Books published by publisher Soft Skull Press

A child’s life is full of both joys and challenges—the infinite wonder of learning, the literal and figurative scraped knees of everyday life, and, of course, deep, penetrating theological terror.That’s why Pastor Brett of the Mega-Pheasant Heights Assembly Church has created an activity book that will divert those long lazy hours of idle youth into a soul-saving good time. Inside are crafty puzzles, mazes of wrath, and connect-the-dots! Also, the mysteries of God’s creation are revealed and explored, including, but not limited to: why God sometimes does not answer your prayers; why heterosexual monogamy is demanded of us; and why listening to scientists will end with your corporeal destruction and eternal damnation. You will learn the nature of other “religions” as well as how best to crush them. And then there will be juice boxes.While tradition states that the path to heaven is paved by knowledge of scripture, the doing of good works, and the conversion of heathens, it has recently been revealed that no one can obtain their eternal reward without first obtaining a copy of The Intelligent Design Coloring Book!

This off-kilter novel centers on three girls who are definitely not part of the in crowd: one’s fat, one’s a dyke, and one is missing a breast. Nicknamed “Lezzylard” by her classmates, Angie is seduced by the prettiest girl in school, an anorexic who just wants to make imaginary grocery lists. Inez, the school’s pot dealer, can’t shoplift because security guards are mesmerized by her single enormous breast. Shelby and Angie can’t be together, because then everyone will think Angie’s only a dyke because she’s too fat to get a guy. Manstealing for Fat Girls explodes the locus where patriarchal and class violence intersect, while embracing all that is magical — and dangerous — about adolescence. Set in a working class suburb of St. Louis in the 1980s, the book is replete with music and pop culture references of the era, but the bullying, lunch table treachery, and desperate desire to fit in ring true for every generation.

Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf is a lyrical and highly visual modern-day fable. When a freak accident involving an infallible gambler, a truck full of chickens, and a gas pump leaves easygoing Iple deaf, he decides to travel to Antarctica. While wandering the tundra trying to reconstruct his hearing and memory, he makes a startling discovery below a sheet of ice. There he finds Isabella, a dinosaur and the last DNA repository of a wealth of human and prehuman knowledge. What follows is a mesmerizing detour into our species' fear and wonder at the nature of prediction in this comic yet harrowing novella in Soft Skull's ShortLit series.

Books on 9/11 tend to get dismissed as “conspiracy theories” but that won’t work with this one, because it contains no theories at all about who did what. It simply focuses on flaws in the official story that have led more than 1500 architects and engineers, with 25,000 years of professional experience (and tens of thousands of others) to demand a new, independent investigation.The book lists fourteen clearly observable facts about 9/11 that the official story can’t explain, then provides a simple explanation that accounts for all of them. It raises hundreds of questions like:Why has no other skyscraper ever been destroyed by fire, even ones that raged for seventeen or eighteen hours?How could the Twin Towers fall so evenly and so fast, straight down through 160,000 tons of structural steel?How could the smaller, lighter floors above where the planes hit completely destroy the much heavier, stronger and completely undamaged floors below?For that matter, how could the top of the South Tower crush the floors below it if it began its fall toppling off them? (See the cover above.) If this was a gravitational collapse, they’re going to have to rewrite the laws of gravity.

Twelve-year-old choirboy Berry wants nothing more than to remain a choirboy, surrounded by perfect notes, as opposed to his imperfect, quarreling parents. Choral music and the prospect of divinity thrill him. Desperate to keep his voice from changing, he tries to injure himself, and then convinces a clinic to give him testosterone-inhibiting drugs. The hormone pills keep Berry's voice from deepening but also cause him to grow breasts. Suddenly Berry faces a world of unexpected gender issues that push him into a universe far more complex than anything he has experienced. A fantastical coming-of-age story, Choir Boy combines off-kilter humor and its own brand of modern day magic in a rollicking, bittersweet story about growing up different.

A child’s life is full of both joys and challenges—the infinite wonder of learning, the literal and figurative scraped knees of everyday life, and, of course, deep, penetrating theological terror.That’s why Pastor Brett of the Mega-Pheasant Heights Assembly Church has created an activity book that will divert those long lazy hours of idle youth into a soul-saving good time. Inside are crafty puzzles, mazes of wrath, and connect-the-dots! Also, the mysteries of God’s creation are revealed and explored, including, but not limited to: why God sometimes does not answer your prayers; why heterosexual monogamy is demanded of us; and why listening to scientists will end with your corporeal destruction and eternal damnation. You will learn the nature of other “religions” as well as how best to crush them. And then there will be juice boxes.While tradition states that the path to heaven is paved by knowledge of scripture, the doing of good works, and the conversion of heathens, it has recently been revealed that no one can obtain their eternal reward without first obtaining a copy of The Intelligent Design Coloring Book!

Growing up, Katie Green had a normal and extremely happy childhood. However, as a child, she had an aversion to finishing certain foods (like toast), foods that she would end up hiding behind her bookshelf when she didn’t want to eat them. As Katie entered her teenage years, she found herself becoming more averse to eating altogether. Before she knew it, she had become obsessive about consuming very limited amounts of calories and within months, found that she was severely anorexic.In Katie’s inspirational graphic memoir “Lighter than My Shadow,” Katie takes readers on her painful journey, as she goes from starving herself to binging and purging. Along the way, Katie tries everything to cure herself (including having an extremely manipulative and dangerous relationship with a zealous alternative healer). It is not until she gives in to her passion for drawing (something she'd tried to ignore all her life) that she begins the long process to her recovery.Katie’s voice is both honest and accessible and her art is mesmerizing and beautiful. This is the kind of book that is not just for those suffering from an eating disorder but the perfect read for anyone struggling with their emotional life or with

How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? A rare look inside the making of the "Murakami Industry"--and a thought-provoking exploration of the role of translators and editors in the creation of global literary culture. Thirty years ago, when Haruki Murakami's works were first being translated, they were part of a series of pocket-sized English-learning guides released only in Japan. Today his books are in fifty languages and have won prizes and sold millions of copies globally. How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? This book tells one key part of the story. Its cast includes an expat trained in art history who never intended to become a translator; a Chinese-American ex-academic who never planned to work as an editor; and other publishing professionals in New York, London, and Tokyo who together introduced an understated, pop-inflected, unexpected Japanese voice to the wider literary world. David Karashima synthesizes research, correspondence, and interviews with dozens of individuals--including Murakami himself--to examine how countless behind-the-scenes choices over the course of many years worked to build an internationally celebrated author's persona and oeuvre. He looks beyond the "Murakami Industry" toward larger questions: How active a role should translators and editors play in framing their writers' texts? What does it mean to translate and edit "for a market"? How does Japanese culture get packaged and exported for the West?