Surfing California is your one-of-a-kind guide to more than 200 of the best breaks in the Golden State - from classic surf spots to lesser-known waves. This revised and updated, full-color guide now includes SUP-friendly spots, too--allowing surfers and paddlers alike to find the best breaks and all get along Explore the surf from the Oregon border to the Mexican border, from North Jetty in Arcata to Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz to Huntington Beach Pier in Huntington Beach.

The short story is a barometer for the state and shape of literature. New American Stories presents the boldest, most innovative and most resonant fiction coming out of the American literary scene. Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet and Leaving the Sea, has here curated an anthology that gives the lay of the literary land. From established masters of the form like Don DeLillo and Lydia Davis to neoteric trailblazers such as Rebecca Curtis and Rachel B. Glaser, this collection sees Marcus trying to 'prove that the distinctions we erect between styles and approaches to fiction can be essentially meaningless'. The result is a must-read, must-own volume for readers of literary fiction.

'I wake up and I have to make the right choice,' he said.

Master-stylist Ben Marcus returns with a wonder-cabinet of brain-rearranging stories. From the horrifyingly strange to the deeply touching, each story is a literary masterclass unlikely to leave the reader unchanged. From parent/child relationships thrown agonisingly off kilter, to intensely moving scenarios of dependence and emotional crisis; from left-alone bodies to new scientific frontiers, Ben Marcus is the great chronicler of the contemporary uncanny and the peculiar future.

Piece by piece, he takes us apart.

A terrifying vision of the future from one of the twentieth century's most renowned writers - J. G. Ballard, author of 'Empire of the Sun' and 'Crash'. Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth-century America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, an expedition from Europe returns to the deserted continent. But America is unrecognisable - the Bering Strait has been dammed and the whole continent has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture. The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-continent journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks. They will uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas in this unique vision of our world transformed. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard's works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Ned Beauman, Ali Smith, Neil Gaiman and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

Mavericks and more, a celebration of feminine beauty, athleticism, wisdom, and skill when the surf is bombing-Women Who Surf profiles some of the world's most inspiring female surfers ranging from Bethany Hamilton to Wrenna Delgado. Each surfer tells her story, highlighting her personal challenges, accomplishments, and philosophy, as well as inspiring readers and providing them with practical how-to suggestions on maximizing not only their own potential in surfing but in life as they lead the charge and push their limits at infamous big-wave spots like Teahupoo in Tahiti, Waimea Bay, and Peahi/Jaws in the Hawaiian Islands. The profiles by accomplished author and editor Ben Marcus are complemented by stunning color photography by leading adventure photojournalist Lucia Griggi. Featured surfers: 1. Rochelle Ballard 2. Wrenna Delgado 3. Bethany Hamilton 4. Maya Gabeira 5. Keala Kennelly 6. Andrea Moller 7. Leah Dawson 8. Mercedes Maidana 9. Easkey Britton 10. Alana Blanchard 11. Bianca Valenti 12. Paige Alms 13. Alison Teal 14. Sally Fitzgibbons 15. Rosy Hodge 16. Janet Macpherson 17. Pauline Ado

"In twenty-nine separate but ingenious ways, these stories seek permanent residence within a reader. They strive to become an emotional or intellectual cargo that might accompany us wherever, or however, we go. . . . If we are made by what we read, if language truly builds people into what they are, how they think, the depth with which they feel, then these stories are, to me, premium material for that construction project. You could build a civilization with them." --Ben Marcus, from the Introduction
Award-winning author of Notable American Women" Ben Marcus brings us this engaging and comprehensive collection of short stories that explore the stylistic variety of the medium in America today.
"Sea Oak by George Saunders
"Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
"Do Not Disturb by A.M. Homes
"The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
"The Caretaker by Anthony Doerr
"The Old Dictionary by Lydia Davis
"The Father's Blessing by Mary Caponegro
"The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders by Aleksandar Hemon
"People Shouldn't Have to be the Ones to Tell You by Gary Lutz
"Histories of the Undead by Kate Braverman
"When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine by Jhumpa Lahiri
"Down the Road by Stephen Dixon
"X Number of Possibilities by Joanna Scott
"Tiny, Smiling Daddy by Mary Gaitskill
"Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace
"The Sound Gun by Matthew Derby
"Short Talks by Anne Carson
"Field Events by Rick Bass
"Scarliotti and the Sinkhole by Padgett Powell

Ben Marcus achieved cult status and gained the admiration of his peers with his first book, The Age of Wire and String. With Notable American Women he goes well beyond that first achievement to create something radically wonderful, a novel set in a world so fully imagined that it creates its own reality.

On a farm in Ohio, American women led by Jane Dark practice all means of behavior modification in an attempt to attain complete stillness and silence. Witnessing (and subjected to) their cultish actions is one Ben Marcus, whose father, Michael Marcus, may be buried in the back yard, and whose mother, Jane Marcus, enthusiastically condones the use of her son for (generally unsuccessful) breeding purposes, among other things. Inventing his own uses for language, the author Ben Marcus has written a harrowing, hilarious, strangely moving, altogether engrossing work of fiction that will be read and argued over for years to come.

In "The Flame Alphabet," the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a novel about how far we will go in order to protect our loved ones.
The sound of children's speech has become lethal. In the park, adults wither beneath the powerful screams of their offspring. For young parents Sam and Claire, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther. But they find it isn't so easy to leave someone you love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a foreign world to try to save his family.

From one of the most innovative and vital writers of his generation, an extraordinary collection of stories that showcases his gifts--and his range--as never before.
In the hilarious, lacerating "I Can Say Many Nice Things," a washed-up writer toying with infidelity leads a creative writing workshop on board a cruise ship. In the dystopian "Rollingwood," a divorced father struggles to take care of his ill infant, as his ex-wife and colleagues try to render him irrelevant. In "Watching Mysteries with My Mother," a son meditates on his mother's mortality, hoping to stave off her death for as long as he sits by her side. And in the title story, told in a single breathtaking sentence, we watch as the narrator's marriage and his sanity unravel, drawing him to the brink of suicide.
As the collection progresses, we move from more traditional narratives into the experimental work that has made Ben Marcus a groundbreaking master of the short form. In these otherworldly landscapes, characters resort to extreme survival strategies to navigate the terrors of adulthood, one opting to live in a lightless cave and another methodically setting out to recover total childhood innocence; an automaton discovers love and has to reinvent language to accommodate it; filial loyalty is seen as a dangerous weakness that must be drilled away; and the distance from a cubicle to the office coffee cart is refigured as an existential wasteland, requiring heroic effort.
In these piercing, brilliantly observed investigations into human vulnerability and failure, it is often the most absurd and alien predicaments that capture the deepest truths. Surreal and tender, terrifying and life-affirming, "Leaving the Sea" is the work of an utterly unique writer at the height of his powers.