The third installment of Ry Cooder [ tickets ]'s California trilogy, an album and a 95-page novella, is scheduled to be released June 24.

The forthcoming album/novella, "I, Flathead," focuses on the fictional roadhouse musician Kash Buk and his band the Klowns in a bygone California filled with deserts, salt-flat racing, Native Americans, seedy dance halls, amusement parks and sinister plots, according to a press release. "I, Flathead" was preceded by 2005's "Chavez Ravine" and 2007's "My Name is Buddy."