Books by Aimee Bender

_______________________________On the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the slice.

She drinks it before the babysitter can see. Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents - her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains.

Following in the footsteps of the late great Lester Bangs -- the most revered and irreverent of rock 'n' roll critics -- twenty-four celebrated writers have penned stories inspired by great songs. Just as Bangs cast new light on a Rod Stewart classic with his story "e;Maggie May,"e; about a wholly unexpected connection between an impressionable young man and an aging, alcoholic hooker, the diverse, electrifying stories here use songs as a springboard for a form dubbed the lit riff. Alongside Bangs's classic work, you'll find stories by J.T. LeRoy, who puts a recovering teenage drug abuser in a dentist's chair with nothing but the Foo Fighters's "e;Everlong"e; -- blaring through the P.A. -- to fight the pain; Jonathan Lethem, whose narrator looks back on his lost innocence just as an extramarital affair careens to an end -- this to the tune "e;Speeding Motorcycle"e; as recorded by Yo La Tengo; and Jennifer Belle, who envisions a prequel to Paul Simon's "e;Graceland"e; -- one that takes place at a children's birthday party replete with a real live kangaroo. With original contributions from Tom Perrotta, Nelson George, Amanda Davis, Lisa Tucker, Aimee Bender, Darin Strauss, and many more -- riffing on everyone from Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen to the White Stripes, Cat Power, and Bob Marley -- this is both an astounding collection of short stories and an extraordinary experiment in words and music. Soundtrack available from Saturation Acres Music & Recording Co.

A woman plays out a prostitution fantasy with her husband in 'The Red Ribbon' and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life. An ugly woman marries an ogre in 'The Devouring' and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children.

In Willful Creatures Aimee Bender takes us on a journey to a fantastical world in which authentic love blossoms.

In The Girl in the Flammable Skirt Aimee Bender has created a world where nothing is quite as it seems. These stories of men and women whose lives are shaped and sometimes twisted by the power of extraordinary desires take us to a place far beyond the imagination.

When Mona Gray is ten, her father contracts a mysterious illness. When she becomes a maths teacher, Mona delights her pupils by encouraging them to find objects that take the form of numbers.