Friday 20 December 2013

More Than a Feline

More Than a Feline (2013)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

An illustrated volume of cat stories and poems by cult author Rhys Hughes written over the past two decades and collected together for the very first time. Do you want to know what happened when Pushkin came to Shovekin; or how the sausage dog Bangers the Mash helped every cat in the world; or which grey cat drank fifty cups of tea one after the other? If so, you need to read More Than a Feline...

Contents:


Foreword * A Tale with the Title at the End * The Cat * Cat in a Balloon * Making a Feline * Cat in a Bathysphere * Cat o'Nine Tales * Autumn Cat * Rimsky's the Limit * Fat Cat Fable * Silky Salathiel * Lady, Tiger and Protozoon * The Cellar Door * Cat on a Unicycle * The Magic Kitten * Lunar Love Cats * The Pig Iron Mouse Dooms the Moon * The Cat that Got the Cream * The Big Lick * The Mice Will Play * Cats' Eyes * Alphabeticat * A Word in Your Shell-Like * Bangers the Mash * The Rescue * When Pushkin Came to Shovekin * Fifty Cups of Lady Grey


Buy from Lulu here.


Note: The pieces in blue are poems, not stories. 'A Tale with the Title at the End' is 'His Wife's Whiskers' retitled; and 'The Magic Kitten' is a rewritten version of 'The Magic Lamp'.

Saturday 2 November 2013

The Young Dictator

The Young Dictator (2013)
Pillar International Publishing

"Thanks to a strange set of circumstances, Jenny Khan wins the Carrington by-election and gets sent to Westminster as an MP. Partly because she holds the balance of power in a hung parliament – but mostly thanks to some magical help – she is able to launch a coup, overthrow democracy and declare herself a dictator. Her regime is opposed by the Middle Classes and a Civil War breaks out. Jenny is shocked to learn that the leaders of the rebels are her own Mum and Dad... Then it gets really weird... On this journey you will meet a man that has grown too old to die, a skeletal Queen, Skargills, shrinking continents, honest aliens, interstellar despots and a myriad of creatures and characters at right-angles to reality... This book is an hilarious, absurd, odd, idiosyncratic blast of an adventure. To be enjoyed by mischievous adults and clever children."

Contents:

Jenny Khan * Genghis Kan't * Caterpillar the Hun * Owl Scared of the Dark * The Cat That Chilled the Scene * Moonmoths, Umbrellas and Oranges

Buy from Amazon here.

Sunday 6 October 2013

The Just Not So Stories

The Just Not So Stories (2013)
The Exaggerated Press

"They said it just wasn’t so. But it was! Thirty stories exploring the bizarre and curiously absurd world of cult writer Rhys Hughes... Irony—Whimsy—Paradox... Aliens—Mad Scientists—Monsters... Living Bicycles... Trumpeters in Outer Space... Wordplay... Robots in Lingerie... That’s the least of it... Herein you will discover phenomena new not only to science but also to the imagination! Roll up! Roll up! But if you can’t roll, feel free to hop, prance, slither, gyrate, stride, tiptoe, slide or undulate in any style you choose!"

Contents:

The Mistake * The Pastel Whimsy * The Great Bicycle Migration * Personification * The Strongest Monster * The Mark of Cain, the Jeremy of Abel * Tuberculosis Bells * My Biological Prism * The Yeasty Rise and Half-Baked Fall of Lyndon Williams * The Leveller of Neptune * How to Lose Friends and Alienate People * The Grave Demeanour * The Ugliest Idol in Christendom * Message to Rosita * Lyndon: God * Pulpo * The Underwear Shop * My Crow Nation * Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World * The Censor * Aldrin’s the Buzzword * Butterbrow * The Blue Jewel Fruit * Mate in Pi * Bachelor of Voodoo * The Gunfight * The Tale That Never Got Told * The Sun Trap * The Dwarf Shortage * My Own Worst Anemone

Buy from Lulu here.

Tuesday 23 July 2013

The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange

The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange (2013)
Meteor House

"The world has never seen an aviator quite like Stringent Strange. Half man, half ape, half badly added fraction, he can fly anything with wings and many things without. Under the mentorship of the unorthodox genius Professor Tobias Crinkle, our hairy hero soon gets much more than he bargains for when he finds himself up against a fiendish Nazi plot to invade and conquer America before the war has even begun! Fortunately there exists an invention that can help him fight back against the warlike scoundrels, but the consequences of using it will propel him into even greater peril, into an alternative future where the themes and tropes of early magazine science fiction are menacingly real and coexist in perfect disharmony! Into a bracing reality where the only weapons he can rely on are the three special abnormalities he was born with… Come and join Stringent Strange in a stupendous, mysterious, inventive adventure set in a far-flung time When Pulps Collide!"

Wednesday 30 January 2013

Tallest Stories

Tallest Stories (2013)
Eibonvale Press

"If every tale told in a tavern is a tall story, then what happens when the entire universe becomes a tavern? It means that every story ever told is tall and therefore untrue, and this includes the true tales. They are all lies. But a lie is a concept only possible because it can be contrasted with truth: without its opposite concept it makes no sense at all. This implies one of two unlikely things, (a) the universe is not really a tavern, (b) there are other universes beyond this one where true stories exist. If you ever learn which is the correct answer to this riddle please let me know."

60 linked stories, 60 illustrations, 18 years in the making...

Taller Stories
Prologue; Rainbow’s End; Ghost Holiday; Those Wonderful Words; Learning to Fly; Learning to Fall; The Banshee; The Queen of Jazz; Anna and the Dragon; Three Friends; The Rake and the Fool; Goblin Sunrise; The Juggler; The Peat Fire; Knight on a Bear Mountain; Something About a Demon; The Furious Walnuts; The Illustrated Student; The Story with a Clever Title; The Silver Necks; Never Hug an Aardvark; Epilogue

More Taller Stories
In the Margins; The Wooden Salesman; Two Fat Men in a Very Thin Country; The Man Who Threw his Voice; The Sealed Room; The Masterpiece; The Hole Truth: a Lie; Entropy; The Time Tunnel Orchid; The Golden Fleas; The West Pole; Islands in the Bathtub; Billion World Boat; The Smutty Tamarinds; A Curry in Camelot; Encore

Last Taller Stories
The Surface Area of a Ghost’s Wanderings; Degrees of Separation; The Folded Page; Milk and Ladders; Niddala; The Juice of Days; The Kissable Climes; But it Pours; The Tallest Midget; The Man who Gargled with Gargoyle Juice; The Minotaur in Pamplona; Wood for the Trees; The Violation; Oaths; Chianti’s Inferno; Gaspar Jangle’s Séance; The Urban Freckle; Corneropolis; The Six Sentinels; The Mirror in the Looking Glass; Trombonhomie; Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World; Anton Arctic and the Conquest of the Scottish Pole; The Most Boring Story

Afterword