Don’t Be Scared… They’re Only CLOWNS! He’s not really a clown...he’s just your dentist! That’s not a clown...in the back seat of your car! Sleep well...there’s no clown under the bed! Don’t look behind you, don’t turn your head, don’t open your eyes… …or you’ll see nothing but 30 single-sided pages of clowns for you to color... ...WON'T THAT BE FUN?

Bad clowns—those malicious misfits of the midway who terrorize, haunt, and threaten us—have long been a cultural icon. This book describes the history of bad clowns, why clowns go bad, and why many people fear them. Going beyond familiar clowns such as the Joker, Krusty, John Wayne Gacy, and Stephen King’s Pennywise, it also features bizarre, lesser-known stories of weird clown antics including Bozo obscenity, Ronald McDonald haters, killer clowns, phantom-clown abductors, evil-clown panics, sex clowns, carnival clowns, troll clowns, and much more. Bad Clowns blends humor, investigation, and scholarship to reveal what is behind the clown’s dark smile.

A short history of the earliest clowns -- The despicable rogue Mr. Punch -- The unnatural nature of the evil clown -- Coulrophobia: Fear of clowns -- Bad clowns of the Ink -- Bad clowns of the Screen -- Bad clowns of the Song -- The carnal carnival: Buffoon boffing and clown sex -- Creepy, criminal, and killer clowns -- Activist clowns -- Crazed caged carny clowns -- The phantom clowns -- Troll clowns and the future of bad clowns

Sicko the clown wasn't always “a clown gone bad.” He had a life. Growing up in a world populated with clowns, Sicko was at first confused with what to do with himself because he couldn't juggle nor ride a unicycle or be in the circus. He tried being a Hobo but it didn't suit him. And he didn't fit in with the Bumpkins in the hot chocolate houses. But he could play the bongos and found a new calling as a musician. At the peak of his success, he got drafted into the Clown Kingdom's Royal Fighting Fools, where he trained as a deadly Nincompoop before shipping off to Nam. But after his best friend, Buddy-Buddy, is captured and tortured by mimes, leaving him disfigured, Sicko can only think of revenge as mimes remain at the heart of Sicko's problems. All mimes must die!

A gorgeously rendered graphic novel of Daniel Alarcón’s story City of Clowns. From the author of The King Is Always Above the People, which was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Oscar “Chino” Uribe is a young Peruvian journalist for a local tabloid paper. After the recent death of his philandering father, he must confront the idea of his father’s other family, and how much of his own identity has been shaped by his father’s murky morals. At the same time, he begins to chronicle the life of street clowns, sad characters who populate the violent and corrupt city streets of Lima, and is drawn into their haunting, fantastical world. This remarkably affecting story by Daniel Alarcón was included in his acclaimed first book, War by Candlelight, and now, in collaboration with artist Sheila Alvarado, it takes on a new, thrilling form. This graphic novel, with its short punches of action and images, its stark contrasts between light and dark, truth and fiction, perfectly corresponds to the tone of Chino’s story. With the city of Lima as a character, and the bold visual language from the story, City of Clowns is moving, menacing, and brilliantly vivid.

Creepy clowns are everywhere, sighted all over the world. They are watching YOUR children. Why?Put your best face on... The circus is coming to town!A creepy clown stares at a young boy from the woods next to his grade school. The boy tells his father. The father wants to get to the bottom of it. Who are they? What do they want? Questions he never should have asked... The answers are here. This is the terrifying story of a desperate father, a simple medicated "beauty lotion," a secret clinical study at a big Pharmaceutical company north of Chicago, and how SERIOUS COMPLICATIONS changed MY life forever. Nothing will be the same again, for me OR for you. Creepy Clowns: Who are they? What do they want? The answer is as clear as the big red nose on your face.

A wide-ranging collection of essays on millennial American culture that “marshals a vast pop vocabulary with easy wit” (The New York Times Book Review). From the far left to the far right, on talk radio and the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling. Celebrity worship and media frenzy, suicidal cultists and heavily armed secessionists: modern life seems to have become a “pyrotechnic insanitarium,” Mark Dery says, borrowing a turn-of-the-century name for Coney Island. Dery elucidates the meaning to our madness, deconstructing American culture from mainstream forces like Disney and Nike to fringe phenomena like the Unabomber and alien invaders. Our millennial angst, he argues, is a product of a pervasive cultural anxiety—a combination of the social and economic upheaval wrought by global capitalism and the paranoia fanned by media sensationalism. The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium is a theme-park ride through the extremes of American culture of which The Atlantic has written, “Mark Dery confirms once again what writers and thinkers as disparate as Nathanael West, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sigmund Freud, and Oliver Sacks have already shown us: the best place to explore the human condition is at its outer margins, its pathological extremes.” “Dery is the kind of critic who just might give conspiracy theory a good name.” —Wired

Provides information on such topics as: designing costumes and makeup, preparing a routine, performing stunts, and interacting with the audience.

The intimacy of the one-ring circus produced the classic clown routines that flourished until the mid-twentieth century and then disappeared with the rise of the grand circus. They have been lost until now. By seeking out the little band of surviving clowns who worked in the old tradition and setting down their scenes, Tristan Rémy, the eminent circus historian, has rescued a theatrical treasure. Thanks to Rémy's persistence, the forty-eight scenes presented here contain not only the spoken words but the manner of line delivery and the physical turns. So they remain superbly suitable for performance. Most of them are written for just three actors—the white-faced clown, August the stooge, and the supercilious ringmaster. Sets are unnecessary. And their combination of the verbal with the physical has timeless appeal. Bernard Sahlins's translation is masterfully attuned to present-day audiences. In his foreword, Mr. Sahlins notes that these scenes have been continually remounted in Europe, attesting to their fundamental vitality and universality. “Clearly there is a debt, witting and unwitting, owed to the clown of the ring by the great comedians of our century. With this book these scenes and the clowns who invented and played them now take their honored place in our theatrical legacy.”

Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel In Adam Cesare’s terrifying young adult debut, Quinn Maybrook finds herself caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress—that just may cost her life. Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can. Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now. YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee