Kaye's two novels have established him as one of today's most stunning chroniclers of Los Angeles. Of "The Dead Circus, " David Ebershoff wrote in the "Los Angeles Times Book Review, " "The reader is compelled to turn the page . . . Once the novel's momentum takes hold, [its] pursuit becomes ours."

From the acclaimed author of Stars Screaming, “a fine new novel . . . [that] pulls some of the dregs of Manson’s dark legacy into the light” (The Oregonian). It’s 1986. Devastated by the death of his fiancée, private eye Gene Burk becomes obsessed with an unsolved mystery from his days with the LAPD: the death of up-and-coming rockabilly star Bobby Fuller. While attempting to reconstruct the circumstances that led to Fuller’s demise, Gene is unexpectedly contacted by a woman from his fiancée’s hometown, a survivor of the Manson Family who needs his help to escape her past. As Gene travels back in history to the moment Manson partied alongside Bobby Fuller and the Beach Boys, he lays bare Los Angeles in the sixties, its relative innocence and its seedy underbelly, and uncovers how those currents have shaped not just history but his own life and those of the people he loves. “Masterfully creating and sustaining a palpable, pure, elegiac paean to lost hopes and dreams, Kaye seems to suggest that the human impulse toward yearning and hopefulness can exist unmarred by and side by side with rampant corruption and pure evil” (Booklist, starred review). “A looming thundercloud of a book; it begins in a Southern California that seems permanently infused with sunshine and ends in one that has been forever submerged beneath the dark surf of a noirish nightmare.” —The New York Times Book Review “A great baggy monster of a book, shifting shape, made up of tales of murder, desertion and love, as full of life as the city it describes.” —The Washington Post

There are many ways to die at the Circus of the Dead. You’re invited to witness them all. Mom sent me all the way across the country to the Louisiana bayou to join the circus and help my uncle for the summer. Except there is something not quite right on this swampy cursed island, and after having my fortune told, I can’t leave. I try to escape, but Benny, an all too charming ghost gangster tries to kill me by feeding me to a tiger. Thankfully I’m rescued by Samuel, the incredibly hot ringmaster who can’t be a day over twenty. Can he? In addition to avoiding the human scorpion, staying away from the big cats, and having trouble figuring out who’s dead and who’s alive, I have to find a way to escape this horror show. Will I get out of the circus alive or will I join their army of ghosts and become a murderer myself? Welcome to the Circus of the Dead.

Drac Von Stoller enters into another dark realm with famous killers Billy the Kid, H.H. Holmes, Lizzie Borden, Elizabeth Bathory. Drac also brings a new tale of road rage and also delves into the occult with a ouija board. So sit back and dim the lights and lock the door as Drac Von Stoller fills each readers minds with even more terror than before.

Brian Keeping was a young closeted gay mechanic who lived in Ashbrooke, one of the most un-PC homophobic, backward little towns in mid-west America. One day the traveling circus came to town and he, along with his two best friends, thought maybe a trip to the circus would be a welcome diversion from the monotony of their sleepy little town, but to their horror everything went terribly wrong. It seemed their sleepy little towns dark history was about to come back to haunt them as a result of a heinous crime that had been committed sixty years earlier. The zealous pastor and self appointed moral leader of Ashbrooke, Harry Farwell, coaxed his congregation to rise up and run the "sinful" Fink and Zimner Freak Show and Circus out of town. Instead they ended up putting it to the torch and condemning the circus and it's performers to a horrible fiery death. All but one that was... the sole survivor, the circus' fortune teller Madame Zadora, was in possession of a mysterious tonic she acquired from her motherland Romania, which had the potential to bring upon the town, a horrible curse of the UNDEAD. Now the new circus has come to town and all hell is about to break loose, in more ways than one. This Zombie fest of the highest order takes the genre to places it's never been before and we know you will be DYING to read it!

In this updated edition, it's plain to see that the state of Illinois has only gotten weirder. Where there was once just a single Popeye statue in downstate Chester, today the town has monuments to Olive Oyl, Swee' Pea, Bluto, the Sea Hag, and more. The creepy Piasa Bird petroglyph on the bluff in Alton now has a roadside pullout with picnic tables, and the two-story outhouse in Gays has a new contemplative garden. With almost twice as many destinations as its predecessor, this edition boasts detailed information on each site—address, phone number, website, hours, entry fees, and driving directions—as well as maps, photos, and a wealth of regional history in the descriptions. Some new sites include Henry's Rabbit Ranch, the World's First Jungle Gym, Ahlgrim Acres (a miniature golf course at a funeral home), the Leather Archives and Museum, General Santa Ana's two wooden legs, the World's Largest Sock Monkey, the Friendship Shoe Fence, a truck stop with a marionette show, and a coin-operated fire-breathing dragon. There is more between Chicago and St. Louis than cornfields and plenty of fascinating places in the Windy City that aren't on Michigan Avenue, and here is a chance to see these underappreciated sites throughout the state.

The lives of notorious bad guys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary--if misunderstood--thinkers, and other colorful antiheroes, jerks, and evil doers from history all get their due in the short essays featured in these enlightening, informative books. Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Connecticut History features fifteen short biographies of nefarious characters, from Benedict Arnold to P.T. Barnum.