Books published by Pelekinesis

With dark humor, the recurring characters in Roberta Allen's stories see themselves and others through distorting mirrors. The pain of never quite connecting is thrown into shadow as they go about their everyday lives and try to recapture their youth.

Title printed on volume in square brackets.

These Footprints in Wet Cement are just that: stories some experienced, some homespun, some dredged from the fertile detritus of dreams; impressions gathered and ruminations fermented over the past decade or so. Straddling the tenuous borderline between the narrative and the poetic, they are all the product of a pressed aesthetic.

Once upon a time in a faraway land, an heir to the throne was born. The King has a son to follow in his footsteps. But life might not be quite as it appears for this Royal Family. All will be revealed on their child's 16th birthday. Family love triumphs over doubt and together they grow stronger.Join this Royal Family on the path to discovery, acceptance and celebration.

The Anarchist's Girlfriend was developed in the art bars of late 1970's New York. Inspired by Dostoyevsky's divine "Idiot," the AG is a clairvoyant Brooklyn Go-Go Girl who designs clothes of the future. Delightfully retro and powerfully prescient, the novel satirizes New York's bohemian underground and the America of any time.

The poems in Surf Music are all pretty short, and some of them are funny. Their subjects include being at the beach, encounters with plants & animals large and small, rain, machines, rocks, and sunlight.

There's a thin line between memoir and fiction, and Peter Cherches walks it in Autobiography Without Words. We follow the main character through the adventures of life, from childhood crimes and punishments to trips to India and Mars. This book will break your heart, mess with your head and have you rolling on the floor, all at once.

"Trapped in the body of boy detective extraordinaire Timmy Hightower, Jesus Christ is forced by his father to solve mysteries no mortal should ever solve. With the help of Timmy's uncle, a fourth generation circus knife thrower/acquitted serial killer Leopold Franz, they search for answers and for a way home"--Back cover.

"Emancipated from her abusive parents at fourteen and graduating high school early the following year, Jex lives alone and can't quite convince herself to go to college. Instead, she spends her days quietly tending to her job as a librarian's assistant, and her nights tagging walls and running from cops. In between, she uses her photographic memory and encyclopedic knowledge of medicine to help ease the pain of the disenfranchised dwellers of L.A.'s dark nights, daring to venture where even some trauma doctors fear to go. Trying to cope as a not-quite-adult in a massively adult world, Jex may not be able to save herself, but she is determined to at least save the world."--Amazon.

Tension brews as a battle ensues within your mind. The Tramples and Trembles come face to face. These tricky types of Tanglelows know how to create a bit of chaos. Travel along the Tanglelows' trail and work towards keeping our worries, doubts, and fears at bay.

David Scott Ewers brings his mastery of the intricately woven tale to the Ultimate Resort, his second novel.

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Allen Callaci is a librarian, rock and roll singer, and heart transplant recipient. HEART LIKE A STARFISH is his account of that death-defying journey and the healing that follows for both himself and those around him. With illustrations by the author and beautiful cover art by Amy Maloof, this wonderfully chaotic tale is told in a non-linear style that manages to convey the frenetic events and emotions while still embracing the strength and care and security all around. A portion of the proceeds of the book will be donated to Cedars- Sinai Heart Research Institute where the procedure was performed.

This "family book" is for adults and mixed age groups of children. Tales of The Mer Family Onyx explores the worlds of Mer, through the magical household of Neptune and Glendora, stewards of the seas and their Mer Children who escape their father's shadow and make themselves proud. Can be read to younger children and enjoyed by those 8 to 11.

Fiction. Selena Chambers' debut collection guides readers out of space and time and through genre and mythos to explore the microcosmic horrors of identity, existence, and will in the face of the world's adamant calls for submission. Victorian tourists take a virtual trip through their (and the Ottoman empire's) ideal Orient; a teenage girl learns about independence and battle of the bands, all while caring for her mesmerized, dead mother; a failed Beat poet goes over the edge while exploring the long-abandoned Government Lethal Chambers. Visceral, evocative, and with a distinct style that is both vintage and fresh, CALLS FOR SUBMISSION introduces a glowing, new writer of the weird and strange.

Most of the pieces in "Rain After Midnight" can be thought of as filmic, as "long story short." There are four distinct sets of stories: One set has to do with film, cinema, movies; a second springs from thinking about writing, what is involved; pieces connected with England make a third grouping; and the fourth is the past, that great well.

David Allen's second collection of newspaper columns, this volume spanning his first 4 years in California, beginning in 1997 when he started at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

"The Underwater Typewriter" immerses us in the ritual of finding and expressing voice, bestowed by grace, in the face of cruelty, chance, betrayal and loss. It arrives as a collection of weathered shards, gathered and turned, through which light and by implication love, bent and at times nearly occluded, passes kaleidoscopically. The Underwater Typewriter's shifting patterns reveal the variety and range demanded of a poet traversing brutal terrain, tempted by but refusing bitterness. Zegans' poetry inverts Browning, finding human possibility in the broken, and discovers life beyond Joseph Cornell's wistful memory compiled in the collage of remaindered things. Listen closely as you read, for sound travels great distances under water.

Fiction. The fourteen stories in HEIBERG'S TWITCH were not selected for their resemblance to one another, but for their differences in character, tone, and form. The aim is to deploy imagination and invention to furnish tales about the variety of human conditions, the scope of thought, the diversity of experience. Settings range from a Scandinavian island to ancient Chinese courts, from the streets of Hyde Park in Boston to the galleries of midtown Manhattan, from Southern California to Eastern Europe, from Africa to South America--in one story, both continents at once. The stories are populated by schoolboys and poets, dictators and delinquents, college girls and composers, businessmen and scientists. Each tale conjures its own world, has its own language, aims to illuminate a distinct experience, a unique situation. Like human life, the stories in HEIBERG'S TWITCH are comic sad, pathetic, perplexing, and tragic.

Fiction. STUMBLING OUT THE STABLE is an irreverent trip down the turbulent backroads of early adulthood. Seamus, a college student with aspirations to hitch hike aimlessly after graduation, grows increasingly unsettled with the vagueness of the future. His friend Jamie, on the other hand, revels in its unpredictability. Together, they party with colorful characters, raise hell at their anarchistic workplace, and wax philosophic about life's hidden glitches. After a series of accidents intersect their lives, the boys stumble to find their footing as it becomes clear that not everything in life can be avoided.

Fiction. California Interest. A dark, multi-generational drama that follows three interwoven stories for nearly a century. The first tale begins in 1873, in the deserts that reach into Mexico where an outlaw and his daughter face crooked lawmen, horse thieves, a Padre named David, and a bloodthirsty posse. Another story unfolds in Los Angeles, establishing itself in 1923 before making its way through 1947, with an industrialist, a socialite, their daughter Lotus, and everyone from pioneering policewoman Minnie Barton to Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and her Angelus Temple. The third and final story takes place in 1970 where hippy-hating Jay takes his young daughter on a desperate journey through the near-dead remains of a defunct counter-culture to a final confrontation with his guru father in the mountains of Colorado. Each story is full of surprises that zig-zag across time and place and weave through history with imagination and intrigue.

FOR LACK of DIAMOND YEARS is an idiosyncratic collection of short poems - most under 20 lines - where questions lead the way. The poems are a mixed set of free verse, unabashed counting forms like the Hay(na)ku and the Elfchen, and a very minimalist version of John Cage''s mesostic form, along with a small number of poems based on colors, and a few that steal freely from traditional American songs. But at its heart, For Lack of Diamond Years is a quixotic narration between realms of being - from the quotidian into the sometimes numinous, sometimes murky realm of the unknown/unknown, and on into a kind of revamped transcendental. There is a thread of praise that runs throughout - an embrace of the joys and sorrows of thinking and feeling, of love and loss.

"A cautionary tale of eroticism, innocence and corruption, and trickery in 137 drawings"--Cover.

This powerful character-driven tale follows Larry Simmons through several life-changing events as 1957 looms on the horizon. Should he continue his athletic aspirations? Will he be inspired by more poetry? What does high school mean to him? And what is happening with Cameron Mitchell?

Art. BUGS OF THE FUTURE PRIMITIVE: A COLOURING BOOK, a fine art colouring book from artist Ian Pyper, features Future Primitive drawings of bugs in various evolutionary and transformative states, collectively and individually, rendered beautifully in black and white and awaiting their metamorphosis into vibrant works to hang upon the wall.

16 year old Elgin Marble has had enough of a world that is decidedly vertical. When his father, an upstanding elevator man, is marked for disposal, Elgin joins an underground group called the Crabs. This illicit group tirelessly digs tunnels in the hope of one day breaking through to the outside. But who are the Crabs, and can they be trusted? Elgin's mother, Ellen, is worried sick about her son. The ruthless school principal, Mr. Orion, warns her that Elgin is in big trouble and blackmails her for sexual favors. Together they go underground to search for the boy. Meanwhile, agents of the IVT (Institute for Vertical Thinking) are also hot on his trail, and the Crabs are feeling the heat.