An ambitious homage to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, The Brubury Tales (Illustrated Edition) takes Chaucer's story and frame to Los Angeles just after the riots in 1992, where seven security guards on the graveyard shift swap tales in an impromptu storytelling competition for Christmas vacation time. Written entirely in rhyming verse, the tales themselves are poetic updates of classic stories by Dostoevsky, Dickens, Boccaccio, O Henry, Poe, Twain, Gilman, Crane, Saki, Anderson, Bierce, and even Khayyam's Rubaiyat. Along with 11 original illustrations by Keith Draws, the book also contains a special foreword by California literary legend, Carolyn See, book reviewer for The Washington Post and bestselling author of Handyman and There Will Never Be Another You. The Brubury Tales [by Frank Mundo] is a landmark book, in what is going to be -- and already is -- an exceptional, distinguished literary career. -- Carolyn See Mundo's skill is astounding and has a natural cadence. These stories are intriguing and compellingly human, and soon enough the reading becomes listening. -Sacramento Book Review With inspiration from many literary classics and plenty of original spin, The Brubury Tales is a fine collection and not one to be missed. -- Midwest Book Review The Brubury Tales is a brilliant blend of writing, combining the style of Chaucer while putting a new slant on the short stories of the classical writers. -- Reader Views The Brubury Tales , a versified compilation of stories by Mexican American poet Frank Mundo set in Los Angeles after the 1992 race riots is composed in iambic pentameter couplets and describes a storytelling contest among a multiracial group of hotel security guards during the graveyard shift. Mundo challenges readers to question the very notion of racial transparency... acknowledging the fraught conditions of "brown" identity on a global scale and its contested meanings in literature and theory." -- The Chaucer Review A unique and powerful new book , The Brubury Tales draws upon Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and classic stories by Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Dickens, to name a few. Frank Mundo takes risks with his writing, which is sensitive, thoughtful, and gritty. -- LA Books Examiner " The Brubury Tales by Frank Mundo is a bold homage to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales . Mundo defamiliarizes the tale by placing it in Los Angeles in 1992 shortly after the Riots. His authentic L.A. childhood experiences came out in his verse..." -- Mike Sonksen for KCET.org The Brubury Tales by Frank Mundo features a magnificently clever central conceit, which in and of itself would merit attention. That is, he takes Chaucer's famed Canterbury Tales and uses that as the foundation for a poetic exegesis on modern-day Los Angeles... Mundo has himself worked as a security guard, as well as a journalist, and in this regard he reminds me of other working class scribes of the LA scene ... sort of like a Bukowski without the excess..." -- David Prybil , author of Golden State Winner of a Poet Laureate Award Nomination from UCLA and CAL, The Brubury Tales has also won Reader Views Reviewers Choice Award for Poetry Book of the Year, the Bookhitch Award for the Most Innovative Book of Poetry, a Reason to Rhyme Award from Byline Magazine , and was selected for Powell Library's WORDs... exhibit. Frank Mundo has a BA in English from UCLA, where he completed the Creative Writing Program. His stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in dozens of journals, magazines and anthologies in print and online. For over a decade, Mr. Mundo has also been reviewing books for the San Diego Union-Tribune , The New York Journal of Books , and many more. Author of Gary, the Four-Eyed Fairy and Other Stories , an interconnected collection of his very best short stories published over the last 15 years, Mr. Mundo's latest book, Different , is an illustrated novella that reimagines Kafka's Metamorphosis and Alice in Wonderland .