AMOR & PSYCHO

From the author of DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION- which was listed among the "Best Novels of 2011" by the San Francisco Chronicle and The New Yorker- come 11 stories about sex and death, violence and desire, love and madness, set in a vast American landscape that ranges from the largest private residence in Manhattan to the lush rain forests and marijuana farms of Northern California. In "Francis Bacon," an aspiring writer learns essential lessons from an aging pornographer. In "The Snake," a restless Jungian analyst sheds one existence after another. In "The Boundary," a muralist falls in love with a troubled boy from the rez. In the surreal "She Bites," a man builds an architecturally distinguished doghouse as his wife slowly transforms. And in the transcendent, three-part title story, two best friends face their strange fates, linked by a determination to wrest meaning and coherence from lives spiraling out of control. At once philosophical and compulsively readable, AMOR & PSYCHO dives into our darkest spaces, confronting the absurdity, poetry and brutality of human existence.

Carolyn Cooke's short fiction, collected in The Bostons, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and has appeared in AGNI, The Paris Review and two volumes each of The Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. She teaches in the MFA writing program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. For more information on Carolyn and her work, please check out: www.carolyncooke.com