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Dangerous Angels
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The World of Francesca Lia Block
Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books
Lanky lizards! The slinkster-cool novels in Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat series have finally been compiled into one delicious volume. All of the ethereal, mesmerizing titles are here--Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop--together like the big, beautiful family described on their pages. Block's unique, poetic style immediately draws readers into an intoxicating magical-realist world populated by empathetic, original characters (as well as a few ghosts, fairies, and genies): "He kissed her. A kiss about apple pie à la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat. A kiss about chocolate, when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year. A kiss about palm trees speeding by, trailing pink clouds when you drive down the Strip sizzling with champagne. A kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like tears all over your legs."
03.01.98  
Girl Goddess #9
Welcome to Girl Goddess #9, a collection of nine stories about girls by the author of Weetzie Bat. Here in these pages are girl goddesses of every age and shape and size, wearing combat boots and spiky hair or dressed all in white. One girl has two moms, another has no mother at all but a strange blue-skinned elf that lives in her closet. One is a rock-star groupie, another loves dancing and reading peotry and having picnics in the backyard when the moon is full. Best best girlfriends, lovers gay and straight. Baby goddesses, singing goddesses, dancing goddesses, writing goddesses-all discovering that the world is not a simple place and that there is more than one way to live.
09.01.96ISBN: 0060272112  
The Hanged Man
After the death of her father, Laurel is haunted by a legacy of family secrets, hidden shame, and shattered glass. Immersing herself in the heady rhythms of a city that is like something wild, caged, and pacing, Laurel tries to lose herself. But when she runs away from the past, she discovers a passion so powerful, it brings her roundabout and face-to-face with the demons she wants to avoid.
10.01.99ISBN: 0064408329  
Violet & Claire
This is the story of two girls, racing through space like shadow and light. A photo negative, together they make the perfect image of a girl. Violet is the dark one, dressed in forever black, dreaming Technicolor dreams of spinning the world into her very own silver screen creation. Claire is like a real-life Tinker Bell, radiating love and light, dressing herself in wings of gauze and glitter, writing poems to keep away the darkness. The setting is L.A., a city as beautiful as it is dangerous, and within this landscape of beauty and pain Violet and Claire vow to make their own movie. Together they will show the world the way they want it to be, and maybe then the world will become that place --a place where people no longer hate or fight or want to hurt. But when desire and ambition threaten to rip a seamless friendship apart, only one thing can make two halves whole again--the power of love.
10.01.99ISBN: 0060277505
I Was A Teenage Fairy
This is the story of Barbie Marks, who dreams of being the one behind the Cyclops eye of the camera, not the voiceless one in front of it; who longs to run away to New York City where she can be herself, not some barley flesh-and-blood version of the plastic doll she was named after. It is the story of Griffin Tyler, whose androgynous beauty hides the dark pain he holds inside. And finally it is the story of Mab, a pinkie-sized, magenta-haired, straight-talking fairy, who may or may not be real but who helps Barbie and Griffin uncover the strength beneath the pain, and who teaches that love--like a sparkling web of light spinning around our bodies and our souls--is what can heal even the deepest scars.
05.02.00ISBN: 0064408620  
Nymph
YA novelist Block (I Was a Teenage Fairy, 1998, etc.) moves into the adult market—the very adult market—in a series of tales tied together by lyrical sex that would stir a wooden Indian.So many of these spirited sketches turn on sexual metamorphosis that readers may wonder whether Block has been boning up on Ted Hughes’s wonderful Tales from Ovid. Tom Mac (‘Mer’) is an aging surfer who has lost the urge to ride the waves until one day in the rain he meets a girl in a wheelchair, her T-shirt plastered to her breasts and her nipples hard. Her legs stay covered while they make all sorts of love short of coitus. The girl is, of course, a goddess of the sea, though we never find out whether she has a mermaid’s tail. Tom takes up surfing again, and their love life only improves. In the title piece, young Sylvie is screwing anything in reach—guys with swastikas, whatever—but is quite unhappy about her nymphomania. Then Sylvie’s best friend, Plum, a fellow poet of the slams, reveals that all the women who go to bed with her find dreamy guys and leave her for them. So shouldn’t Sylvie have shy and tender sex with Plum? Assuredly. In ‘Goddess,’ Elvis Dean’s girlfriend dumps him, then reappears dancing in a strip bar called House of Goddess—only now she has a cat’s face. Mr. Wonder, the magician owner of the House, won’t let any of his surgically altered employees leave unless a man truly loves them. Will Elvis take her back? The final story, ‘Overcoming,’ turns on Carmelita’s fantasies of transformation, which she thinks will keep her lover, Tony, from wandering. But only the fantasies bring her to orgasm, never Tony. Until . . . . Call these bedtime firecrackers. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
08.01.00ISBN: 1885865309  
The Rose and the Beast
With language that is both lyrical and distinctly her own, Francesca Lia Block turns nine fairy tales inside out. Escaping the poisoned apple, Snow frees herself from possession to find the truth of love in an unexpected place. A club girl from L.A., awakening from a long sleep to the memories of her past, finally finds release from its curse. And Beauty learns that Beasts can understand more than men. Within these singular, timeless landscapes, the brutal and the magical collide, and the heroine triumphs because of the strength she finds in a pen, a paintbrush, a lover, a friend, a mother, and finally, in herself
10.01.00ISBN: 0064407454
Echo
Echo is caught at the crossroads of a physical world full of hope and despair and the realm of the supernatural, where young men have wings and skeletons speak. On the way, she is graced by angels and fairies and haunted by ghosts, psychopomps, and vampires. But as Echo falls under the spell of demons who threaten to destroy her, she must ultimately look within to find the strength to survive. Through shifting points of view, Francesca Lia Block weaves pure magic into this deftly constructed tale -- a novel told in the form of linked stories. One girl's life emerges from a tapestry of voices, lives, and loves -- lost and found -- that deliver her finally to herself, triumphant, ever-changing.
08.07.01ISBN: 0060281278  
Online Poems and Short Stories
Moon Harvest
1978
Season of Green
1979
Blood Oranges
Safe Love
1999
The Box
Out of Print
Ecstasia
The world of Ecstasia is basically divided into three parts: Elysia, a garish, artifical city where people spend their days and nights indulging themselves in candy and carnivals and sex; Underground, the dark, forbidden part of the city where the Old Ones and the drug seekers go to die; and the Desert, a harsh, dry land where the work is difficult but where all people can age in peace. Rafe and Calliope, the two main characters of the story, were born in the Desert but their mother, Estrella, wanted to move to Elysia with them and their father. Their father, an extremely intelligent man (a scientist, I suppose) who created potions that helped combat ills and aging, didn't really want to leave the Desert, but because he loved Estrella so much, he conceded. However, the signs of age were already beginning to show on his face, and it wasn't long before he gave into the pressure and exiled himself Underground. Eventually, Estrella, too, went Underground to die in shameful solitude, though she was never reunited with her husband. Rafe and Calliope, now alone together in Elysia, became part of a band called Ecstasia, along with the homosexual lead singer, Paul, and the bassist, Dionisio, who became Calliope's fiance. Ecstasia (the book, not the band) concentrates on how Rafe and Calliope discover that the price of living in Elysia is not worth all of the mindless fun and material things it has to offer. Even though Elysia can give them anything they desire, it is only for as long as their faces remain unwrinkled. Only in the frightening but refreshing vastness of the Desert can they exercise the freedom to create their destiny through hard work and perseverence. --written by Mieu Sedai
Primavera
"There's a world that's mainly desert, populated by small villages where life is pretty normal. However, in this world, there's a city called Elysia, where every good and enjoyable thing is abundant and free, and everyone is young and beautiful. The latter is because when residents get older and less beautiful, they retire in shame to a hellish underground world to wait out their time until death. So you can have the regular life in the villages, or you can have your every wish fulfilled for a period of time, followed by another, fairly lousy period of time when you are exiled from Elysia. The main characters are a band in Elysia -- Rafe and his sister Calliope, her boyfriend Dionisio, and Paulo, who's madly in love with Rafe. The plot involves several strands: Rafe's girlfriend becomes addicted to a deadly drug called Orpheus that induces visions of meeting again with your dead loved ones, and the identity of Rafe and Calliope's father being chief among them. The real question that pervades the story, though, is whether the band -- Ecstasia -- will choose to leave Elysia while they still can, building the dreamed-of garden in the desert where they can live together to grow old and raise Calliope and Dionisio's unborn child (Primavera). The whole tone is very lush, surreal, erotic, and poetic." H.T.
"She is the child whose voice brought the desert to life, the young woman in love with someone she knows she can't have. So when the stranger comes with his horse-headed motorcycle, Primavera welcomes the chance to get away. What she finds is horror, suffering, evil and--finally--hope." On book jacket
Presenting Francesca Lia Block
by Michael Cart
10.01.98ISBN: 0805716580
Finding Your Way : A Book About Sexual Ethics

ASIN: 0613065905
Zine Scene: The Do It Yourself Guide to Zines

10.01.98ISBN: 0965975436
Links
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© 2001 Artemis Pie