Titles of note, out now.
LAIKA: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory: Two Decades of Groundbreaking Animation from Coraline to Wildwood
In this rare glimpse at LAIKA’s 500,000-square-foot dream factory, read how the visionaries of the renowned stop-motion studio bring LAIKA’s handcrafted films to life one frame at a time.
Stunning new puppet photography, never-before-seen artwork, and interviews with the studio’s community of storytellers take readers on an unforgettable tour through the studio’s key people, places, and processes, from script development to production design, puppet fabrication, 3D face printing, animation, and visual effects.
Featuring a double-page gatefold measuring nearly three feet wide, this expansive illustrated publication on the illustrious studio reveals LAIKA’s innovations in stop-motion filmmaking over the last two decades, from Kubo and the Two Strings to ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Coraline, Missing Link, and Wildwood.
Kiss '76: Twelve Months That Defined the Hottest Band in the Land
1976 suffered no shortage of notable events...Cincinnati's "Big Red Machine" beat the Yankees in the World Series. Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford at the ballot box. Rocky lit up the big screen. And some guy named Bruce Jenner lit up the Summer Olympics. And it was all set against the backdrop of the United States Bicentennial.
Kiss stomped into the fray with their platform boots, barnstorming the world and still finding time to record and release two of their all-time bestselling albums. Formed in 1973, Kiss had already grabbed attention with their outrageous makeup, stage show, and (of course) music. But in 1976 the band truly took off, unleashing Destroyer and Rock and Roll Over in a span of just eight months and logging more than 100 performances in North America and Europe.
In Kiss '76, Martin Popoff presents month-by-month narratives following the band around the world, across stages and through studios.
Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane
Alice Coltrane (1937-2007) was one of the most misunderstood artists of the last sixty years. For most of her life--and even in the decades since her passing--she was primarily known as the widow of the late John Coltrane. John Coltrane is widely seen as being one of the greatest tenor saxophonists and composers of the 20th century, with a fervor and devotion approaching sainthood. Yet ever so slowly, that level of love and appreciation is also being bestowed upon pianist, organist, harpist, and composer Alice Coltrane.
Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane is the first full biography of this remarkable, groundbreaking artist, and is an elegant, deeply researched corrective to the historical--and critical--record. It elevates Alice Coltrane to her proper place, both alongside her husband as one of the greatest musical visionaries of the 20th century, and also as a singular artist in Western music, one who became a spiritual leader in her lifetime.
In the years since her passing, she has become a great influence on a new generation of musicians, especially women, people of color, and artists who seek to combine jazz with other musical forms, be it modern classical, electronic, Indian music, and more. Cosmic Music also unearths previously unknown connections between Alice Coltrane and other generational icons, from Stevie Wonder, Carlos Santana, and Nina Simone to Mother Teresa and Doja Cat.
Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie
When David Bowie died on January 10th, 2016, aged sixty-nine, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. Politicians and fellow musicians alike fell over themselves to pay tribute to the former Starman, and his home cities of New York and London saw thousands of well-wishers assemble to play his music and console each other in their hour of grief.
Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up. His 80s career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock with the new group Tin Machine had been disastrous, and the art-rock music with which he had made his name was badly out of fashion. The Thin White Duke needed a miracle if he was not only going to be able to assume his rightful place at the top of the rock music firmament, but even to continue his career. And a miracle—a resurrection from the dead—is precisely what happened.
Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first biography of Bowie that tells the full and candid story of what happened in between those two apparently unbridgeable points. With new and exclusive interviews with the musicians, filmmakers, and cultural figures who worked with and befriended Bowie throughout this period, Lazarus is the definitive account of the previously overlooked and fascinating latter half of a great and distinguished career.
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Redrawing the Western: A History of American Comics and the Mythic West (World Comics and Graphic Nonfiction Series)
Redrawing the Western charts a history of the Western genre in American comics from the late 1800s through the 1970s and beyond. Encompassing the core years in which the genre was forged and prospered in a range of popular media, Grady engages with several key historical timeframes, from the origins of the Western in the nineteenth-century illustrated press; through fin de siècle anxieties with the closing of the frontier, and the centrality of cowboy adventure across the interwar, postwar, and high Cold War years; to the revisions of the genre in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Western's continued vitality in contemporary comics storytelling.
In its study of stories about vengeance, conquest, and justice on the contested frontier, Redrawing the Western highlights how the "simplistic" conflicts common in Western adventure comics could disguise highly political undercurrents, providing young readers with new ways to think about the contemporaneous social and political milieu. Besides tracing the history, forms, and politics of American Western comics in and around the twentieth century, William Grady offers an original reassessment of the important role of comics in the development of the Western genre, ranking them alongside popular fiction and film in the process.
Jim Thompson: Five Noir Novels of the 1950s & 60s (#399): A Hell of a Woman / After Dark, My Sweet / The Getaway / The Grifters / Pop. 1280
Here in one deluxe clothbound volume are five chilling crime classics from the writer who blew the top off the conformity of postwar American life in novels of shocking violence and stunning psychological depth. His experimental style was as shattering as his dark stories, infusing the pulp crime novel with the energies of underground writers like William Burroughs and Hubert Selby. Already represented in the Library of America’s American Noir collection with The Killer Inside Me, Thompson now joins the masters of American crime fiction featured in the series with this volume collecting five of his best novels:
- A Hell of a Woman (1954), a haunting, mesmerizing portrait of a mind unraveling under the weight of abuse endured and inflicted
- After Dark, My Sweet (1955), a sucker punch of a story about an ex-fighter who gets involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes catastrophically awry
- The Getaway (1959), about a bank heist that leads to a descent into a hell worthy of Dante or Bosch
- The Grifters (1963) a taut drama that sets a master of the short-con on a collision course with the one person he can’t fool: his mother
- Pop. 1280 (1964), which unleashes a dangerously messianic sheriff on a small southern town.
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