"He loads his head full of coal and diamonds shoot out of his finger tips. What a trick. The mole genius has left us with another digest. It's a full house - read 'em and weep." - Tom Waits

Inspired by D.H. Lawrence, Chekhov, and Hemingway, Bukowski's writing is passionate and extreme - his life was as weird and wild as the tales he wrote. His first work came from the 1960s Los Angeles underground press, and yet he became regarded as one of one of America's greatest poets and realist novelists.

This collection of Buk's grimmest diaries gives an insight into the noir and brutal Los Angeles that Bukowski observed and lived so well. He was a legend in his time: a madman, a recluse, a lover...tender, vicious...never the same. These are exceptional stories that came pounding out of his violent and depraved life - horrible and holy. You cannot listen to them and come away the same again.

Tales of Madness includes iconic stories "A .45 to Pay the Rent" about drug dealing, fatherhood and love on the other side of the law, and "The Great Zen Wedding" in which Bukowski goes off the rails as best man at a wealthy Hollywood affair.

OBIE winner Will Patton (Remember the Titans, The Good Wife, Armageddon) recreates Bukowski in his visceral prime, along with every eye-popping character in his life, each adversary, lover, and stranger in a lost city.

©1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1983 Charles Bukowski

More about the author:

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany and raised in Los Angeles, where he lived for 50 years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was 24, and began writing poetry at the age of 35. He died in San Pedro, California on March 9, 1994 at the age of 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.