These eighteen "comedies and traumadies" divide in half: nine are "stories light," filled with crazy humor and nutty characters, and nine are "stories dark," filled with scary shadows and creepy situations. Many of the stories, whether they're humorous or scary, have surprise endings.

This is not a book for young children, as some of the dark stories might be too ghoulish and frightening. Everyone else, though, will find something to remember in this remarkable collection.

After the stories comes a section of "Special Features" (like on a DVD), where you'll find the author's commentary, artist profiles, a deleted scene, and acknowledgements.

Adding to this book's charm is the wonderful art. Each story has been illustrated by a different artist (eighteen stories, eighteen artists). Some of the artists have used photographs, others ink drawings, and still others computer graphics, to interpret the text. Here are the artists of Stories Light and Dark, with the stories they illustrated in parentheses:

Michael Arnaud ("FateMaster"), Lucy Arnold ("Lure"), Lisa Baker ("The Island"), Barbara Bigbee ("What I Did for Summer Vacation"), Tyson Compton ("Roll Tide"), Sabrina Dalbesio ("An Occurrence at Owl Creek High"), Julia Dvorin ("The Price You Pay"), Teena Gores ("The Lady and the Tiger"), Annie Helm ("Marvin's Mummy"), Robin Noel Hiers ("Clocky"), Heather Madden ("The Pharaoh's Amulet"), Larry Noggle ("The Next 43 Seconds"), Tasha Osterhout ("If This Were That"), Sheryl Patton ("Yarn"), Connie Pecoraro ("Nerbert's Curveball"), Daphne Phillips ("The Moonstalker"), Deirdre Reinert ("Bloodsucker"), David Shearer ("Wordsmitty").

Read the bios and see the photos of these talented artists at this page of our site.

The Author: Chris Strodder has written four books for Red Hen Press: the children's story A Sky for Henry in 1985, the adventure novel Lockerboy in 2002, the comic novel The Wish Book in 2004, and now this collection of short stories. He's also written the acclaimed biographical compendium Swingin' Chicks of the '60s for Cedco Publishing in 2000, which brought him national attention in print and on TV. Chris lives in Mill Valley, California. Write to him at cstrodder@earthlink.net.

The Cover Illustrator: A Bay Area graphic artist, Larry Noggle is also an amateur chef, gardener, and 20-year mountain biker on the trails of Northern California and Utah.  A chile pepper zealot, he's the author and designer of the popular Chile Peppers calendar, now in its seventh successful season (calendars.com).  In the last twelve years, he has been seriously growing chiles with some very interesting results (the calendars' chiles are all from his garden).  This has led to a variety of gourmet hot sauces and chile powders. E-mail Larry at peppahead @pobox.com, or look for his new Web site, peppahead.com.

Stories Light and Dark is available direct from us (send us an e-mail for info) and at Amazon.com.

Recommended ages: PG-13

Dimensions: 6" wide x 8.75" tall, 280 pages, softcover

Price: $9.95

First published: 2006

ISBN: 0931093201

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