Now Available!!

The first novel of the trilogy, Canticle of the Thrush, this the story of the impassioned love affair between Simeon St. James and Eloise deSaussure, who fight to save a magnificent swamp land from devastating encroachment by industry.  It is a fight to preserve a rural society from the menace of industrial progress, in which Simeon and Eloise confront game poachers and semi-outlaws on the one hand, who threaten to destroy the swamp by fire, and ambitious commercial interests that seek to span the swamp with highways and devastate its ecological treasures forever.  The story is filled with action, humor, wit and passion.  It tells of the confrontation of America with its future in a world stripped of passion and faith in its own institutions.

This novel is the second volume of Canticle of the Thrush, and carries the themes of America confronting the 21st century forward.  The plot is complex and full of action.  Mexican hit men track a drug mule called Cunningham to a cabin the the vast deSaussure swamp where Simeon St. James, the younger, nicknamed Stump, and his first cousin Caroline deSaussure, have taken refuge.  (Simeon is the illegitimate son of the Simeon of Saving deSaussure Swamp and Eloise deSaussure.  Caroline is the daughter of the elder Simeon's daughter and Eloise's brother.)  The children are 12 years old.  They help Cunningham fight the hit men in self-defense, and they are then threatened with death by Cunningham.  This is the first encounter with evil and it stamps them for the rest of their lives.  This novel is full of action, suspense and humor.

Marbella!

This novel, which takes place in 2016, and which assumes Islamic domination of Europe and a confrontation between the United States and the European Union follows the story of two young Americans, one the supermodel of her age, the other the top contender for the undivided heavyweight championship of the world. They are first cousins, and also niece and uncle. Both are spoiled, high-born scions of southern and old New York aristocrats. They are pig rich. She becomes the sex-slave of a Muslim arms dealer in Marbella, Spain; he attempts to rescue his boyhood playmate, with whom he is incestuously
in love.

The action climaxes in the Spanish seaside resort of Marbella, which has been converted into a Pleasure Zone by the new regime in Brussels, where every imaginable carnal passion and perversion are openly practiced.

The destinies of both these young people become embroiled with the Crusade of the Redemption, which is led by a half-mad hermit from the nearby Sierra, whose thousands of peasants and shopkeepers rise up against the regime in a rebellion that takes on international implications when American Marines invade Spain’s southern coast.

This novel has been compared to the works of Zola and Tolstoy in its scope. It is chilling, dark, passionate, decadent, rapturous, apocalyptical…and also howlingly funny in parts. It flays the flesh off the hedonistic cant of this post-modern world.

The paperback edition of Marbella! is a 45% discount from the price for each of the hardback bound volumes. Marbella! is the third novel in the trilogy, Canticle of the Thrush.

Servants and their Masters

What the critics said about Servants and Their Masters when it was first published:

More than enough action to keep one turning its pages…an entertaining, droll, superbly detailed, lavishly portrayed son et lumière.”

                                             New York Times Book Review

“The reader can have a very good time with this novel…the various threads of plot are absorbing, the writing elegant…at the end one is shaken (some of these events are mighty gory) but   strangely reluctant to surface.”

                          Publishers Weekly

“Dazzling…a grand and lavish tale.”

                          The Kirkus Review

“A magnificently unique and uniquely readable novel…Few contemporary authors could have dreamed up a plot of such complexity, assembled as diverse and multitudinous a cast, and brought it all off…There is just a chance that [the author]…will be remembered…as…the major twentieth century novelist…”

                         National Review

An Introduction to a New Mode of Publishing

The editors of P.E.N. Press announce a new concept in publishing fiction.

Many of the greatest and most fascinating novels in all the world are big. Think Les Miserables. Think Oliver Twist. Think War and Peace. Think The Brothers Karamazov. Think The Forsyte Saga. Think The Naked and the Dead. Think Noble House. Think The Borifire of Vanities ... Think even the often behemoth thrillers by Steven King.

Master novelists who undertake to define entire societies and who plunge into the big questions that burden mankind require the scope that only a thorough examination of the complexities of human nature can afford, as reflected in a large cast of characters. These novels are richly rewarding ... but they run to five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred pages ... more. And big novels in their physical dimensions are a pain to read. They weigh up to three pounds. They are cumbersome to prop on one's chest in bed at night, awkward to pack and to lug aboard an airplane. And because of the economics of publishing, they are printed in small, eye-straining type, with too much text crammed to the page.

Well, P.E.N. Press has come up with a novel way of making such works comfortable for the reader. This is to print them in serial parts; as, during the nineteenth century, so may great novels were published (notably the works of Dickens), chapters appearing monthly in magazines. Not every novel lends itself to such treatment, but P.E.N. Press is reissuing Servants And Their Masters, by Reid Buckley, one of the funniest (and wickedest) (and most enduring) novels of the past forty years, a critical success when it first appeared in 1974 and an alternate Book-of-the-Month Club selection ... but 607 pages in its original edition, weighing two pounds!

Now you will be able to get Servants And Their Masters in easily digestible and comfortable form: nine separate pamphlets, printed in large, easy to read, boldface type, each pamphlet containing, unabridged, a continuous narrative section of the novel that is a complete story in itself. And you can order a box to contain the entire novel on your bookshelf.

Set in the Madrid of 1967, during the waning years of the Franco regime, when Spain was tremulously emerging from four hundred years of slumber, the narrative opens with the entrancing table of The Marchioness of the Pilgrim, the aging matriarch of a noble Spanish family, who struggles to keep up appearances, notably her palace, against penury. It continues with The Heirs of True Spain, introducing the Duke of Sacedón and Jacobo Rivas, a dairyman, in hilarious counterpoint, who represent intimately related social extremes in a tightly knit yet decadent society. This is followed by Kinfolk, the stories of the Marquesa’s dysfunctional children, their spouses, and their lovers, and then by The Countess of a Thousand Tears, the heart-breaking romance of the Marquesa’s beautiful younger daughter, Sofía, who is married to an English genius-eccentric. The narrative is continued with the intrigue and social upheaval consequent on the death of the matriarch, beginning with The Commencement of a Wake, running through The Hidalgos of Sacedón, and Civil War (in two parts), and ending with The Exposure of Insurrection (in two parts also)—nine pamphlets in all, each separate component of the narrative fascinating and complete in itself.

Books are expensive, yet readers are commonly asked by publishers to buy a pig in a poke. Under this new concept, that won’t happen to you. The pamphlet, The Marchioness of the Pilgrim, costs $7.95. The reader may buy only The Marchioness of the Pilgrim, if he wishes; and only after fully tasting the story decide whether to subscribe to the complete set, for which he will then pay the discounted price of $47 for the nine installments, including a handsome box to hold the set: a savings of over $25. For the complete set with box add $7.00 shipping and handling. All prices are subject to change without notice.

Each pamphlet of Servants And Their Masters is designed to be a perfect, two-hour jet ride read. If you are flying to Europe, and plan to stay a week, pack one in your briefcase, a couple more in your carry-on suitcase, and as many more as you may desire in your checked luggage. You are in for a heap of reading fun.

This is a Limited/Signed Edition of 2000 copies, each numbered. The exquisite (and mordant) artwork is by Claude Langford Buckley.

by Christopher Taylor Buckley
The incredible (literally) story of how Washington PR man Nick Naylor was hired by North Korea to stage a celebrity Pro-Am golf tournament in the 'Axis of Evil.'

"Christopher Buckley is on a roll! I had just finished laughing my way through his latest novel, No Way to Treat a First Lady, when I came across this novella, Field of Screams, obliging me to check my blood pressure against the eruptions of laughter that roared up out of my belly and left me gasping for breath. Nick Naylor, the star-crossed hero of Buckley's Thank you for Smoking, resurfaces to handle the PR for Kim Jong II's Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea ... it being Dear Leader's wish to stage the most extravagant golf tournament in history. Nick Naylor's assignment is to entice the likes of Tiger Woods and other star pros and the likes of Clint Eastwood and other celebrities (a babe from "Baywatch" and even O. J. SImpson) to play ... along with Dear Leader Kim Jong II, who has become infatuated with the game.

World War III almost erupts on the fabulous new golf course while you, the reader, are reduced to helpless jelly by the paroxysms of your laughter. Oh, read this funniest work yet by America's master satirist ... do!"
--- Edmund Zuckerman, President, Permanent Ad Hoc Committee Against Boring Authors

Reid Buckley's Classics - Tales from the Arabian Nights and The Caliph Turned Stork. For children -or anyone who enjoys being read a good tale-Reid Buckley has recorded these stories on two tapes.