Flora was prolific in his commercial work; he created art privately in equal measure and often with more fiendish pleasure. His style is cartoonish, evoking childhood nostalgia and dereliction of adult responsibility. There are clowns and kitty cats, grinning faces and beaming suns. But Flora did not restrain his darker impulses. His montages are crammed with bullets and knives and fang-baring snakes. Muggers run amok, demons frolic with rouged harlots, and Flora's characters suffer that is, are afflicted by the artist with severe disfigurement. The banal and the violent often coexist within inches of each other on the canvas.

by Irwin Chusid 11 x 10, SC, 180 pages, FC, $34.95 The first collection of the marvelous, mischievous album cover art of Jim Flora (1914-1998), collecting most of his known covers. The book also includes rarely seen illustrations and covers from Columbia's "Coda" trade journal and elsewhere.

A third collection of amusing nightmares from the demonic wand of Jim Flora: art and artifacts spanning Flora's career, including more from his Columbia Records days, children's book roughs and outtakes, rarely seen cartoon-science illustrations and more.

A cow sneezes and sets off a series of ridiculous events.

The highly anticipated reprint of a classic children's book by renowned illustrator and graphic designer James Flora.

At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley was the first black American poet to publish a book. Her elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses of the beginnings of African-American literary traditions. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.