KICKS BOOKS PRESENTS... 

HARLAN ELLISON!

Kicks Books NYC prepares for fireworks with its publication of the controversial collection PULLING A TRAIN, the explosive first volume of twisted early street fiction from noted scribe HARLAN ELLISON. 

Known worldwide for his landmark speculative fiction, Cleveland-born ELLISON initially rumbled onto the newsstands hell-bent for leather-- jackets, that is, and zipguns, and shivs, and brass knuckles, and all the accoutrements necessary for basic teen gang violence circa 1957. 

Inspired as a teenager in seeing a familiar placement of consonants in the byline of author Hal Ellson's novel DUKE, young Ellison began pecking out his own gritty tales about street kids, the forgotten flotsam of society. 

With a taste for printers ink, he would soon be selling stories with a vengeance to crime digests like Guilty, Trapped, Terror, and Web Detective Stories,  and men's magazines including Rogue, Caper, and Knave. Sometimes he used his given name, but most often, he traveled incognito onto the newsstands, passing as Ellis Hart, Derry Tiger, Cordwainer Bird, Lee Archer, and many more.  

A paperback collection of his street-wise crime tales saw proper issue in 1959 as THE DEADLY STREETS, as did his groundbreaking first novel RUMBLE, written from first person experience when Ellison (using his nom de guerre, Cheech Beldone) passed initiations into a pack of under-age Red Hook pagans on the Brooklyn waterfront. 

Also in 1959, a brown-paper wrapper collection of his men's magazine stories turned up unannounced (and under the counter) as the paperback SEX GANG,  the title of its novella-length lead story. The set of eleven stories was credited to "Paul Merchant", and went unclaimed by Ellison for decades.

Over the years, all of Ellison's books have enjoyed reissue, over and over again, and numerous collections of his short fiction have continued to see print. His adult-audience material, however, has remained unavailable-- until now.

For the uninitiated, we recommend consumption in very small doses. A damp towel and bed rest may be necessary. 

For the lively set, prepare to blast into orbit with blade-wielding ferocity as Ellison takes you into a cobblestone wilderness fraught with hate and violence, a street level cosmos where shadowy creatures are hard, and blunt, and malicious, and where hope hangs a shingle that reads, "GET LOST".

In the realm of 1950's juvenile delinquent fiction, it was Ellison who dragged the unnamed genre from the gentle hands of the social workers into a filthy basement, where he worked it over, with great satisfaction, into an alternate universe of hate and pain. Ellison is the king of JD fiction. Of this, there can be no debate.

MORE TO COME...

PULLING A TRAIN by Harlan Ellison (KB4) Kicks Books, NYC. 176 pages. Publication date: May 27, 2012 $14.95 ISBN 978-09659777-5-3

Dig: Nick Tosches on Poets Of The Tabloid Murder

Photo: Robert Maxwell

Nick Tosches Interview: Click Link

TOSCHES!

KICKS BOOKS PRESENTS…

WHEN: FRIDAY SEPT 9 • 8 PM
WHERE: JEFFERSON MARKET LIBRARY, 425 SIXTH AVE (at 10th Street), NYC
telephone (212) 243 4334
FREE ADMISSION

SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR SATAN is set to hot-foot onto bookshelves, and into hip pockets, across America, bringing this long anticipated new NICK TOSCHES scorcher to fans of the inveterate scribe, who is correctly described as “the story-teller from Hell” by French magazine L’Officiel Homme.

SATAN launches with a public afterhours reading in the historic vaulted top floor of JEFFERSON MARKET LIBRARY, located in New York City’s Greenwich Village, Friday September 9th. SATAN is sure to stun stalwarts and sophisticates alike during this rare in-person live appearance by Tosches.

SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR SATAN delivers Tosches at his storytelling best, tackling the squirming roots of rock ’n’ roll history with a finesse previously reserved for night workers at a rendering plant.

One hundred twenty-eight pages are packed into the “hip pocket paperback” format created by KICKS BOOKS, the New York publishing house that has injected a new attitude into the book world with SWEETS (AND OTHER STORIES) by Andre Williams and THIS PLANET IS DOOMED: THE SCIENCE FICTION POETRY OF SUN RA.

Scheduled for release from KICKS BOOKS in November is PULLING A TRAIN: SEX GANG AND OTHER STORIES by HARLAN ELLISON and in February 2012, TALL COOL ONE VOL. 1 by KIM FOWLEY.

NICK TOSCHES is the author of COUNTRY, HELLFIRE, UNSUNG HEROES OF ROCK ’N’ ROLL, CUT NUMBERS, TRINITIES, DINO, THE LAST OPIUM DEN, KING OF THE JEWS, THE DEVIL AND SONNY LISTON, POWER ON EARTH, FRANKIE PARTS 1 AND 2 (with Richard Meltzer), CHALDEA/I DIG GIRLS, WHERE DEAD VOICES GATHER, NEVER TRUST A LOVING GOD and THE NICK TOSCHES READER.

Photo: Lorna Doone (LORNOGRAPHY)

A big screen version of Tosches’ third novel, IN THE HAND OF DANTE, is currently in the works with director Julian Schnabel and actor Johnny Depp.

Jefferson Market Library, erected as Jefferson Market Courthouse in 1874, is a New York City landmark building, designed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Clarke Withers. By 1927, the Court was used solely for trials of women. Thousands of female criminals and accused innocents faced the gavel here. Famous cases include the murder trial of architect Stanford White, which inspired the book The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing. Mae West’s 1927 “Sex” trial was set here.

Jefferson Market Library houses a massive collection of New York City historical files and serves the neighborhood, the city, and visitors worldwide as a branch library of the New York Public Library system, and yet with a personality all its own.

Kicks Books and Jefferson Market Library are delighted to present NICK TOSCHES in person and on fire at this free public after-hours reading.

Jefferson Market Library closes at 5 PM on Friday. Doors will open for the event at 8 PM, with the reading set to start at 9 PM.

------

SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR SATAN will be available for purchase at the event.
Also available will be TOSCHES, a limited promotional fragrance created specially for readers of SATAN.


Jefferson Market Library 425 Avenue of the Americas (at 10th St.) NYC

Kicks Books PO Box 646 Cooper Station NYC 10276

Contact Kicks Books

kicksbooks.com

Click these pick hits!

NYPL Interviews Author of SATAN

The Nick Tosches Society


In the Hand of Nick Tosches


More Tosches to acquire here... and there, too!

SUN RA • THIS PLANET IS DOOMED

KICKS BOOKS • DATE LINE • NYC


THIS PLANET IS DOOMED: THE SCIENCE FICTION POETRY OF SUN RA
Foreword by Amiri Baraka • Introduction by Bhob Stewart  (KB2)


T-minus 30... the countdown is on for the publication of a new hip-pocket paperback from the masterminds at KICKS BOOKS!


THIS PLANET IS DOOMED, which collects the science-fiction poetry of Sun Ra, explodes into the stratosphere on 7/7/11, an auspicious day for numerologists and doomsday enthusiasts alike. 7/7 coincides historically with the detonation of 20 kiloton Little Feller II, the first of the last four above ground nuclear warhead tests conducted in the US. 


The date will also evidence interstellar overdrive when Saturn, Pluto, Uranus and Venus form an intense and rare alignment known as the Cardinal Grand Cross.

THIS PLANET IS DOOMED serves up a traumatic torrent of future shock—deeply personal and critical commentary and unsettling advice to the people of Earth, who fail to acknowledge this planet’s role in the universe.

Poet Amiri Baraka's estimable foreword, together with science fiction historian Bhob Stewart’s revealing introduction, set the stage for the heavy dose of the real and the unreal, which are delivered in the pages of THIS PLANET IS DOOMED.

Poet Amiri Baraka’s estimable foreword, together with science fiction historian Bhob Stewart’s revealing introduction, set the stage for the heavy dose of the real and the unreal which are delivered in the pages of THIS PLANET IS DOOMED.


This book was collected from tape recordings and transcriptions culled from the Sun Ra Archives by director Michael Anderson, who worked with Norton records to compile a total of six albums—three collections of rare and unissued music recordings (on LP and CD) and another trio (vinyl only) of unissued spoken word Sun Ra.


THIS PLANET IS DOOMED was expanded with the addition of several key “lost” poems which appear here for the first time.


In conjuntion with the publication of THIS PLANET IS DOOMED, the Orchard has launched downloads of the vinyl spoken word albums, which are entitled STRANGE WORLDS IN MY MIND, THE SUB-DWELLERS, and THE OUTER DARKNESS.




An out-of-this-world promotional fragrance, SATURNIA, will be available in a limited edition of THIS PLANET IS DOOMED. This trend was set with the Andre Williams’ book SWEETS. All future KICKS BOOKS will issue with limited edition promotional sister scents.


THIS PLANET IS DOOMED will be available here on July 7.


For further information please contact press secretary Paige Turner.

VARIETY DIGS SWEETS!

Click here to Order SWEETS



"Sweets," a raw, hard-edged tome about streetwalkers, drug runners and other gutter-jumpers in the manner of paperback blaxploitationists Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines.... A funky renaissance man? No doubt... Norton's also given Andre his own fragrance line, Bait and Switch Perfume. A bottle costs 10 bucks and is accessorized with a plastic switchblade. Eat your heart out, Sean John.

- Christopher Morris, VARIETY

Read the VARIETY story here

ANDRE'S HOME STATE DIGS SWEETS

Tuscaloosa News story by Ben Windham:

Had I not got involved in ‘Sweets,’ things now probably would have been a lot different,” Williams says in his alligator tenor. “I probably wouldn’t have completed the time that I needed in rehab (at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital). Doing this thing kept me busy. Mentally.”

“Sweets” may have saved Williams’ life, but the story it tells is no thing of beauty. It’s a raw, unvarnished tale that minces no words.

It centers on a luscious 17-year-old African-American woman named Sweets. Six of her seven brothers are killed in a shootout between Black Panthers and the FBI, and she is unmarried and pregnant. Hank, the father of her unborn child, is slain in a drug deal gone bad, her surviving brother joins the Navy, and Sweets realizes she has to hustle to cope for herself and her unborn baby.

Williams wastes no time on sociology or psychobabble. Like a hit of speed, his narrative races brutally head, plunging into prostitution, drugs, lesbianism, murder, bribery and treachery...

Read Ben Windham's interview with Andre Williams

OFFBEAT DIGS SWEETS

Andrew Hamlin raves.. "I proclaim Williams’ true philosophical antecedent as Hadrurus arizonensis, the giant desert hairy scorpion. Like the beast, this book is hairy, hot, and thrives after the sun sets. Pages fly by without adjectives. Action plunges into time like a riptide through breaking waves. In terms of style (not philosophy), I proclaim Williams a follower of the Lascaux cave paintings. He wastes nothing. Every line, word, and letter perform a function."
read the whole review