American and British Fiction

Floyd Kemske

LABOR DAY. A darkly comic labor of lies about the world of union organizing and union busting. "[A]n entertaining look at the tribulations of working stiffs, wherever they toil.." --New York Times Book Review

$22 cloth, 208 pp., ISBN-0945774-48-6.

THE THIRD LION: A Novel About Talleyrand. Talleyrand, one of history's most vilified and unprincipled men, is also one of its most civilized. This Machiavellian statesman helped make and break both the French Revolution and Napoleon. "Kemske, best known for his quirky takes on latter-day organization men, smoothly shifts gears to deliver a wryly engrossing historical novel." --Kirkus Reviews

$22.95 cloth, 224 pp., ISBN-0945774-37-0.

THE VIRTUAL BOSS. Everyone wishes for the perfect manager. But what would happen if our wishes came true? An adaptive, interactive software system learns each employee's needs and weaknesses, and then effectively exploits them. Kemske's most frightening primer on management. "The most intriguing computer character since HAL in 2001." --Library Journal

$19.95 cloth, 237 pp., ISBN 0-945774-22-2.

HUMAN RESOURCES. Corporate management is the use of humans as resources. So is vampirism. When a vampire is called in to turn an ailing biotech company around, reorganization takes on a much paler cast. "Kemske understands that some of what's going on in corporate America is so horrible that only fantasy can adequately depict it." --Cleveland Plain Dealer

$12.95 paper, 224 pp., ISBN 0-945774-29-X.

LIFETIME EMPLOYMENT. Due to an extreme policy of lifetime employment, the only way to get ahead at Growth Services, Inc. is murder. "Kemske blends black humor with a serious treatment of the individual's plight within a closed, Kafkaesque society in his satiric first novel." --Publishers Weekly

$19.95 cloth, 231 pp., ISBN 0-945774-18-4.


Randall Beth Platt

THE 1898 BASE-BALL FE-AS-KO In Platt's warm and loopy third Fe-As-Ko, Royal and E.M. try to turn around an old-time baseball team.

$24 cloth, 300 pp., ISBN 0-945774-47-8.

THE CORNERSTONE A moving coming-of-age story set in 1944 on the Puget Sound. "Platt's fifth novel is emotionally powerful and skillfully crafted." --Library Journal

$21.95 cloth, 224 pp., ISBN 0-945774-40-0.

THE ROYALSCOPE FE-AS-KO Royal Leckner's second fe-as-ko takes him to 1915 Hollywood, at the height of the silent Western. With dreams of stardom for her daughter Elsie (and a few for herself), Royal's wife, E. M., buys a silent film company, and then it's one fe-as-ko after another. "From one rapid-fire gag to the next, the plot hits targets left and right . . . Royal sums up this hilarious tale best: 'who needed moving pictures when real life was as farcical as this?'" --Publishers Weekly

$21.95 cloth, 288 pages, ISBN 0-945774-35-4.

THE FOUR ARROWS FE-AS-KO In Northwest ranch foreman Royal Leckner's first fe-as-ko, back in 1892, he suddenly finds himself charged with teaching the ranch owner's retarded son to take over management of the spread. A humorous, human treatment of the mentally handicapped and the Old West. "Bonanza meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in this comic western." --Kirkus Reviews

$17.95 cloth, 225 pp., ISBN 0-945774-14-1.


Frederic Raphael

ALL HIS SONS is novella and nine stories that display Raphael's storytelling skills and versatility. "[Raphael's stories] provide him with ample opportunity to exercise his keen wit and mordant sense of irony. … Exposing the self-serving and dishonorable realities beneath the surface, Raphael has an acutely perceptive eye and ear for some of the hypocrisies and evasions of our time." —Los Angeles Times

$21 cloth, 187 pp., ISBN-0945774-49-4.


A DOUBLE LIFE is the fictional memoir of a Frenchman whose duplicitous life reflects that of his country since the Second World War. "Repressed histories, sexual and political, drive this brilliant and wrenching story of a man whose emotional response mechanism has been terminally misdirected. … [Raphael] has created a novel to remember out of a dispassionate vacuum. … alternately chilling and magnificently tragic." —Publishers Weekly

$24 cloth, 374 pp., ISBN-0945774-46-X.


COAST TO COAST is an entertaining study of marital torment in which love, hatred, and self-hatred fuel rapid-fire dialogue that is both painful and a pleasure to read. "Fiercely hilarious ... Raphael is superb at capturing lies, pain, evasions, half-thoughts and self-deception." --Washington Post Book World

$22.95 cloth, 231 pp., ISBN-0945774-42-7.


David R. Slavitt

ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL: A NOVEL A finely crafted look at depression from the inside, both humorous and moving. Also a wise reflection on the novel and its relationship to life. "A complete experience, at once laughing-out-loud funny and breath-catching, heart-breakingly sad. It explodes the idea of the novel while defining and celebrating it."
--George Garrett

$20 cloth, 188 pp., ISBN-0945774-56-7.

GET THEE TO A NUNNERY: A Pair of Shakespearean Divertimentos Romeo and Juliet and Measure for Measure told from the point of view of minor characters. Great intellectual entertainment. "Machiavellian storytelling that subverts the original story with a new twist ... devilishly clever." --Publishers Weekly

$19.95 cloth, 192 pp., ISBN 0-945774-41-9.

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