GIANT CLAW
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AN IMPRINT OF WHAT BOOKS PRESS, LOS ANGELES
Artwork by Gronk

March 15, 2022

Let's Face the Music and Dance by Chuck Rosenthal

Available Now

How the Animals Around You Think: The Semiotics of Animal Cognition by C. P. Rosenthal & Terror Island: A Novel by A. W. DeAnnuntis
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“No one inflects their prose with the wild and absurd beauty of existence better than Chuck Rosenthal.”  
—Elizabeth McKenzie


LET'S FACE THE MUSIC AND DANCE

CHUCK ROSENTHAL​

ISBN 9781733378949
Publication date: MARCH 2022
Format: 6 by 9 inches, PAPERBACK
226 pages

Let’s Face the Music and Dance  is three books in one:  part contemporary love-story set in Los Angeles; part philosophical meditation on desire; and part historical romance set during the siege of Vicksburg and modeled loosely on the film Casablanca.  Deftly innovative, intellectually engaging and thoroughly enjoyable, it is Chuck Rosenthal’s 20th book.

Praise for Rosenthal’s The Hammer, the Sickle and the Heart
“The Portuguese novelist José Saramago has defended the construction of fictions centered on historical characters, asserting that facts in themselves are nothing and history only what society agrees happened. It is the novelist’s job to explore this ‘wretched reality’ for deeper and truer explanations. Rosenthal depicts the culture and landscape of Mexico, as well as the destabilizing atmosphere of Kahlo’s Casa Azul, with lyricism and dramatic flair. He excels at creating those intriguing and resonant delays that keep
you reading, even when you know the end of the story.” 
—Karen Kevorkian, The Los Angeles Review of Books
Chuck Rosenthal is the author of thirteen previous novels, a memoir, two books of narrative essays, a book of animal philosophy, and the co-author of two books of experimental poetry. He holds postgraduate degrees in both English Literature and philosophy.  He lives in Topanga Canyon, California.
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Available On Amazon

TERROR ISLAND

 A. W. DEANNUNTIS

ISBN 978-1-5323-4143-3
Publication date: October 2019
Format: 6 by 9, hardback with dust jacket
662 pages

In his newest novel, DeAnnuntis offers an epic coming-of-age tale set in the 17th century.  Filled with marvels and horrors, it tells the story of Pierre, a young man who has left his home in Philadelphia to find his lost father.  Soon after Pierre embarks on a sea voyage he hopes will unite them, his ship is destroyed by a gigantic sea monster, and our hero’s adventure truly begins.

Against a backdrop of piracy on the high seas and harrowing encounters with the supernatural, Pierre embarks on an odyssey across the Caribbean and the South Atlantic to the Mediterranean.  There, a mysterious character lures Pierre to a climactic confrontation with the creature.
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Wildly imagined, TERROR ISLAND weaves together early scientific experiments, ghosts and an unlikely romance—all overshadowed by a raging beast—into a spellbinding tale with a remarkable, elusive and sinister antagonist lurking at the story’s heart.

A. W. DeAnnuntis lives in Philadelphia and has published short fiction in more than twenty journals as well as the novels Master Siger’s Dream and The Mermaid at the Americana Arms Motel and the short story collections, The Final Death of Rock and Roll and Other Stories and The Mysterious Islands and Other Stories  with What Books Press.
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Available On Amazon

HOW THE ANIMALS AROUND YOU THINK: ​The Semiotics of Animal Cognition

C. P. ROSENTHAL​

ISBN 978-1-5323-4142-7
Publication date: October 2019
Format: 6 by 9 inches, hardback with dust jacket
196 pages
The Cheese is a big, silver cat with vertical black stripes. He has leapt from an upper deck through a second story window and sits on the sill. Now the Cheese jumps from the windowsill, goes down stairs and meows from the bottom of the steps. He wants to eat, but he won’t go to the food bowl unless someone accompanies him because he wants to be petted while he eats. The Cheese is meowing to someone he can’t see so they will come do something for him in a place where he is not. If he weren’t capable of abstract thought, how could he do this?

​Animals think, says C. P. Rosenthal. They think in signs. Using a wholly unique combination of philosophical discourse and examples of observable, everyday animal behavior, Rosenthal offers a powerful argument and a theory for animal cognition. This is a book that challenges current scientific, linguistic, and theological positions and offers ample evidence that despite not possessing language as we know it, the animals around us are conscious.

C. P. Rosenthal holds advanced degrees in philosophy and literature with emphasesin Language Theory and Semiotics.  He has been observing domestic animal behavior for over forty years. He is a Professor of Narrative and Narrative Theory at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

CLICK TO READ
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Psychology Today—Mar 06, 2020 
How Animals Think, Feel, and Communicate Without LanguageAn interview with Chuck Rosenthal about his new book about animal minds.



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An imprint of What Books Press, Los Angeles
GIANT CLAW is a new small press located in Los Angeles, California. We are an imprint of What Books Press. Both presses are run by the Glass Table Collective, a diverse group of artists and writers.
 
In keeping with the original vision of What Books Press, GIANT CLAW will be publishing unique works of literary merit.  In addition, GIANT CLAW will seek out and publish ground-breaking books of rigorous intellectual imagination and accomplishment such as How the Animals Around You Think:  The Semiotics of Animal Cognition, a book of animal philosophy by C. P. Rosenthal, and Terror Island, an epic novel combining history and fantasy by A. W. DeAnnuntis, our first two books.
 
Submit to Giant Claw via the What Books Press Submittable page. Click here to see if submissions are open. 

For all other inquiries, please contact publisher Gail Wronsky at gail.wronsky@gmail.com or (310) 663-2130. 
Copyright © 2022 Giant Claw. An imprint of What Books Press, Los Angeles. All rights reserved.