MICE 1961, the new novel by Stacey Levine. Levine’s fiction has been hailed by Kelly Link as “unlike anything else . . . peculiar, vivid, preternaturally alert to the strangeness of the human condition,” and Garielle Lutz has written: “Mice 1961 is as enchanting a novel—and as excitingly original, as tunefully phrased, and as discomposingly hilarious—as anything I can ever hope to read. Few writers are ever this alive to language and this tender toward the lot of the vividly different among us. I am in awe.” Set in southern Florida at the peak of Cold War hysteria, Mice 1961 is a powerful meditation on belonging and separateness, conformity and otherness.

Mark Swartz’s THE MUSIC NEVER DIED (August 2024) is a collection of irreverent and inventive stories that riff on rock and rap mythology, with illustrations by Jeb Loy Nichols. Swartz imagines what might have happened to Biggie, Amy, Jimi, Janis, Lil Peep, Gram, and more if their untimely deaths had been averted, or somehow hadn't been the end of their lives. More details here.
Our Dark Passage imprint completes its reissue of Australian queen of crime June Wright’s classic mysteries with MAKE-UP FOR MURDER, the third in her series featuring the incomparable nun-detective Mother Paul (September 2024).
WAITING AT THE BAR: MEKONS SCRAPBOOK 1977-81 (early 2025) is an autobiography in words and images of the legendary art-punk band’s early years, collecting writing by various Mekons about their early years and first recordings along with around 100 photographs and flyers. It also features contributions from longtime musical comrades such as Jon King (Gang of Four), as well as filmmaker Adam Curtis, who put together for this book a documentary sequence of still images from the weeks in 1977 when the Mekons first took shape.

THE BOOK OF UNCONFORMITIES by Hugh Raffles was named the winner of the 2023 J. J. Staley Prize, awarded by the School for Advanced Research for “a book that exemplifies outstanding scholarship and writing in anthropology . . . and adds new dimensions to our understanding of the human species.” Raffles is also to receive one of the 2024 Literature Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Book of Uncomformities has been widely praised—hailed, for example, as a “mesmerizing, genre-melding work of history, memoir, anthropology, travel, and time travel” by the New York Review of Books, as “an astonishing book, both copious and profound” by Kathleen Jamie in the New Statesman, and “one of the most mysterious books I’ve ever read . . . a dense, dark star” by Parul Sehgal in the New York Times.

MAYBE THE PEOPLE WOULD BE THE TIMES, the latest collection from Lucy Sante, shortlisted for a 2021 PEN/America Award.

Our upstart sibling, THE VISIBLE SPECTRUM, launched in 2020 with a mix of new work and cult classic reprints. The first ten titles include an expanded new edition of Stranded, Clinton Walker’s epic account of Australian underground music; Ultrazone, a William Burroughs ghost story set in Tangier, by Mark Terrill and Francis Poole; Czech poet Tereza Riedlbauchová’s Paris Notebook; a graphic novel satire on TV sitcoms and their obsessive fans, Persiflage by David Nichols; the US debut of The Painting and the City, a fantastical novel of the New York art world by Robert Freeman Wexler; an expanded edition of Lucy Sante’s revelatory Folk Photography, on the early 20th-century phenomenon of the real-photo postcard, and Susan Compo’s two collections of goth and punk stories from the 1980s, Life After Death and Malingering.

Now Is the Time to Invent: Reports from the Indie-Rock Revolution - an anthology of writing and photography drawn from the pages of cult 80s/90s music zine Puncture
Great Balls of Doubt: poems by Mark Terrill with illustrations by Jon Langford
Amaze Your Friends, a fresh instalment of Peter Doyle's award-winning crime series featuring Billy Glasheen, Sydney's most irresistible crook
Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years, by Robert Dean Lurie: the most detailed account to date of the band’s formative years, with previously undocumented stories that cast a fresh light on their story
David Nichols's history of Australian rock and pop music, DIG! From the Missing Links to the Triffids by way of the Bee Gees, Easybeats, Skyhooks, AC/DC, and many more, cult heroes as well as international stars, these 600 pages cover the territory with Nichols's unique wit and flair.
Arthur Nersesian's neo-noir Manhattan crime novel, Gladyss of the Hunt

VERSE CHORUS PRESS

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