, and mischief. To read this riveting memoir, download your FREE Ebook from Amazon for one week only, September 11 to 19!

To read more about The End of Boys, visit:
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/hard-knock-life/Content?oid=4114271

To watch the Trailer for The End of Boys, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOHWCSs2mHU

Slingshot to the Juggernaut: Total Resistance to Secrecy and War is Total Love for the Truth

In the ten years since 9/11, a grassroots truth movement has sprung up that unites the best elements of the right and left. The call to resist the secrecy, imperialism, and the manipulation of the elite has been heard by a wide spectrum of people, across religious and political lines. This is a revolutionary movement that has lacked a clarifying manifesto.

Until now.

Pulling from his personal confrontations with the FBI, Rudolph Giuliani, Eliot Spitzer, and Dick Cheney, activist, maverick, and investigative reporter Sander Hicks reaches for a broader understanding of who was behind the 9/11 attacks. He reports the mysterious murder of Dr. David M. Graham, a Shreveport dentist who met two of the 9/11 hijackers but was then harassed by the FBI and poisoned. Scientific evidence leads him to take a hard, critical stance against Bush, Cheney, and the 9/11 “Official Story.”

Weaving evidence with anecdote, Slingshot to the Juggernaut is an inspiring ride into the 9/11 cover-up and the revolutionary possibilities it inadvertently created. Provocative and unyielding, Hicks examines the evidence, draws conclusions, and offers a vision for the future of the United States.

Praise for Slingshot to the Juggernaut:

“Following after his heroes Gandhi and Jesus, Hicks uses Slingshot to accomplish an ‘experiment in truth’ that enlivens our hearts and opens our eyes to the central issues of our time. His experiment ranges from autobiographical scenes of direct action to impressive journalistic research and political analysis—and concludes with the offering of an original political program that arises out of heartfelt theological reflections. This rich piece of passionate writing is a huge gift those of us who have wondered about the deeper meanings of 9/11 truth.” —Byron Belitsos, cofounder of Citizens 9/11 Commission Campaign and coauthor of A Return to Healing

Sander Hicks is the founder of Soft Skull Press and Vox Pop, Inc. He is a leader in the global mass movement demanding truth and transparency regarding US power, empire, 9/11, and the War on Terror. His previous books include The Breaking Manager and The Big Wedding. He leads the new art punk band Rebel Moon, and lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

Filthy Talk for Troubled Times: And Other Plays

Neil LaBute burst onto the American theater scene in 1989 with his controversial debut work Filthy Talk for Troubled Times. Set in a barroom in Anytown USA and populated by a series of everymen (and two beleaguered everywomen), this series of frank exchanges explores the innumerable varieties of American intolerance. A unique snapshot of the times, the play — seldom allowed production by the author since — provides a compelling look at the early thinking and evolution of one of our great theater artists.
Also in this collection is a series of new, short works, some never before produced. They include “The New Testament,” a showbiz satire that takes a close look at the perils of color-blind casting, and “The Furies,” in which a woman helps navigate her brother’s breakup with his out-and-then-perhaps, in-the-closet-again lover.

Praise for Neil LaBute:

“The reigning prince of Off Broadway.” —David Amsden, New York

“LaBute [is] the dark shining star of stage and film morality.” —Linda Winer, Newsday

“There is something of the sinister menace of Pinter in LaBute’s work (along with David Mamet, he is very much the heir apparent to that master).” —Hedy Weiss,Chicago Sun-Times

“A connoisseur of unsettling emotion . . . LaBute’s psychological terrain is the punishing slippery slope of ambivalence. In his hands, this bedeviling state of spiritual stasis comes with a distinctive sound, a sensational hemming and hawing, which poetically betrays the mind boxing clever with itself.” —John Lahr, The New Yorker

“Like a giant, mischievous child poking a dog with a stick, Neil LaBute delights in seeing what he can get away with. [He's] the bad boy of American theater . . . Dangerous and devastatingly funny.” —Jumana Farouky, Time

“LaBute[‘s] judgment of his fellow men makes the Old Testament Jehovah look like a softie . . . his talents go beyond glibly vicious storytelling and extend into thoughtful analyses of a world rotten with original sin.” —Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute.” —John Lahr, The New Yorker

Neil LaBute’s most recent works for the stage include This Is How It Goes (Faber, 2005) and Fat Pig (Faber, 2004), which won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off Broadway Play.

The Book Doctors, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, co-authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, are the masterminds behind this country-wide event, which has come to be called the American Idol of the book world. Take away the screaming fans, lengthy commercials, and Simon Cowell, and you’ve got this year’s PITCHAPALOOZA, July 25^th at Books Inc. in Berkeley, 7pm.

Here’s how it works: At the event, twenty people will be chosen at random to pitch their book in one minute. A panel of judges, including our very own Soft Skull Press Executive Editor Laura Mazer, will give advice and feedback about each proposal, instructing each author on how to best present themselves and their material. At the end, the judges will pick a winner who will receive an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for his/her book. “There are so many people who want to write books that actually have very good ideas and just need a little bit of help crafting their proposal and getting access to an agent and a publisher,” said James Levine, Founder of Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, and another judge at the event.

Within the last month, three PITCHAPALOOZA authors have signed book deals, including unknown authors Nura Maznavi and Ayesha Mattu, who’s LOVE, INSHALLAH is was acquired by SSP.

Obviously you can’t miss it. Details are below. See you there!

July 25

7pm

Books Inc

1760 Fourth Street

Berkeley, California