Manga creators from Japan and the US present an international showcase of horror. Collected for the first time in Betwixt: A Horror Manga Anthology, six short stories reveal the universal fear of the space between the known and unknown. Will anyone cross that border?--

"American childhood is a carefully edited, photographic record of the lives of American children, accompanied by brief, thoughtful essays on aspects of their experiences. There are over 200 pictures of children in this book, ranging over the history of the American nation. Some of the people in these pictures would go on to fame (or infamy). But for the great bulk of them, a photograph is likely the only public trace they have left behind"--

In Europe, the Americans are pulling out their troops in a tide of isolationism. Britain, torn between loyalties to America and the continent, is caught betwixt and between. In America, a space shuttle crashes on landing, killing all but one of the crew on-board: A British man named Mike Dreyfuss, who will become vilified by the US press and protesters. Halfway across the world, Martin Hepton, an English ground control technician watches as they lose contact with the most advanced satellite in Europe. A colleague of Hepton's who suspects something strange is going on is signed off sick, and never comes back. But there is much more at stake than anyone realizes, and many more people on their trail than they can possibly evade.

"Our narrator, Francisco Goldberg, an American writer, has been living and working in Mexico City as a journalist for over a decade, but has recently returned to New York City in hopes of "going home again." It's been five years since the end of his last relationship and he is falling in love again with a new woman. Soon, though, he is beckoned back to Boston by his former high school girlfriend who was witness to his greatest youthful humiliations, and his Guatemalan mother, Yolanda, around whom his story orbits like a dark star. Backdropping this five-day trip to his childhood home is the specter of Frank's recently deceased father, Bert, an immigrant from Ukraine who was volcanically tempered, pathologically abusive, yet also at times infuriatingly endearing; as well as the high school bullies who gave him the moniker "monkey boy." Told in an intimate, irresistibly funny, and passionate voice, this extraordinary portrait of a family and of growing up a "halfie," unearths the hidden cruelties in a predominantly white, working-class Boston suburb where Francisco came of age and explores the pressures of living betwixt and between worlds all his life. Monkey Boy is a new masterpiece of autobiographical fiction from one of the most important American voices in the last forty years"--