Kirjahaku

Author Oliver Bestul wrote this 120-poem collection during the many rambling walks of his first year at college. He uses an original poetic structure, the "bestul," to explore the sad and unsettling.

Immerse yourself in a murder mystery that will leave you wanting more, Oliver Bestul's latest play The Birding Body In picking up your own copy of the case file, illustrated by Veronica Swanson, you will be joining audiences across the country in observing the odd mind of Bestul's Detective Peterson. Performed by the two artists in each of the fifty United States, from 2019 to 2020, The Birding Body is as widely enjoyed as it is funny

Lately, Leona has led a stressful life. Her friends don't seem to trust her, her family's out roaming the streets with the rest of Zone Q's zombies, and, because of her recent contact with the Orb of the Zodiac, her fangs are coming in. Feeling less like a member of the Zodiac Dozen and more like a lion, it seems her struggles against the forces of evil will begin within.Thankfully, she'll soon come to learn that even life's darkest times can be illuminated by the flames of friendship. Banding together with a few unlikely companions - including a king, an archer, and a girl with detachable hands - Leona devises a plan to finally end the invasion that's been plaguing Milwaukee. Their biggest obstacle? The rest of the Zodiac Dozen, who remain unconvinced that her idea will work. Without their support, Leona's forced to take matters into her own claws in a decision that could either reunite the Dozen or disband the group for good.And, as can happen with the best of plans, Leona's comes with its own massive snag. Sure, she may have figured out how to convert a few zombies back to humans, but what she hadn't counted on was an all-new type of attack. The man on the back of the Moon has been busy, and he's ready to test the power of his new pet

It's a zoo in Zone Q Having defeated Big Blue, Virgil and the rest of the Zodiac Dozen come to learn that the beast's attack was the least of their worries. Intent on retrieving the Orb of the Zodiac for his own evil schemes, the man on the Moon will stop at nothing, no matter how many constellation monsters he needs to unleash on Earth - Thought Ursa Minor was a formidable foe? Try her 80-foot-tall bigger sister Or a 100-yard-long set of serpentine triplets Or the most tall and terrifying threat of all, soon to crash-land in Lake Michigan All newly upgraded by the Orb of the Zodiac, the Dozen will have to face these fearsome fiends while learning how to use their new abilities. From seeing through walls to moving in superspeed, each of the friends will bring something all their own to the table. Virgil? In his own way, let's just say he can do a little of everything.Perhaps the most mysterious member of the Zodiac Dozen, Virgil will at last connect with his friends, though likely in a way he hadn't anticipated. With his quick-thinking bravery, he might just be the very hero Milwaukee needs to overcome the attacks of the night sky's constellations

It's a simple life. Victoria spends every morning getting homeschooled by her father and every evening rewatching old black-and-white movies. Outside of that basic daily structure, however, she hasn't had too many life experiences. She's never taken a weekend, never gotten the slightest injury, and never even walked outside of her space-safe compartment-just like all the other kids living in her colony on the planet Venus.However, that's all about to change when a dream she has of Earth causes a strange and shocking chain reaction. From an explosion that punches through a wall in her compartment and exposes her to the vacuum she's been living in, to a hole in the floor that lets her eavesdrop on her parents, to a boy attempting to make contact from Earth, the dominoes are all in place for Victoria's alien world to come crashing down around her. Hopefully, the friendship of the Zodiac Dozen will be enough to help her rebuild it.The only problems are: she doesn't have a spacesuit, doesn't have a rocket, and doesn't know of any other way to get to Earth from her front door on Venus

Jeromy has lost a lot in the span of a single night. He's lost track of his family, lost track of his friends, and now he's lost the entirety of the neighborhood they live in. The culprit? An army of evil Moon-men, spreading chaos through the streets of Bay View with an odd alien affliction. Their aim? To find and steal the Orb of the Zodiac.So long as he can keep from getting captured by them, Jeromy won't join the hordes of zombie-like citizens these beasts have already attacked. Unfortunately for him, this could prove easier said than done. With literal thousands of invaders in the streets all around him, he'll need his wits, his resourcefulness, and his ability to split into twins if he's to have even the slightest chance at staying human But what does it matter if a bunch of aliens take a small, strange Orb back up to space with them? Why should Jeromy risk his life - or, at least, his human eyes - to prevent them? Well, as the nightmare stretches into weeks, Jeromy will come to face the stakes of the situation. These mud-made Moon-men don't only pose a threat to him, or the Zodiac Dozen, or even all of Wisconsin. No - if Jeromy can't overcome them, it could indeed mean the loss of his entire planet.

Just when Bria was starting to feel comfortable with her new friends and powers again, she had to take a huge step back... a 250-year step back, to be exact When the evil conqueror Night casts the Dozen into the distant past, the team will be forced to make a few adjustments. Instead of a mayor, the Dozen will have the historical Potawatomi chief Siggenauk to govern and guide them. Instead of houses and apartments, they'll have to make themselves at home in wigwams and longhouses. Instead of fast or frozen food, they'll be dining on whatever they can find in the nearby streams and forest Gone are the Milwaukeeans of the present, replaced by the very clan that helped to get the city started Thankfully, Bria's mind-reading abilities allow for limited yet essential communication between the clan and the Dozen. Will she crack under the pressure of this new responsibility, or will friendship prove to need no translation? From a cutthroat game of lacrosse to dealing with a less-than-honest band of fur traders, Bria and her friends will learn just what it meant to be an original citizen of the homeland they and the clan have in common

When Corbin and his friends opened a portal to return to the present, they may have made a slight miscalculation. Somehow, Milwaukee seems a little different, with massive magnetic fields powering the city's tech, hyperfast cable cars for instant transportation, and UV-ultraprotective sunsuits on every citizen. Thankfully, Corbin's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter Scarborough arrives on the scene to explain; in leaping through time, the friends missed their target by a quarter millennium Thrust into the distant future, the Dozen will have to learn again how to function in a strange time and land. With dream-recording Dreamdexes, virtual reality visards, and portal-powered sightseeing for entertainment, the year 2272 seems like it's sure to be a blast Unfortunately for Corbin, the fun of the future also comes with a few threats. As Scarborough warns him, learning too much information about the last 250 years could cause the fabric of spacetime to unravel into a tangled, irreparable mess. Besides that, there's an old friend of the Dozen in town who wants to keep them from returning to the past

When the watery warrior Darius fused himself with the Earth's oceans to pad the planet against an impact with Venus, he didn't count on the kind of recuperation that would be required of him afterward. Now, despite his best attempts, he can't seem to grow any bigger than his usual size, rendering much of his power useless. All this at a time when the Dozen must get themselves from Wisconsin to Florida fast In just a few days, the Artemis Omega rocket will launch from the Kennedy Space Center; if the friends have any hope of finally defeating the evil entity Night, they need to catch that flight Unable to simply carry them there like he usually would, Darius is forced to use a method of transportation a little less fantastic: a van.Hopefully, his limited driving experience will prove enough to get him and his friends across the country, in time for NASA's latest rocket launch. Not only will he have the clock to contend with, but his own conflicting emotions, the interstate's crazed trucker population, and a much more sinister threat than that

The time has come at last for Sierra and her friends to face off against the evil conquerer Night on the far side of the Moon. With their unique star-powered abilities, their year's worth of training, and the strong bonds of their friendship, they might just have a chance. First, however, they have to make the 240,000-mile journey to meet him After using their powers to infiltrate NASA and commandeer the Artemis Omega rocket, the Dozen find themselves strapped in for quite the trip: a four-day voyage through outer space to what might be their final destination Will doubts and second thoughts arise during the friends' flight to Night? Will the vacuum of space and the pressure of their mission finally cause the team to crack? Will Sierra ever figure out how to properly use a zero-gravity space toilet?These might be only the beginnings of the Dozen's worries, for when they land on the Moon's cold unforgiving surface, evil itself will be ready for them. Armed with the Orb of the Zodiac, the contagious power of negative thinking, and the very same enhanced abilities as all the Dozen, the colossal villain Night is sure to prove a worthy opponent Will the light of love and friendship or the dark of Night end up victorious? It all comes down to this