o celebrate our favorite holiday, on April 1st of each year, the Press produces a keepsake for our friends and collectors. The images here show the cover and title page of each year's offering.

All Fool's Day keepsakes are $25 each. We will send a separate invoice for shipping after you order and when we are able to determine the shipping charge.

Now available, a special box designed to hold a set of April Fool’s keepsakes, covered in cloth with a leather inset decorated with a motif derived from a 17th–century foolscap watermark.

2024-From the Series: Opera Xplained
 
Up to now opera has gotten little traction in the hip-hop world but Lil DucatX, in xplaining, step by step, the finer points of opera is an ideal guide. Get an insider’s dope (and perhaps inspiration for your own hybrid musical form) thanks to his artistic imagination.

2023-Literary Hangouts: Examining the Utilization of Alcohol Inside the Heads of Writers
 
We know how the consumption of alcohol can affect, to a certain degree, all of us but how are the brains of writers affected by the intake of a certain amount of alcohol? We can all weigh in as to the theories of alcohol to stimulate the creation of literature. But do we know what we are talking about or is this simply daft drivel? This question is addressed by Hermann P. Bergschneider, PhD., DLitt., and the results may be surprising. Doctor Bergschneider cites sixteen separate studies involving rats, dogs, Homer, a monkey, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald in his nearly exhaustive summary of his scientific studies.

2022-Environmental Awareness Magazine
 
When a magazine reporter travels all the way from New York City to Nowhere, Texas, she better have a pretty good reason. And, in this case, that reason has to involve the environment, if she wants to get paid. This is a story involving a new power plant. So far so good. The problem is, the source of power for this experimental power plant is preposterous  that is, until is isn’t. Of course, anything is possible if it involves Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Nuclear, but does it have to involve the Texas Rangers? We’re still trying to figure that one out.

2021-Letters From Wittenberg: During the Great Turmoil at Elsinore
 
Herr Professor Doktor Friedrichs von Henrk, Dean and Admissions Officer at the University of Wittenberg corresponds with his absent students Horatio and Rosencrantz who are away in Denmark trying to help their friend (and fellow student) the increasingly troubled Prince Hamlet who is preparing to follow the demands of his ghost-like father who has returned from death to haunt Elsinore.
 
Try as he might to get Hamlet and Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to return to normal university life, the Professor fails as, step by step, letter by letter, the court at Elsinore devolves into a final bloodbath from which there will be only one surviving student who must now return to tell Hamlet’s story.

2020-A Letter to My Daughter: On Her Birthday April 1st
 
This letter, written by Sancho Panza in the days after the death of his beloved Don Quixote of La Mancha, attempts to explain to his daughter, Mari-Shancha, how it came about that he was chosen to accompany his famous neighbor on his journey to rediscover the lost life of a knight errant. When Sancho was made governor of a small insula (for a brief period of ten days) the wise Don Quixote instructed him with much insightful advice about governance—advice so universal that we wish all leaders could follow it today.

2019-Report from the Metropolitan Police Marine Policing Unit (Thames River Police) Concerning Three Men in a Boat.
 
When it is learned that a gang of dangerous anarchists are operating somewhere along the River Thames, every lead must be followed, even if it comes from an anonymous neighbour of three eccentric friends who are planning a trip up the river in order to . . . to what? That is the million-pound question. And the answer must come from the undercover taco catering van known to the Thames River Police as the Taco Surveillance Unit (TSU) all part of Operation River Watch. Will the investigators be able to act in time? Will the three men (not to mention the dog) be able to slip away from near-constant surveillance? Will the police caught in the maze ever be found again? These and other questions could be asked and almost certainly answered.

2018-Murder by Book
 
Detective Theodore M. Wilke of the NYPD has a special mission: he is the specialist when it comes to crimes in the City involving books. When he is introduced to a corpse with his mouth stuffed with pages from a book he has never heard of, he calls in someone from the Department of Conservation at the NYPL. He was expecting the old bald guy he remembers from previous cases. Joyce Mountrill, Ph.D. is not he. In stocking feet (hers) he needs to stretch a bit in order to meet her eye to eye. And then he and his partner need to do a little mental stretching when they get to her office above the two stone lions at the NYPL.

2017- The Blog of Samuel Pepys
 
The year is 1666 and Samuel Pepys, a veteran diarist by this time, is introduced to blogging by his wife’s young nephew, William Joyce. Having a secret diary is one thing, a public blog quite another. When things go awry the ‘Blogge device’ very nearly ends the illustrious career of Mr. Pepys. As a special bonus to this keepsake, we include A Public Service Announcement for those who feel the need to emigrate.

2016- The Truer History of Doctor Dolittle
 
Doctor John Dolittle had a way with animals. Which was a good thing considering he didn’t have a way, in the medical sense, with his fellow humans. And he and everyone else in Puddleby-on-the-Marsh didn’t have a way with Fauna Pharma. But that shouldn’t be a surprise. What should be a surprise is that it took the animals to fix things.

2015- Harry Paget Flashman: Dawn of a Dastardly Hero
 
Heroes receive medals. Well, here is a case where a boy fashions important tools for life, setting a standard where the rules of society are tossed out and medals are practically catapulted upon him. That’s his lot. And it doesnt seem to matter that he is, and always will be, a coward, a cheat, a liar, a thief–and so much more.

2014- New Foolszit Roman
 
An exposure to typefaces will start as soon as you begin to notice those indecipherable hieroglyphs pasted above the blackboard in the classroom. The small child is supposed to make sense of these ABCs. Actually, they are called your ABCs even before you decide to make any claim to them. But–here is the great part–once the code is broken, everybody’s a graphic designer and begins to compete with the likes of Garamond, Bodoni and Caslon. Here we have a personal story from classroom ABCs to a (nearly) full type specimen broadside, not to mention a philosophy of type styles.

2013- Hoarder’s Manual No. 77
 
It seems as if one can buy just about anything these days. Even things from Paris, France. But, before you order that scarf, wouldn’t you be willing to pay a little extra to discover the 'story' behind the article in question? We thought so.

2012- The Diaries Of A Damp Stone
 
What does a young bride do when her famous husband, John Ruskin, practically abandons her in Venice to do research for what will become his most famous work, The Stones of Venice? She’ll turn over a few stones of her own to discover a young Italian architect who will show her the difference between Gothic and Romanesque, among other things. . . .

2011-Calliope vs. Thamyris, et al.
Case No. 1095880IC
 
What do you do when your Muse reneges on her promise to help finish your great literary masterpiece? You sue of course, and confront her in the Immortal Court presided over by the god Zeus (who also happens to be her father).

2010-A Foundational Literature Experience For A Young Person
 
As the traditional book form disappears from our libraries and homes, a new group comes forward to save our bookless children—they are The American Gaming-Scholastic Electronic Library Association (AG-SELA).

2009-Literary Recipes
or
Food Thoughts from Famous Writers
 
Chef Marc-Paul Gérard collects books of la cuisinier and he likes to expound upon them. He also tells us perhaps a little more about himself than he may suppose.

2008-B. Traven: An Interview with Himself
 
In just-released papers, the famously recondite author reveals what has only been guessed at by literary scholars—the uncloaking of the identity of B. Traven.

2007-On the Labeling of Paintings: A Guide for the Art School Impaired
 
This is a new museum experience that employs the philosophy that Art is for Everyman (and the label tells Everyman where to get the real dirt on the subject).

2006-My Private Library: Confessions of a Collector
 
The title says it all in a profession where, it seems, the ends do justify the means.

2005-Tayler's ho, a Snaile! A Crye for Haelp
 
An exciting theory involving giant snails found on illuminated manuscripts given to a spellbound meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Folklore, in London.

2004-Gaillard Durfort: An Ordinary Frenchman's Ride Up & Down History
 
A reminiscence of Gaillard Durfort who, as Gustave Eiffel's private assistant, witnessed a meeting between Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and M. Eiffel in the latter's apartment atop his famous tower.

2003-Shakespeare: Motions & the Man
 
Before the normally skeptical audience at the Interlude Conference of Shakespearean Scholars in Paris, Professor Henryk Moosekowski shows beyond a reasonable doubt that Shakespeare's dramatic life began as a puppeteer.

2002-The Sadie L. Spincraft Discovery Award
 
From the League of American Librarians, we have the announcement of the Sadie L. Spincraft Discovery Award, read by the head curator of The Henry J. Kaiser Collection of Technical Motor Manuals at the Detroit Free Library.

2001-General Dwight D. Eisenhower's Golf Caddie
 
Correspondence from General Dwight D. Eisenhower's golf caddie, a young lieutenant writing from Italy to his sister during World War II. This letter is held in the Eisenhower Presidential Library along with other censored material.

2000-A Letter to Isabelle Rimbaud
 
This love letter is to Arthur Rimbaud's sister, Isabelle, from the dying man whose poetry style Rimbaud forged.

1999-The Spring Haiku of Tobu Sho
 
Haiku from the unbalanced mind of a minor Japanese poet and disgruntled neighbor of Matsuo Basho.