In Bite Me!, idiosyncratic observations and provocative musings illuminate an unseen world of creatures both real and imagined. This is a collection populated by eighty-foot-long boa constrictors and carnivorous pitcher plants. Of colossal clams that inhale noxious volcanic fumes and of bioluminescent ocean-dwelling critters that appear as ghostly mermaids to unsuspecting submariners. It is a collection in which the unfortunate Monster Boy copes with the consequences of schoolyard bullying—and flesh-liquefying stomach acid—while the agoraphobic Birdman ‘strives to ascend skyward’ though he is permanently grounded. The poems and musings in Bite Me! are interested in ‘the bizarre side of Mother Nature’s handiwork’, from the depths of the ocean to the wilds of the tropical rainforest ... to the cozy hearth of the domesticated housecat. In this collection characterized by isolation and unquenchable need, Rosenblatt celebrates life in all its varied forms while awaiting that moment when ‘time drifting as a bottom feeder makes a meal of us’.

That which bestows value upon this book is not in the words, the stories, its lyric qualities, nor anything that anyone could say about it. Its precise meaning and value lies within you the reader, and nowhere else. It is a question mark, an apostrophe, a space between words… it is the expression of life for living rather than written words for reading. It is neither to be understood nor misunderstood, unless it is both and neither. It is a fire that dances upon gilded water, and the calm toes that nimbly tip toe upon a line in a fire which is not; a fire that laughs but does not consume, that consumes but does not exhume. It is a solitary shining ray cut as a hue hewn seen but dimly through the solitary cell of a soul exhumed and marred yet as if a babe still hooked; a humble jolt stilted in lapsed time, transfigured and bare to the blemish of eternity. It is a rite of life, and as life is, it is what you make of it.

This fascinating collection of letters between sons and mothers offers an intimate and unexpected glimpse into the mind and heart of the artist. Here are letters by over fifty writers, painters, and musicians, from boyhood to manhood--including Elvis Presley, Ezra Pound, E. B. White, Paul Cezanne, Henry James, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Richard Wagner, Victor Hugo, Jean Cocteau, Tennessee WIlliams, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The basic rules governing the use of periods, semicolons, hyphens, commas, and other punctuation marks are illustrated by original explanations and humorous sample sentences. Reprint.

Uses imaginative examples to illustrate the meaning of words from abrogate, brouhaha, and cachinnate to susurration, truculence, and voluble.

Playful and practical, this is the style book you can't wait to use, a guide that addresses classic questions of English usage with wit and the blackest of humor. Black-and-white illustrations throughout.

Best known for her Gothic language handbooks (reissued recently as The New Well-Tempered Sentence and The Deluxe Transitive Vampire), Karen Elizabeth Gordon here turns her extraordinary talents to fiction, and the result is as unconventional as her seductive grammar dramas. The Red Shoes consists of tatters of a half-dozen tales ("The Glass Shoe," "The Gingerbread Variations," "The Little Match Girl," "Don Juan Is a Woman," and the title story, among others) sewn together into a novel by two seamstresses. "Fabric, fabrication--such is the stuff of these lost chronicles come together here," Gordon writes in her introduction. "Swinging their hatboxes, swaying their hips, chapters with torn slips wander in on high heels and blistered feet." Looking back to the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, but also casting sidelong glances at metafictional sugardaddies like Queneau, Nabokov, Cortazar, Gass, and Milorad Pavic, The Red Shoes is a Rabelaisian romp through the language of sensuality.

A pansexual bloodmage reluctantly teams up with an undead spirit to start a rebellion among the living and the dead, in this dark YA fantasy by A.M. Strickland, author of Beyond the Black Door, whom Richard Kadrey calls “a storyteller of both grace and power.” In Thanopolis, those gifted with magic are assigned undead spirits to guard them—and control them. Ever since Rovan’s father died trying to keep her from this fate, she’s hidden her magic. But when she accidentally reveals her powers, she’s bound to a spirit and thrust into a world of palace intrigue and deception. Desperate to escape, Rovan finds herself falling for two people she can’t fully trust: Lydea, a beguiling, rebellious princess; and Ivrilos, the handsome spirit with the ability to control Rovan, body and soul. Together, they uncover a secret that will destroy Thanopolis. To save them all, Rovan will have to start a rebellion in both the mortal world and the underworld, and find a way to trust the princess and spirit battling for her heart—if she doesn’t betray them first. An Imprint Book

From the author of The Deluxe Transitive Vampire comes this delightful collection of writings about food, drink, and the art of eating. Drawing on excerpts from more than 50 writers--Barthes, Balzac, Mandelstam, McPhee, Marquez, and Joyce among them--Gordon gives us a funny, surprising, and wonderfully macabre book.

An illustrated guide to a surrealist Paris. At the Cinema l'Ange des Sables, they show only movies shot in the desert, while in the Cafe Dada you insert food into an automatic dispenser and get money. By the author of The Red Shoes.