Sherman Alexie

The noted legal expert and best-selling author of The Case for Israel looks at the diverse ways in which the religious right has been abusing the Declaration of Independence in an effort to Christianize America, countering arguments that the document was founded on biblical law and providing a case to disprove a grave distortion of one of America's most important documents.

Before the war-torn world of A Dewdrop Away, there existed a different world, a world where magic was more than a myth. Young Tiallin is part of this world, and as far as he knows, his colony is the only one of its kind left in Arborand. None of the other squirrel races seem to want anything to do with the magic-wielding, aloof white squirrels. To honor his eleventh season, Tiallin is awarded the fortune of working for blind King Sirius, who has grown paranoid due to the mysterious fate of the last white king. When Tiallin’s job becomes to investigate the king’s suspicions, he finds he knows even less about his own colony than he thought. Can Tiallin trust anyone when everyone, including his own family, seems to harbor their own secrets? Meanwhile, Edelle, a dutiful fox squirrel from a close knit community, embarks on a journey to save her colony from a crippling and puzzling famine, and Lute, a mixed breed misfit and former thief, is on the run from his second home and a crime he insists he didn’t commit. What happens when the destinies of three very different squirrels collide and intertwine and they are simultaneously forced to face the truth about themselves and the danger that has been patiently stalking them all from the beginning?

"The subject of speed is so innately intimidating yet so undeniably present that it begs to be written about. It is no secret that the drug has historically tuned up the lives of writers, including Jack Kerouac, Susan Sontag, Philip K. Dick, and scores more. Too rarely, though, has it been written about, and its jolt to the bones of the American landscape continues to peak. Akashic Books dares to bring forth the first contemporary collection of all new literary short fiction on the drug from an array of today's most compelling and respected authors. These are no stereotypical tales of tweakers--the element of crime and the bleary-eyed, shaky zombies at dawn are here right alongside heart-wrenching narratives of everyday people, good intentions gone terribly awry, the skewed American Dream going up in flames, and even some accounts of pure joy"--

Presents selections of mainstream and alternative American literatue including both fiction and nonfiction, that discuss a broad spectrum of subjects.

From the Publisher: In this first full collection in nine years, Alexie's poems and prose show his celebrated passion and wit while also exploring new directions. Novelist, storyteller and performer, he won the National Book Award for his YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. His work has been praised throughout the world, but the bedrock remains what The New York Times Book Review said of his very first book: "Mr. Alexie's is one of the major lyric voices of our time."

Collection of stories about Native Americans who find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heart-rending, tragic, sometimes wondrous moments of being that test their loyalties, their capacities, and their notions of who they are and who they love.

Presents a literary memoir of poems and essays that reflect on the author's complicated relationship with his mother and his disadvantaged childhood on a Native American reservation.

A collection of poems reveals the spirit of Native American resistance, determination, and sovereignty.

A collection of short stories includes the title story, in which a famous writer, who just learned he may have a brain tumor, must decide how to care for his distant, American Indian father who is slowly dying.

"In these stories, we meet the kinds of American Indians we rarely see in literature - the upper and middle class, the professionals and white-collar workers, the bureaucrats and poets, falling in and out of love and wondering if they will make their way home. A Spokane Indian journalist transplanted from the reservation to the city picks up a hitchhiker, a Lummi boxer looking to take on the toughest Indian in the world. A Spokane son waits for his diabetic father to return from the hospital, listening to his father's friends argue over Jesus' carpentry skills as they build a wheelchair ramp. An estranged interracial couple, separated in the midst of a traffic accident, rediscover their love for each other. A white drifter holds up an International House of Pancakes, demanding a dollar per customer and someone to love, and emerges with forty-two dollars and an overweight Indian he dubs Salmon Boy."--BOOK JACKET.

Poetry. Native American Studies. "One of the major lyric voices of our time" (NY Times Book Review), winner of the National Book Award, Alexie publishes his first new collection of poetry and short prose in six years.

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.

A bittersweet comedy about two young Native-Americans, Victor and Thomas, who leave their small town for an adventure in self-discovery.

In 1931, Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil, receiving legendary blues skills in return. He went on to record only twenty-nine songs before being murdered on August 16, 1938. In 1992, however, Johnson suddenly appears on the Spokane Indian Reservation and meets Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the misfit storyteller of the Spokane Tribe. So begins Reservation Blues, the mythic and musical tale of Coyote Springs, an all-Indian Catholic rock-and-roll band. With Thomas Builds-the-Fire as lead singer, Victor Joseph and Junior Polatkin on lead guitar and drums, and Chess and Checkers Warm Water on vocals, Coyote Springs takes their "four-and-a-half-chord rock and blues" to reservation bars, small town taverns, and the urban landscapes of Seattle and Manhattan. Sherman Alexie brilliantly mixes narrative, newspaper excerpts, songs, journal entries, visions, radio interviews, and dreams to explore the effects of Christianity on Native Americans in the late twentieth century. More important, he examines cultural assimilation's impact on the relationship between Indian women and Indian men. Reservation Blues is a painful, humorous, and ultimately redemptive symphony about God and indifference, faith and alcoholism, family and hunger, sex and death.