"Before the plague, and the quarantine, fourteen-year-old Daniel Raymond had only heard of the Listeners. They were a gang, or at least that's what his best friend Katie's police officer father had said. They were criminals, thieves, monsters--deadly men clearly identifiable by the removal of their right ears.That's what Daniel had heard. But he didn't know.He didn't know much in those early days. He didn't know how the plague began, but then, no one did. The doctors and emergency medical personnel said it was airborne, and highly contagious. They said those infected became distorted both inside and out, and very, very dangerous.Then the helicopters came and took the doctors away, and no one said much of anything after that.Except the police officers. They said they'd provide food and order, in exchange for guns and, ultimately, anything else they felt like taking.Daniel's mother went out for toilet paper. She never came back. He hasn't heard from Katie since the phones went dead. And with his real family gone and surrogate family unreachable, Daniel, scared and alone, has nothing except the walls of his apartment, the window shattered, the poisonous air seeping in.That's when the Listeners arrive. Derek, the one-eared man with the big, soulful eyes, promises protection, and hope, and the choice not to sit alone and wait to die in some horrific way. He offers a brotherhood under the watch of their leader, the prophet Adam. He offers a place in the world to come.A harrowing work of literary horror, The Listeners, Harrison Demchick's electrifying debut, is a dark and terrifying journey into loneliness, desperation, and the devastating experience of one young boy in a world gone mad."

Passion, humiliation, and depravity are the cornerstones of the artistic spirit. How else to rationalize one's deliberate choice to face a life of unsigned rejection letters, calls from worried parents and collection agencies, and cups and cups of ramen noodles? Being a noble artiste is a rough gig. It's one part denial, one part masochism. And it gets all the respect of being a fry cook, without the convenient minimum wage. Only a fool would agree to such soul crushing -- until now. The Starving Artist's Survival Guideboldly reassures both the dreamer and the doer that you are not alone.Regardless of whether you are a painter, a poet, a musician, a writer, an actor, or simply paralyzed by an English lit or fine arts degree, help has arrived. Topics include the pros and cons of various artistic day jobs ("People love clowns, except for the 80 percent who want to beat them up and the 20 percent who do"), coping with form-letter rejections through the healing power of haikus ("You, blinking red light, / A call back from my agent? / No, just goddamn Mom"), a survey of artists' dwellings (from the romanticized loft to Mama's rent-free attic), and most important, "Holding On: Ten Good Reasons to Keep Your Head out of the Oven."

2017 Freedley Award Finalist, Theatre Library Association 2016 Best Circus Book of the Year, Stuart Thayer Prize, Circus Historical Society The 1960s American hippie-clown boom fostered many creative impulses, including neo-vaudeville and Ringling's Clown College. However, the origin of that impulse, clowning with a circus, has largely gone unexamined. David Carlyon, through an autoethnographic examination of his own experiences in clowning, offers a close reading of the education of a professional circus clown, woven through an eye-opening, sometimes funny, occasionally poignant look at circus life. Layering critical reflections of personal experience with connections to wider scholarship, Carlyon focuses on the work of clowning while interrogating what clowns actually do, rather than using them as stand-ins for conceptual ideas or as sentimental figures.

The Super Sons find themselves tumbling through space and time without so much as a GPS to guide them! Having battled the intergalactic group of teen hoodlums known as the Gang, Superboy and Robin barely escape. However, they do end up having a shootout with gunslingers on a Western-like world before engaging in a swordfight to save a princess on a medieval-like planet. The Sons need to find their way back to Earth before the Gang does a planetary smash-and-grab with the whole planet!

Monthly current affairs magazine from a Christian perspective with a focus on politics, society, economics and culture.

Sicko the clown wasn't always “a clown gone bad.” He had a life. Growing up in a world populated with clowns, Sicko was at first confused with what to do with himself because he couldn't juggle nor ride a unicycle or be in the circus. He tried being a Hobo but it didn't suit him. And he didn't fit in with the Bumpkins in the hot chocolate houses. But he could play the bongos and found a new calling as a musician. At the peak of his success, he got drafted into the Clown Kingdom's Royal Fighting Fools, where he trained as a deadly Nincompoop before shipping off to Nam. But after his best friend, Buddy-Buddy, is captured and tortured by mimes, leaving him disfigured, Sicko can only think of revenge as mimes remain at the heart of Sicko's problems. All mimes must die!