A debut short story collection in the tradition of writers like Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, and George Saunders—strange, imaginative, and refreshingly original—now back in print as part of Ecco’s “Art of the Story” Series, and with a new introduction from the author Kevin Wilson’s characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. “Grand Stand-In” is narrated by an employee of the Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider—a company that supplies “stand-ins” for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in “Blowing Up On the Spot,” a story singled out by Ann Patchett for Ploughshares, a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted. Southern gothic at its best, laced with humor and pathos, these wonderfully inventive stories explore the relationship between loss and death and the many ways we try to cope with both.

“Hands down my favorite book of the year.” -- Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth From the New York Times bestselling author of The Family Fang comes his first short story collection in nearly a decade, combining his signature quirkiness with his keen eye for emotional complexity to explore the fraught relationship between parents and children. “Wildfire Johnny” is the story of a man who discovers a magic razor that allows him to travel back in time. “Scroll Through the Weapons” is about a couple taking care of their underfed and almost feral nieces and nephews. “Signal to the Faithful” follows a boy as he takes a tense road trip with his priest. And “Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine,” the title story, is about a narcissistic rock star who moves back home during a rough patch. These stories all build on each other in strange and remarkable ways, showcasing Wilson’s crackling wit and big heart. Filled with imagination and humor, Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine is an exuberant collection of captivating and charmingly bizarre stories that promise to burrow their way into your heart and soul. "Wildfire Johnny" will be the first project in development with “The Great” actor Nicholas Hoult and MRC Television.

Soon to be a major film starring Nicole Kidman and Jason Bateman 'Funny, smart, ingenious, moving, altogether great' Nick Hornby World famous Caleb and Camille Fang have dedicated their lives to great performance art. But for their children, Annie and Buster, their 'art' is an embarrassment. As soon as the children grow up they flee home, desperate to escape the chaos of their parents' world. But when the lives they've built come crashing down, brother and sister have no choice but to go back. And whether the kids agree to participate or not, Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance that will finally determine what's more important: their family or their art.

Wilson’s ambition alone is exciting. . . . [His] writing has a Houdini-like perfection, wherein no matter how grim the variables, each lovely sentence manages to escape with all its parts intact.” —Boston Globe The eagerly-anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Family Fang—a warm-hearted and moving story about a young woman making a family on her own terms. When Isabelle Poole meets Dr. Preston Grind, she’s fresh out of high school, pregnant with her art teacher's baby, and totally on her own. Izzy knows she can be a good mother but without any money or relatives to help, she’s left searching. Dr. Grind, an awkwardly charming child psychologist, has spent his life studying family, even after tragedy struck his own. Now, with the help of an eccentric billionaire, he has the chance to create a “perfect little world”—to study what would happen when ten children are raised collectively, without knowing who their biological parents are. He calls it The Infinite Family Project and he wants Izzy and her son to join. This attempt at a utopian ideal starts off promising, but soon the gentle equilibrium among the families disintegrates: unspoken resentments between the couples begin to fester; the project's funding becomes tenuous; and Izzy’s growing feelings for Dr. Grind make her question her participation in this strange experiment in the first place. Written with the same compassion and charm that won over legions of readers with The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson shows us with grace and humor that the best families are the ones we make for ourselves.

The family from Secrets of the Garden are back in a new book about backyard science that explains why the seasons change. Alice and her friend Zack explore the reasons for the seasons. Alice's narrative is all about noticing the changes as fall turns into winter, spring, and then summer. She explains how the earth's yearlong journey around the sun, combined with the tilt in the earth's axis, makes the seasons happen. Alice's text is clear and simple, and experiential. Two very helpful—and very funny—chickens give more science details and further explanation through charts, diagrams, and sidebars. Packed with sensory details, humor, and solid science, this book makes a complicated concept completely clear for young readers—and also for the many parents who struggle to answer their kids' questions! "Several adults of my acquaintance . . . would find Secrets of the Seasons to be an eye-popping revelation." —John Lithgow, The New York Times Book Review

In this work, Carl Anthony shares his perspectives as an African-American child in post-World War II Philadelphia; a student and civil rights activist in 1960s Harlem; a traveling student of West African architecture; and an architect, planner, and environmental justice advocate in Berkeley. He contextualizes this within American urbanism and human origins, making profoundly personal both African American and American urban histories as well as planetary origins and environmental issues, to not only bring a new worldview to people of color, but to set forth a truly inclusive vision of our shared planetary future. The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race connects the logics behind slavery, community disinvestment, and environmental exploitation to address the most pressing issues of our time in a cohesive and foundational manner. Most books dealing with these topics and periods silo issues apart from one another, but this book contextualizes the connections between social movements and issues, providing tremendous insight into successful movement building. Anthony's rich narrative describes both being at the mercy of racism, urban disinvestment, and environmental injustice as well as fighting against these forces with a variety of strategies. Because this work is both a personal memoir and an exposition of ideas, it will appeal to those who appreciate thoughtful and unique writing on issues of race, including individuals exploring their own African American identity, as well as progressive audiences of organizations and community leaders and professionals interested in democratizing power and advancing equitable policies for low-income communities and historically disenfranchised communities.

“They moved along in the bobbing, springy gait of a family that followed the woods as some families follow the sea.” In that first sentence Conrad Richter sets the mood of this magnificent epic of the American wilderness. Toward the close of the eighteenth century the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio river was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight. Here the Lucketts, a wild, woodsfaring family, lived their roaming life, pushing ever westward as the frontier advanced and as new settlements threatened their isolation. Richter has written, not a historical novel, of which there are so many, but a novel of authentic early American life, of which there are so few. It is the primitive story of Worth Luckett, the hunter, and of Jary, his woman; of Genny, Wyitt, Achsa, and Sulie, their woods-wild children; of the bound boy and the Solitary and Jake Tench; but principally of the oldest girl, Sayward Luckett, whos people as far back as she knew had always been hunters and gunsmiths to hunters, but who, through the quiet, growing, and yet tragic oppression of the trees, turns her back at last on her life as a hunter’s child and becomes a tiller of the soil. This novel of great lyrical beauty and high excitement tells the story of the transition of American pioneers from the ways of the wilderness to the ways of civilization. Here is the true American epic. Here is the raw adventure, swift and cruel in its episodes; but here too is the poetry of loneliness. Here is a portrait of frontier life as it really must have seemed to the pioneers. Here in short is a masterpiece by the man who gave us The Sea of Grass.