Fantastic Cities

In this eagerly awaited follow-up to the international bestseller Fantastic Cities, artist Steve McDonald uses his unique large-format approach working from actual photographs to create beautifully detailed line drawings of amazing buildings and other structures from around the world. The globe-trotting selection includes buildings from six continents—including Prague's Astronomical Clock, Russia's St. Basil's Cathedral, a Florentine bridge, a Romanian castle, an Indian palace, and many dozens more—alongside fun-to-color details from iconic structures such as the Eiffel Tower, London's Tower Bridge, and the Chrysler Building. The crisp white pages are conducive to a range of applications, and a middle margin keeps all the artwork fully colorable. A dozen imaginative architectural mandala illustrations round out this gorgeous adult coloring book.

Contributions by Carl Abbott, Jacob Babb, Marleen S. Barr, Michael Fuchs, John Glover, Stephen Joyce, Sarah Lahm, James McAdams, Cynthia J. Miller, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Chris Pak, María Isabel Pérez Ramos, Stefan Rabitsch, J. Jesse Ramírez, A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Andrew Wasserman, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, and Robert Yeates Metropolis, Gotham City, Mega-City One, Panem’s Capitol, the Sprawl, Caprica City—American (and Americanized) urban environments have always been a part of the fantastic imagination. Fantastic Cities: American Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror focuses on the American city as a fantastic geography constrained neither by media nor rigid genre boundaries. Fantastic Cities builds on a mix of theoretical and methodological tools that are drawn from criticism of the fantastic, media studies, cultural studies, American studies, and urban studies. Contributors explore cultural media across many platforms such as Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, the Arkham Asylum video games, the 1935 movie serial The Phantom Empire, Kim Stanley Robinson’s fiction, Colson Whitehead’s novel Zone One, the vampire films Only Lovers Left Alive and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel The Water Knife, some of Kenny Scharf’s videos, and Samuel Delany’s classic Dhalgren. Together, the contributions in Fantastic Cities demonstrate that the fantastic is able to “real-ize” that which is normally confined to the abstract, metaphorical, and/or subjective. Consequently, both utopian aspirations for and dystopian anxieties about the American city become literalized in the fantastic city.

This fantastic cities coloring book features inspiring illustrations from countries around the world including London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, and Rome. Color the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Vatican, the Empire State Building, the Taj Mahal, city skylines, cathedrals, and more. Contains 40 full-page designs. Printed single side for ease of removal and no bleed through Large 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages Pure white, 50 lb paper

Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted novel about an Emperor's travels—a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory. “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.

The Urban Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century European Literature explores transnational perspectives of modern city life in Europe by engaging with the fantastic tropes and metaphors used by writers of short fiction. Focusing on the literary city and literary representations of urban experience throughout the nineteenth century, the works discussed incorporate supernatural occurrences in a European city and the supernatural of these stories stems from and belongs to the city. The argument is structured around three primary themes. “Architectures”, “Encounters” and “Rhythms” make reference to three axes of city life: material space, human encounters, and movement. This thematic approach highlights cultural continuities and thus supports the use of the label of “urban fantastic” within and across the European traditions studied here.

Fantastic Coloring features 70 of the best illustrations inspired by the internationally bestselling adult coloring book series that has sold over 500,000 copies. This distinctive collection captures the beauty of the world around us with black-and-white coloring designs by artist Steve McDonald. Including a dozen never-before-seen artwork, and castles, jungles, cityscapes, butterflies, and more, each unique design is in his signature photo-to-illustration style. With detailed illustrations of travel destinations, natural wonders, and everyday scenes, the popular Fantastic series, which includes fan favorites like Fantastic Cities, has delighted and inspired hundreds of thousands of artists and coloring enthusiasts to create beautiful works of art. * In a handy 10 x 10 inch size * Features 12 never-before-seen illustrations * Series has sold over half a million copies worldwide * Great for fans of Millie Marotta, Johanna Basford, and Kerby Rosanes; and for those who loved Secret Garden, Lost Ocean, Animal Kingdom Color Me Draw Me, and Tropical World

‘On November 2nd armed with a sheaf of visas...one suitcase...and my typewriter, I left humdrum London for the thrilling cities of the world...’ In 1959, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was commissioned by the Sunday Times to explore fourteen of the world’s most exotic cities. Fleming saw it all with a thriller writer’s eye. From Hong Kong to Honolulu, New York to Naples, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of underground haunts, and mingling with celebrities, gangsters and geishas. The result is a series of vivid snapshots of a mysterious, vanished world.

In this newest coloring book by the author of the internationally bestselling Fantastic Cities (more than 400,000 copies in print), artist Steve McDonald uses his unique photo-based approach to create beautiful and intimately detailed line drawings of amazing collections of objects. Finding inspiration in the unusual (museum collections, antiques, and quirky toys) and the everyday (leaves, butterflies, vintage cameras, store product displays), McDonald creates playful and immersive illustrations that are as lovely as they are fun to color. The quality of the large, crisp white pages are conducive to a range of applications, while a middle margin keeps all the artwork fully colorable. A dozen meditative mandalas created from the drawings round out this gorgeous adult coloring book.