Eighteen brief stories inspired by television commercials produced by America's favorite brands. What if actual human beings lived in the worlds created by brand marketers? A Taco Bell test kitchen is pushed to its limits. A new Lexus for Christmas takes a family over the edge. An exceptional outing with extremely beautiful people becomes transcendent when onion cheeseburgers get passed around. Budweiser, Cialis, Toyota and KFC are a few of the other branded worlds explored here, where everyday lives are shaped by human needs as much as marketing strategy.

Commercial Fiction

Literature & Fiction

Housley, Dave

Literary

Outpost 19

Sixteen-year-old Maria returns to her parents' home in the French countryside. Her ill mother faces her last days and her preoccupied father has grown even more distant. In the shadow of her parents' sorrow, Maria pursues a much older man, a disreputable art collector. She is infatuated with him, as with the French paintings she has come to love. Maria enters a world of tenderness and captivity, of transgression and awakening, and of art and sensuality. Lyrical, painterly and erotic, Indolence is a portrait of a young girl's haunting passage into womanhood

Indolence

Wellford, Alison

Edited by J. Ryan Stradal, our second annual anthology of new California writing presents short fiction and non-fiction by 30 acclaimed authors, including Aimee Bender, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Ann Friedman, Rico Gagliano, Jim Gavin, Dana Goodyear, Amelia Gray, Vanessa Hua, Rachel Khong, Lou Mathews, Kate Milliken, Joshua Mohr, Wendy C. Ortiz, David L. Ulin, Deborah Vankin, Siamak Vossoughi, and many more.

California Prose Directory 2014: New Writing from the Golden State

United States

When a disillusioned New York attorney decides to leave the law, buy a lipstick-red convertible, and hit the road, she doesn't expect to wake up in a hospital room with a malignant brain tumor and a prognosis of one year to live. Or that ten years later, she'll be competing in a grueling triathlon.

5 Months 10 Years 2 Hours

Biographies & Memoirs

Reisman, Lisa

Arts & Literature

An anthology of everyday evocations by 68 authors. A benefit project for 826 Valencia, with prayers by Dan Albergotti, Kate Angus, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Jensen Beach, A. K. Benninghofen, Nathan Blake, Gabriel Blackwell, George Bishop, Jr., Wendy Brenner, Nic Brown, Scott Cheshire, Jaime Clarke, Sean Conaway, Stanley Crawford, Michelle Kyoko Crowson, Christy Crutchfield, Weston Cutter, Chad Davidson, Gabe Durham, Mieke Eerkens, Clyde Edgerton, Matthew Gavin Frank, Amy Fusselman, Jonterri Gadson, V. V. Ganeshananthan, William Giraldi, Ani Gjika, Eve Grubin, John Haskell, Bob Hicok, Caitlin Horrocks, Marie Howe, Leslie Jamison, Lauren Jensen, Will Kaufman, Rob Kenagy, Lee Klein, Catherine Lacey, J. Robert Lennon, Ariel Lewiton, Nate Liederbach, Samuel Ligon, Robert Lopez, Courtney Maum, Aaron McCollough, Charles McLeod, Erika Meitner, Brenda Miller, Rick Moody, Liz Moore, Dylan Nice, Brian Oliu, Alicia Jo Rabins, Dawn Raffel, Wendy Rawlings, Ryan Ridge, Joseph Salvatore, Benjamin Samuel, Scott Sanders, Ravi Shankar, Susan B. A. Somers-Willett, Amber Sparks, Sasha Steensen, Sarah Strickley, Ian Stansel, Christian TeBordo, Robert Uren, &amp; Matthew Vollmer

A Book of Uncommon Prayer

Religion & Spirituality

In Christiania, Copenhagen's anarchist village and infamous tourist destination, a Pusher Street regular nears the end of the line. With locals decamping and outsiders encroaching, he can no longer subsist on hash sales and a chillum. but even hard up and hungry, he sees lost love in the moon, revels in a comrade's garbled rants, tangles with the Big Man and, as winter gets the best of him, still believes a grimy commune can be heaven on earth.

Welcome to Christiania

Leebron, Fred

Hope for a Cool Pillow

Margaret Overton's Hope for a Cool Pillow is a passionate argument for planning end-of-life care. As physician, daughter and student of American health care, Overton pulls from all corners, showing us the emotional, financial and physical costs of not being prepared. Her daily rounds reveal harrowing consequences, her studies at Harvard highlight the industry's limits, and her own aging parents make her case universal. Deeply felt, frankly told, this book will challenge you--and then help you--make your own choices about end-of-life care.

Self-Help

Overton, Margaret

Death & Grief

A debut coming of age story set in Southern woods filled with drugs, sex and violence--and a hidden tradition of voodoo-like magic. In a hard-scrabble town where family history defines destinies, a handful of teenagers bear witness to old traumas that still haunt adults working to keep food on the table. Modern pressures deepen old ruts, and in a circle of friends, each looks for their own path. A local drug ring offers high-speed comforts, and while some fall for easy choices, others find the strength to make their own place in the woods.

Children of the Country

Shaffer, Abigail R.

This is not your average New Jersey childhood: a circus tiger attack, a schoolmate’s abduction, heartbreaking addicts, and a blind bad-ass granny. Scott Loring Sanders’ suburban adolescence overflowed with perils: bone-crushing water slides, hitchhiking serial killers, a chilling collision in a ‘71 Impala. From his tough, complex father to Sanders’ own reckoning of fatherhood and alcohol, SURVIVING JERSEY is a tour-de-force exploration of the risks that shape America’s youth.

Surviving Jersey: Danger & Insanity in the Garden State

Sanders, Scott Loring

In search of meaningful connection, Clayton Draper moves into The Complex, a residential development in Austin, TX sponsored by Kool Kola, and comes face-to-face with very contemporary modes of self-absorption and a rampant materialism he can’t resist. In his journal entries, he looks for guidance from Schopenhauer, Snagglepuss, Aldous Huxley, Howlin' Mary, The Flintstones, Willa Cather, Winston Churchill, the voice of God, and many others. He quits his job, treks to Paris, and wrestles with a feral cat, while struggling with a sniping nemesis and a way too blonde and charismatic neighbor. Rob Reynolds' debut is a sharp, quick-paced satire, full of erudition and irreverent observation.

Wire Mother Monkey Baby

Reynolds, Rob

Humor & Satire

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Books by Outpost 19