A SEARING INDICTMENT OF THE OFFICIAL STORY—BACKED BY DOCUMENTED FACTS.

 A Lie Too Big to Fail is a groundbreaking investigation into the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, based on newly released police files and government records.

Author Lisa Pease, a longtime researcher of both the JFK and RFK cases, presents compelling evidence that the official account—centering on Sirhan Sirhan as the lone assassin—fails to withstand scrutiny. Through exhaustive primary source research, Pease shows how the Los Angeles Police Department suppressed or destroyed evidence, ignored key witness testimony, and constructed a narrative that avoided signs of a broader conspiracy.

The book reveals how the trial of Sirhan Sirhan avoided pursuing critical leads, and how the justice system and press failed to present the public with a full accounting of the facts. Pease draws connections between the RFK case and other political assassinations of the era, raising serious questions about the ability of government institutions to investigate crimes involving their own power structures.

Rather than speculate, Pease relies on meticulous documentation—including LAPD files she personally reviewed on microfilm—to demonstrate that Robert F. Kennedy was viewed by some as a political threat whose rise to the presidency had to be stopped.

 This is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the profound impact of Black Nationalism on America’s past, present, and future.

Lisa Pease is a lifelong information activist and respected political researcher. She became involved in assassination research in the 1990s, seeking to support her arguments with verifiable documentation. She has been a featured speaker at political and historical conferences in both Dallas and Los Angeles, in addition to her frequent appearances on popular podcasts and radio broadcasts.

 

Orders placed directly with Feral House receive a signed photo of Eugene Robinson. Quantities are very limited.

A rollicking no-holds barred memoir from journalist and musician Eugene S. Robinson that takes readers along through the story of his life.

“A weird rollicking ride” frames how author Eugene S. Robinson views his journey from a Brooklyn kid with decidedly offbeat punk rock proclivities to the realities of California hardcore and dark detours into shows, tours, drugs, porn, guns, MMA fighting, an Ivy League-esque education and his eventual entry into the US Defense industry just in time to see his boss dragged into Contragate.

Robinson’s writing mirrors his fighting style intensity, ferocity, and brutal truth. He knows exactly who he is and how he is perceived by the white people and white culture that surrounds him. Robinson challenges accepted norms. He fights against easy answers and safe passages. He says:

“No one who ever gets a life sentence for just about anything really expects it to last a lifetime. Even if the modifier is “without the possibility of parole.” Hope springs eternal but there’s always the undiscussed other option. The one where the fate is chosen, freely, and the protagonist has about as much interest in escaping as he does of being almost anywhere else at all. Which is to say: not at all.”

A Walk Across Dirty Water is Robinson’s memoir of growing up in Brooklyn during the 1970s, playing in punk bands and touring the world during the eighties, taking a break to attend Stanford, and accidentally becoming a famous television personality in Germany.

“I’m sorry to see you here, but had you fought like a man, you need not be hanged like a dog.”
(Anne Bonny to her husband, Calico Jack Rackham)

The story of the most famous female pirate in history provides a remarkable personal odyssey from a time when women were almost powerless and at the lowest level of the social order on both sides of the Atlantic. This new biographical work fills considerable gaps in Anne Bonny’s life beyond her mythology to rescue an actual person for posterity.

Born in scandal in Ireland then emigrating to the American Colonies, she turned her back on the rigid South Carolina plantation lifestyle to find a sense of personal freedom, Anne Bonny sailed the Caribbean’s pristine waters during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early eighteenth century. Few accurate records exist about these law-breakers, whose lifestyles called for hanging. Fortunately, Anne Bonny was a notable exception to the rule, as she was caught off the Jamaican coast and tried by a court of law, whose records have fortunately survived.

So, who was the real Anne Bonny? A heartless prostitute, a bloodthirsty psychopath, or a compassionate woman of faith and courage? Such a fundamental question has not been adequately answered by historians for 300 years.  Anne Bonny: The Infamous Female Pirate takes a fresh look at the life of Anne Bonny to present a corrective view into not only her story but also the seldom explored, but incredibly rich, field of women’s history.

Author Phillip Thomas Tucker, has earned acclaim and recognition as an award-winning American historian and author. Fundamentally a corrective scholar of outdated and traditional history, he has written ground-breaking books about some of the most iconic moments of American history.

“These devils and red-eyed bunnies are powerful, devoid of cutesy charm, and the language and lettering that presents them is integral and key—the “Dukes,” the “Knights,” the “Kings,” the gleeful usage of archaic words like “Thee” never uttered in the United States, except perhaps by cults—and while they crop up elsewhere, they certainly seem to have become more rooted n Chicago than anyplace else. “  From Anthony Haden-Guest’s foreword to Compliments of Chicagohoodz.

A rare, private collection of photos, calling cards, and ephemera serves as inspiration for Compliments of Chicagohoodz.  The book analyzes the unique visual language and graphics of Chicago’s gangs, drawing upon decades of interviews, documentation, and collecting of memorabilia, and featuring commentary from gang members and Chicago artists.

The practice of creating and distributing gang business (“compliment”) cards was popular in Chicago for over fifty years. These displayed the organization and branch, its active and fallen members, and rivalries. Compliments of Chicagohoodz tells the stories behind the names, bringing the reader closer to the individuals who created, owned, and added their personal touches to the card as it passed from hand to hand.

James “Jinx” O’Connor’s photographic documentation of gang graffiti and members captures a lost era of large-scale color promotional murals and an extraordinary style distinct within street art. The book also explores other forms of representation including varsity-style sweaters, patches, and drawings. Through these images, Compliments of Chicagohoodz traces the development and consolidation of the neighborhood street organization from doo-wop to hip-hop, from greasers to gangster rap, from dances, bands, and softball teams to racketeering, narcotics trafficking, and domestic terror.

 

Famous for its revolutionary aspects in musical, political, sexual identity and consumerist ideas, punk rock also has its lesser-known gangster ethos as well, explained here by players in the various punk gangs in Los Angeles, Orange County, and South Bay.

Some blue collar kids, responding to the violence and aggression of punk songs, formed punk gangs that got into beatings, drug dealing and murder. No gang was more notorious than La Mirada Punks, or LMP. Says LMP chieftain Frank the Shank after getting arrested by police for murder: “After having my hands in so much bloodshed over the years, I most certainly had it coming. I deserved whatever I got.”

Unexpectedly Frank was bailed out from prison by his father’s friend, a mob gangster. “Too many people died at the hands of punk rock violence,” said Frank. “I got lucky, some didn’t. The gangs ruined punk rock. I still have people telling me today that they quit punk because of LMP. I dig graves at a small cemetery just outside Los Angeles. What else would you expect for Frank the Shank?”

Kudos
“Disco’s Out Murder’s In! is one of my favorite books of all time. I devoured it—An absolute page-turner. It’s an exciting and visceral account of the LA suburbs in the 80’s and an anti-coming of age story. It felt like I was right there. This book is so fucking punk – READ IT!” — Terry Richardson, Photographer/Director

“If you’ve never been in the jungle, a story about a tiger is just a story. Yes, you may shiver… but to you, it’s still just a story, an exciting escape from your every day life. But not to me … It’s real, it’s frightening, and the savagery of that world haunts you forever. I was afraid when I read this book. I caught my fingers tracing over old scars as I turned the pages, and I knew it was real. You can tell yourself that people like this don’t exist, but they do, and they would be pleased to meet you in the dark night of a hardcore boulevard.” — Jack Grisham, Author/Singer TSOL

Click the photo to hear an exclusive playlist created for the book!

On May 12, 2013, 48-year-old Vicky Isaac of rural Puxico, Missouri—a woman with a history of learning disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, and drug addiction— loaded a .22 caliber handgun and shot her violent addict husband while he slept in the trailer they shared with Vicky’s adult son. Or did she? According to police reports, Vicky called 911 and confessed to the crime.

Was this another sad case of murder amongst addicts or something more?

Betty Frizzell escaped her family’s legacy of crime, addiction, and abuse to become a respected law enforcement officer and teacher. Drawn back to the town and people of her past, Betty works to uncover the truth of murder and her family’s history of violence. Her investigation uncovers sad realities about mental illness, small-town politics, and a society that doesn’t care about “poor, white trash”.

There are never easy answers when the odds are stacked against you and no amount of “elegies” will save your family.

Betty Frizzell is the former chief of the Winfield, Missouri Police Department. Betty began her law enforcement career in 1997 with an aim to assist victims of sexual assault. She served as a Deputy Sheriff in both the Lincoln and Ripley County (MO) Sheriff’s Departments. During her time with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, she helped develop the first sex crimes unit and was the first female officer to join the S.W.A.T. team. She later worked as a police officer and gang investigator for the city of Louisiana, Missouri before becoming the Chief of the Winfield Police Department. Upon retiring from policing, Frizzell began teaching courses on sexual assault investigations as an adjunct professor of criminal justice. She holds an M.F.A in Writing and an M.S. in Criminal Justice Administration. She served as a member of the Citizens Advisory Board for the State of Missouri Department of Corrections: Probation and Parole Division and was honored as the Lincoln County Law Enforcement Officer of the Year in 2001. Frizzell currently resides in Seattle, Washington, but remains closely connected to Missouri.

REVISED EDITION

The 2003 edition of LORDS OF CHAOS is revised and expanded, adding fifty new pages, detailing outbreaks of Black Metal crime in Finland, Germany and the United States; and includes the secret history of occult Rock, a new section on Varg Vikernes’ promulgation of bizarre Aryan UFO theories, and material on the career of Hendrik Mobus, an international neo-Nazi fugitive. This award-winning exposé features hundreds of rare photos and exclusive interrogations with priests, police officers, Satanists, and leaders of demonic bands who believe the greater evil spawns the greatest glory.

“The authors of Lords of Chaos clearly know the international Metal/Satanism picture and, largely through interviews, have brought information to light of which religion scholars as well as the general public ought to be aware… highly recommended.”
— Robert Ellwood, Historian of Religion, writing in Nova Religio

“With Lords of Chaos Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind paint a portrait of a fantastic realm where Satanism, neo-paganism and National Socialism energized a musical scene in which fantasy was actualized in the burning of medieval churches in Norway …a uniquely valuable history of Black Metal music in general and of the Norwegian scene in particular as it is viewed by the participants themselves.Lords of Chaos is a compelling work deserving of a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic.”
— Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan, author of Radical Religion in America

“This definitive study of Black Metal bridges the gap between fans and students of music subcultures, avoiding the twin evils of fanzine hype and academic detachment. Wise, witty and informative, Moynihan and Soderlind have written a model genre study in an engagingly accessible style through which their deep understandings shine.”
— Deena Weinstein, author of Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology

“An unusual combination of true crime journalism, rock and roll reporting and underground obsessiveness, Lord of Chaos turns into one of the more fascinating reads in a long time. This unpredictable collection of interviews, histories, quotes and anecdotes stares long and hard into the dark heart of the Satanic Black Metal movement and returns with a sober analysis on the subject.
To their credit, Moynihan and Soderlind manage to avoid both the frequent flippancy of the mainstream media as well as the backward bending apologizing of the counter culture press. For them, the world of Black Metal offers legitimate insights into art, ethics and politics, but they never forget just how strange these people are…”
— David Thomas, The Denver Post

“A fascinating study in extremism… Lords of Chaos is the rare exception, proving of interest not just to fans of the genre, but also to any students of true crime, sociology, and cultism. This both intelligent and accessible book will definitely serve as the textbook on the black metal scene for years to come.”
— Bay Area Music News

“Gripping stuff, a book about scary rock that is really scary.”
— Booklist

“Long the source of rumors, wildly exaggerated stories, and misinformation, the saga of black metal has finally been been chronicled intelligently and accurately [shows] the blood-red dividing line between the drama of antichrist superstars and the limits of human reality.”
— Bikini

“A meticulously researched exposé… a fascinating read. If you thought the feuds associated with Death Row Records were a bit over-the-top, then take a glimpse into the dark corners of the metal underground.”

— The Face

“This exhaustive, near-academic look at metal’s satanic underground simultaneously traces the Devil’s ascent through rock history and provide cultural antecedents for music-related violence and paganism.”
— Alternative Press

“Lords of Chaos is a brilliantly interwoven, if unlikely, bundle of journalistic branches-music, true-crime, occult, and subcultural anthropology. [It] benefits immeasurably from the authors’ commitment to long-term study, and the care they’ve taken to convey the contradictions and differences within the scene, demolishing the oversimplified coverage in the sensationalistic press.”
— Brutarian

“Well-written and highly academic… A non-fiction take on the cultural, political, and social implications of a music realm gone mad… I was somewhat hesitant in picking up a book which might fall into a trap of adding to the notoriety of the sporadically violent media pariahs it portrays, but Moynihan and Soderlind don’t do them any favors.”
— Wet Ink

“Paints a grim picture of the infamous Norwegian death metal scene in the early ’90s… Testimonies reveal a lethal brand of childish, psychopathic obsession vastly more scary than the ponderous and deliberately offensive music scene that spawned them.”
— Bizarre

”[Lords of Chaos] includes not only the sensationalistic, fiery, blood-and-guts side of the black metal story, but the elegant and passionate side as well; the life-and-death struggle by a few dedicated young people to rise above the mediocrity and complacence that surrounded them.”
— Flipside

“A fascinating and deeply tragic story supported by hilarious photographs.”
— Loaded

“A riveting read, equal parts history, sociopolitical analysis, and true crime.”
— Spin

“The most exciting book since the Old Testament … a masterwork of music history.”
— Spex (Germany)

“Finally someone has compiled an exhaustive resource regarding the seamy and Satanic side of pop music and culture. Whatever your musical or religious outlook, this book has the facts you need to understand what’s going on in Death Metal music.”
— Bob Larson, radio & TV personality, author of numerous Christian-oriented books on Satanism, the Occult, and contemporary culture.

“Speaking of dark and twisted reads, Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind’s Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground has everything: wacky Norwegians burning down churches to get back at Christians for stamping out Odin worship, murder, suicide, more than you ever wanted to know about the Norway vs. Sweden black-metal rivalries, and the (d)evolution from theatrical Satanic to slightly-more-serious Wotanic Nazi metal, Plenty of interviews-from the late Anton LaVey to Norwegian metal villain Varg Vikernes-make this a mighty entertaining bedtime reader.”
— Pulse

“Brilliantly interwoven… Lords of Chaos benefits immeasurably from the authors’ commitment to long-term study, and the care they’ve taken to convey the contradictions and differences inherent in the [Black Metal] scene, demolishing the oversimplified coverage in the sensationalist press.”
— Brian Hodge, horror novelist

“Lords of Chaos brings much light into a realm of darkness where previously rumors and mystical transfigurations had reigned.”
— Visions (Germany)

“Rev up a chainsaw. Flick on the blender and a couple of power drills. Stand directly behind an F-16, right before it blasts off into space. A jackhammer should do to set the tempo. Now get down on all fours, contort your face into the wickedest grimace you can muster, and scream until your vocal chords collapse. If all of this makes you feel just the least bit ridiculous, hit yourself in the face with a roofing hammer until you can’t laugh anymore. There now. Listen carefully. This is what Black Metal sounds like.
Black Metal’s “medieval Satanism” is the logical fulfillment of Christianity’s worst apocalyptic fantasies, or at least the ones the media have irresponsibly legitimized. It is rebellion taken to its natural conclusion … destruction for its own sake, an adrenalized nihilism that revels in every toppled steeple. Lords of Chaos … lets the genre’s more luminous personalities speak for themselves, stringing countless first-hand interviews into a seamless chronological narrative. It’s a task few other writers could have pulled off, whether geeked-up music journalists or academic outsiders. Surprisingly balanced, exhaustingly thorough, and—lest we forget that a lot of these folks come across more like professional wrestlers than terrorists—darkly humorous, it is a comprehensive look at a phenomenon that’s rarely been scrutinized.”
— Vor Tru

Just Kids for the grunge era.

Seattle band, The Gits and their charismatic front person Mia Zapata were on the verge of international rock stardom but on  July 7, 1993, days before their third US tour, Mia Zapata, The Gits 27-year-old singer-songwriter, was brutally assaulted and murdered by a stranger. Zapata’s death sent chilling ripples through progressive communities throughout the United States. She became a cause-celebre for women’s rights activists outraged by the brutal killing and lack of law enforcement support. This book reclaims Zapata’s story to focus on the art she and The Gits created and not her tragic end.

Much has been written and said about her murder, yet Zapata’s life and work remain overshadowed by the circumstances of her death. Zapata’s friend and bandmate, Steve Moriarty, tells her story—and the story of their band, The Gits—from their first meeting in 1985 to their last goodbye.

Moriarity and Zapata met in 1985 as first-year students at Antioch College, where they discovered the power of punk rock and found an outlet for their progressive ideas through music. Zapata, Moriarity, and fellow students Matt Dresdner and Andy Kessler attended a show by San Francisco punk legends Dead Kennedys that inspired the friends to start a band fueled by Mia’s provocative lyrics. They quickly gained critical praise and dedicated fans.

Moriarty details their struggles as newcomers to the then-pre-tech outpost of the Seattle music scene. Interspersed are the tales Zapata told of her legendary ancestor, Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, to entertain the band as they spen’t countless hours on the road crammed into a single un-air-conditioned van touring the US and Europe. They shared stages with Beck, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Joan Jett, Bikini Kill, L7, and more—all who expected Mia and The Gits to be the next “big thing.”

The Gits’s story is more than a biography; it’s a testament to the ability of artists and musicians to challenge the status quo and the power of friendship to change the world. Moriarty reframes the sensationalist story as he shares his personal narrative and presents, with intimacy, grit, and humor, the lived experience of The Gits and his dear friend, Mia Zapata.

Included are never before seen paintings, letters, and pictures.

Chicago history as told by the relics of her forgotten people and places. The observed made real to exorcise the hauntings of do-gooders and social engineers.

Chicago was a city of wanderers, truants, and delinquents. It was home to the largest tuberculosis sanitarium in the country, as well as a dizzying number of public and private institutions for wayward children, indigents, the mad, and the poor. Chicago’s socially progressive institutions were influential and respected as saviors of the immigrants and “lower classes.” Yet, the savage race riots of 1919 laid bare the eugenic truth of an ongoing, second Civil War operating as the Northern status quo.

Mother Chicago is the story of three of these institutions – an obscure juvenile experiment called the Chicago Parental School, the great Municipal Sanitarium, and the amalgam of poor house, asylum, and cemetery that occupied the far northern boundaries of the City. This sector of quarantine and detention built on stolen lands acted as a limiter on the production of dreams and an orphan zone for people cast adrift by societal decree. Outside its walls, City power worked in ways both mysterious and transparent while the land harbored peculiar hallucinations that still must be banished.

As the City grew larger, these institutions became fissures in the streets and the transport lines, odd reminders of the Gilded Age, which had made them. Mother Chicago tells the story of the corporeal specters used against the working class: redlining, property speculation, racism, and collateralized debt. Like the game of snakes and ladders, the City lays her traps for the unlucky on a numbered grid — easy to navigate yet impossible to escape.

Billheimer turns a life-long obsession with the ephemera of Chicago history to tell the City’s story through the relics of her forgotten places.

Mother Chicago is a kaleidoscopic romp through America’s most intriguing and confounding city, a city of recent ruins and distant cultures, where the past keeps erupting into the future. In prose that summons the ghostly voices of the machine age, Martin Billheimer excavates the moral core of Chicago by investigating what it did to its own lost children, the kids who were born losers at the game of late-capitalism, the exiles and runaways, the orphaned and unwanted, in a place where the city became the stern parent of its own savage history. –Jeffrey St. Clair, author Born Under a Bad Sky, editor CounterPunch Magazine

Martin’s book elegantly and harrowingly delineates a concept of American education that dwarfs Catholic nuns for sheer evil, a social engineering experiment to kill the gypsy in us all, every mother’s son and daughter indoctrinated with numbed-out stooge as the goal, students with flunky in the bloodstream, capitalism’s WORST form of imperialism, THEY WERE ALWAYS COLONIZING…US!–Daniel Riccuito, The Depression Alphabet Primer, editor of The Chisler

Martin Billheimer’s, Mother Chicago, should be read by everyone who wants to revisit their past. Martin is a living encyclopedia of historical knowledge. With his keen introspection, humor and factual history of old Chicago, I felt that I was actually there looking through his eyes while exploring his childhood home. Brilliant! – HY Thurman, Author, Co-founder of the Young Patriots Organization and the Rainbow Coalition

“Martin’s style is fascinating and engrossing, and his subject is rendered in a kind of shadow that feels both totally mythic and undeniably attuned to that of its time and place. Reading it feels investigative, like a long journalistic piece, while being much more invested in impression than in detail.” – Bryce Lucas, Seminary Co-op Books, Chicago

Murder Ballads Old & New: A Dark and Bloody Record is an exploration of an age-old topic? our human need to document the horrors of the world around us. The murder ballad, here expanded to include songs about traumatic loss in modern variants and multiple styles, including punk, post-punk, alt-country, and folk. The book is a graveyard stroll past tombs both well-kept and half-hidden. Murder Ballads Old & New excavates facts about killers, victims, and the folkloric storytellers who disseminated their tales in song.

Author Steven L. Jones focuses the tragic ballad as “an act of remembering and a soul-reckoning with the ineffable.” Songs examined range from obscure tunes from the founding days of the United States to familiar canonical songs learned in schoolrooms and honkytonks. Jones tackles each song in a manner that’s equal parts musicological, psychosocial, and genealogical as he uncovers stories that reveal larger contexts and maps the lineages of songs and themes, forebears, and ancestors.

Murder Ballads Old & New is a compelling delve into the perennial American fascination with True Crime. Includes archival and historical black & white images.

Steven L. Jones is an artist, writer, musician, and former instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kentucky-born, the son of a choir director and violinist, he lives with his wife Catherine and dog Mojo in his adopted hometown, Chicago. A longtime writer for magazines and online journals, including the Woody Guthrie Foundation magazine “Sing Out.” Murder Ballads Old & New is his first book.