ENC Press: catalogue

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Richard Kaempfer. $EVERANCE A scathing satire about mainstream broadcast media, an insider’s insight into just how the political parties have managed to convert broadcasting into a partisan screech-fest, and a spotlight on who, what, and why really runs the media.

David A. Brensilver. ExecTV Fast-forwarding reality TV to its logical extreme, an unemployed documentary filmmaker extraordinaire arranges to have an execution broadcast live on pay-per-view television, in as flamboyant a form as his bizarre vision can conjure to amuse the masses.

Christopher Largen. JUNK A riotous exploration of prohibition policies, told through the narrative lens of a future America in which the government outlaws junk food in response to widespread obesity.

Scott Stein. MEAN MARTIN MANNING Can a grumpy old man, who hasn’t left his apartment in 30 years and just wants to be left alone, stand up to a relentlessly well- meaning social worker and her enforcers? He can. But to win this epic battle of wills, he’ll need to call on a lifetime of stubbornness and downright meanness, a patience rarely seen, and more than a little luck.

Andrew Thomas Breslin. MOTHER’S MILK A young, skeptical attorney finds herself in Washington, DC, working for a group of nutrition advocates with a passionate distaste for cow milk. Little does she suspect that their militant intolerance for lactose is a reaction to a global conspiracy orchestrated by the dairy industry, itself a puppet of alien masters from a distant planet orbiting the star Vega.

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In times like these, it is difficult not to write satire. — Juvenal

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If Franz Kafka were funny, if, while down at his local pub in Prague, he had fired off one witty, sarcastic rejoinder after another about the absurdity of the world, then he would have written a novel like Scott Stein’s Mean Martin Manning. — Edward Pettit, Philadelphia City Paper

Sarah Crabtree, Terror From Beyond Middle England

Craig Forgrave. DEVIL JAZZ How would mankind react to an alien named Armageddon suddenly stepping into the media spotlight and offering the world a new explanation of the origins of civilization? In New York, in the 21st century, things can go either way.

Andrew Hook. MOON BEAVER A comic romp about big business, the cult of individuality, and the teasing quality of time, this is an adventure story for those who hate adventure stories.

Sarah Crabtree. TERROR FROM BEYOND MIDDLE ENGLAND Small-town temp saves the world in this tale about friends, lovers, dysfunctional families, GMO, and all kinds of weird stuff that nobody expects to stumble across in a prim and proper English town.

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If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. But if you really make them think, they'll hate you. — Don Marquis

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The Alphabet Challenge combines humor, potent social satire, and a very creative history of the U.S.A. over the next fifty years to create a politically-charged, clever and hard-to-put- down story. — The Catalyst

Olga Gardner Galvin. THE ALPHABET CHALLENGE A satirical dystopia about the big business of organized professional compassion, which has too much caring to do to care much for the amateur individualists traipsing all over its turf.

Mark Mandell. DIARY OF A XX- CENTURY ELIZABETHAN POET An illustrated comedy of manners about a naive, pompous young poet who experiences a culture shock upon falling in love with a fair, albeit slightly worn-out, maiden from a South Florida trailer park. NC-17

Mark A. Rayner. THE AMADEUS NET Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is alive and in love, living in the world’s first sentient city, Ipolis. Lucky for both of them, nobody knows, but how long can it stay that way?

Doug Reed. HALF If you’re immortal, when is the right time to have your midlife crisis? Phil Half, a vampire, works a soul-sucking second- shift job watching the servers for an insurance company. As humiliation piles upon humiliation, he finds his long- dormant vampire urges reawakening.

Michael Antman. CHERRY WHIP An eccentric young Japanese jazz artist, obsessed with new sensations and new experiences, arrives for a career-making gig in New York City, where his quirky adventures are abruptly overshadowed by illness, guilt, and betrayal.

Walt Maguire. MONKEY SEE When asthma research accidentally leads to creation of talking animals, Man must finally confront the question avoided for centuries: How will this affect dinner parties? Ed the Talking Monkey is stuck between two worlds, with only one good pair of pants, living in a world he never made. Who isn’t?

Jeffrey R. DeRego, Escape Clause (a Union Dues novel)

Jeffrey R. DeRego. ESCAPE CLAUSE Think having superpowers would be cool? Think again. Strict legal guidelines must be followed to the letter, public opinion molded by PR campaigns in glossy, serial form, and you’ll never get any thanks. The Union of Superhumans has everything under control. Almost everything.

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The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel. — Horace Walpole

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Cherry Whip is a beautifully written meditation on love, language, music, and the mystery of existence. — Christopher D. Guerin

Liam Bracken. EXIT ONLY A suspenseful, multihued novel of Saudi Arabia as it’s seen through the eyes of expatriates of various origins and social standings who have one thing in common: they are all leaving it forever, on the same plane hurtling toward its destiny.

Justin Bryant. SEASON OF ASH South Africa, 1994: A country caught between its violent past and its hopes for the future, between the beauty of its wildlife and the squalor of its shantytowns. This simple human tale ponders the unpredictability of ways in which history can alter lives — and of the roads that choose us.

David Gurevich. VODKA FOR BREAKFAST A saga of love, friendship, life, drugs, and opportunities almost lost on an ex-KGB company man who leads a seemingly decent immigrant’s life of quiet desperation in New York.

Ray Cavanaugh. DEAR MR. UNABOMBER Trying to make sense out of life in the cultural wasteland of ever-ascending technology and materialism, a precocious college student writes letters to Ted Kaczynski, whom he sees as the most compelling counterpoint to the frenzy of online dating, cyber-chats, Internet porn, and futile blogger slacktivism.

Yevgheniy Zamyatin. WE The first dystopia ever, it started asking uncomfortable questions about individuals, collectives, revolutions, progress — and the collectives’ rights to individuals’ souls in the name of revolutions and progress.

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I have always been fascinated with those who try to look over the horizon and see things that are coming at us. — Al Gore

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Despite the sinister nature of its title, Dear Mr. Unabomber is the funniest book that I have read in many years. — Connell Gallagher, The Irish Emigrant