"In these glimpses of suburban life, Pete Court's gentle yet sharp observations of the human condition manage to be both sardonic and compassionate. In language that sings with inventiveness and a joyfully grim humour, each tale is woven through with touches of the magical, little sparkling surprises that add a thread of mystic wonder throughout the whole. At the end of it all I was left contemplating just how well I was living, loving and being a Light in the Darkness." - D.M.Cornish, author, Monster Blood Tattoo series

n these glimpses of suburban life, Pete Court's gentle yet sharp observations of the human condition manage to be both sardonic and compassionate. In language that sings with inventiveness and a joyfully grim humour, each tale is woven through with touches of the magical, little sparkling surprises that add a thread of mystic wonder throughout the whole. At the end of it all I was left contemplating just how well I was living, loving and being a Light in the Darkness. - D.M.Cornish, author, Monster Blood Tattoo series Court's prose is a world of its own. In these stories he gets into the minds of some desperate and 'unbelievable' characters. While the stories are gruesome, they make a case for our common humanity. Above all, they have verve and incredible energy. - Phillip Edmonds, author of Tilting at Windmills and Leaving Home with Henry Court's precise evocative writing gives us troubling stories, inviting the reader into challenging worlds of grotesquerie and distortion. In scenes reminiscent of Kafka, all three novellas are a search for elusive threads of meaning, with the Dark as a linking motif. . . . Intriguing and compelling reading. - Valerie Volk, author of Even Grimmer Tales and Bystanders P.H. Court's Sub Urban Tales navigate that mysterious territory where time, place and eternity meet. At once intriguing, sometimes gruesome, often hilarious and always relatable, these cunningly interwoven tales remind us of the extraordinary in the ordinary, the grace reflected in all surfaces though dimmed by the Dark of human conceit. - James Cooper, Head of Creative Writing, Tabor College P. H. Court is co-host of the popular Breakfast with Kit and Pete on Adelaide's 1079 Life and is creative writer for the radio station. He is an adjunct lecturer at Tabor College and a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at University of Adelaide. He has published numerous award winning short stories and satires.

Land of carpools and cul-de-sacs! Home to good schools and green lawns! An idyllic place where nothing bad ever happens--right? Right?Wrong. As David Lynch and Desperate Housewives have taught us, life in the 'burbs has a dark side--and Surburban Legends shows the worst of it. Here are 75 spooky tales of corpses buried in back yards, ghosts in department stores, UFO sightings, vanishing persons, and much more!

A flash fiction look at a perfect life. Tom Hargrove has it all. A story of wealth, consumption, and in the case of Tom, an unfortunate consequence. A potent look at American priorities, capitalism, consumerism, and its potentially deadly outcomes.

It's a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood They told you the suburbs were a great place to live. They said nothing bad could ever happen here. But they were wrong. This collection of terrifying true stories exposes the dark side of life in the ’burbs—from corpses buried in backyards and ghosts lurking in fast food restaurants to UFOs, vanishing persons, bizarre apparitions, and worse. Consider: • The Soccer Mom’s Secret. Meet Melinda Raisch of Columbus, Ohio. She’s the wife of a dentist. A mother of three. A PTA member. And she has enough murderous secrets to fill a minivan. • Noise Pollution. More than 100 residents of Kokomo, Indiana, claim their small town is under attack by a low-pitched humming sound that erodes health and sanity. Too bad they’re the only ones who can hear it. • Death Takes a Holiday inn. There’s nothing more reassuring than a big chain hotel in a quaint small town—unless it’s the Holiday Inn of Grand Island, New York, where you’ll spend the night with the spirit of a mischievous little girl. So lock your doors, dim the lights, and prepare to stay up all night with this creepy collection of true tales. We promise you’ll never look at white picket fences the same way again!

A cultural history of the South Bronx that reaches beyond familiar narratives of urban ruin and renaissance, beyond the “inner city” symbol, to reveal the place and people obscured by its myths. For decades, the South Bronx was America’s “inner city.” Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins—none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium—proclaimed the failures of urbanism. Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives—urban crisis and cultural renaissance—have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life. A Bronx native, Peter L’Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L’Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s carvings of abandoned buildings with the city’s trompe l’oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx’s infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a “global Bronx” as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad. Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx.