Still reeling from the death by suicide of his drug-addicted father, Travis moves in with his grandmother to become her caretaker as she battles cancer. Meanwhile, he tries to live a typical teen life of pulling pranks, occasional shoplifting, dating, and endless drives through the twisting backroads of Central Massachusetts with Nirvana’s Nevermind as the soundtrack. When the police intervene after a prank backfires, the boys realize that their time as children is rapidly disappearing and they may never fully understand each other as they move apart. After his Lynd Ward Prize-winning graphic novel, King of King Court, explored the power that parents hold over their children’s emotional lives, Travis Dandro employs his signature dream imagery and crass humor to tell the story of teenage independence and resilience as he prepares to head off to art school. Hummingbird Heart is a detailed and stylish account of a time of great uncertainty. Dandro’s densely crafted pages create a deeply emotional experience as his story swings from character confrontation to finely wrought domestic detail—a slapstick cafeteria-destroying brawl gives way to the beautifully rendered flight of the impossible hummingbird.

Sixteen-year-old Dylan has never met her father. She knows that her parents were just teenagers themselves when she was born, but her mother doesn't like to talk about the past, and her father, Mark, has never responded to Dylan's attempts to contact him. As far as Dylan is concerned, her family is made up of her mother, Amanda; her recently adopted younger sister, Karma; and maybe even her best friend, Toni. And then, out of the blue, a phone call: Mark will be in town for a few days and he wants to meet her. Amanda is clearly upset, but Dylan can't help being excited at the possibility of finally getting to know her father. But when she finds out why he has come—and what he wants from her—the answers fill her with still more questions. What makes someone family? And why has her mother been lying to her all these years?

A man seeking to change, a lady desperate to stay the same . . . as they cross the Atlantic, pent up passions crash over them like the ocean¿s waves. But will the ghosts of her past end their lives before love can begin?

“Her eyes were soulful, like little black pearls that perceived beyond mortal vision...Artemis showed up in my life to share a part of her world, this seemed clear. But why? Was there some deeper insight into my own life that she was willing to impart?” Within each of us is the capacity to connect with the Universe, with Nature, and with our Higher Self. This magical journey begins with two of the tiniest birds known to man and one observer willingness to quite the mind and simply pay attention. Through the eyes of nature, one is made privy to the profound goodness that pervades all that exists and co-exists. This book will open your eyes to seeing the EXTRAORDINARY within the ORDINARY and open your heart to new ways of appreciating the oh-so-omnipresent Universe that surrounds and binds all that we are.

One of Henry Miller's most luminous statements of his personal philosophy of life, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, provides a symbolic title for this collection of stories and essays. Many of them have appeared only in foreign magazines while others were printed in small limited editions which have gone out of print. Miller's genius for comedy is at its best in "Money and How It Gets That Way"--a tongue-in-cheek parody of "economics" provoked by a postcard from Ezra Pound which asked if he "ever thought about money." His deep concern for the role of the artist in society appears in "An Open Letter to All and Sundry," and in "The Angel is My Watermark" he writes of his own passionate love affair with painting. "The Immorality of Morality" is an eloquent discussion of censorship. Some of the stories, such as "First Love," are autobiographical, and there are portraits of friends, such as "Patchen: Man of Anger and Light," and essays on other writers such as Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Sherwood Anderson and Ionesco. Taken together, these highly readable pieces reflect the incredible vitality and variety of interests of the writer who extended the frontiers of modern literature with Tropic of Cancer and other great books.

A dynamic and devastating memoir about the cycle of trauma caused by addiction within one family From a child’s-eye view, Travis Dandro recounts growing up with a drug-addicted birth father, alcoholic step-dad, and overwhelmed mother. As a kid, Dandro would temper the everyday tension with flights of fancy, finding refuge in toys and animals and insects rather than in the unpredictable adults around him. He perceptively details the effects of poverty and addiction on a family while maintaining a child’s innocence for as long as he can. King of King Court spans from Travis’s early childhood through his teen years, focusing not only on the obviously abusive actions but also on the daily slights and snubs that further strain relations between him and his parents. Alongside his birth father committing crimes and shooting up, King of King Court lingers on scenes of him criticizing Travis and his siblings. Dandro gives equal heft to these anecdotes, emphasizing how damaging even relatively slight traumas can be to a child’s worldview. As Travis matures into young adulthood and begins to understand the forces shaping his father’s toxic behaviors, the story becomes even more nuanced. Travis is empathetic to his father’s own tragic history but unable to escape the cycle of misconduct and reprisals. King of King Court is a revelatory autobiography that examines trauma, addiction, and familial relations in a unique and sensitive way.

DUSTY GOLD College is weird. One second you're studying for a huge exam in integrated physics and the next you're secretly drooling over the sexy rugby player living in the dorm next door. The second after that, you're sharing a bed with that same Insta-famous jock, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what in gay heaven caused such a miraculous and terrifying thing. Even though it all felt like a dream, logically, I could see that it wasn't. That everything about Brandon Reed was real. But logic didn't stop me from feeling an icy-cold wave of fear every time I thought about my heart and my body in his (very large) hands. Maybe inviting him to stay at my family's house for the summer wasn't the greatest idea I've ever had? Or maybe it was the best? BRANDON REED I freakin' loved college. Everything about it, minus the classes obviously. I loved being able to play rugby the most; losing myself to the game, watching the crowds in the stadium grow bigger with every win. Rugby gave me an escape. An escape I really needed. Then Dusty Gold springs into my life. Literally. After we end up as surprise roomies, a spring busts on his bed and we go from roommates to snuggle buddies. Snuggling somehow turns into staying with him over the summer at his family's animal sanctuary. Soon, I find myself falling hard for the handsome and shy nerd. I've got a messy past, though, and Dusty's got a bright future. Will my ghosts ruin us before we could ever really begin or will we both get a once-in-a-lifetime shot at a happy ending? _______________________ Hummingbird Heartbreak is the first book in The Gold Brothers series. It's a full-length, steamy gay romance novel and can read as a stand-alone.