New Releases by Alison Bechdel

The celebrated and beloved New York Times bestselling author of the modern classic Fun Home presents a laugh-out-loud, brilliant, and passionately political work of autofiction. In Alison Bechdel’s hilariously skewering and gloriously cast new comic novel confection, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, is existentially irked by a climate-challenged world and a citizenry on the brink of civil war. She wonders: Can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about her own greed and privilege? Meanwhile, Alison’s first graphic memoir about growing up with her father, a taxidermist who specialized in replicas of Victorian animal displays, has been adapted into a highly successful TV series. It’s a phenomenon that makes Alison, formerly on the cultural margins, the envy of her friend group (recognizable as characters, now middle-aged and living communally in Vermont, from Bechdel’s beloved comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For). As the TV show Death and Taxidermy racks up Emmy after Emmy—and when Alison’s Pauline Bunyanesque partner Holly posts an instructional wood-chopping video that goes viral—Alison’s own envy spirals. Why couldn’t she be the writer for a critically lauded and wildly popular reality TV show…like Queer Eye...showing people how to free themselves from consumer capitalism and live a more ethical life?!! Spent’s rollicking and masterful denouement—making the case for seizing what’s true about life in the world at this moment, before it’s too late—once again proves that “nobody does it better” (New York Times Book Review) than the real Alison Bechdel.

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Fun Home All her life, Alison Bechdel has searched for an elusive secret. The secret to superhuman strength. She has looked for it in her favourite books, the lives of her heroes, celibacy, polyamory, activism, therapy, and most obsessively, in her lifelong passion for exercise. Skiing, running, karate, cycling, yoga, weight lifting - you name it, she''s tried it. "Oh, to be self-sufficient! Hard as a rock! An island!" But as she gets older, her body isn''t getting any stronger. And in a changing, sometimes overwhelming world, are "cantaloupe-sized guns" all a person needs? Maybe the all-important secret is not where she expected to find it . . . In this, her third graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel has written a deeply layered, personal story about selfhood, self-sabotage, mortality, addiction, bliss, wonder, and the concerns of a generation.

The New York Times–bestselling graphic memoir about Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, becoming the artist her mother wanted to be. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel''s childhood…and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It''s a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers. A New York Times, USA Today, Time, Slate, and Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year “As complicated, brainy, inventive and satisfying as the finest prose memoirs.”—New York Times Book Review “A work of the most humane kind of genius, bravely going right to the heart of things: why we are who we are. It''s also incredibly funny. And visually stunning. And page-turningly addictive. And heartbreaking.”—Jonathan Safran Foer “Many of us are living out the unlived lives of our mothers. Alison Bechdel has written a graphic novel about this; sort of like a comic book by Virginia Woolf. You won''t believe it until you read it—and you must!”—Gloria Steinem

For 25 years Bechdel''s path-breaking "Dykes to Watch Out For" strip has been collected in award-winning volumes, syndicated in alternative newspapers, and translated into many languages. This collection gathers 60 of the newest strips.

A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel''s sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi''s Persepolis, it''s a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison''s father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family''s Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter''s complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.

"There''s definitely an invasion afoot in the latest installment in Alison Bechdel''s Dykes to Watch Out for series, but just who''s invading whom is unclear. Are Mo and her friends having an impact on the world or merely splattering on its windshield? Mo is forced to work her way through library school by slinging best sellers at Bounders Books-N-Muzak. Sparrow is ambivalent about new motherhood. Clarice and Toni discover 10-year-old Raffi jacking ears and picking up prostitutes on his best friend''s computer. And Sydney''s first mammogram yields some very bad news. If this isn''t enough to turn your hair gray, it all unfolds against the grim rainbow-colored backdrop of the Homeland Security Advisory System. Join our conflicted friends as they struggle to save this fragile, fearful planet with attachment-parenting, patriotic dissent, good sex, library cards, and a dedicated resistance to the forces of order and decency wherever they rear their ugly heads."--Publisher''s description.

In the tenth book in the best-selling lesbian comic series that has become an international treasure, Mo, Clarice, Lois, Sparrow and Toni square off on questions of idealism, violence, compassion, patriotism and dissent. As they hash out their ideological differences, a black-and-white world takes on surprisingly variegated shades of grey. Syndicated worldwide and in Diva magazine, this newest addition to the series is guaranteed to take the UK lesbian community by storm.

Mo considers a panoply of possible gender permutations. Angst with her as she inquires: If she were a transsexual woman, a bisexual man, or a straight woman with a penchant for gay girls, would she still be a dyke to watch out for?

Go behind the pen and into the psyche of "dyke to watch out for" Alison Bechdel, cartoon chronicler extraordinaire, as the inner workings of lesbiana''s most quick-witted, longest-running social commentator are revealed. Illustrations throughout.

Big changes are set in motion when many of Alison Bechdel''s best-loved lesbian gals find themselves on the move in this eighth cartoon collection. Illustrations.

This is the fifth collection of work from Bechdel''s signature comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For. In this volume, Toni and Clarice are having a baby and of particular note is the long sequence created just for readers of Spawn--the birth itself. Where babies come from may never look the same again.

This is the fourth collection of work from Bechdel''s signature comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For.

The third collection of work from Bechdel''s signature comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For.

Irksomely earnest Mo makes her debut in this, the second collection of work from Bechdel''s signature comic strip. Mo''s at loose ends--unemployed, unintentionally celibate and unable to come to grips with a regrettable haircut. What could the unflappable Harriet possibly see in her? Perhaps the answer lies in the "mildly erotic" account of their first night together ...