Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats is the first comprehensive account of how the rise of postwar youth culture was depicted in mass-market pulp fiction. As the young created new styles in music, fashion, and culture, pulp fiction shadowed their every move, hyping and exploiting their behaviour, dress, and language for mass consumption and cheap thrills. From the juvenile delinquent gangs of the early 1950s through the beats and hippies, on to bikers, skinheads, and punks, pulp fiction left no trend untouched. With their lurid covers and wild, action-packed plots, these books reveal as much about society’s deepest desires and fears as they do about the subcultures themselves. Girl Gangs features approximately 400 full-color covers, many of them never reprinted before. With 70 in-depth author interviews, illustrated biographies, and previously unpublished articles from more than 20 popular culture critics and scholars from the US, UK, and Australia, the book goes behind the scenes to look at the authors and publishers, how they worked, where they drew their inspiration and—often overlooked—the actual words they wrote. Books by well-known authors such as Harlan Ellison and Lawrence Block are discussed alongside neglected obscurities and former bestsellers ripe for rediscovery. It is a must read for anyone interested in pulp fiction, lost literary history, retro and subcultural style, and the history of postwar youth culture. Contributors include Nicolas Tredell, Alwyn W. Turner, Mike Stax, Clinton Walker, Bill Osgerby, David Rife, J.F. Norris, Stewart Home, James Cockington, Joe Blevins, Brian Coffey, James Doig, David James Foster, Matthew Asprey Gear, Molly Grattan, Brian Greene, John Harrison, David Kiersh, Austin Matthews, and Robert Baker.

A long, hard ride from start to finish, Biker Boys features easy riders, stuntmen studs, and men who aren't just wearing chaps because they look good. The term "biker" describes a specific archetype in our culture: "real" men — rebels, outlaws, and sometimes criminals. The racy stories of Biker Boys evoke the passion these masculine men have for their cycles and each other. Also along for the ride are grease monkeys who service bikes, guys who willingly take on the role of biker bitch, and road-weary men looking for a bed for the night. These sensational stories by Jeff Mann, Shane Allison, Simon Sheppard and more are filled with speed, danger, and lived-in leather.

Abby Abernathy is re-inventing herself as the good girl as she begins her freshman year at college, which is why she must resist lean, cut, and tattooed Travis Maddox, a classic bad boy.

/DIVI am a queen. I live in a castle, right across the street from the John Howard Housing Projects. Every day right after school I run to my bedroom window and open it wide--even in the middle of winter when the wind blows wet snow up my nose. I watch for my knight in shining armor. He's ten years old, like me, and rides a bike--a two-wheeler with rusty spokes and torn-up seat. So begins Sharon Flake's highly-anticipated new novel--a moving story of an unlikely friendship. DIV Queen is a royal pain in the neck! Her Highness treats everyone like her loyal subjects: her classmates, her teacher, even her parents! That's why all the kids hate her and it's hard for her to make friends. To make matters worse, Queen known she is bright. Her teacher thinks she's a spoiled know-it-all, and that keeps her in hot water as well. When a new kid comes to Queen's school riding a broken bike and wearing run-over shoes, he immediately becomes the butt of everyone's jokes. Her parents insist she be nice to Leroy, since history has never been kind to queens who forget how to be humble. But Leroy isn't just smelly, Queen thinks that he tells fibs—whoppers in fact—and when he says he's an African prince from Senegal, sparks fly between him and Queen. There's only room for one blue-blooded family on 33rd Street, and Queen is determined to prove Leroy is an impostor. What Queen ultimately discovers about Leroy makes her wonder what "happily ever after" really means. If a broken-bike boy is truly Queen’s knight in shining armor, can he save her from herself, by teaching her how to be a good friend?

96 pages of comic strip - that's something that can be leafed through fairly quickly, one should think. But things are different when it comes to American comic artist Zack's juicy, nasty and nostalgic erotic stories! In fact, the stories are so hot that readers will have trouble getting through just one of them from beginning to end without...well, taking a break, shall we say? But Zack's comics are also so much more than sex. They're arty, nostalgic and fantastically drawn; a real treat for all the senses!

At the confluence of experimental art and the gay subculture of early 1960s New York, Juan Suárez discovers a postmodern, gay-influenced aesthetic that "recycles" popular culture. Filmmakers Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol epitomize this sensibility, combining the influences of European avant-garde movements, comic books, rock 'n' roll, camp, film cults, drag performances, fashion, and urban street cultures.

A screenwriter stage dives into L.A.’s punk rock scene to find a missing reporter as Sinclair mixes “hard-edged realism . . . [and] humor” in a “fine” novel (Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A.). Four years ago, when Capt. George Steifer charged screenwriter Ben Crandel with murder, it didn’t look like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. But Hollywood makes strange bedfellows, and now the cop has come to his writer pal for help. A Los Angeles Times reporter named Elise Reilly disappeared two weeks ago while investigating a story on the punk rock scene. Steifer has been trying to find her with the help of a spiky-haired informant who just ended up shot point-blank in the bathroom of a punk club—and now the cop is losing it. It turns out he buried the lead: He’s in love with Elise. Ben has lost his own loved one to the punk scene, in a way. His now fifteen-year-old adopted son, Petey, is the lead singer in a group called Claustrophobic—and apparently that’s how he felt about living at home. But at least Petey left a note: He’s off to pursue his punk pipe dream and Ben’s left with his basset hound, Stanley, for company. In pursuit of Elise, Ben and Steifer rush headlong into a veritable mosh pit of neo-Nazis and religious fanatics, where one wrong move could get them trampled. As they uncover a stockpile of weapons and an assassination plot, they frantically search for a connection to the reporter’s whereabouts . . . “Sinclair has the unique ability to dish out hard-edged realism with—believe it or not—a touch of humor. Goodbye L.A. is a fine piece.” —Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A.

When photojournalist and writer Roby Page first started trekking to Daytona Beach, Florida, for Bike Week in 1985, the counterculture gathering was dominated by rogues, ruffians, and rebels. Now the leather-clad biker rumbling down Atlantic Avenue might be a doctor or a lawyer. More than a half-million enthusiasts arrive at Daytona Beach every March, a number swelled by new bikers from the American mainstream. In Bike Week at Daytona Beach: Bad Boys and Fancy Toys, Page sets out on his Harley-Davidson to search for what it really means to be a biker. Part memoir, part narrative history, and part photo essay, the book not only chronicles Bike Week, but also vividly documents the evolution of two American icons-the Harley and the Biker. Braving wintry weather on his way to sunny Florida, Page gives us an understanding of the visceral, even elemental thrills of traveling by motorcycle. He tracks the history of the outlaw biker image from its origins in the wake of World War II and the parallel history of the Harley-Davidson Motor Company, creator of the machine favored by bikers. Arriving in Daytona Beach, the author shares the changing carnival of Bike Week through his prose and through black-and-white photographs. Finally, Page joins long-time bikers Jinks and Wolfpup to get perspective on how Bike Week has changed and on how the dramatic increase in new bikers has transformed their culture forever. Roby Page, Roanoke, Virginia, is a sociologist and photographer whose work has been featured in such periodicals as Visual Sociology and Contexts and in the St. Petersburg Times, the Gainesville Sun, and many other newspapers.

India is a tough country. Growing up in India is a tough job. Back in the 1990’s, it was even tougher. Armed with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, Pi, at the age 21, embarks on the roller coaster called ‘life’. Seeking love, happiness and a successful career, Pi experiences many firsts. His first kiss, his first pay cheque, a live-in girlfriend and his first million. In a decade, during which the red fort saw six Prime Ministers, and the country saw rapid but haphazard economic growth, he also takes baby steps into the corporate world, learning the ropes all over the country. Myriad happenings around him not just helped him form his world view, but in fact chiseled and sometimes even destroyed his career, happiness and love life. The Mandal commission, The Kashmir exodus, The Mumbai riots, the Gulf War, the south east Asian meltdown and an Indo-Pak war impact his life in unforeseen ways. He also adapts to the invasion of technology through Satellite TV, the internet and the mobile phones. Steering his love life and career through ups and downs, faced with the burden of expectations of a dominant middle-class father, the journey he took during this decade was tumultuous, torturous yet exhilarating. The learnings which came from that road could not have come any other way.

Revised for this second edition, Now You See It, Richard Dyer’s groundbreaking study of films by and about lesbians and gay men, now includes an outline of developments in queer cinema since 1990. Placing the book within lesbian and gay film history, Dyer examines familiar titles such as Girls in Uniform, Un Chant D’Amour and Word is Out in their lesbian/gay context, as well as bringing to light many other forgotten, but remarkable films. Each film is examined in detail in relation to both film type and tradition, and the sexual subculture in which it was made. Now featuring a brand new introduction by Juliane Pidduck, this will be an excellent aid to cinema and film studies courses.