A novel by the award-winning Los Angeles journalist. Nancy Rommelmann’s articles and profiles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Reason and other publications. The idea for this novel grew out of her non-fiction work, which often explores the story behind the story when it comes to Los Angeles’s more interstitial populations: LAPD officers and the refuge that is the cop bar; the itinerant inhabitants of a Sunset Boulevard motel; the workaday lives of a Mexican gardening crew in the Hollywood Hills.

The Bad Mother: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Rommelmann, Nancy

Contemporary

Dymaxicon

The Elements of Scrum has gained an international following and a reputation for being perhaps the only book on software development that reads like a page-turner. Written by Chris Sims, a top scrum trainer and pioneer of experiential learning, and Hillary Louise Johnson, a novelist and business journalist, it demonstrates the principles, practices and pitfalls of the scrum framework through lively storytelling and vividly told example. The Elements of Scrum opens with a blow-by-blow description of a week in the life of a scrum team, then briefly details the history and origins of scrum, comparing it to traditional methodologies and providing context for how scrum applies to the cultural history of the software industry. Next, the principles and practices set forth in the Agile Manifesto are broken down and illustrated with real-world examples, putting the reader inside the heads of the founders of scrum and agile for a thorough grounding in theory. The meat of the book explains every aspect of the scrum process, including team composition, scheduling and work flow management, in crisp, clear, example-laden prose designed to provide insight to novices and experienced practitioners alike. The book concludes with a section on supporting technical practices like Test Driven Development and Pair Programming, to help the reader apply scrum at the practical level. The Elements of Scrum is taught at colleges and universities across the country, including UCLA, George Mason University, Arizona State, SUNY Potsdam, Wofford College, and Becker College. It has been translated into Mandarin, and is soon to appear in other international editions.

The Elements of Scrum

Computers & Technology

Sims, Chris

Johnson, Hillary Louise

Software

The world is full of rules and guidelines for garden design if you care about such things. It never hurts to read up on any subject, just so you will know what rules you are breaking. Breaking rules is, after all, how most art happens. Anarchy in the garden is a harmless form of indulgence. As you go about your liberated way, trusting your instincts, your inner artist will begin to express itself, bringing you untold gratification.

BeBop Garden: Riffing and jiving in the plant kingdom

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Grady, Ricki

Gardening & Landscape Design

Set in 1980's Japan, the book follows the adventures of Fat Harada, a gentle, noodle-slurping small-time enforcer, and Yuko, his purple haired, black-lipsticked, foul mouthed nemesis and unlikely dream girl, as they go up against the Yakuza. Violent, sexy, and very, very funny. If you are nostalgic for Delacorta's new wave novels of the same time period (Luna, Diva, Nana), then you will be smitten by the Sushi King's Daughter. An excerpt: Harada threw the bruised and gasping Snake on top of the jackknifed Peach Boy, gave them both an extra kick in the gut to keep them down, “For Sato, you baka-yaro!” charged into the hall, leapt lightly over the prone and groaning Shin, grabbed Yuko’s wrist and surged along the hall, down the stairs, through the curtain, burst into the shop ,knocking the phone out of Muso’s hand sending it flying through the air to strike a teetering pile of books, which toppled with a dusty sigh of relief pulling three other stacks along with it. Books sprayed across the floor. “Harada, you bastard—” Muso screamed. Plowing through the store trying to run, bow, and Yuko flying along behind him, Harada shouted back, “I’m sorry, really, Muso-san,” exploded through the shop’s front door sweeping aside two blue-suited salarymen and a teenager lost in his favorite S&M manga. The salarymen flew into a taxi stand, their newspapers puffing into flight. The teenager slammed into a pile of cardboard boxes with a soggy whomp! His magazine drifted down and settled by his head, the bound and gagged girl on the cover eyeing him as he lay there gasping for breath.

The Sushi King's Daughter: a novel

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Kronish, Larry

Mystery

Short Fuse: A Graphic Novel

Comics & Graphic Novels

Ristagno, Lili

Graphic Novels

Originally published in 1989 by Poseidon Press in the US and Pandora Press in the UK, Physical Culture was translated into Dutch and Spanish, but failed to achieve a wide audience. "Hillary Johnson in the 1980s was a writer so far ahead of her time practically no one understood what she was doing," Madison Smartt Bell wrote in the Huffington Post in 2011. "Physical Culture describes levels of self-mutilation that put it over the top at a time when 'transgressive' fiction was supposedly in vogue." About Dymaxicon Cult Classics Dymaxicon Cult Classics are new editions of books beloved by a handful of hard-core fans-books that deserve more time to grow on readers than conventional publishing schedules tend to allow. We're bringing these dead soldiers back into print, but our new editions are more than "reprints." In many cases, we're re-editing and sometimes restoring the author's original vision (think director's cut).

Physical Culture: A Novel

Literary

A relentless tour of DCs most crime-ridden streets, with many beautifully written surprises, and darker than the deepest noir. ~Madison Smartt Bell David Swinson’s Ezra Simeon has the dry wit of Chandler’s Marlowe and the stylish, hard-won bitterness of Connelly’s Harry Bosch. ~Hillary Louise Johnson Half of DC Police Detective Ezra Simeon’s face is immobilized from a persistent case of Bell’s Palsy—he must drink through a straw and eat carefully to avoid chewing through his own cheek. He has been detailed from robbery to the cold case department while he heals. “How odd to dream with one eye open, like having one foot in reality,” Sim muses in the dark, bluesy vein that is typical of his Chandler-esque narration. “That’s what makes dreaming dangerous and why I moved my gun farther from the bed.” Detective Simeon’s half-frozen world begins to heat up when a friend from his Academy days drops dead of a heart attack, and Sim is tapped to replace him, detailed now to homicide, where he inherits the high-profile case of a murdered escort he alone thinks may be the victim of a serial killer.

A Detailed Man

Swinson, David

As an actress, Carlotta Novak never got off the B-list, but as a hit woman who takes out troublesome stars for studios and financiers she’s number one with a bullet. Now Carlotta is faced with a sticky problem: in order to stay in the orbit of her A-list targets, she needs to make a comeback on the screen. But Carlotta‘s plans are complicated when she finds herself caught in the middle of a nasty feud between Hollywood’s favorite power couple and... the Dalai Lama.  Shooting Stars is the first mystery novel by Hillary Louise Johnson, author of Physical Culture and Super Vixens’ Dymaxion Lounge.   Advance Praise for Shooting Stars:  "The funniest Hollywood novel I’ve read in a long time, up there with the likes of the two Peters, Farrelly and Lefcourt." ~Anne Thompson, Thompson on Hollywood   "Only a veteran of Hollywood’s singularly bitchy madness could write a book as weirdly, crazily, wickedly awesome as this." ~David Corbett, New York Times Notable Author of Do They Know I’m Running?  "Hillary Louise Johnson is breaking out a whole new kind of novel: a satire as good as the genre it satirizes. Shooting Stars skewers the Hollywood social scene straight to the wall with its own nail file. And as a straight-ahead noir thriller, this book is moodily striking enough to make Raymond Chandler look twice." ~Madison Smartt Bell  Praise for Super Vixens’ Dymaxion Lounge:  "LA life as it might have been lived by Bridget Jones." ~Marie Claire  "A slim but wickedly brutal take on existential life in modern L.A." ~ Mark Athitakis, Salon  "Johnson is a universe shaper, with a powerful mind careening slightly to self-parody, and a lot of attitude." ~Kirkus Reviews  Praise for Physical Culture:  "The single most shattering novel I’ve read since Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird." ~Harry Crews  "Hillary Johnson has achieved in Physical Culture a sort of perfect, corrupt beauty." ~ Patrick McGrath

Shooting Stars: A Carlotta Novak Mystery

A pocket-sized overview of roles, artifacts and the sprint cycle is adapted from the bestsellerThe Elements of Scrum by Chris Sims &amp; Hillary Louise Johnson Praise for The Elements of Scrum: “If you want to understand the essentials of Agile development and Scrum, The Elements of Scrum by Chris Sims and Hillary Louise Johnson is a must read.” -Dave Moran “Bravo. 6 stars. I wish all computer books were written like this.” -T. McCann “As a consultant who works in agile, this is the book I’ve been waiting for.” -Liz Lewison “For those only dancing with the idea of learning scrum and agile, I have three words—Read this Book.” -Brendan Kane

Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction

Programming

Short stories by the author of THE BAD MOTHER and THE QUEENS OF MONTAGUE STREET  "Nancy Rommelmann's startling stories are as compelling as they are unsettling.  The worlds she creates are recognizable but also completely and wonderfully unfamiliar.  She writes close to the body, and we are made to feel each uncanny detail.  Transportation is a fascinating, fierce, and original collection of stories."  --Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia  "I inhaled this book in one sitting, thoroughly hypnotized. Rommelmann has the uncanny ability to tease out the nightmarish moments of everyday life in stories that are audacious, darkly hilarious, surprisingly tender and HDTV sharp. Fiction doesn't get any better than this."  --Karen Karbo, author of How Georgia Became O'Keeffe  "Somewhere between gritty and your mother's kiss on your forehead lies Transportation, Rommelmann's startling new collection. Each story crackles with violence, folding over into realms of otherworldliness, where the reader dare not look away. As the voice in the title story claims, 'There is only one escape and that is to brush away the sentimental cobwebs, get them out of your eyes quickly,' which Rommelmann does with razor-sharp precision."  --Deborah Reed, author of Carry Yourself Back to Me  Author and journalist Nancy Rommelmann is known for her unflinching documentarian gaze, usually focused on subjects like serial killers and Munchausen moms, con-men and homeless teens. But the stories in Transportation have an elevated, untethered quality—they are transported, and transporting. The storytelling surges at times toward sci-fi; at others, toward an unadorned magical realism. The first story in the collection, “The White Coyote,” is an intense, black-humored study of shame that takes place in a Catholic grade school gymnasium. The title story, “Transportation,” documents the metaphysical journey of two grieving parents who must literally circumnavigate the globe, on separate paths, in order to heal.

Transportation: Stories

Short Stories & Anthologies

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Books by Dymaxicon