Anthologies

Exploring a landscape of internalized horror, stories by John Edgar Wideman, Angela Carter, Ruth Rendell, Peter Straub, Anne Rice, Martin Amis, and others present a world of madness, terror, death, evil, and perversion

This special limited edition of A Convergence of Birds follows the successful publication of the trade edition of this wonderful anthology of new fiction and poetry inspired by the art of Joseph Cornell. This book features writing from 22 of the best American writers working today; authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Pinsky, Rick Moody, Howard Norman and Barry Lopez, all invited to participate by editor and contributor Jonathan Safran Foer. The limited edition of only 225 copies is linen-bound and slipcased, and signed by each author on individual sheets of vellum that are bound into the book at the beginning of their contributions. A wonderful and highly collectable edition that will be treasured by lovers of contemporary writing and fine books. In order to insure safe delivery for this item we can only ship Federal Express 3rd Day. An additional charge of $25.00 will be added to your purchase.

For perhaps two decades, a small group of writers rooted in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror have been simultaneously exploring and erasing the boundaries of those genres by creating fiction of remarkable depth and power. Their connections to the genres they have been radically redefining have, for many of these writers, limited the appreciation of their accomplishments to a specialized readership. For example, though John Crowley and Jonathan Carroll have massive underground reputations, and Peter Straub has written two books with Stephen King and other bestselling novels such as Ghost Story, Koko, and The Throat , many if not most readers of Conjunctions will be unfamiliar with their work. In this haunting and beautiful collection of tales, Crowley, Carroll and Straub join Elizabeth Hand, China Mieville, M. John Harrison, Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link to demonstrate precisely how science fiction, fantasy and horror have been unobtrusively colonizing serious literature during the past 20 years. As an added bonus, science fiction and fantasy experts Gary K. Wolfe and John Clute offer a critical perspective and explain everything in sight. With original cover art by master cartoonist Gahan Wilson.

What is death and how does it touch upon life? Twenty writers look for answers. Birth is not inevitable. Life certainly isn't. The sole inevitability of existence, the only sure consequence of being alive, is death. In these eloquent and surprising essays, twenty writers face this fact, among them Geoff Dyer, who describes the ghost bikes memorializing those who die in biking accidents; Jonathan Safran Foer, proposing a new way of punctuating dialogue in the face of a family history of heart attacks and decimation by the Holocaust; Mark Doty, whose reflections on the art-porn movie Bijou lead to a meditation on the intersection of sex and death epitomized by the AIDS epidemic; and Joyce Carol Oates, who writes about the loss of her husband and faces her own mortality. Other contributors include Annie Dillard, Diane Ackerman, Peter Straub, and Brenda Hillman.

Essays, fiction, and poetry reflecting on truth and illusion in a world filled with deceptions both treacherous and benign. Children deceive, as do grownups, and many are the moments when all of us even deceive ourselves. People of every age and stripe, whether rarely or often, dissimulate, bluff, and beguile. The writer who fabricates and populates worlds is a deceiver, as is the artist whose triumph is to trick the eye, to alter perception. The honest magician's livelihood is based on deception; so is the dishonest thief's. And consider the great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva who wrote, "A deception that elevates us is dearer than a legion of low truths," thus complicating the subject entirely. This special issue of Conjunctions gathers a wide spectrum of essays, fiction, and poetry on the classic subject of deception, exploring in original and thought-provoking ways a world in which truth is a most fragile, elaborate, and mercurial thing. Contributors include Edie Meidav, Terese Svoboda, Yannick Murphy, Paul Hoover, Bim Ramke, Eleni Sikelianos, Magdalena Zyzak, and many others.

New writings on the topic of friendship from Stephen O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Clark, Elizabeth Gaffney, Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke, and more. Aristotle proposed that a friend is, in essence, “another self,” and it is indisputable that our relationships with our friends are nearly as complex as the ones we have with ourselves: One minute we’re in perfect accord, another we’re uncertain. Friendships are as mercurial as they are essential. We form friendships that are fraught, friendships that fade, and friendships that are as important to us as our very lives. Conjunctions: 66, Affinity investigates the phenomenon of friendship in its many forms through innovative and provocative fiction, poetry, and essays by writers of every ilk. This collection includes contributions by Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke, Robert Coover, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Elizabeth Gaffney, Andrew Ervin, Stephen O’Connor, Gilles Tiberghien, Michelle Herman, Robert Clark, Jonathan Carroll, Sallie Tisdale, Robert Duncan, Jedediah Berry and Emily Houk, Diane Josefowicz, Brandon Hobson, Charles B. Strozier, Spencer Matheson, Paul Lisicky, John Ashbery, J. W. McCormack, Isabella Hammad, Tim Horvath, Roberta Allen, M. J. Rey, Elizabeth Robinson, Matthew Cheney, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Ah, the Christmas season. The scent of roasting chestnuts fills the air, turkeys cook in every oven, and mistletoe hangs quietly above the doors. But beneath this cheerful Yuletide veneer, a seedier reality lurks, as a criminal element continues to ply its dastardly trade in secret, disguised by the joyous songs of carolers young and old... At least, that's the case in the pages of this volume, in which some of crime fiction's biggest names offer a playful take on the holiday's most beloved melodies, including such soon-to-be classics as "Arrested Merry Gentleman," "How Come You're Not Faithful," and "I Saw Mommy Killing Santa Claus." Contributors include: Donna Andrews, Rhys Bowen, Ken Bruen, Reed Farrel Coleman, Max Allan Collins, Thomas H. Cook, Jeffery Deaver, Harlan Ellison, Loren D. Estleman, Jane Haddam, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Andrew Klavan, Peter Lovesey, John Lutz, Katherine Hall Page, Ridley Pearson, Thomas Perry, Nancy Pickard, S.J. Rozan, Charles Todd, Joseph Wambaugh, and Donald E. Westlake, among many others.

The human body is admired, displayed, and dissected in this eclectic collection of stories, poems, and essays from Rick Moody, Edward Carey, and more. Being Bodies is an exploration of the complex circumstances of our flesh-and-blood existence. Our bodies dance; they’re inked; they contain prosthetics and implants. Our bodies are gendered, though not always correlative with how we perceive ourselves. Some use bodies for violence; some sacrifice their bodies for others. Our bodies are mortal, their days numbered. We do with them what we can and what we will. Through innovative poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction, thirty writers consider bodies as subjects; bodies as objects; bodies as loci of politics, illness, nature, artifice, performance, power, abuse, reward, disgust, and desire. Conjunctions:69, Being Bodies includes contributions from Rick Moody, Edward Carey, Carole Maso, Bin Ramke, Dina Nayeri, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Sallie Tisdale, Stephen O’Connor, Sejal Shah, Maud Casey, Samantha Stiers, Forrest Gander, Kristin Posehn, Nomi Eve, Rosamond Purcell, Alan Rossi, Aurelie Sheehan, Peter Orner, Gregory Norman Bossert, Mary Caponegro and Fern Seiden, Anne Waldman, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Jena Osman, Michael M. Weinstein, Emily Geminder, Elizabeth Gaffney, Jessica Reed, Michael Ives, and Kyoko Mori.