Twelve-year-old Angela and thirteen-year-old Tony are neighbors and best of friends who have a penchant for getting into trouble. While playing in Angela's creepy basement one day, they discover a secret portal that leads them to a magical world beyond their wildest imaginings. In this new and exciting realm, they train to become wizards, meeting an eclectic cast of characters along the way. But even in this place, Angela and Tony become embroiled in mischief. After all, what kid wouldn't want the power to transform into a beastly dragon or the ability to command any inanimate object to fly across the room? As the two become enveloped in the realm of mysterious creatures and beings, they must face a cruel and evil wizard who plans to overtake the magical world. Can Angela and Tony defeat him before the wizard destroys everything they've come to love?

“One of those can’t-put-it-down-until-the-last-page-is-turned monsters that has readers all over the country missing sleep.”—Minneapolis Tribune Corky is a brilliant entertainer with a bright future ahead of him. He has good looks, many women, and enormous talent. He also had a secret and a certainty: a secret that must be hidden from his public at all costs; and a certainty that the dark forces of magic were out to destroy him. “Fascinating . . . This dazzling psychological thriller cannot be put down! . . . The most imaginative and enjoyable novel I've read since Marathon Man. . . . [A] bizarre journey into the world of illusion.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Kept me up half the night. . . . A brilliantly alarming novel!”—Cosmopolitan

This book is about American jazz history and a very special place in San Francisco that was called Earthquake McGoon's, which was one of the longest running jazz clubs in America. Included in Meet Me At McGoon's are some 860 photos and illustrations, a complete index and an updated list of Turk Murphy recordings at the time of writing this book.

In this funny, irreverent, unique, eccentric memoir, magician Steve Spill reveals how he managed to survive decades inside a rarely profitable, sometimes maddening, but often deliciously rewarding offbeat showbiz profession—magic! Spill tells of how his tailor grandfather sewed secret pockets in a magician’s tuxedo back in 1910, which started his childhood dream to become a magician. This dream took Spill on a journey that started with him performing, as a young boy, at a “Beauty on a Budget” neighborhood house party to engagements in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean, to today in Santa Monica, California, where he’s been starring in his own shows since 1998 at Magicopolis, the theater he designed and built himself. Being a magician has given Spill the opportunity to interact with the world’s most famous and fascinating people. In his memoir, Spill reveals the many unique encounters that his profession has led him to enjoy and endure: hosting Sting as his opening act one night, spending two days on camera with Joan Rivers, and selling tricks to Bob Dylan, as well as encounters with Adam Sandler, Stephen King, and other celebrities. I Lie for Moneyis a literary magic show that captures the highs and lows of an extraordinary life that will delight and amaze you with wit and wickedness. This book should be an obligatory read for anyone considering a creative career, and it serves as an inspiration to those who desire to craft an independent life.

This issue of the award-winning magazine of comics interviews, news, and criticism focuses on the relationship between animation and comics. Gary Groth interviews this issue’s cover artist Cathy Malkasian (Eartha), the PBS/Nickelodeon animation director (Curious George, The Wild Thornberrys) turned graphic novelist, about her first middle-grade GN, NoBody Likes You, Greta Grump. In addition to this issue’s featured interview with Cathy Malkasian, MLK graphic biographer Ho Che Anderson shares his animation storyboards, and Anya Davidson talks to Sally Cruikshank about how the underground comics movement influenced the latter’s aesthetic in a career that encompasses indie shorts and Flash animation, as well as work for feature film credits and Sesame Street. Other features include: an unpublished Ben Sears (Midnight Gospel) comic, and Jem and the Holograms cartoon creator Christy Marx talks about the behind-the-scenes advantages and disadvantages of both art forms. Plus! Sketchbook art by Vanesa Del Rey (Black Widow), an interview with Amazon warehouse worker-turned-cartoonist Ness Garza, Paul Karasik’s essay on an unseen gem, and much more. For more than 45 years, no magazine has chronicled the continuum of the comic arts with more rigor and passion than The Comics Journal.

San Francisco is probably best known for its hills, ubiquitous fog, dungeness crab and the Golden Gate Bridge. But jazz music's threads are similarly woven into the fabric of the city and its environs. Whether performed in renowned clubs like So Different, Jimbo's Bop City, Black Hawk, and the Jazz Workshop or in halls like the Primalon Ballroom and Great American Music Hall, jazz has infused the city from the Barbary Coast to the Fillmore, thrilling audiences for over a century. San Franciscans have grooved to and incubated scores of jazz acts, hot and cool, raucous and contemplative. That tradition continues today.

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