Books published by publisher McSweeney's Publishing

For more information, visit McSweeneys.netMatt Furie’s glorious first picture book ― now in paperback, too! A nocturnal frog and rat wake at midnight, share a salad of lettuce and bugs, and strike off on an epic dirtbike adventure toward the sunrise. As the friends make their way from forest to bat cave to ghost town to ocean to shore and beyond, new friends are discovered, a huge crab is narrowly avoided, and a world is revealed. Packed with colorful characters and surprising details on every hand-drawn page, The Night Riders is the ideal book for anyone who has ever wanted to surf to the mountains on the back of a dolphin.

In Matt Furie’s glorious debut, a nocturnal frog and rat awake at midnight, share a salad of lettuce and bugs, and strike out on an epic dirtbike adventure toward the sunrise. As the friends make their way from forest to bat cave to ghost town to ocean to shore and beyond, new friends are discovered, a huge crab is narrowly avoided, and a world is revealed. Packed with colorful characters and surprising details on every hand-drawn page, The Night Riders is the ideal book for anyone who has ever wanted to surf to the mountains on the back of a dolphin.

With a special section on Donald Barthelme, including remembrances from Ann Beattie, David Gates, and Oscar Hijuelos, and some of Barthelme’s barely published and never-collected early work, and a highly theoretical but potentially amazing Z-binding that we can’t describe very well here, or even to each other, McSweeney’s 24 will never be mistaken for anything else. (Except possibly the June 1978 issue of Popular Mechanics.)

For many years the scientific and educational communities have wondered and worried about the possibility that semi-sane scholar-pretenders would find the means to publish a series of reference books aimed at children but filled with ludicrous misinformation. These books would be distributed through respectable channels and would inevitably find their ways into the hands and households of well-meaning families, who would go to them for facts but instead find bizarre untruths. The books would look normal enough, but would read as if written by people who have eaten too many lead-based paint chips. Giraffes? Giraffes! is the first in a proposed series of 377 reference books, all written by a couple now getting their chance to twist and tickle the brains of the impressionable. The book puts forth the following novel theories: that giraffes were not part of any evolutionary chain, but came here from Neptune, by way of very long (but convenient and fast) escalators; that giraffes are expert dancers, but become angry if asked about their dancing; that giraffes control over 90 percent of what we see in mirrors; and that the Giraffe navy is as strong as ever, contrary to recent claims in the popular press.

In 1986, two artists—one Russian, one American—joined forces, against the odds, to tell a brand new kind of picture story. In Here Comes the Cat!, a single mouse runs around shouting "HERE COMES THE CAT!" again and again—in both English and Russian—until everybody he knows is worried sick. Just when the tension can't get any tenser, the cat arrives with a giant wheel of cheese! A big party breaks out and everyone—the reader included—laughs a huge laugh of relief.Funny, whip-smart, and illustrated in mesmerizing detail, Here Comes the Cat! is a parable about fear, more relevant than ever, that follows in the great tradition of Chicken Little. McSweeney's proudly presents this deluxe new edition, complete with a fold-out dust-jacket, on the 25th anniversary of the book's conception.

A band of intrepid chickens leave behind the boredom of farm life, joining the crew of the pirate ship Pitiless to seek fortune and glory on the high seas. Led by a grizzled captain into the territory of the Dog Knights, they soon learn what it means to be courageous, merciful, and not seasick quite so much of the time. A whimsical and unexpected adventure tale, Chicken of the Sea originated in the five-year-old mind of Ellison Nguyen, son of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen; father and son committed the story to the page, then enlisted the artistic talents of Caldecott Honor winner Thi Bui and her thirteen-year-old son, Hien Bui-Stafford, to illustrate it. This unique collaboration between two generations of artists and storytellers invites you aboard for adventure, even if you're chicken. Maybe especially if you're chicken.

Our return, after four issues, to pure hardcover bookness features Jonathan Franzen on Upper East Side ambition, Jess Walter on the men who ride children's bicycles in Spokane, Washington, Joe Meno on women who want to be eaten by lions, Etgar Keret and Joyce Carol Oates on murder and language in a restaurant called Cheesus Christ and at Gate C34 of Newark International Airport, respectively--and ten more stories besides, five of them strange and beautiful pieces from Kenya that will tell you, indelibly, what it's like to be drunk for seventy-two hours straight in Nairobi or to smuggle contraband jam into the girls' dormitory of the Precious Blood Riruta Secondary School or to fly over the Kalacha Goda oasis in a small plane, at sunset, with your brother in a coffin next to you. Other topics covered include unemployment, drumming vs. painting, and Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square car-bomb attempter. As if that wasn't enough, this one is our first full-color issue in quite a while, too, with illustrations on every page—so if the absence of art was your last excuse, you no longer have any reason not to subscribe in time for this one.

For many years the scientific and educational communities have wondered and worried about the possibility that semi-sane scholar-pretenders would find the means to publish a series of reference books aimed at children but filled with ludicrous misinformation. These books would be distributed through respectable channels and would inevitably find their way into the hands and households of well-meaning families, who would go to them for facts but instead find bizarre untruths. The books would look normal enough but would read as if written by people who should not have written them. Sadly, that day is upon us. The fourth book in the HOW series, Cold Fusion, is to be feared. Like its predecessors, Giraffes? Giraffes! and Animals of the Ocean, Cold Fusion must also be kept far from the young people in your life. This book reveals the secrets of cold fusion, one of the most controversial scientific pursuits that can be conducted in a bathtub.

One lives high in the sky. The other lives deep underground. Follow Hang Glider and Mud Mask as they fly down and climb up to meet each other halfway—on the surface of the earth and in the center of the book. Hang Glider & Mud Mask is uniquely constructed with two front covers, two spines, and a Z-shaped binding that links the two sides of the story. Will you begin from the Hang Glider side, or flip the book around and start from the Mud Mask side? It’s your choice. (And since one half’s finale becomes the other half’s front cover, it’s hard to stop and put the book down.)

Sloth's phone rings and rings. He races across the room to answer the call, but he's a sloth, so it takes a while. The phone says he's won an afternoon shopping spree! Can the sloth get to the store in time to claim his prize? Yes, but it's going to take an impromptu zipline, a missed bus, a parkful of trees, an oblivious ice-cream vendor, a rainbow hang glider, and an out-of-control shopping cart to make it happen. As soon as the spree begins, the sloth crashes into a pillow display and falls asleep, exhausted from excitement. When he awakes, he finds himself the proud and happy owner ofseveral fine new pillows. Mission accomplished.

At recess one day, sisters Elsie and Theo spy a nut wiggling on the ground. Out pops Benny—the world’s smallest and most gentlemanly walrus. After the girls learn that Benny misses his home in the sea, they send him sailing in a milk-carton boat, along with a trusty band of adventure-seeking slugs. Together, Benny’s Brigade (as they call themselves) begin their voyage to a truck-sized island paradise, avoiding the salt water as much as they can. Slugs don’t like salt.

We’ve buried 12 emerald-studded numbers—each handmade and one of a kind—in 12 holes across the United States. These treasures will belong to whoever digs them up first. The question: Where to dig? The only path to the answer: Solve the riddles of The Clock Without a Face!THE BOOKThe call comes in from the shadowy Ternky Tower: 13 robberies, one on each floor, all the way up to the penthouse, where obnoxious importer Bevel Ternky has been relieved of the numbers garlanding the legendary Emerald Khroniker, his priceless, ancient clock. Readers must conduct their own investigations, scouring detailed illustrations for hidden clues and knotty puzzles. All your answers can be found within this book: whodunit and how and where the real numbers are buried now.THE NUMBERSTwelve—and only twelve—emerald-bedecked integers sleep somewhere in this nation’s soil. If you can find them, they’re yours to keep—and only this book can tell you where they are. So read the story carefully, and examine the illustrations closely. The race is on!