Seven tales

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Kathe Koja

Kathe Koja's shattering new novel, Strange Angels, is a dark, fascinating story of art, madness, and obsession. Grant is a freelance photographer who has come up against an artistic block. When he sees the crayon drawings done by a schizophrenic man named Robin, Grant is immediately fascinated by Robin's genius, hungry for the subtle truth that seems hidden in the arcing, crossing lines. Completely obsessed, Grant feels it's his mission to help Robin fully realize his artistic potential. He persuades Robin to check out of the hospital and move in with him. He encourages Robin to draw episodes from the most disturbed periods of his life. But Robin becomes more and more withdrawn until he doesn't want to draw anymore. Then Grant realizes the transcendent truth Robin holds is not to be found in his art, but in Robin himself. He must go deeper and deeper into Robin. Together they must explore altered states, must undergo sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation. Robin deteriorates further. Gradually Grant becomes convinced that Robin is transforming into something new, some kind of angel. On a par with Katherine Dunn or Donna Tartt, Kathe Koja is a powerful young writer whose distinctive voice will hold you spellbound as you take a journey into darkness unlike any you've been on before.

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Phyllis Limbacher Tildes

A gentle, nearsighted peasant girl rescues the legendary Baba Babochka and is rewarded with a magic babushka that enables her to create beautiful "pysanky," or decorated eggs.

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Sue Coe

Armed with her sketchbook, Sue Coe traveled across the United States, following the path from factory farm to feedlot, to the "killing floor" of the slaughterhouse. Her firsthand observations are rendered in her diaries and artwork - stunning, unforgettable images. Dead Meat graphically documents the castrations, debeakings, electrocutions, and decapitations; the skewing, flaying and dismembering; the pathos and tragedy. Coe made eye contact with a frightened veal calf awaiting execution and talked to the people who commit the sanctioned killing that supplies our meat-eating culture. Her illustrations evoke the dark, cavernous abattoir, slippery with blood, steam, and body heat. Workers wielding knives and stun guns slave in dangerous conditions, dehumanized by the brutality of their jobs, alienated by economic oppression. Like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Dead Meat indicts the system of corruption and consumption that exacts such a toll from its citizens.

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Valerie Steele and Jennifer Park

"From its origins in the eighteenth-century literature of terror to its contemporary manifestations in vampire fiction, cinema, and art, the gothic has embraced the powers of horror and the erotic macabre. "Gothic" is an epithet with a strange history - evoking images of death, destruction, and decay. Ironically, its negative connotations have made the gothic an ideal symbol of rebellion for a wide range of cultural outsiders. This gorgeous book is the first in-depth study of the gothic influence on fashion." "Popularly associated with black-clad teenagers and rock musicians, gothic fashion encompasses not only subcultural styles (from old-school goth to cyber-goth and beyond) but also high fashion by such designers as Alexander McQueen, John Galliano of Christian Dior, Rick Owens, Olivier Theyskens, and Yohji Yamamoto. Fashion photographers, such as Scan Ellis and Eugenio Recuenco, have also drawn on the visual vocabulary of the gothic to convey narratives of dark glamour. As the text and lavish illustrations in this book suggest, gothic fashion has deep cultural roots that give it an enduring potency." "Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)."--Jacket.