After Izzy’s lover Tim, an entomologist and ringmaster of a flea circus, makes an Irish exit out the airshaft window, she oscillates between madness and reason, failing to make any sense of it.Staggering from the gut punch, she serves the drunks at Tim’s brother’s dockside bar, takes up with a purveyor of flea-breeding equipment who asks no questions, and slowly loses her grip. Every time she reaches for cold certainties, her mind skids off the road. Izzy can calcu...

A collection of nineteen short stories from the Nebula and Hugo Award–winning author of The Iron Dragon's Daughter and Stations of the TideWritten over the course of a decade, Tales from Old Earth contains nineteen masterful pieces of short fiction—including the Hugo Award–winning stories "The Very Pulse of the Machine" and "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur;" the World Fantasy Award–winning novella "Radio Waves;" Hugo Award finalists "The Dead," ...

The bestselling author "offers up lean, deftly composed short-shorts that seem effortless but inflict a surprising amount of mayhem considering their size" (Brian Evenson, O. Henry Award–winning author).Like a gut punch, like a lightning strike, nearly seventy pieces of flash fiction in this expanded edition—featuring twenty previously uncollected tales, including ten original stories—from Stephen Graham Jones showcase the visceral bite of his prose and scope of hi...

Though set at Disney World, this collection is far from Disneyesque (as if the title wasn't a giveaway.) Mouseschawitz - My Summer Job of Concentrated Fun - is Part 1 of a short collection of essays from an ex theme park employee and the unbelievable feats she witnessed one summer. From deadly wildlife to celebrity encounters, to guests attempting makeshift abortions on rides, these tales cover all kinds of thrills in the happiest place on earth."Angela Lovell is not just someone w...

If reading most short story collections is like canoeing gently down a tranquil and picturesque river, then reading Spencer Gordon's Cosmo is like riding a jetski over Niagara Falls with Leonard Cohen whispering in your ear. You'll join Matthew McConaughey as he drives naked across the desert in a surreal dark night of the soul. You'll meet a young wrestling fan half-nelsoned by circumstances and a sister's best intentions. You'll hear a Miley Cyrus admirer defend his passion in a 3,000-wo...

I stopped off at the Peace Gardens - a memorial straddling the US-Canadian border commemorating 'Lasting Peace Between America and Canada', as if there had ever been a problem. Show me a garden commemorating Peace Between America and, say, Iraq and I'll be impressed.America is like a beauty contestant. It's gorgeous, until it opens its mouth.'From the similarities between US gun laws and British drinking hours, to what cryptic crosswords really tell us about the British psyc...

Why do some people retain cute baby-talk names for their relatives (like "Num-Num" and "Pee-Paw") well into middle age? How should a reasonable person respond when Olivia Newton-John sings, "Have you never been mellow?" Who's responsible for the sorry state of men's fashion, and is it the same guy who invented the jerkin? Is there any future in being a Midwesterner? Can you really enjoy your lunch when the restaurant is decorated to look like an African plain? How come women keep dozens of...

Selected for the 2008 National Poetry Series by Kevin YoungThe poems in Adrian Matejka's second collection, Mixology, shapeshift through the myriad meanings of "mixing" to explore and explode ideas of race, skin politics, appropriation, and cultural identity. Whether the focus of the individual poems is musical, digital, or historical, the otherness implicit in being of more than one racial background guides Matejka's work to the inevitable conclusion that...

Smiling has been shown to relieve stress, boost the immune system, release endorphins, and even make us more attractive. It's the natural drug. Whether it's the sight of baby animals wrestling each other or watching pigeons fight over a Cheeto, there are more than enough funny, silly, and downright weird reasons to put a smile on your face inside this little book of joy, including:When the person in the next lane lets you ahead of them in heavy trafficWhen you finally get bac...

So, you want a bit of Gangnam Style do you? You've heard that it's what all the cool kids have and you want a bit of it? It's recently come to your attention that there's this horse dance as well, yes? Right, this is the book for you. Within these (digital) pages are ten amazing tips which will help you get that all-important Gangnam Style. You too can be like PSY! Find out what Gangnam Style is, how to display it in public, and of course what to do once you've got it. Don't take it too se...

If it were necessary to tell someone where I am, I'd say the spheres of Kepler resonate like icicles. I'd say I have loved. These are high-energy poems, riddled with wit and legerdemain and jolted by the philosophy and science of time. 'Time's not the market, it's the bustle; / not the price but worth," he muses, sailing through the rhythms and algorithms of a world made concrete by Samuel Johnson, before it was undone by Niels Bohr. Tierney's narrators grapple with the gap between what's ...

What do you do when you see yourself in a photo you can't possibly be in?