Aimee Bender

The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook is a collection of personal, food-related stories with recipes from 76 contemporary artists and writers inspired by a book from 1961, The (original) Artists' & Writers' Cookbook In The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook, Anthony Doerr lures us out into the wild to find huckleberries and happiness. Neil Gaiman makes a perfectly eerie cheese omelet while Ed Ruscha associates his cactus omelet with “a time of doom.” Yiyun Li eats rations in Beijing while Edwidge Danticat prepares a soup to celebrate freedom. Nelson DeMille reminisces about a meal he ate 40 years ago when serving in Vietnam; Kamrooz Aram recalls childhood “picnics” in his basement in Tehran during air raids. Sanford Biggers updates a soul food classic—“something tasty to lessen the bitter taste of consistent, systematic oppression.” Paul Muldoon and Aimee Bender conjure food-related apocalyptic visions. Marina Abramović shares a dish best consumed on top of a volcano, Elissa Schappell dreams of playing Serge Gainsbourg records to snails, and Padgett Powell tastes a dish that reverses time and space. Daniel Wallace woos with an eggplant sandwich. Francesca Lia Block tells us how to fall in love. The essays are at turns comedic and heart-wrenching, personal and apocalyptic, with recipes that are enchanting to read and recreate. One part cookbook and one part intimate self-portrait, The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook is a portal into the kitchens and personal lives of an unmatched collection of contemporary artists and writers.

Short stories capture the lives of such offbeat characters as a delusional schizophrenic, an egg donor with second thoughts, and a young girl who discovers a portal to another, ghostly world.

A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips? Aimee Bender's stories portray a world twisted on its axis, a place of unconvention that resembles nothing so much as real life, in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. From the first line of each tale she lets us know she is telling a story, but the moral is never quite what we expect. Bender's prose is glorious: musical and colloquial, inimitable and heartrending. Here are stories of men and women whose lives are shaped--and sometimes twisted--by the power of extraordinary desires, erotic and otherwise. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is the debut of a major American writer. From the publisher

A Vintage Contemporaries Original Includes: Jim Shepard's "Tedford and the Megalodon" Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter" Dan Chaon's "The Bees" Kelly Link's "Catskin" Elmore Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman" Carol Emshwiller's "The General" Neil Gaiman's "Closing Time" Nick Hornby's "Otherwise Pandemonium" Stephen King's "The Tale of Gray Dick" Michael Crichton's "Blood Doesn't Come Out" Laurie King's "Weaving the Dark" Chris Offutt's "Chuck's Bucket" Dave Eggers's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" Michael Moorcock's "The Case of the Nazi Canary" Aimee Bender's "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers" Harlan Ellison's "Goodbye to All That" Karen Joy Fowler's "Private Grave 9" Rick Moody's "The Albertine Notes" Michael Chabon's "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance" Sherman Alexie's "Ghost Dance" From the Trade Paperback edition.

Being able to taste people's emotions in food may at first be horrifying. But young, unassuming Rose Edelstein grows up learning to harness her gift as she becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

Stories about people searching for connection through love, sex, and family -- while navigating the often painful realities of their lives. A traumatic event unfolds when a girl with flowing hair of golden wheat appears in an apple orchard, where a group of people await her. A woman plays out a prostitution fantasy with her husband and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life. An ugly woman marries an ogre and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children. Two sisters travel deep into Malaysia, where one learns the art of mending tigers who have been ripped to shreds.

Mona Gray, the second-grade math teacher who has always specialized in quitting, has such a love for numbers and their effect on her life, and then the new science teacher threatens her "strange and tidy universe ... [with] love, the supreme disorder."--Jacket.

Aimee Bender's Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place WHERE a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman's children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.From the Hardcover edition.

Maggie May (1981) / Lester Bangs, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton -- The National Anthem / Jonathan Lethem, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Speeding motorcycle" by Daniel Johnston as performed by Yo La Tengo -- Blue guitar / Amanda Davis, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Blue guitar" by the Cowboy Junkies -- Untitled / JT LeRoy, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters -- Dirty mouth / Tom Perrotta, inspired by the music and lyrics from "I won't back down" by Tom Petty -- Hallelujah / Tanker Dane, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen as performed by Jeff Buckley -- Why go / Lisa Tucker, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Why go" by Pearl Jam -- All the security guards by name / Aimee Bender, inspired by the music and lyrics from "The lobby" by Jane Siberry -- She once had me / Anthony DeCurtis, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Norwegian wood (This bird has flown)" by the Beatles -- Milestones / Hannah Tinti, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Milestones" by Miles Davis -- Death in the alt-country / Neal Pollack, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Mama tried" by Merle Haggard -- I shot the sheriff / Touré, inspired by the music and lyrics from "I shot the sheriff" by Bob Marley -- A simple explanation of the afterlife / Victor LaValle, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Aluminum" by the White Stripes -- The eternal Helen / Heidi Julavits, inspired by the music and lyrics from "I found a reason" by the Velvet Underground as performed by Cat Power -- Swampthroat / Arthur Bradford, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Highway to hell" by AC/DC -- Bouncing / Jennifer Belle, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Graceland" by Paul Simon -- Graffiti monk / Ernesto Quiñonez, inspired by the music and lyrics from "The message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five -- Smoking inside / Darin Strauss, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Remedy" by the Black Crowes -- The system / Judy Budnitz, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Way down in the hole" by Tom Waits -- Four last songs / David Ebershoff, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Four last songs" by Herman Hesse and composer Richard Strauss -- Dying on the vine / Elissa Shappell, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Dying on the vine" by John Cale -- Rio / Zev Borow, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Rio" by Duran Duran -- King Heroin / Nelson George, inspired by the music and lyrics from "King Heroin" by James Brown -- The bodies of boys / Julianna Baggott, inspired by the music and lyrics from "Spirit in the night" by Bruce Springsteen.