The Charles Manson franchise -- books, movies, records that feature or somehow cash-in on The Family and hippie cult killers.

Loose women and dangerous men; true tales from the darkest corners of the brightest cities. From New York City to the Czech Republic, from Philadelphia to Finland, from intimate stag bars to underage street walkers and subway suicides, these are the compelling first-hand accounts of travelers who have hit upon the weird and the despicable-whether through fault or by design; all have a tale to tell.

Based in New Jersey, Factory 2000 makes low-budget exploitation films which inhabit a place removed from the traditional realms of cut-price sex and violence. Courtesy of exclusive interviews, on-set reports and film reviews, Headpress 22 investigates these highly controversial asphyxiation-fetish filmmakers, whose most recent effort -- Duck! The Carbine High Massacre -- resulted in their arrest. Also included are interviews with James Ellroy, gay pornographer Bruce La Bruce, tasteless impersonator Dead Elvis, and porn star-cum-brothel girl Jeannie Rivers.

A work of fact, fiction, fable and folklore spanning three generations of southern Italian family life. "Europe ends at Naples and ends badly. Calabria, Sicily and all the rest belong to Africa." - Creuz de Lesser, 1806 No geographical map distinguishes Montefalcione as being different from any number of isolated mountain villages in southern Italy. It has ancient customs and its own saints and feast days, like other villages. Yet Montefalcione in Campania is the setting for a unique meditation on family and the Italian Diaspora, reconstructing three generations of village life through myth, superstition, and the anecdotal history of the author's own family. The drama unfolds amidst a landscape of peasant riots, vicious landlords, religious festival, feuds, the collapse of the Fascist party, and the tarantella - a world lost to the changing face of the twenty-first century.

An indispensable sampling of the vast assortment of publications which exist as an adjunct to the mainstream press, or which promote themes and ideas that may be defined as pop -culture, alternative, underground, or subversive.

Updated and revised from the pages of the critically acclaimed "Headpress "journal, this is an enlightened and -entertaining guide to the counter culture by way of its books and zines, with contact information accompanying each review so that readers may find out more.

"Particularly bizarre, disturbing, and sometimes delightful"-"Time Out"