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Forget everything you know about the plucky twentysomething woman who moves to the Big Apple. You haven’t met Rayla Sunday and her Screwball Comedy. Rayla wants to be a famous photographer, but she’s still working on the famous part. In the meantime, she’s struggling to get her foot in the door. Which wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t have to deal with a dog-kissing ex-boyfriend, a boozy best friend and an extreme mom-makeover. Toss in an apartment eviction and a racist drag queen in the workplace. But these are just minor speed bumps on Rayla’s road to success.

Miraculously, Rayla makes time for a dance card that’s filled to the gills. Unfortunately, quantity doesn’t mean quality. When she finally thinks she’s found The One, Rayla discovers there’s frequently a catch involved when it comes to Mr. Right.

In self-aware, effervescent language, Rayla Sunday narrates six connected tales full of dreams and false alarms, relationships and their expectations, with both humor and poignancy. Screwball Comedy is a shimmering, fresh take on finding your place in the world.

While Screwball Comedy represents the light at the end of the tunnel, Stories Going Steady is a journey through the darkness. A rich, bold short story collection featuring a cast of souls searching for humanity and connection in turbulent times. "A Man of a Certain Age" finds a high school teacher weighing his privacy against the truth brought about by a scandal. In "Counting Men," a Los Angeles nurse answers the question, What makes a woman star in an adult film? Loneliness and loss sends a recent widower reaching out to an unexpected new friend in "eventually…" And the narrator of the startling "A Posthumous Introduction" pays tribute to his friend, an obscure author, whose lone novel couldn’t cure his horrific obsession.

Taken together, these two volumes of stories are triumphant examples of Allen’s eclecticism and his ability to convincingly illustrate the lives of us all. He does this with clear-eyed compassion and a bracing honesty. Screwball Comedy and Stories Going Steady are ample evidence of a writer working at the height of his powers.

Coloring Book: An Eclectic Anthology of Fiction & Poetry by Multicultural Writers features the traditional up against the postmodern all under one cover. Transgressive. Spoken word. Experimental. Adventure. Erotica. These are just some of the styles you'll discover. Eighty-five writers spanning the globe share prose and poetry that's sometimes personal, sometimes political, but always exciting and provocative. This expansive anthology brings together new work from both emerging voices and a few you've come to love over the years like Susan Atefat-Peckham, Farnoosh Moshiri and Emanuel Xavier. With the same talent found in his own books, Allen delivers a collection that will soothe one moment and make you toss the book against the wall the next...the way all fine art should.

PRAISE FOR COLORING BOOK: What does Coloring Book do but suggest the best of life consists of coloring outside the lines? In this admirable compendium of fresh voices, sharp visions, writers once considered on the margins or beyond are shown to be pertinent. Impressive, urgent, and rewarding. - Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Mirror, Mirror.

Our introduction to Janet Hurst begins in a suicide ward. She is the sum of her broken dreams. She lives life as if she was merely consulted “for the minutiae.” So she blames her young son. She blames her husband, Marshall. She even blames their housekeeper, Barbara, who Janet believes is having an affair with him. As she meditates on her life, we witness a middle-aged woman as she’s challenged by her health, her sanity and the expectations of having it all.

When twin sisters Talulah and Cora are uprooted from New York City to a Pittsburgh suburb, because of their father’s new job, the sixteen-year-old girls are less than pleased. Eager for some excitement, Cora convinces her sister to break their mother’s curfew and sneak out to Owl’s, a popular college hang-out. The twins pretend they are college students and meet two young men who will alter the course of their young lives. The Daughters of a Mother is at once the study of family and its influence. It is the story of the bond between two sisters, but it is also an exploration of how having a strict mother who never wanted children taints every decision of her daughters.