We know you've really been wondering what the interior of Love and Rockets: The Covers looks like... how it's laid out, what the recoloring looks like, what it includes. This PDF excerpt should answer your questions, particularly the Editor's Note:

It's a spectacular and dee-luxe production and we want to be sure we're getting everything just right at the printer, so we're taking a little extra time with it and it's now scheduled for September release. Here's a sample of the clear overlay that wraps around the front cover:

Read the first three chapters of In Case We Die by Danny Bland below or here. (Note that there is NSFW material.) We'll wait...

OK, now that you're hooked, pre-order the book. First taste is free. (You'll also get a free download of the full audiobook when it's released, as a bonus for ordering direct from us. Details TK.)

It's our great pleasure to add another member of the fabulous Friedman family to our roster. Kipp Friedman's forthcoming memoir Barracuda in the Attic boasts this loving portrait by Kipp's big brother Drew (with hand-lettering by our own Jacob Covey), a foreword by father Bruce Jay and an afterword by brother Josh. In the book's pages you'll find true tales of the colorful clan's hijinks from New York to Hollywood and beyond, hobnobbing with the literati, mobsters, and at least one Marx brother.

We're taking pre-orders now; look for the book to hit shelves in early Fall, and if you know us you know we have more previews and sneak peeks on the way. 

Danny Bland's debut novel In Case We Die hits shelves in September. The book and jacket were designed by our guru Jacob Covey. Dig those silver & day-glo inks. Some of Danny's music-scene compadres have already read the book and had this to say about it:

"Our anti-hero is floating in a tiny lifeboat made of heroin, graveyard shifts & rock music. His companions are two fabulous women; a bombshell who robs banks & a beautifully pale rock violinist who can barely dodge suicide. ICWD is much funnier & more satisfying than any other junkie rock'n'roll tragedy." – John Doe (X)

"Bland is a brutally funny and bravely honest writer. A perfect guide through the bloodshot streets and desperate bedrooms of the underground wilderness." – Dave Alvin (Blasters)

"In Case We Die is a poetic and elegant journey ... straight to the gutter." – Wayne Kramer (MC5)

"Beautiful, literary redemption." – Exene Cervenka (X)

"A great piece of work — full of filth and heart." - Steve Earle

"A suitably Peckinpah finale. Bravo. It has been like a traveling dream state and sometimes familiar look into the abyss." – Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs)

"I am a believer in what Bland has to say. He writes with eloquence, candor, darkness, and humor....the good stuff!" – Duff McKagan (Guns N' Roses)

We'll be making a few sample chapters available for you to read soon. And hey, if you pre-order the book from us, when the book is released you'll receive a code for a FREE download of the audiobook from Local 638 Records, with chapters read by a mind-blowing all-star lineup of music and cultural luminaries, including some of the folks above. Stay tuned for more details about this exclusive offer — all pre-orders are eligible, so there's no reason to put it off! 

Listen up, lit lovers. Two-time National Book Award nominee and multiple literary prize recipient Stephen Dixon's brand new novel, His Wife Leaves Him, is due in about 2 months and we have advance copies to show off to you.

With no chapter breaks and very few paragraph breaks (not even for dialogue) to interrupt the flow of words on the page, you're getting maybe 500 pages worth of words in the space of just over 400 pages. What a value for your book-buying dollar! Of course, none of that would matter if the words didn't coalesce into such a complex, ambitious, tender, funny story of pain and joy, memory and forgetting.

Curious? We've made the first 38 pages available to read, and you can pre-order your copy, right here. 

Frank & Fran are back for more frolic & fear in Jim Woodring's follow-up sequel/prequel to the acclaimed Congress of the Animals, due in late September. Jim calls Fran "one of the most messed-up things I've ever done," and if you know Jim's work, you know that's saying something. You'll be delighted, appalled, and amazed by the wordless proceedings and find yourself taking multiple journeys through the pages in order to unravel the mysteries therein.

Where to start with a story that has no beginning and no end? We offer a 10-page excerpt and a button to pre-order your copy right here.

Well, baseball and softball season in the city leagues of Seattle started recently and we couldn't help but draw a little inspiration from the man who helped elevate baseball to its on-high status, Willard Mullin. The Golden Age of Baseball Drawings 1934-1972 collects for the first time Mullin's best drawings devoted to baseball — depictions of players like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra and the story of Mullin creating the Brooklyn Bum, the bedraggled mascot of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Whether you're in the dugout...

Out ready to turn a play in the infield...

Or catching fly balls in the outfield... (see me, I'm that little green and pink-banged blob on the right)

…this hardcover book is full of great baseball gags and political comics from a time when the nation needed something to keep up their moral. Our team, Scared Hitless, even decided to get uniforms to match the beautiful book jacket (or did Jacob Covey design it to match us?). 

See you at the next game with some more previews of the Willard Mullin's Golden Age of Baseball: Drawings 1934-1972. For Seattle people, we play at the Cal Anderson park on Monday nights, 8pm. Come on by and check out this advance! 

First baseman Matt enjoyed this Babe Ruth comic. Thanks to Hugo Garcia for photo help!

Oh, goody! Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics in the pulpy flesh. A lost masterpiece from a cartoon giant. Wilson's mid-1970s Sunday strip — really a collection of one-panel gags, a freewheeling mélange of board meetings, monsters, cavemen and so on — are collected in this fine, long edition. While Wilson is better known for his work in Playboy and National Lampoon, it's fun to see him harness all the colors of the rainbow to convey the blackest of black comedy. Prismatic AND perverse.

Can you hear the oom-pah-pah accompanying some of the finest cartooning of lumpy, melty, and always hilarious people? Perhaps you need to read a few pages over here (full-screen viewing recommended), or get the PDF directly, and pre-order the book here.

Supernatural mysteries run amok in Gilbert Hernandez's The Children of Palomar and unraveling them could mean trouble for all but this isn't quite Twin Peaks, its Palomar. Originally released as a three-issue magazine series titled New Tales of Old Palomar in the acclaimed international "Ignatz" format, these comics now live in a handsomely designed hardcover package!

We had advances of this beautiful graphic novel at TCAF but the book will debut at Comic-Con International in San Diego where Gilbert himself will sign copies and sketch Pipo, Chelo, Carmen or even a young Tonantzín inside! The rest of you will just have to preorder and wait for July! Beware the Blooter Baby... 

We are very excited to reveal the cover for a book that will shake you silly while laughing in your face: In Case We Die by Danny Bland. This debut novel by the veteran Seattle musician follows a pair of outsiders who find themselves locked in the palpable, dizzy grunge-rock scene of early-'90s Seattle. Read this book on your daily commute, coffee shop, in line to a rock show, just not the library because you will choke on your own loud laughter and squeeze out a tear if your ducts are in working order.

"Ours is a story written on hotel room walls with fifty cent words" states the dedication to this story of falling in and out of love and life. Right now Danny is is most likely in a Ford Econoline van on a long stretch of highway, driving a rock band to its next engagement, but we can't wait for him to tour the states reading to you from In Case We Die. More sneak peeks are ready for you to inject soon, more information at the In Case We Die website and you can pre-order the book from us today.