{"title":"Sean Carswell","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"dead-extra-book-sean-carswell-9781945551475","title":"Dead Extra","description":"The early forties have been a tough time for Jack Chesley. His plane was shot down over Germany and he spent two years in a brutal POW camp. During that time, his wife fell in the tub and died. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePrior to her death, the early forties were even tougher for Jack's wife, Wilma. After Jack was mistakenly presumed dead, she went on a bender that ended with her wrongful commitment to the Camarillo State Psychiatric Hospital. While there, she took up with an alcoholic socialite, a junkie pianist, and a shady hospital employee who promised her a way out. Only that way out set her on the path to the end of her road. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNow Jack's back in Los Angeles. His sister-in-law and Wilma's twin, Gertie, hunts him down to tell him Wilma's death was no accident: she was murdered. Gertie's first efforts to find the truth earned her a bullet to the collarbone. But that doesn't mean Gertie is ready to give up. She knows the right places to look and the right people to ask. She needs Jack, who was a cop for a short time before the war, to stick his nose into these places and ask these questions so that, together, they can figure out who killed Wilma, and why. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eDead Extra\u003c\/i\u003e follows the parallel storylines of Wilma in the months before her murder in 1944 and Jack and Gertie's search for the killer in 1946. Their adventures carry them through Hollywood's second-tier studios, nearby psychiatric hospitals, Pasadena mansions, downtown jazz clubs, and one seriously sleazy motor court in Oxnard. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTaking its cues from early noir masters like James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler as well as contemporary neo-noir writers like Walter Mosley and Megan Abbott, \u003ci\u003eDead Extra\u003c\/i\u003e explores new shadows on the seedy side of midcentury Southern California.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50186658218257,"sku":"CIN194555147XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50402486911249,"sku":"CIN194555147XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51054032093457,"sku":"NIN9781945551475","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52994171601169,"sku":"GOR014684935","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/194555147X.jpg?v=1751381004"},{"product_id":"train-wreck-girl-book-sean-carswell-9781933149219","title":"Train Wreck Girl","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Sean Carswell is a wonderful storyteller. . . . Reading his stuff makes you laugh and makes you think.\"--Howard Zinn\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"[Carswell's writing is] the antidote to what is so boring or safe or wrong with modern book publishing.\"--Joe Meno, author of \u003ci\u003eHairstyles of the Damned\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTrain Wreck Girl\u003c\/i\u003e is the funny and tragic story of one man's quest to figure out what to do with his life now that it's too late for him to die young.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAfter finding his girlfriend dead on the railroad tracks right after breaking up with her, Danny McGregor--Flagstaff bartender and surfer without an ocean--rides the next bus out of Arizona, fleeing to his Cocoa Beach, Florida, hometown, where a maelstrom of past ghosts await.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBack in Florida, his treacherous friend, Bart, finds Danny a job picking up corpses. Sophie, a former crazy girlfriend who stabbed Danny, wants to rekindle their relationship. Taylor, a twelve-year-old neighborhood girl, only wants Danny to teach her to surf. And then there's Helen, with a face that launched a dozen Greyhounds. Through the chaos, Danny discovers his strengths amid all his weaknesses and is able to move forward while making peace with his past.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSean Carswell\u003c\/b\u003e is a former carpenter, housepainter, dishwasher, and warehouse clerk. His fiction has appeared in dozens of literary journals. He has been a staff writer for \u003ci\u003eFlipside\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eClamor\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eInk 19\u003c\/i\u003e, and is a regular contributor to \u003ci\u003eRazorcake\u003c\/i\u003e. A co-founder of Gorsky Press, he is currently a professor at the University of California.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50393439338769,"sku":"CIN1933149213G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52756778778897,"sku":"NIN9781933149219","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1933149213.jpg?v=1751347917"},{"product_id":"metaphysical-ukulele-book-sean-carswell-9781632460264","title":"THe Metaphysical Ukulele","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Leave it to the audacious Sean Carswell to crack the code on this secret society of writers, especially after so many other publications (the \u003ci\u003eBeliever\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBitch\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e) have tried and failed. I'm humbled and grateful to be immortalized in this wily, coltish collection with fellow strummers Flannery, Herman and weird old Uncle Thom.\"--Pam Houston\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"On the surface, Carswell is a literary chameleon, moving effortlessly in and out of voices, genres, and styles, but underneath and above that, he is a born storyteller, always focused on his characters' hearts and minds and fitting ends.\"--Ben Loory, author of \u003ci\u003eStories for Nighttime and Some for the Day\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe all know Herman Melville, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Pynchon, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Pam Houston. Now meet their metaphysical ukuleles.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMixing the flair of literary invention with real events in each writer's life--Herman Melville living with a tribe of cannibals; Raymond Chandler holding \u003ci\u003eThe Blue Dahlia\u003c\/i\u003e hostage from Paramount Studios; Flannery O'Connor falling in love; Chester Himes threatening to decapitate his landlord, and many more--Sean Carswell takes the nonfiction of some our most famous writer's lives and turns it into exquisite fiction, with a ukulele thrown in for good measure. At times heartbreaking, at times absurd, the stories in this truly one-of-a-kind collection delightfully blur the line between what is life, and what is literature.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSean Carswell\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eDrinks for the Little Guy\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTrain Wreck Girl\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eMadhouse Fog\u003c\/i\u003e, and the short story collections \u003ci\u003eBarney's Crew\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eGlue and Ink Rebellion\u003c\/i\u003e. He co-founded the independent book publisher Gorsky Press and the music magazine \u003ci\u003eRazorcake\u003c\/i\u003e. He currently teaches writing and literature at California State University, Channel Islands.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50397472063761,"sku":"CIN1632460262G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1632460262.jpg?v=1750763037"},{"product_id":"occupy-pynchon-book-sean-carswell-9780820356846","title":"Occupy Pynchon","description":"Examines power and resistance in the writer's post-Gravity's Rainbow novels. 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A metaphysical thriller peopled with memorable characters set in a picturesque town along the Pacific coast, Carswell gives readers a wild ride into the unknown. and back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51053706019089,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053708706065,"sku":"NIN9781933149752","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1933149752.jpg?v=1751186837"},{"product_id":"occupy-pynchon-book-sean-carswell-9780820350882","title":"Occupy Pynchon","description":"Occupy Pynchon examines power and resistance in the writer’s post–Gravity’s Rainbow novels. As Sean Carswell shows, Pynchon’s representations of global power after the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s shed the paranoia and meta­physical bent of his first three novels and share a great deal in common with the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s critical trilogy, Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth. In both cases, the authors describe global power as a horizontal network of multinational corporations, national governments, and supranational institutions. Pynchon, as do Hardt and Negri, theorizes resistance as a horizontal network of individuals who work together, without sacrificing their singularities, to resist the political and economic exploitation of empire.  Carswell enriches this examination of Pynchon’s politics—as made evident in Vineland (1990), Mason \u0026amp; Dixon (1997), Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice (2009), and Bleeding Edge (2013)—by reading the novels alongside the global resistance movements of the early 2010s. Beginning with the Arab Spring and progressing into the Occupy Movement, political activists engaged in a global uprising. The ensuing struggle mirrored Pynchon’s concepts of power and resistance, and Occupy activists in particular constructed their movement around the same philosophical tradition from which Pynchon, as well as Hardt and Negri, emerges. This exploration of Pynchon shines a new light on Pynchon studies, recasting his post-1970s fiction as central to his vision of resisting global neoliberal capitalism.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52435770179857,"sku":"NLS9780820350882","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53498467156241,"sku":"NIN9780820350882","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780820350882.jpg?v=1759185232"},{"product_id":"dead-extra-book-sean-carswell-9781945551703","title":"Dead Extra","description":"The early forties have been a tough time for Jack Chesley. His plane was shot down over Germany and he spent two years in a brutal POW camp. During that time, his wife fell in the tub and died. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePrior to her death, the early forties were even tougher for Jack's wife, Wilma. 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