If you're a dinosaur, all of your friends are dead. If you're a pirate, all of your friends have scurvy. If you're a tree, all of your friends are end tables. Each page of this laugh-out-loud illustrated humor book showcases the downside of being everything from a clown to a cassette tape to a zombie. Cute and dark all at once, this hilarious children's book for adults teaches valuable lessons about life while exploring each cartoon character's unique grievance and wide-eyed predicament. From the sock whose only friends have gone missing to the houseplant whose friends are being slowly killed by irresponsible plant owners (like you), All My Friends Are Dead presents a delightful primer for laughing at the inevitable.

A young writer hits the dusty Texas highway for the California coast in this “brilliant . . . funny and dangerously tender” (Time) tale of art and sacrifice. Hailed as one of “the best novels ever set in America’s fourth largest city” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry’s “comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension” (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the “mundane happiness” of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his car, “El Chevy,” bound for the West Coast on a road trip filled with broken hearts and bleak realities of the artistic life. A cast of unforgettable characters joins the naïve troubadour’s pilgrimage to California and back to Texas, including a cruel, long-legged beauty; an appealing screenwriter; a randy college professor; and a genuine if painfully “normal” friend. Since the novel’s publication in 1972, Danny Deck has “been far more successful at getting loved by readers than he ever was at getting loved by the women in his life” (McMurtry), a testament to the author’s incomparable talent for capturing the essential tragicomedy of the human experience.

Features five stories all dealing with the boundaries between individuals and illustrating how an idea of the world does not always match reality.

Almost as famous for the legendary excesses of his personal life as for his films, Sam Peckinpah (1925–1984) cemented his reputation as one of the great American directors with movies such as The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Max Evans, one of Peckinpah’s best friends, experienced the director’s mercurial character and personal demons firsthand. In this enthralling memoir we follow Evans and Peckinpah through conversations in bars, family gatherings, binges on drugs and alcohol, struggles with film producers and executives, and Peckinpah’s abusive behavior—sometimes directed at Evans himself. Evans’s stories—most previously unpublished—provide a uniquely intimate look at Peckinpah, their famous friends (including Lee Marvin, Brian Keith, Joel McCrea, and James Coburn), and the business of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s.

All Our Friends: Simple Rewards of Simple Living begins with a couple's choice to quit their jobs and take up a life of voluntary simplicity. When they buy a rustic property on Mayne Island, one of British Columbia's Southern Gulf Islands, they soon find themselves sharing their yard with an extended family of raccoons. While exploring the adjustments the couple must make to the limitations of living in a travel trailer and on a fixed income, All Our Friends follows their relationship with the raccoons as they move from the background into the foreground of the couple's lives. First Bandit appears by making a comical assault on the bird feeder. Shortly after his lady friends, Foxy, Raggedy Ann and Putzi, make themselves at home. When Raggedy and Putzi bring their kits in the summer, the yard turns into a 'garden stage'. By letting the reader in on the challenges and rewards of simple living in an island setting, of which close contact with wildlife is the ultimate reward, All Our Friends is an experience few are ever lucky to have. Reviews "All Our Friends is a slim volume that is well-written ... and goes very quickly for the reader. As the author states, it is not a recipe but an example of a modest lifestyle, and one that will be interesting to many in these times of growing eco-awareness." Gulf Islands Driftwood "Faithfully but not sentimentally recounted, the exploits of this merry band [of raccoons] will make you more friend than foe of these creatures. It will also make you yearn for the simple life, at least from your comfy, warm reading spot." Island Tides Video readings D.S. Hartley's readings of condensed versions of two chapters can be seen on You Tube. Chapter 1 The Faery Garden Chapter 5: Close Encounters Author's Website For more contents, reviews, and photo gallery, visit: www.dshartley.com

Tribe explores the issues of reciprocity in cross-race and cross-class relationships using stories, narrative, and sociological insights and perspectives derived from urban fieldwork and the author's own life. The volume examines the social and structural barriers to the formation of these kinds of relationships, as well as the transformations that can take place as these barriers are overcome. Stories, interviews, and empirically driven narratives are interwoven with theory from the fields of adult education, economics, sociology, ethics, theology, and history. After exploring the barriers to the formation of these relationships and the potential of adults for learning new ways of thinking and being, the book makes the case that there are communal and individual benefits to these relationships that far outweigh the difficulties in forming them. The book is set up to answer the questions "Why does it matter if all my friends look just like me?" and "How do I leave behind a siloed existence to live a fully transformational and socially aware life?"

A black family and a white family in 1960s Texas find common ground during the Civil Rights Movement.