Chemo Cat Cathy Nilon Price: $9.95 ISBN: 978-0-9791921-4-2 Author and Illustrator Cathy Nilon has created the book that she wished had been available to share with her young son when she was first diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer in the fall of 2004. There were no programs available for his age group; the family had no mental health coverage to help deal with the trauma. Cathy decided to write one, and began sketching while still bald. Chemo Cat is the account of the pain-filled journey of her family, told in the voice of her son Luca who was four years old at the time. This book hopes to bridge the gap for families with children as to how to deal with the news of this awful illness. Luca and Mama cat, aka Cat-Cat, personified as a family of cats, take you through the emotions and realities of that most difficult time. It is meant to open a dialog with children without adding to their fears. It explains the changes they can expect when their mother loses her hair and is sick from chemotherapy and can't be with them all the time. The story is real and all too common. It should prove also, to be emotionally helpful for the child and the whole family. "I was saddest by far and sometimes would shout or just sit on my floor and cry my eyes out. I was tired of kids who had healthier moms..." The author's net proceeds will be donated to Living Beyond Breast Cancer.

Chinese Checkers Mario Bellatin Price: $16.00 ISBN: 978-0-9776162-9-9 Three modern, edgy and superb stories by famous Mexican author Mario Bellatin--Chinese Checkers, Hero Dogs and My Skin Luminous--translated by Cooper Renner.   This, his first book to appear in English, promises us an fascinating, unsettling and important new voice in modern writing.  In these stories the narrator speaks rationally, cleanly, carefully, with a sense of precision and progression.  But the life he describes is not rational, clean precise or progressive.  His focus seems to be on exploring the ins and outs of specific situations. He is not plot-driven, nor do his characterizations seem to function in the normal way -- that is, to create a sympathetic character whom the author leads through some sort of growth process to a sort of epiphany. Any given one of his sentences, isolated from its context, might seem like an ordinary narrative sentence in a traditional work. Bellatin's contexts don't work that way: situations and thought repeat and recur in an apparently random fashion; he refuses to orchestrate climaxes and artificial excitements, even where a conventional writer would immediately do so.  Illustrated with photographs by the author.

Collaborations Gene Troyer Price: $14.95 ISBN: 978-0-9791921-3-5 Collaborative poetry in the English language has always been a little like the poor relative invited to the banquet as a charitable gesture - something of an afterthought and not taken very seriously. Thus, it is poetry that is usually available only in small literary journals and chapbooks, and must be sought out with some dedication by those with an interest. Collaborations offers an eclectic mix of poetry drawn from other publications and gathered together for the first time. While books like this are scarce, collaborative poetry is indeed alive, robust, and flourishing, especially on the internet in blogs and mass or collaborative poetry web sites like The Spoonbill Generator. Contributors: Lee Ballentine, Ted Berrigan, Bruce Boston, Ray Bradbury, Clark Coolidge, Oliver de la Paz, Tom Disch, Denise Dumars, Roger Dutcher, Larry Fagin, Robert Frazier, Sarah Gambito, Marilyn Hacker, Ron Horning, Andrew Joron, Richard Kostelanetz, Joseph Legaspi, David Lehman, Michael Marsh, Todd Mecklem, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ron Padgett, Jon Pineda, Charles Platt, Jonathan Vos Post, Kathryn Rantala, Barbara Reyes, Patrick Rosal, The Spoonbill Generator, Steve Sneyd, W. Gregory Stewart, Gene van Troyer, T. Winter-Damon

The Damsel Fly and Other Stories Barbara Kremen Price: $14.95 ISBN: 978-0-9776162-0-6 A widower filches an identity and finds himself enthralled by a damselfly; a young couple on honeymoon in the Alps are lured to implacable heights; an old man, confused and alone, is adrift in the storied streets of an ancient city… Invoking a strong sense of place, Barbara Kremen explores in three stories themes of inquirers and voyeurs; the relationship of species, insect and human; the dispossession of age; and the beauties and distortions of the imagination.  Novelist and critic Frank Lentricchia, the Katharine Everett Gilbert Professor of Literature and Theater Studies at Duke University, firmly places the author in the company of the small American "pantheon of unpredictably original writers."  Reproductions of original collages by artist Irwin Kremen accompany the three stories.