Hairstyles of the Damned (Punk Planet Books)

Author: Joe Meno
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1936070294
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
The debut novel from Akashic’s new imprint, Punk Planet Books. Also check out the smash hits How the Hula Girl Sings, Tender as Hellfire, and The Boy Detective Fails. “A funny, hard-rocking first-person tale of teenage angst and discovery.” —Booklist “Captures the loose, fun, recklessness of midwestern punk.” —MTV.com Hairstyles of the Damned is an honest, true-life depiction of growing up punk on Chicago’s south side: a study in the demons of racial intolerance, Catholic school conformism, and class repression. It is the story of the riotous exploits of Brian, a high school burnout, and his best friend, Gretchen, a punk rock girl fond of brawling. Based on the actual events surrounding a Chicago high school’s segregated prom, this work of fiction unflinchingly pursues the truth in discovering what it means to be your own person.

Demons in the Spring

Author: Joe Meno
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1936070871
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
From the author of Between Everything and Nothing, “an inspired collection of twenty stories, brilliant in its command of tone and narrative perspective” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Demons in the Spring is a collection of twenty short stories by Joe Meno, author of the smash hits The Boy Detective Fails and Hairstyles of the Damned, with illustrations by twenty artists from the fine art, graphic art, and comic book worlds—Todd Baxter, Kelsey Brookes, Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, Nick Butcher, Steph Davidson, Evan Hecox, Kim Hiorthoy, Paul Hornschemeier, Cody Hudson, Caroline Hwang, kozyndan, Geoff McFetridge, Anders Nilsen, Laura Owens, Archer Prewitt, Jon Resh, Jay Ryan, Souther Salazar, Rachell Sumpter, and Chris Uphues. In these stories, oddly modern moments occur in the most familiar of public places—from offices to airports to schools to zoos to emergency rooms. A young girl refuses to go anywhere unless she’s dressed as a ghost. A bank robbery in Stockholm goes terribly wrong. A teacher becomes enamored with the students in his school’s Model United Nations club. A couple is affected by a strange malady. A miniature city begins to develop in a young woman’s chest. These inventive stories are hilarious, heartbreaking, and unusual. A portion of the author’s proceeds from the book will go directly to benefit 826 CHICAGO, a nonprofit tutoring center, part of the national organization of tutoring centers with branches in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle. Finalist for the 2008 Story Prize Time Out Chicago Best Books of 2008 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2008 “This short story collection succeeds word to word, sentence to sentence, and cover to cover.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Great Perhaps: A Novel

Author: Joe Meno
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393071375
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
“This ambitious, adventurous writer . . . recalls Anton Chekhov with his amused appreciation of human foibles.”—Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune The sky is falling for the Caspers, a family of cowards. When the parents decide to separate, this family is forced to appreciate the cloudiness of this modern age.

Office Girl

Author: Joe Meno
Publisher: Saqi
ISBN: 1846591716
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
No one dies in Office Girl. Nobody talks about the international political situation. There is no mention of any economic collapse. Nothing takes place during a World War. Instead, this novel is about young people doing interesting things in the final moments of the last century. Odile is a twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal and a hopeless dreamer. Jack is a twenty-five-year-old shirker who's most happy capturing the endless noises of the city on his out-of-date tape recorder. Together they decide to start their own art movement in defiance of a contemporary culture made dull by both the tedious and the obvious. Set in February 1999 — just before the end of one world and the beginning of another — Office Girl is the story of two people caught between the uncertainty of their futures and the all-too-brief moments of modern life. 'A love story on bicycles' Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief 'Wonderful storytelling panache' The Wall Street Journal 'Fresh and funny' The New York Times 'A sweetheart of a novel' Kirkus Review 'Meno has constructed a snowflake-delicate inquiry into alienation and longing' Booklist

How the Hula Girl Sings

Author: Joe Meno
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617752312
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
A haunted ex-con returns to his hometown: “Fans of hard-boiled pulp fiction will particularly enjoy this novel” (Booklist). Luce Lemay is out on parole three years after an awful tragedy sent him to prison. In his small Illinois town, he does his best to find hope: in a new job at the local Gas-N-Go; in his companion and fellow ex-con, Junior Breen, who spells out puzzling messages to the unquiet ghosts of his past; and finally, in the arms of the lovely but reckless Charlene. But sorrow and violence lie in his path, in this suspenseful exploration of a country bright with the far-off stars of forgiveness and dark with the still-looming shadow of the death penalty. “A wonderful accomplishment . . . The power is in the writing. Mr. Meno is a superb craftsman.” —Hubert Selby Jr., bestselling author of Last Exit to Brooklyn “The author moves the story along at a surprisingly fast and easy pace.” —Kirkus Reviews “Moving . . . Meno has a poet’s feel for small-town details, life in the joint and the trials an ex-con faces, and he’s a natural storyteller with a talent for characterization.” —Publishers Weekly

Badass Braids

Author: Shannon Burns
Publisher:
ISBN: 163106438X
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Book Description
Recreate the braids, buns, and twists of your favorite historical, sci-fi, and fantasy heroes and heroines with Badass Braids. Step-by-step, illustrated instructions will show you how to make the hairstyles from Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Legend of Zelda, Vikings, The Lord of the Rings, and more. When she’s not studying for her PhD in social neuroscience, Silvousplaits (a.k.a. Shannon Burns) is creating and posting weekly instructional videos on her YouTube channel of DIY hair art that mimics the hairstyles of valiant men and women in the best historical, sci-fi, and fantasy shows and movies. In Badass Braids, Shannon shows you how to transform your hair, step by step. The book covers braids and styles from a full spectrum of fantasy worlds (and galaxies), from ancient adversaries and viking warriors to romantic renegades and sci-fi heroines. With an introduction to the styling techniques for different kinds of basic braids, interviews with behind-the-scenes stylists and actors, and original styles inspired by fan-favorites, you will learn to recreate the hairstyles of Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay), Anne Boleyn (The Tudors), the Norse king Ragnar Lothbrok (Vikings), Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones), and many more. Badass Braids is the perfect gift for geeky men and women of all ages!

The Boy Detective Fails

Author: Joe Meno
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1936070499
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
In this “charming” and melancholic novel, a former child sleuth “investigates the hard-to-crack case of Lost Innocence” (Entertainment Weekly). A Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist Book of the Year In the twilight of a mysterious childhood full of wonder, Billy Argo, boy detective, is brokenhearted to find that his younger sister and crime-solving partner, Caroline, has committed suicide. Ten years later, Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at St. Vitus’ Hospital for the Mentally Ill to discover the world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes. Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy befriends two lonely, extraordinary children—one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, he experiences the unendurable boredom of a telemarketing job; encounters a beautiful, desperate pickpocket; and confronts the nearly impossible solution to his sister’s case. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown. “Haunted by the mystery of his sister’s death and feeling that a lapse in his sleuthing may be to blame, Billy is determined to find out the reason for her suicide and to punish those responsible . . . The story of Billy’s search for truth, love and redemption is surprising and absorbing. Swaddled in melancholy and gentle humor, it builds in power as the clues pile up.” —Publishers Weekly “The author gives Billy a gallery of rogues to combat and even sends him to investigate the Convocation of Evil at a local hotel (‘Featured Panel: To Wear a Mask?’). Meno sets himself a complicated task, marooning his straight-arrow, pulp-fiction protagonist in a world uglier than the Bobbsey Twins ever faced but refusing to go for satire. Instead, the author takes his compulsive investigator at face value.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Comedic, imaginative, empathic . . . investigates the precincts of grief [and] our longing to combat chaos with reason.” —Booklist

Tender As Hellfire

Author: Joe Meno
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617750085
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
From the award-winning author of The Boy Detective Fails: A novel of two brothers growing up on the other side of the tracks. “A trailer park in the Plains town of Tenderloin is the setting of this crusty coming-of-age debut, which features some of the liveliest characters just this side of believable that one is apt to meet in a contemporary novel. The first-person narrator is a moral but susceptible eleven-year-old called Dough, who lusts after his fifth-grade teacher and idolizes his trouble-making older brother, Pill-Bug. The boys, who are new to the town and shamed by the stigma of living in a trailer, were named by a father who wanted them to remain tough and who ended up dying while smuggling cigarettes along a Texas highway. Their mother and her new boyfriend, French, are low-life swingers, allowing the siblings to spend nights with Val, who entertains a slew of men but whom Dough worships as a virginal Madonna. Dough’s own adoring friend is Lottie, a slightly deranged girl who offers Dough a gift of one of her taxidermist father’s specimens; meanwhile, Pill-Bug earns a special affection from Lunna, a high school floozy. Each character is vividly described . . . Meno’s passionate new voice makes him a writer to watch.” —Publishers Weekly

You Must Be This Happy to Enter

Author: Elizabeth Crane
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617750565
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Book Description
“Crane seems to be carving out a younger, brassier, less dystopic territory to complement the fiction of George Saunders and David Foster Wallace.” —The Quarterly Conversation In her third short story collection, following When the Messenger is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory, Elizabeth Crane presents a quirky cast of characters all searching for, showing off, or seriously questioning what makes them happy. There’s a woman who speaks in all exclamation points, one enamored by her boyfriend’s closet, a zombie reality TV star, a mother whose baby turns into Ethan Hawke, and a woman whose moods are printed on her forehead. Whether breathlessly enthusiastic, serenely calm, or really concentrating right now on their issues, Elizabeth Crane’s characters shine a spotlight on our spirituality-starved, self-improvement-seeking, celebrity-obsessed culture. “In her third collection of inventive short stories, Crane continues to ingeniously satirize our muddled quest for meaning in all the wrong places.” —Booklist “A well-crafted collection of short stories, one whose clarity of tone and theme unites each and every piece into a cohesive whole. At a time when it seems almost antediluvian to be optimistic, Crane’s sincerity stands as a bewitching reminder that there is more to literature than tragedy.” —Bookslut “Zombies, time travelers, reality TV contestants and even a few normalish folks populate the pages of Elizabeth Crane’s quirky, charming new collection.” —PopMatters

Train Wreck Girl

Author: Sean Carswell
Publisher: Manic D Press
ISBN: 1933149655
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Book Description
“Sean Carswell is a wonderful storyteller. . . . Reading his stuff makes you laugh and makes you think.”—Howard Zinn “[Carswell’s writing is] the antidote to what is so boring or safe or wrong with modern book publishing.”—Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned Train Wreck Girl is the funny and tragic story of one man’s quest to figure out what to do with his life now that it’s too late for him to die young. After finding his girlfriend dead on the railroad tracks right after breaking up with her, Danny McGregor—Flagstaff bartender and surfer without an ocean—rides the next bus out of Arizona, fleeing to his Cocoa Beach, Florida, hometown, where a maelstrom of past ghosts await. Back in Florida, his treacherous friend, Bart, finds Danny a job picking up corpses. Sophie, a former crazy girlfriend who stabbed Danny, wants to rekindle their relationship. Taylor, a twelve-year-old neighborhood girl, only wants Danny to teach her to surf. And then there’s Helen, with a face that launched a dozen Greyhounds. Through the chaos, Danny discovers his strengths amid all his weaknesses and is able to move forward while making peace with his past. Sean Carswell is a former carpenter, housepainter, dishwasher, and warehouse clerk. His fiction has appeared in dozens of literary journals. He has been a staff writer for Flipside, Clamor, and Ink 19, and is a regular contributor to Razorcake. A co-founder of Gorsky Press, he is currently a professor at the University of California.