This is the largest collection of limericks ever published, erotic or otherwise. Of the 2750 printed here, none is otherwise. The limerick is the only fixed poetic form native to the English language. "Hickory Dickory Dock" was a limerick remember?), but that was the last time the limerick ever saw a nursery. Don Marquis is reported to have divided limericks into three kinds: "Limericks to be told when ladies are present, limericks to be told when ladies are absent and clergymen are present, and LIMERICKS." Ladies have changed, and so have clergymn, but the LIMERICK, as this collection will attest, is authentic erotic folklore at its most ribald. Arnold Bennett said, in the 1920s, that the best limericks were entirely unprintable. Until now, we might add. For here are printed, for the first time, 2750 NEW LIMERICKS (plus another 100 in the Notes) most of which have never before seen the light of day. From aardvarks to yaks and zebras, every error of mankind-and womankind-is celebrated here in verses of five hilarious yet pathetic lines. Wild, witty, sad and outrageous: Read 'em and weep! Nothing is repeated from THE LIMERICK (First Series) and for good measure an entirely new subject is now presented for the first time, the Science Fiction Limericks that so neatly sum up our Interplanetary Age, still with the same age-old aspirations and inspirations, by means of which the unpardonable now commit the unmentionable. The limerick is the bawdiest thing to happen to an ancient literary form since graffiti were found in Pompeii. Clean limericks were a fad in the mid-1800s, and lasted only five years. Few of them will be found here. But there's an index of Geographical and Personal names, so you can find your real favorites, and a list of subjects, from Buggery to Zoophily and beyond. If you have a favorite, it's here. If you don't have a favorite yet, you soon will.

Frederick Busch's 18th work of fiction, Girls , is a novel whose roots lie buried in an earlier short story. In "Ralph the Duck," Busch introduced Jack and Franny, a young couple trying to recover from the recent death of their baby daughter. In Girls Busch expands Jack and Franny's lives beyond this single personal tragedy to encompass a greater the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl, daughter of the town minister and his dying wife, from the community. Propelled by his own loss, Jack, a security guard at a local college, begins investigating the disappearance, and thus Busch's novel becomes a literary detective story. In the course of solving the mystery, Jack must grapple with his attraction to a professor at the college, the disintegration of his marriage, and the impossibility of outrunning the past.