Bluesiana Snake Festival
A Novel
AUBREY BART

 “. . . Probably many a road scholar would testify this place makes good leavin’ and better comin’ back to . . . Place puts a hold on your soul, man, these streets call you like an old song . . .” So starts The Bluesiana Snake Festival as Hidden Dave Crossway, a New Orleans street sweeper, celebrates the city in its pre-Katrina skin. With the night of the “snake moon” as the backdrop, we experience the lives, languages, and rhythms of the French Quarter, an unexpected urban idyll. A novel about the joy and beauty of life in the depths, the momentum and narrative heart isn’t driven by a plot—it’s about the trance. “It’s all about hearing the music.”

"Covering a single (pre-Katrina) night, Bart's story finds a full moon rising over a population busting at the seams; colorful characters such as Hidden Davey Crossway, Shushubaby, and Big Jim Bullshit, all city street sweepers, act as lenses through which readers explore the Big Easy's late-night backstreets in vivid, urine-stained detail . . . Bart's familiarity with the quarter shines." —Publishers Weekly

COUNTERPOINT | 978-1-58243-577-0 | Trade Paper | $14.95

Flying to America
45 More Stories
DONALD BARTHELME
EDITED AND WITH A PREFACE BY KIM HERZINGER

Donald Barthelme was one of the most influential and inventive writers of the 20th century. In this volume of unpublished and previously uncollected stories, he transforms the absurd into the real in his usual epiphanic and engaging style. Delving into such themes as the perils of the unfulfilled existence and the relationships among politics, sex, art, and life, this collection will delight both old fans and new readers.

COUNTERPOINT | 978-1-58243-443-8 | Trade Paper | $15.95

The Teachings of Don B.
Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme
DONALD BARTHELME
EDITED BY KIM HERZINGER | INTRODUCTION BY THOMAS PYNCHON

Sixty-three of Barthelme’s rare or previously uncollected shorter works—including satires, plays, and collages—have been assembled in this gleeful, melancholy, erudite, and wonderfully subversive volume. The Teachings of Don B. is a literary testament cum time bomb with the power to blast any reader into an altered state of consciousness.

COUNTERPOINT | 978-1-59376-174-5 | Trade Paper | $15.95

Whitefoot
A Story from the Center of the World
WENDELL BERRY
ILLUSTRATED BY DAVIS TE SELLE

Wendell Berry offers the fable of Whitefoot, a mouse who lives at the edge of the woods, at what she believes to be the center of the world. Whitefoot’s great discovery of the universe around her, and her own ability to survive within it, is a lesson that’s sure to resonate with children and adults alike.

COUNTERPOINT | 978-1-58243-432-2 | Cloth | $22.00

Ghosted
SHAUGHNESSY BISHOP-STALL

Growing up, Mason Dubisee had a hundred future selves: Jedi. Cowboy. Jedi-cowboy. But at thirty, he must finally face the truth: He’s a drug-addled drifter, an aspiring novelist unable to move beyond lists of titles and themes. Ghosted is a gritty literary thriller, a black comedy, a high-stakes poker caper, an urban cowboy adventure, and a love story.

soft skull press | 978-1-59376-295-7 | TRADE PAPER original | $15.95 

Fight Scenes
GREG BOTTOMS
ILLUSTRATED BY DAVID POWELL

In an intricately linked series of short, poetic tales set in a 1983 suburb, Greg Bottoms portrays his life as one of two “at-risk” twelve-year-old boys as they learn how to be—and what it means to be—men. By turns funny, disquieting, and moving, Fight Scenes is an unsparing look at juvenile disaffection and the dark side of white, working-class masculinity.

COUNTERPOINT | 978-1-59376-129-5 | Cloth | $20.00

The Springs of Affection
Stories of Dublin
MAEVE BRENNAN

A collection of short stories by one of The New Yorker’s most celebrated writers that embraces the breadth and sorrow of love across three Dublin families.

“Remarkable . . . Fiction of the highest order, controlled, wise, and fearless. Not many writers go this deep or far from home.” —The Nation

“Wide-ranging, savage, poignant . . . full of small miracles.” —New York Times Book Review

COUNTERPOINT | 978-1-58243-500-8 | Trade Paper | $15.95

Doubles
A Novel
Nic Brown

Slow Smith is in a slump. He's a professional tennis player stuck in his hometown, serving to an empty court. His wife is in a coma and he’s afraid he’s to blame. Left behind are her Polaroids, obsessive daily records of their life together. Meanwhile Kaz, Slow's lifelong doubles partner, is traveling the world while playing with someone new. Then one afternoon his old coach Manny appears in a dumpy Fiat convertible and persuades Slow to get in. When they return to Forest Hills—the site of a six-year winning streak—they reunite with old friends who call up long-buried desires and reveal a secret that threatens to destroy Slow’s marriage as well as his friendship with Kaz.

“Comedic sexual escapades, tender sciences of love and loss—this work from the author of the critically acclaimed Floodmarkers, a series of interconnected stories, has it all . . . This tale of contemporary life should resonant with a popular audience. Brown may be the John Updike for a new generation.” —Library Journal (starred review)

COUNTERPOINT | 978-1-58243-507-7 | Trade Paper | $15.95

Floodmarkers
NIC BROWN

Lystra, North Carolina. A fictional town full of very real people who survive the attack of Hurricane Hugo and then find their bearings in the aftermath—often in wild and hilarious ways.

“Nic Brown is the most talented new writer I’ve come across . . . Brown’s prose is beautiful and his empathy and insight into the human condition is breathtaking.” —Jonathan Ames

COUNTERPOINT | 978-1-58243-506-0 | Trade Paper | $14.95