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Why I Hate Saturn.
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I grew up in the weird world of a nerdy immigrant single mother, surrounded by comics and stories of every kind. I was attracted to writing (and drawing) from a really young age. Like a lot of 80s kids I was a latchkey, so there wasn’t really anyone around to tell me what was age-appropriate. I just grabbed books at random. Most of all what appealed to me were unique voices, when the books surprised me I didn’t care what they were about. When I finally started writing comics I got obsessed with trying not to repeat myself, keeping myself surprised. These books really helped me see the freedom I had in making comics.
For my money, Gipi is the best living comic book storyteller in the world right now and while it’s incredibly hard to pick a single book, I went with Garage Band, which elevates the drama of a very simple situation, teenagers escaping the turmoil of their lives through music who have to figure out what to do when their only amp dies. It reminds me of how every teenaged moment felt like an opera of life or death. In his art, in his stories, in his characters, Gipi gives simple things an impossible depth.
When Giuliano's father loans him the family garage, he and three of his friends form a band. Playing their battered secondhand instruments, the four teenagers find something they love to do, and they find in their friendship and music a refuge from difficult and turbulent home lives. But when their only amp blows a fuse, a desperate search for some new equipment lands them in more trouble than they ever saw coming. Written and painted in stunning watercolors by the renowned Italian artist Gipi, "Garage Band" is an introspective meditation on teenage life.
I grew up in the weird world of a nerdy immigrant single mother, surrounded by comics and stories of every kind. I was attracted to writing (and drawing) from a really young age. Like a lot of 80s kids I was a latchkey, so there wasn’t really anyone around to tell me what was age-appropriate. I just grabbed books at random. Most of all what appealed to me were unique voices, when the books surprised me I didn’t care what they were about. When I finally started writing comics I got obsessed with trying not to repeat myself, keeping myself surprised. These books really helped me see the freedom I had in making comics.
Tekkonkinkreet has more raw energy than any comic I’ve ever read, like in my own book it’s the story of 2 brothers who think they’re invincible and make a lot of mistakes in the heat of the moment. The book is relentless and breaks every possible rule and is just an absolute marvel of comic storytelling.
Orphaned on the mean streets of Treasure Town, lost boys Black and White must mug, steal and fight to survive. Around them moves a world of corruption and loneliness, small-time crooks and neurotic police officers, and a band of sadistic yakuza who have plans for their once-fair city. Can they rise above their environment? Surreal manga influenced by European comics.
TEKKONKINKREET is a play on Japanese words meaning "a concrete structure with an iron frame," and it suggests the opposing images of concrete cities against the strength of imagination.
I grew up in the weird world of a nerdy immigrant single mother, surrounded by comics and stories of every kind. I was attracted to writing (and drawing) from a really young age. Like a lot of 80s kids I was a latchkey, so there wasn’t really anyone around to tell me what was age-appropriate. I just grabbed books at random. Most of all what appealed to me were unique voices, when the books surprised me I didn’t care what they were about. When I finally started writing comics I got obsessed with trying not to repeat myself, keeping myself surprised. These books really helped me see the freedom I had in making comics.
This book spoke early to me as a kid on form and presentation, it played with visual scale and pace on a level you still very rarely see. Sienkiewicz tells a sort of elaborate impressionist visual poem through paint and graphic design. And Miller layers text almost like a melody track, playing with texture and emotion, speeding things up and then slowing them all the way down, playing with time in a way that changed the whole game for me.
Meet Elektra Natchios. This intriguing young woman has played equally intriguing roles throughout her life: Gymnast. Martial artist. Ninja. Assassin! Trained in the deadliest of arts and renowned as the world's fi nest killer, Elektra remains an enigma even to herself. Now, relive her fi rst solo adventure, an epic crafted by two of comics' greatest innovators - Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz! An unconscious woman washes ashore off the coast of a small Central American country. Two policemen are strangled. A diplomat is assassinated. A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is brutally dismembered. Unrelated events? Hardly. Elektra has returned - and she's…
I grew up in the weird world of a nerdy immigrant single mother, surrounded by comics and stories of every kind. I was attracted to writing (and drawing) from a really young age. Like a lot of 80s kids I was a latchkey, so there wasn’t really anyone around to tell me what was age-appropriate. I just grabbed books at random. Most of all what appealed to me were unique voices, when the books surprised me I didn’t care what they were about. When I finally started writing comics I got obsessed with trying not to repeat myself, keeping myself surprised. These books really helped me see the freedom I had in making comics.
The Hernandez Brothers burned down almost anything I thought about comics. As a young Latin kid I hadn’t seen stories that referenced Latin characters in anything but a really heavy-handed way, the idea that we were allowed to be these flawed weird characters seemed impossible to me. I connected pretty heavily with Jaime’s work especially and when I’m stuck on almost anything I revisit these pages as a sort of hard reset on whatever I think my process is.
This oversized art book collects the comics series’ iconic covers sans title or logo.
Five women stand in a police lineup; four of them are garishly dressed, impressively endowed superwomen ― perfectly normal, because this is, after all, the cover of a comic book. A closer look, however, reveals a fifth woman who seems thoroughly out of place ― mousy, in bathrobe and curlers, smoking a cigarette, she appears to have been suddenly yanked from her breakfast table. Surely, this diminutive, dowdy woman is here by mistake ― or is she? From the very first cover of the very first…
I grew up reading short stories in the annual Reader’s Digest books my parents collected, so I’ve always liked the short form. Perhaps that is why I pursued it in college, wanting to know what made them work. So I took a lot of classes in college to do just that, to dissect stories to see what made them resonate with readers. And although I’ve been trying to push myself to write longer fiction, I’ll never be able to fully abandon the short fiction. I love a story you can read in a day and think about all night.
SGJ has such a unique voice, it’s hard to deny this collection its props. Here you have a wide range of themes and unique characterization, and I think there’s a lot to be learned from a collection such as this. Dialogue, character building, tension; this is like a guide to writing good fiction.
Winner, Best Collection of the Year, This Is Horror
Nominated, Best Collection of the Year, Bram Stoker Awards
Nominated, Best Collection of the Year, Shirley Jackson Awards
The 15 stories in After the People Lights Have Gone Off, by Stephen Graham Jones, explore the horrors and fears of the supernatural and the everyday. Included are two original stories, several rarities and out-of-print narratives, as well as a few "best of the year" inclusions.
In "Thirteen", horrors lurk behind the flickering images on the big screen. "Welcome to the Reptile House" reveals the secrets that hide in our flesh. In "The…
I love scary books for kids, and scary mysteries in particular. I’m a strong advocate for literacy and reaching reluctant readers, and the author of the multi-award-nominated middle-grade mystery Daybreak on Raven Island and Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, among others. The recent resurgence of horror has brought a fresh new bunch of scary stories for kids. And I love reading these books, even though I’m well out of the target age range. These new scary books for kids blend genres, tackle difficult issues, and show kids that even in the darkest, smallest hour of the night, you can solve the problem at hand and come out on the other side—better, stronger, smarter.
I love a good short story, especially when it’s written for kids.
In More Tales to Keep You Up at Night, main character Gilbert finds audio tapes after his brother is injured in a mysterious accident, and starts to listen to them. Gilbert soon figures out that the stories are connected to his family, and that he’ll have to listen to all of them to save his brother…
Perfect for readers of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. And as you probably can tell from the title, there is a first book by the same author. Dan Poblocki is one of those authors who just know how to tell a scary story for the middle-grade audience.
From the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestselling series The Magic Misfits comes a spectacularly creepy follow-up to Tales to Keep You Up at Night that will keep you up way past bedtime.
Perfect for fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark!
Gilbert is visiting his injured brother, Ant, in the hospital, when he sees a shadowed figure leave behind a satchel filled with old cassette tapes. Despite a strange, garbled voicemail telling him "Don't listen to the tapes," Gilbert can't resist playing them and listening to the chilling stories they reveal: tales of cursed seashells,…
I love noir fiction and the hard-boiled detective novels that often best exemplify the genre. Both Dashiel Hammet’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chander’s Marlowe are two men who will sacrifice everything for the truth, no matter the cost. There is a stark beauty in that. Fantasy, the genre of myth, carries the deepest, most poignant truths. These are the hard truths that can break a hero’s heart, as in Gilgamesh, or give you the bittersweet ending of The Lord of the Rings. Blending them produces some of my favorite stories, stories I love to read as the fog rolls in, listening to the music of heartbreaking jazz.
In this noir story with a philosophical bent, Miles has been hired to track the reincarnation of a demonic guardian by a Tibetan monk on the eve of a visit of the Dali Lama to New York, and Miles finds himself over his head as an apparent gang war erupts in Chinatown, killings that some on the force think he had a role in. He must avoid capture by the cops so that he can find the killer and the demon, if they are not the same, and avoid becoming the demon's next victim.
I loved the weaving of Tibetan myth into a story of gang warfare and revenge.
Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast.
Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals. The year is 1991, and a series of grisly murders has rocked New York City in the run up to a visit from the Dalai Lama.
I’m a word guy. I’ve been a radio announcer and an academic librarian. Currently I translate Norwegian film and TV production scripts into English. I’ve had an obsession with Vikings all my life and have made researching the subject my lifelong hobby. I’m also a Christian (not as paradoxical as you might think). I like authors who a) know how to use words, and b) explore the larger, more challenging moral questions with honesty and decency. Most of all, I like stories that work magic with words to make my spirit soar. I’ve written several stand-alone “urban” fantasies and am carrying on my ongoing historical fantasy series set in Norway around the first millennium.
A wonderful book in two senses – it’s wonderfully written, and it evokes wonder. This is an idiosyncratic urban fantasy set in an imaginary metropolis called New York City (cut off from the world by an impenetrable cloud wall that lifts only occasionally, to let the trains through). In this city, amazing characters (amazingly good and amazingly evil) clash as they strive for the things that matter to them most. And the prose is as bright and vivid as a Van Gogh painting. Winter’s Tale contains one of my favorite lines in all literature, where one character is described as “breathtakingly short.”
One night in New York, a city under siege by snow, Peter Lake attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks it is empty, the daughter of the house is home . . .
Thus begins the affair between this Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl dying of consumption. It is a love so powerful that Peter will be driven to stop time and bring back the dead; A New York Winter's Tale is the story of that extraordinary journey.
I’ve been reading romance novels since I was way too young to be reading romances and I love the romance genre. I’m a fan of many tropes, but second-chance romance is one of my favorites and it is the main trope in my debut novel, Just a Fling. When I read romance, I want to read stories that make my heart break and then stitch it back together. Second-chance romances do that because they capture the essence of hope and forgiveness. They give readers the opportunity to experience the beauty and power of forgiveness and to believe in the transformative power of love.
Dark Skye is both an enemies-to-lovers and a second-chance epic paranormal romance.
It's part of the Immortals After Dark series (the best PNR series out there) and features Thronos, a Vrekener prince seeking revenge against the sorceress Lanthe. But things get complicated when he realizes she might not be the enemy he thought she was.
With action-packed scenes, steamy romance, and tons of supernatural creatures, Dark Skye is a must-read for anyone who loves paranormal romance.
In this highly anticipated fifteenth novel in the Immortals After Dark series, #1 New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole spins a sultry tale of a mighty warrior scarred inside and out and the beguiling sorceress with the power to heal him—or vanquish him forever.
Eternal Obsession As a boy, Thronos, prince of Skye Hall, loved Lanthe, a mischievous Sorceri girl who made him question everything about his Vrekener clan. But when the two got caught in the middle of their families’ war, tragedy struck, leaving Thronos and Lanthe bitter enemies. Though centuries have passed, nothing can cool his seething…
Like my series protagonist, FBI Agent Susan Parker, I am neurodiverse and have dealt with traumatic family events. I have Asperger’s, dyslexia, ADD, and have battled depression and suicidal impulses in earlier years. As a child, I experienced many violent, traumatic events, including the traumatic death of my mother, abduction, and abuse. However, my personal story has a happy ending: I overcame all challenges to become a fully functional individual with a rich, fulfilling family life and a successful career. Not surprisingly, I became a crime thriller superfan. I gravitate toward books that don’t shy away from depicting darkness but find a way for the MC to return to the sunlight.
My troubled childhood left deep, lasting scars on my psyche. I’m a gentle, loving soul with a caring nature. I love animals and children, and they seem to love me just as much. I’m happiest when spending time with children, and raising my own brought me the greatest happiness. Yet as any parent knows, we’re not just parenting, we’re also dealing with our own issues and challenges.
Stephen King takes that reality and turns it into one of the most terrifying stories about a family isolated in a remote snowbound mountain hotel. On the surface, The Shining is a horror fable, but it’s driven by an engine of realistic human behavior that is terrifying because it shows what any one of us might become given the right circumstances and pressures.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Before Doctor Sleep, there was The Shining, a classic of modern American horror from the undisputed master, Stephen King.
Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around…
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