Dirty Boulevard

Inspired by the outcasts, outlaws, and other outré inhabitants of rock legend Lou Reed’s songbook, Dirty Boulevard traffics in crime fiction that’s sometimes velvety and sometimes vicious, but always, absolutely, rock & roll. Inside, you’ll find stories from the fire escapes to the underground, stories filled with metal machine music, stories for gender-bending, rule-breaking, mind-blasting midnight revelries and drunken, dangerous, dark nights of the heart. Upcoming genre stars like Alison Gaylin team up with crime fiction legends such as Reed Farrel Coleman, along with Cate Holahan, Gabino Iglesias, Tony McMillen, and many of the most exciting new names in crime and horror fiction, who teach us that a perfect day is often anything but, that the power of positive drinking is a destructive force rarely contained, and that knock-down-drag-out drag queens are probably way tougher than you.

The vision of America seen through the lyrics of its popular songs

Described as 'a continuous carnival' and 'the crossroads of the world,' Times Square is a singular phenomenon: the spot where imagination and veracity intersect. To Marshall Berman, it is also the flashing, teeming, and strangely beautiful nexus of his life. In this remarkable book, Berman takes us on a thrilling illustrated tour of Times Square, revealing a landscape both mythic and real. Interleafing his own recollections with social commentary, he reveals how movies, graphic arts, literature, popular music, television, and, of course, the Broadway theater have reflected Times Square's voluminous light to illuminate a vast spectrum of themes and vignettes. Part love letter, part revelatory semiotic exposition of a place known to all, On the Town is a nonstop excursion to the heart of American civilization, written by one of our keenest, most entertaining cultural observers.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Containing a body of work that spans more than three decades, Pass Thru Fire is a stunning collection of the lyrics of an American original. Through his many incarnations-from proto punk to glam rocker to elder statesman of the avant garde-Lou Reed's work has maintained an undeniable vividness and raw beauty, fueled by precise character studies and rendered with an admirable shot of moral ambiguity. Beginning with his formative days in the Velvet Underground and continuing through his remarkable solo career-albums like Transformer, Berlin, New York, Magic and Loss, and Ecstasy-Pass Thru Fire is crucial to an appreciation of Lou Reed, not only as a consummate underground musician, but as one of the truly significant poets of our time.