In The Language of the Enemy, Stuart Friebert gives us something precious: a fictionalized, detailed view of the past that is wondrously free of sentimentality or nostalgia. Frieberts stories are simply told, but each of them has a bite. A young mans love of flying whisks him into a wartime disappearance; the big adventure of retrieving a mobsters body from a lake leads one rescuer to death from an infection; a revered German scholar breaks down as he recalls how he hurled into a bonfire books written by Jews. The Language of the Enemy illuminates-over and over-how cultural, natural, and...

After the Octopus is the action-packed, stand-on-its-own, laugh-riot sequel to After the Orange Glow. It s also the final installment in Mark Spitzer s four-part series about living the life of an outlaw poet forty years too late. It s the age of Grunge and the setting is underground Seattle, where our narrator discovers that MIA thieving nympho who blew his mind in Literary France, scrambled his brain with hash in Morocco, and sent him packing to the Abyss. Adventures ensue with Lily again, danger again, lots and lots of sex again. Madness, death, weirdos, fear But this time our femme...