Nothing has driven home a certain truth about my generation, which is approaching the apex of its childbearing years, quite like this. --New Yorker
A parenting zeitgeist --Washington Post
A hilarious take on that age-old problem: getting the beloved child to go to sleep. --National Public Radio
A new Bible for weary parents --New York Times
Resonates powerfully with almost everyone --Boston Globe
Go the Fuck to Sleep is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don't always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach's verses perfectly capture the familiar--and unspoken--tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. In the process, they open up a conversation about parenting, granting us permission to admit our frustrations, and laugh at their absurdity.
With illustrations by Ricardo Cortés, Go the Fuck to Sleep is beautiful, subversive, and pants-wittingly funny--a book for parents new, old, and expectant. You probably should not read it to your children.
--One of Esquire magazine's 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time
Solomon debuts with a raw distillation of slavery, feudalism, prison, and religion that kicks like rotgut moonshine . . . Stunning. --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world.
Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.
ALICE COLTRANE (1937-2007) was a composer, master of various musical instruments, improviser, spiritual leader, and wife of John Coltrane. Throughout her adult life, she worked within and combined a broad range of musical genres, including gospel, R&B, bebop, free jazz, Indian devotional song, and Western art music. She recorded more than twenty full-length albums for Impulse and Warner Bros. Her music speaks to her experiences as a child playing for church congregations in Detroit; the transcendent and mind-bending avant-garde improvisations she performed with John Coltrane; and her religious pilgrimages to India.
When Monument Eternal was originally published in 1977, Alice Coltrane was living in Southern California and had recently become a swami, building and nurturing an alternative spiritual community. In these pages, she says that the book is based upon the soul's realizations in Absolute Consciousness and its spiritual relationships with the Supreme One. Monument Eternal offers deep insight into Coltrane's tremendous musical output, and shines a light on her transformation from Alice McLeod, Detroit church organist and bebopper, to sage thought leader Swami Turiyasangitananda. It also reflects the extraordinary fluidity of American religious customs in the mid and late twentieth century.
Akashic's long-awaited reissue of Monument Eternal includes a new foreword by Ashley Kahn.
Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.
Brand-new stories by: Alan Brennert, Kiana Davenport, Tom Gammarino, Stephanie Han, Scott Kikkawa, B.A. Kobayashi, Chris McKinney, Morgan Miryung McKinney, Christy Passion, Mindy Eun Soo Pennybacker, Michelle Cruz Skinner, Lono Waiwai'ole, and Don Wallace.
From the introduction by Chris McKinney:
When one thinks of Honolulu, I'm sure 'noir' is not the first word to pop into one's mind. Instead, one thinks surfing and hula--white sandy beaches and crystal-blue waters . . . Yet we do have our problems. To this day, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are disproportionately incarcerated and victims of poverty in a place where the average cost of a single-family home has skyrocketed to a million dollars. It's not uncommon for four generations of a family to live in the same house. Drugs, homelessness, child abuse, and sex trafficking are pervasive . . .
I was excited to be tasked with editing this anthology because the setting of Honolulu for the purposes of noir is and always has been full of possibility. Wherever crime, poverty, and corruption exist, noir is easy, and despite its glossy reputation, Honolulu has all these things. On top of that, I'm betting this will be one of the most diverse anthologies in Akashic Books's impressively popular and abundant collection . . . We all mostly get along in this city in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, about 2,500 miles from the closest continent. And when we don't? Well, you can read all about it here in Honolulu Noir.
A bright, nostalgic look at the exhilaration of 1967, this book--illustrated throughout with Hitchcock's surreal sketches--will appeal to not only the author's many fans but also anyone interested in the music and culture from the golden age of psychedelia. Wistfully reflective reading. --Kirkus Reviews
Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock's ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny, finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacrificing its sense of the breathtaking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it. --Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue
1967: HOW I GOT THERE AND WHY I NEVER LEFT explores how that pivotal slice of time tastes to a bright, obsessive-compulsive boy who is shipped off to a hothouse academic boarding school as he reaches the age of thirteen--just as Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited starts to bite, and the Beatles's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band explodes.
When he arrives in January 1966, Robyn Hitchcock is still a boy pining for the comforts of home and his family's loving au pair, Teresa. By December 1967, he's mutated into a 6'2? tall rabid Bob Dylan fan, whose two ambitions in life are to get really high and fly to Nashville.
In between--as the hippie revolution blossoms in the world outside--Hitchcock adjusts to the hierarchical, homoerotic world of Winchester, threading a path through teachers with arrested development, some oafish peers, and a sullen old maid--a very English freak show. On the way he befriends a cadre of bat-winged teenage prodigies and meets their local guru, the young Brian Eno.
At the end of 1967, all the ingredients are in place that will make Robyn Hitchcock a songwriter for life. But then again, does 1967 ever really end?
IN FIVE-DOG EPIPHANY, MARIANNE LEONE writes about the joy that can be summoned after a great loss, when you look into the eyes of another damaged creature and know that your happiness is a mirror and an echo and a prayer, and that the little soul reflecting all that energy is happy too, at last. This memoir is a moving and sometimes surprisingly funny exploration of grief and the mutual healing that can occur between rescue dogs and people who have experienced a soul-crushing loss. Leone and her husband, actor Chris Cooper, lost their only child suddenly in 2005. Jesse was seventeen, a straight-A student, and a brilliant poet, who was also quadriplegic and nonverbal except with the assistance of a computer.
When six-year-old Jesse miraculously blurted dog to Santa, Goody appeared on his bed on Christmas morning. Goody was followed by Lucky, Frenchy, Titi, and Sugar, all rescues adopted after Jesse's passing. After Jesse's death, Leone grew a tumor the size of her premature son at birth, her husband disappeared into dark acting roles (Breach, Married Life), and Leone fainted during the filming of a scene in The Sopranos where she is standing in front of her television son's coffin.
This is the story of a bereaved couple and a pack of rescue dogs finding their way to a new life, everyone licking their wounds, both corporal and spiritual, and the rediscovery of joy.
Featuring brand-new stories by: Naomi J. Williams, William T. Vollmann, Maureen O'Leary, Reyna Grande, Jamil Jan Kochai, Maceo Montoya, Nora Rodriguez Camagna, Shelley Blanton-Stroud, Luis Avalos, José Vadi, Janet Rodriguez, Jen Soong, and John Freeman.
In his introduction, John Freeman writes:
This book is an attempt to . . . invite you into a variety of houses and apartments and spaces all over Sacramento, to imagine lives, not yours, or perhaps like yours, as told by some of the city's most talented living writers. What freedom is here in words: to travel, to visit, to linger, to hear stories from all across the city, and to some degree across time . . .
Here is Sacramento in all of its splendor and deep, not-at-all-buried contradictions. A frontier city that quickly used its wealth to gather power. A locale that is somehow not quite sure it is still urban. Darkly compelling, canopied, gusted by river smells, Sacramento emerges from these thirteen stories like a character itself. It's the kind of place that has sprawled widely enough, and covered enough different landscapes, that it is now many cities, some of which do not interact with each other. Some of which are only remembered in names of neighborhoods which people who once lived there still use with each other: Sakura City. The West End. Broderick. What a joy and vivid dream it is to see these stories here together, between these covers--for all to visit.
In Montego Bay, Jamaica, teenager Nyjah Messado witnesses a brutal assault by some of the boys in his circle of friends. Torn between the masculine code at his private all boys' school and his own conscience, Nyjah fails to intervene, and comes of age haunted by the guilt of his inaction.
Stylistically engaging, ambitious in scope, and brimming with poetic patois, the novel takes us through a sweeping movement between the younger and more mature selves of Nyjah. We see him trying to come to terms with his own place in multiple worlds: in his family; at school, with its colonial Eurocentric ethos; and within the religion and politics of Montego Bay and the city's criminal gangs. Similar to Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life and Kate Walbert's His Favorites, My Own Dear People looks unflinchingly at proclivities toward cruelty, particularly toward women and LGBTQ+ people. Dwight Thompson elevates the tradition of the coming-of-age novel by boldly examining how sexual predation crosses both gay and straight worlds.
--Includes Incident at Bear Creek Lodge, winner of the World Fantasy Award
--Selected for the Locus Magazine 2023 Recommended Reading List
--Rumpus Room selected as finalist for a 2023 Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction
[A] master class in horror fiction and sci-fi written by one of the very best in the genre. --Joe Hill, NPR's Weekend Edition
The Wishing Pool . . . is a major treat, full of major scares. Due excels at twist endings but also brilliantly creates an atmosphere of creeping dread in which you know something terrible is coming . . . Due shows just how much territory she can cover in one short book and just how versatile terrifying tales can be.
--Washington Post
Holy hell: These fourteen stories from author and film historian Due might scare even the most dauntless horror fans to death . . . A patchwork of stories that somehow manages to be both graceful and alarming, putting fresh eyes to the unspeakable. --Kirkus Reviews, starred review
AMERICAN BOOK AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR TANANARIVE DUE's second collection of stories includes offerings of horror, science fiction, and suspense--all genres she wields masterfully. From the mysterious, magical town of Gracetown to the aftermath of a pandemic to the reaches of the far future, Due's stories all share a sense of dread and fear balanced with heart and hope.
In some of these stories, the monster is racism itself; others address the monster within, each set against the supernatural or surreal. All are written with Due's trademark attention to detail and deeply drawn characters. The story Incident at Bear Creek Lodge is a World Fantasy Award finalist, and this paperback reissue includes two new stories.
AFTER THE ARREST OF CHANCELLOR KING and the murder of his eldest son and heir, Ghost, the King family and the streets of New York City are thrown into chaos. Chancellor's older brother, Chapman, takes the opportunity to usurp the crown, breaking the line of succession and stepping over his nephew Shadow. Chapman's first act as the new king is to banish what remains of his broken family, branding them enemies of the crown. Stripped of all wealth and power, Maureen King places a seemingly impossible task on the shoulders of Shadow--to reclaim what was stolen from their family and take back the crown.
The King clan--as relentless as the heirs on the hit TV sensation Succession--are among K'wan's most memorable characters to date.
IN THE HEART OF A LANGUID JULY, ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD JOHN REDDY HEART drives a traffic-stopping, salmon-colored Cadillac into the quiet upstate town of Willowsville, New York. His mother, Dahlia Heart, a blackjack dealer, has brought her family east from Las Vegas to claim the rambling mansion left to her by a wealthy suitor.
But it is John Reddy--already growing into a heartbreaking hybrid of James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Elvis Presley--who will claim the town itself. It is John Reddy who will arouse the desire of Willowsville's teenage girls and the worship of its boys, the fear and envy of its men, and the yearning of its women. And it is John Reddy who will capture the town's soul forever on the night a prominent citizen is shot dead in Dahlia Heart's bedroom--and a statewide manhunt sweeps Willowsville's rebel outlaw into the realm of living myth.
Over the course of thirty years, Broke Heart Blues charts the rise and fall--and the ultimate call to reckoning-- of John Reddy Heart, through the myriad voices of those who find him their whipping boy, savior, dream lover, and confessor. At once a scathing indictment of the cultlike nature of fame and celebrity in America and a deeply moving mediation on human need and longing, the novel explores loneliness, and the profound price we pay for our desires and dreams.
IN THE EARLY 1970s, Poe is living a nomadic life, hopping trains, sleeping rough, and juggling to feed himself. He eventually settles in Philadelphia and masters his street act before ever-growing crowds. When one of his fellow buskers presents him with an opportunity--a bank heist--he should have refused, an innocent bystander is killed, and he splits town a felon.
Unable to resist the lure of performing, he resurfaces halfway across the country as a regular act in a Renaissance Fair(e). Unfortunately, his notoriety outs him to the criminal organization who believes he took something of importance from them during the bank heist. Using all of the wit and misdirection that has made him the best street performer anyone has ever seen, Poe must outsmart and outmaneuver them in order to return to the peaceful life of juggling.
Drawing from his own youthful experience as a nomadic juggler--before earning international acclaim as one half of the magic duo Penn & Teller--Jillette's madcap thriller is an authentic and often hilarious glimpse into the pleasures and perils of performing on the street.
You Have to F**king Eat makes parents of picky eaters smile. --TODAY Parents
Adam Mansbach . . . will delight exhausted and exasperated parents everywhere for a second time with You Have to F**king Eat--another children's book that is most definitely not for children. --Entertainment Weekly
Parents, Adam Mansbach gets you. He understood that sometimes your kids just won't go the f**k to sleep. And, in his new foulmouthed bedtime book for parents out Wednesday, he understands that sometimes they just won't f**king eat. And he knows, well, it's really f**king annoying. So how about some f**king comic relief? --GQ
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Go the Fuck to Sleep comes a long-awaited sequel about the other great parental frustration: getting your little angel to eat something that even vaguely resembles a normal meal. Profane, loving, and deeply cathartic, You Have to Fucking Eat breaks the code of child-rearing silence, giving moms and dads new, old, grand-, and expectant, a much-needed chance to laugh about a universal problem.
A perfect gift book like the smash hit Go the Fuck to Sleep (over 3 million copies sold worldwide!), You Have to Fucking Eat perfectly captures Mansbach's trademark humor, which is simultaneously affectionate and radically honest. You probably shouldn't read it to your kids.
DEPECHE MODE HAS BEEN DELIGHTING FANS all over the world for decades. From the first gigs in smoke-filled pubs in front of a dozen spectators to sold-out world tours in front of millions of fans--the enormous success of the band is due in large part to their incomparable live performances.
Following the critically-acclaimed Depeche Mode: Monument, Dennis Burmeister and Sascha Lange present another visually stunning book focused on the band's live shows which continue to enthrall millions of people across the globe. Depeche Mode: Live traces the band's growth from 1980 to 2023 and includes a plethora of previously unpublished photos, unseen material, and exclusive interviews.
If you're a fan of both Larry David and profane children's book parodies, don't even try to curb your f*cking enthusiasm. --Kirkus Reviews
Adam Mansbach famously gave voice to two of parenting's primal struggles in Go the Fuck to Sleep and You Have to Fucking Eat--the often-imitated, never-duplicated pair of New York Times best sellers that ushered in a new era of radical honesty in humor books for parents. But what could possibly be left?
Parents--new, old, expectant, and grand--of multiple children already knew the answer. Adam discovered it for himself by having two more kids, less than two years apart.
Fuck, Now There Are Two of You is a loving monologue about the new addition to the family, addressed to a big sibling and shot through with Adam's trademark profane truth-telling. Gorgeously illustrated and chock-full of unspoken sentiments channeled directly from the brains of parents worldwide, Fuck, Now There Are Two of You articulates all the fears and frustrations attendant to the simple, math-defying fact that two is a million more kids than one.
As you probably know by now, you shouldn't read it to a child.
AFTER THE ARREST OF CHANCELLOR KING and the murder of his eldest son and heir, Ghost, the King family and the streets of New York City are thrown into chaos. Chancellor's older brother, Chapman, takes the opportunity to usurp the crown, breaking the line of succession and stepping over his nephew Shadow. Chapman's first act as the new king is to banish what remains of his broken family, branding them enemies of the crown. Stripped of all wealth and power, Maureen King places a seemingly impossible task on the shoulders of Shadow--to reclaim what was stolen from their family and take back the crown.
The King clan--as relentless as the heirs on the hit TV sensation Succession--are among K'wan's most memorable characters to date.
LEGENDARY HIP-HOP ARTIST CHUCK D has been touring the world for four decades, since his band Public Enemy put out their first album in 1987. Now, at age sixty-three, Chuck is frequently asked how he still manages to put on such high-energy performances so many years later. His response is simple: he practices Pilates, a form of exercise and body conditioning that has become increasingly popular over the last decade.
Chuck's appreciation for Pilates took a major leap in 2016 when he was setting out on a rigorous tour schedule with a powerful and energetic new band called Prophets of Rage (a supergroup including members of Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine). Over the next four years, the group would perform to more than two million people across the globe. As Chuck admits, he simply could not have delivered on such a massive level without his practice of Pilates.
In this volume, Chuck and his Pilates guru, Kathy Lopez, present the RAPilates program of more than thirty mat-based exercises for people of all ages and experiences. The exercises are beautifully illustrated in the inimitable style that Chuck has demonstrated in his previous books of visual art, including STEWdio and Summer of Hamn. Like those two books, RAPilates is published on Chuck's Enemy Books imprint, which is hosted by Akashic Books.
EVER WONDER WHAT GOES ON IN THE MIND OF A DOG? Buster is the story of one dog's lifelong journey, as told by the animal himself.
A strong and proud boxer, he spends his early days with a loving family in a public housing complex in Washington, DC. Abruptly, he is taken away by an abusive, alcoholic man, plunging Buster into a challenging, nightmarish existence. Over the course of his life, he will experience homelessness, tragedy, a harrowing stay in a shelter, and acts of kindness, including his adoption by an older gentleman grieving the death of his wife.
At his peak, Buster lives with a young marijuana dealer who runs a profitable but dangerous business in the city. Along the way, Buster befriends other dogs and witnesses the best and worst aspects of humanity. As the seasons change, and change again, he begins to understand the finality of existence and in turn learns to appreciate the gift of life.
You've probably heard of the book Go the F**k to Sleep and its two sequels--You Have to F**king Eat and F**k, Now There Are Two of You. But did you know it's been a full decade since the first book become a brilliant and hilarious phenomenon? --Fatherly
Ten years ago, Adam Mansbach crystallized the secret agony of parents the world over with one simple phrase: Go the Fuck to Sleep. In verses that perfectly capture the familiar tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night, the book opened up a conversation about parenting, granting us permission to admit our frustrations, and laugh at their absurdity . . . and the message only resonated louder when Samuel L. Jackson, the bard of the F-word, read the audiobook.
You Have to Fucking Eat expanded the conversation to include parenthood's other universal frustration: getting your little angel to eat something that even vaguely resembles a normal meal, with Bryan Cranston voicing the audiobook . . . and because life moves pretty fast, Fuck, Now There Are Two of You soon became necessary, to address the fact that two is, somehow, a million more kids than one--with Larry David doing the audiobook honors.
And now, to celebrate a decade of profane, loving, and deeply cathartic children's books for adults, the entire trilogy is finally available in a collectors'-edition boxed set, perfect for gifting at a baby shower or using to knock yourself unconscious. As always . . . you probably should not read these books to a child.