A septuagenarian contract killer, a chronic hypochondriac, two zombie-creating comedians, a good Samaritan and a man called Barnaby whose holiday takes an unexpected turn. In these sleek and witty tales, described by Loaded as 'an excellent collection of dark, funny and bizarre short stories', Alexei Sayle's characters are vividly, wryly - and occasionally disturbingly - portrayed. Their voices, and the stories they have to tell will remain in the mind for a long, long time.

Charles Carter, dubbed Carter the Great by Houdini himself, was born into privilege but became a magician out of need: only when dazzling an audience can he defeat his fear of loneliness. But in 1920s America the stakes are growing higher, as technology and the cinema challenge the allure of magic and Carter's stunts become increasingly audacious. Until the night President Harding takes part in Carter's act only to die two hours later, and Carter finds himself pursued not only by the Secret Service but by a host of others desperate for the terrible secret they believe Harding confided in him. Seamlessly blending reality and fiction, Gold lays before us a glittering and romantic panorama of our modern world at a point of irrevocable change.

Beyond Black is a groundbreaking study of the dynamic meaning of racial identity for multiracial people in post-Civil Rights America. Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David Brunsma document the wide range of racial identities that individuals with one Black and one White parent develop, and they provide a incisive sociological explanation of the choices facing those who are multiracial. Stemming from the controversy of the 2000 Census and whether an additional 'multiracial' category should be added to the survey, this second edition of Beyond Black uses both survey data and interviews of multiracial young adults to explore the contemporary dynamics of racial identity formation. The authors raise even larger social and political questions posed by expanding racial categorization on the U.S. Census.

'Mam says that dad was pigflesh and pigmind, a huge mucky porker that nabbed her by force, then jogtrotted off beyond the farlands when he understood what had been hatched . . .' Jack is a 'freak' kept away from school in his youth and shunned by his local community in adulthood due to his terrible physical deformities. Holly is a young girl growing up alone with her mother, facing the pains and frustrations of a belated adolescence and of having to deal with the the threat she sees posed by her mum's new boyfriend. When these two lonely souls unexpectedly come together, and form a bond around the pigs that Jack rears in secret, they realise they must keep their friendship hidden from the prejudices and intolerance of those around them. But with Jack's abusive mother dying, and with Holly's supposed best-friend, Samantha, determined to cause trouble, how long can they keep their secret? Part-dark moral fable and part-domestic drama, Pigtopia is a tale of violence and foreboding. It is also though a story of compassion, escape and the faint hope of redemption. Narrated alternately by the beautifully rendered voices of Jack and Holly, it will be loved by anyone who has ever felt shunned or alone.

"Catch-22 is one of this century's greatest works of American literature. First published m 1961, Joseph Heller's profound and compelling novel has appeared on nearly every list of must read fiction. It is a classic in every sense of the word. Catch-22 took the war novel genre to a new level, shocking us with its clever and disturbing style. Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen. And this novel is full of madmen -- Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly m order to finish their tour; Milo Minderbinder, a dedicated entrepreneur who bombs his own airfield when the Germans offer him an extra 6 percent; Major Major Major, whose tragedy in life is that he resembles Henry Fonda; and Major -- de Coverley, whose face is so forbidding no one has dared ask his name. No novel before or since has matched Catch-22's intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war. Heller satirizes military bureaucracy with bitter, stinging humor, all the while telling the darkly comic story of Yossarian, a bombardier who refuses to die. Nearly forty years later, Yossarian lives"--Cover.

'Girls, Gags & Giggles""--this was publisher Robert Harrison's recipe for dishing up the American pin-up to the U.S. male. In the 1950s his girls magazines sold by the millions, before becoming icons of pulp and trash culture. These skillfully illustrated girls with their curvaceous forms and inviting lingerie soon overlook America's national dessert, in terms of popularity, and even developed considerable potential as a cultural export during the 1940s. ""Never show everything,"" was always the motto.