From the creator of Black Hole: the first volume of an epic masterpiece of graphic fiction in brilliant color. Doug is having a strange night. A weird buzzing noise on the other side of the wall has woken him up, and there, across the room, next to a huge hole torn out of the bricks, sits his beloved cat, Inky. Who died years ago. But who’s nonetheless slinking out through the hole, beckoning Doug to follow.  What’s going on?  To say any more would spoil the freaky, Burnsian fun, especially because X’ed Out, unlike Black Hole, has not been previously serialized, and every unnervingly meticulous panel will be more tantalizing than the last …  Drawing inspiration from such diverse influences as Hergé and William Burroughs, Charles Burns has given us a dazzling spectral fever-dream—and a comic-book masterpiece. .cbr @mediafire

From the creator of Black Hole: the first volume of an epic masterpiece of graphic fiction in brilliant color. 

Doug is having a strange night. A weird buzzing noise on the other side of the wall has woken him up, and there, across the room, next to a huge hole torn out of the bricks, sits his beloved cat, Inky. Who died years ago. But who’s nonetheless slinking out through the hole, beckoning Doug to follow. 
 
What’s going on? 
 
To say any more would spoil the freaky, Burnsian fun, especially because X’ed Out, unlike Black Hole, has not been previously serialized, and every unnervingly meticulous panel will be more tantalizing than the last … 
 
Drawing inspiration from such diverse influences as Hergé and William Burroughs, Charles Burns has given us a dazzling spectral fever-dream—and a comic-book masterpiece.

2 months ago
Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she’s albino. She’s a terrific athlete, but can’t go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits. And then she discovers something amazing - she is a “free agent,” with latent magical power. Soon she’s part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too? mobi @mediafire

Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she’s albino. She’s a terrific athlete, but can’t go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits. And then she discovers something amazing - she is a “free agent,” with latent magical power. Soon she’s part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?

2 months ago
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has unnerved readers since its original publication in 1959. A tale of subtle, psychological terror, it has earned its place as one of the significant haunted house stories of the ages. Eleanor Vance has always been a loner—shy, vulnerable, and bitterly resentful of the 11 years she lost while nursing her dying mother. “She had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words.” Eleanor has always sensed that one day something big would happen, and one day it does. She receives an unusual invitation from Dr. John Montague, a man fascinated by “supernatural manifestations.” He organizes a ghost watch, inviting people who have been touched by otherworldly events. A paranormal incident from Eleanor’s childhood qualifies her to be a part of Montague’s bizarre study—along with headstrong Theodora, his assistant, and Luke, a well-to-do aristocrat. They meet at Hill House—a notorious estate in New England. Hill House is a foreboding structure of towers, buttresses, Gothic spires, gargoyles, strange angles, and rooms within rooms—a place “without kindness, never meant to be lived in….” Although Eleanor’s initial reaction is to flee, the house has a mesmerizing effect, and she begins to feel a strange kind of bliss that entices her to stay. Eleanor is a magnet for the supernatural—she hears deathly wails, feels terrible chills, and sees ghostly apparitions. Once again she feels isolated and alone—neither Theo nor Luke attract so much eerie company. But the physical horror of Hill House is always subtle; more disturbing is the emotional torment Eleanor endures. Intense, literary, and harrowing, The Haunting of Hill House belongs in the same dark league as Henry James’s classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw.  epub, mobi @mediafire

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has unnerved readers since its original publication in 1959. A tale of subtle, psychological terror, it has earned its place as one of the significant haunted house stories of the ages.

Eleanor Vance has always been a loner—shy, vulnerable, and bitterly resentful of the 11 years she lost while nursing her dying mother. “She had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words.” Eleanor has always sensed that one day something big would happen, and one day it does. She receives an unusual invitation from Dr. John Montague, a man fascinated by “supernatural manifestations.” He organizes a ghost watch, inviting people who have been touched by otherworldly events. A paranormal incident from Eleanor’s childhood qualifies her to be a part of Montague’s bizarre study—along with headstrong Theodora, his assistant, and Luke, a well-to-do aristocrat. They meet at Hill House—a notorious estate in New England.

Hill House is a foreboding structure of towers, buttresses, Gothic spires, gargoyles, strange angles, and rooms within rooms—a place “without kindness, never meant to be lived in….”

Although Eleanor’s initial reaction is to flee, the house has a mesmerizing effect, and she begins to feel a strange kind of bliss that entices her to stay. Eleanor is a magnet for the supernatural—she hears deathly wails, feels terrible chills, and sees ghostly apparitions. Once again she feels isolated and alone—neither Theo nor Luke attract so much eerie company. But the physical horror of Hill House is always subtle; more disturbing is the emotional torment Eleanor endures. Intense, literary, and harrowing, The Haunting of Hill House belongs in the same dark league as Henry James’s classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw. 

3 months ago
Michelle Williams is young and attractive, with close family ties, a busy social life … and an unusual occupation. When she impulsively applies to be a mortuary technician and is offered the position, she has no idea that her decision to accept will be one of the most momentous of her life. “What I didn’t realize then,” she writes, “was that I was about to start one of the most amazing jobs you can do.”To Williams, life in the mortuary is neither grim nor frightening. She introduces readers to a host of unique characters: pathologists (many eccentric, some utterly crazy), undertakers, and the man from the coroner’s office who sings to her every morning. No two days are alike, and while Williams’s sensitivity to the dead never wavers, her tales from the crypt range from mischievous to downright shocking. Readers won’t forget the fitness fanatic run over while doing nighttime push-ups on the road, the man so large he had to be carted in via refrigerated truck, or the guide dog who led his owner onto railway tracks—and left him there. The indomitable Williams never bats an eye, even as she is confronted—daily—with situations that would leave the rest of us speechless. epub, mobi @mediafire fyi there’s a super shitty fat-shaming passage that could be triggering

Michelle Williams is young and attractive, with close family ties, a busy social life … and an unusual occupation. When she impulsively applies to be a mortuary technician and is offered the position, she has no idea that her decision to accept will be one of the most momentous of her life. “What I didn’t realize then,” she writes, “was that I was about to start one of the most amazing jobs you can do.”

To Williams, life in the mortuary is neither grim nor frightening. She introduces readers to a host of unique characters: pathologists (many eccentric, some utterly crazy), undertakers, and the man from the coroner’s office who sings to her every morning. No two days are alike, and while Williams’s sensitivity to the dead never wavers, her tales from the crypt range from mischievous to downright shocking. Readers won’t forget the fitness fanatic run over while doing nighttime push-ups on the road, the man so large he had to be carted in via refrigerated truck, or the guide dog who led his owner onto railway tracks—and left him there. The indomitable Williams never bats an eye, even as she is confronted—daily—with situations that would leave the rest of us speechless.

fyi there’s a super shitty fat-shaming passage that could be triggering

3 months ago
Tendo, the daughter of a yakuza (mob) boss, grew up in 1970s and 80s Japan, living through the booms and busts of life on the wrong side of the law. Her first published work, Shoko uses unpracticed but appropriately blunt prose to memoir her exceedingly arduous life; readers will appreciate her restrained but powerful details, especially during some of the harsher scenes. From age 12 onwards, Shoko’s life was enveloped in drug addiction, poverty, psychological and sexual abuse, miscarriage, attempted suicide and the deaths of many close family members, set against a backdrop of Japan’s ultra-secretive yakuza society. Admiration and a detached style keep Tendo from exploring any resentment she might harbor toward her criminal father, which may prove off-putting for some, but feels entirely honest given the emotional trauma Tendo suffers, and is as revealing for what it includes as for what it doesn’t. Emotionally complex and thoroughly heart-rending, this book is recommended for anyone searching for a more thorough and personal understanding of Japanese society, and its darker corners, than is offered by more popular Japanese imports (movies, comic books) featuring similar subject matter. pdf, mobi @mediafire

Tendo, the daughter of a yakuza (mob) boss, grew up in 1970s and 80s Japan, living through the booms and busts of life on the wrong side of the law. Her first published work, Shoko uses unpracticed but appropriately blunt prose to memoir her exceedingly arduous life; readers will appreciate her restrained but powerful details, especially during some of the harsher scenes. From age 12 onwards, Shoko’s life was enveloped in drug addiction, poverty, psychological and sexual abuse, miscarriage, attempted suicide and the deaths of many close family members, set against a backdrop of Japan’s ultra-secretive yakuza society. Admiration and a detached style keep Tendo from exploring any resentment she might harbor toward her criminal father, which may prove off-putting for some, but feels entirely honest given the emotional trauma Tendo suffers, and is as revealing for what it includes as for what it doesn’t. Emotionally complex and thoroughly heart-rending, this book is recommended for anyone searching for a more thorough and personal understanding of Japanese society, and its darker corners, than is offered by more popular Japanese imports (movies, comic books) featuring similar subject matter.

3 months ago
From the bearded women and half-men of the P.T. Barnum era to the bug-eating denizens of contemporary Coney Island, Hartzman leaves no circus tent unexplored in his history of freakish sideshow performers. The human curiosities, many of whom made a good living, are listed alphabetically within each chronological section and are accompanied by brief bios-based on sensationalist publicity for the older cases, and interviews with those still living-that include everything from anatomical details and medical explanations to minutiae about performers’ social lives: Myrtle Corbin, the four-legged woman, for instance, “had five children-three born from her own body, and two from her twin’s.” “Insectavora,” Coney Island’s resident facial-tattooed bug-eater, “walks up a razor-sharp ladder of swords and is currently working on a whip-cracking act. During the off-season she works in a tattoo and body-piercing shop, and probably eats a more balanced diet.” Hartzman’s book succeeds as a curiosity-quencher, but not as a reference, as his source material, particularly for the early performers, is sketchy, but the book-and its marvelous collection of photos-will shock and amaze offbeat voyeurs. [epub, htmlz, lit, lrf, mobi, pdf, rtf, txt] pw wolfboy @mediafire

From the bearded women and half-men of the P.T. Barnum era to the bug-eating denizens of contemporary Coney Island, Hartzman leaves no circus tent unexplored in his history of freakish sideshow performers. The human curiosities, many of whom made a good living, are listed alphabetically within each chronological section and are accompanied by brief bios-based on sensationalist publicity for the older cases, and interviews with those still living-that include everything from anatomical details and medical explanations to minutiae about performers’ social lives: Myrtle Corbin, the four-legged woman, for instance, “had five children-three born from her own body, and two from her twin’s.” “Insectavora,” Coney Island’s resident facial-tattooed bug-eater, “walks up a razor-sharp ladder of swords and is currently working on a whip-cracking act. During the off-season she works in a tattoo and body-piercing shop, and probably eats a more balanced diet.” Hartzman’s book succeeds as a curiosity-quencher, but not as a reference, as his source material, particularly for the early performers, is sketchy, but the book-and its marvelous collection of photos-will shock and amaze offbeat voyeurs.

  • [epub, htmlz, lit, lrf, mobi, pdf, rtf, txt]
  • pw wolfboy
  • @mediafire
3 months ago