Indie Global Reads - Fall 2023 - Shelf Unbound

globalreads

NEW RELEASES IN TRANSLATED FICTION

EZER ÖZLÜ'S COLD NIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD

WES DAVIS'

AMERICAN JOURNEY

SHELF UNBOUND MAGAZINE

All we wanted was a really good magazine.

About books. That was full of the really great stuff. So we made it. And we really like it. And we hope you do, too.

Because we’re just getting started.

“A self-deprecating memoir, beautifully deppicting the intricacies of Chinese culture and the timeless search for where one truly belongs”

Shelf Unbound’s 2022 Overall Best Indie Book Winner

PRESIDENT, EDITOR IN CHIEF

Sarah Kloth

PARTNER, PUBLISHER

Debra Pandak

DIGITAL DESIGNER

Corinna Kloth

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Christian Brown

Alyse Mgrdichian

Gabriella Guerra

Wyatt Bandt

Christina Consolino

Michele Mathews

Anthony Carinhas

V. Jolene Miller

FINANCE MANAGER

Jane Miller

For Advertising Inquiries: e-mail sarah@shelfmediagroup.com

For editorial inquiries: e-mail media@shelfmediagroup.com

2003: THE TIME-LOOP DEVICE

Nolan Emerson, PhD, is a brilliant young theoretical and experimental physicist who is a professor at the University of Geneva, and the lead scientist at the CERN particle accelerator. He is a leader in the areas of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Dr. Emerson devises an experiment so radical and revolutionary that it seeks to unlock the astounding, complex, and mysterious secrets of Einstein’s space-time. Ultimately, his work challenges the fundamental notions of consciousness and of the concept of reality itself.

1918: THE GREAT PANDEMIC

Major Edward Nobel’s mission, as a physician, is to help protect American troops from infectious ailments during the First World War. However, his unique vantage point in Boston allows him to detect an emerging influenza strain that is an unprecedented global threat. Eventually, the 1918 influenza pandemic killed up to 100 million people, and became the worst natural disaster in human history.

1877: A NORTHERN PHYSICIAN IN SOUTHERN UNGOVERNED SPACES

Colonel Charles Noble is a US Civil War veteran, and an Army surgeon reservist. Extreme violence in the former Confederacy, in anticipation of a national election, has caused President Grant to send additional federal troops to the Southern states. Terrorists are determined to counter Noble’s good intentions, as they threaten the civil rights, and the very lives, of all who oppose them.

1980: THE EMERGENCE OF HIV

Dr. Arthur Noble is a brilliant first-year medical resident in San Francisco. Noble encounters a strange new ailment that seemingly appears out of nowhere, and delivers its victims a most horrible merciless death. Dr. Noble struggles to find answers to the medical mystery, even as many researchers and society refuse to believe that it is a serious public health hazard, or that it even exists.

IN THIS ISSUE

FEATURES

13 Interview with Wes Davis

Author of An American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs By V. Jolene Miller

22 New Release Roundup: Fall 2023 By Corinna Kloth

82 The Breadth of Human Experience By Wyatt Bandt

90 Interview with Maureen Freely Translator of Tezer Özlü’s Cold Nights of Childhood By Wyatt Bandt

A WORD FROM THE PUBLISHER

Global Reads.

BY SARAH KLOTH, PUBLISHER

As the crisp autumn breeze rustles through the golden leaves, it carries with it the promise of a new season filled with wonder and magic. Fall has arrived, painting the world in hues of red, orange, and yellow, and with it comes the irresistible urge to curl up with a good book.

As the world undergoes its annual transformation, shedding the vibrant hues of summer for the warm embrace of autumn, our passion for storytelling knows no borders. Fall has arrived, not merely as a season but as a season of exploration and connection. In the pages of the Fall 2023 issue of Shelf Unbound, we invite you on a literary voyage around the globe, where stories from diverse cultures converge to create a tapestry of rich and unforgettable narratives.

In this issue, you will discover a

curated selection of global reads that beckon you to explore the world from the comfort of your reading nook. These books, hailing from various corners of the globe, offer a unique perspective on the human experience, allowing you to traverse continents, languages, and cultures without leaving your chair.

So, dear readers, as the world outside transforms, let your imagination take flight through the pages of books that transcend borders. Welcome to the Fall 2023 issue of Shelf Unbound, where we celebrate the global tapestry of literature and invite you to embark on a literary journey that spans continents and cultures. Get ready to explore the worlds between pages and to discover the universal truths that bind us all together in the vast tapestry of human existence. Enjoy the issue!

The Newest TE Watson Book A Place To Be

Wind has traveled with his friend Paper for many miles. High and low they have flown, all over the world, but they have not found a home for Paper. Paper is sad because he does not have a home. Wind is determined to help Paper find his place to be. Where will they find Paper’s special place. Travel together with these wayfaring friends as they try to find a home for Paper and keep him away from the Great Waste Pile.

Bridge of Tomorrow: Cold Peace

Bridge of Tomorrow: Cold Peace

By Helena P. Schrader

By Helena P. Schrader

The

Russian Bear is Restless

Berlin 1948. The economy is broken, the currency worthless, and the Russian bear is hungry. In the ruins of Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers and a woman pilot start an air ambulance company which offers a glimmer of hope. Yet when a Soviet fighter brings down a British airliner, Berlin becomes a flashpoint. The world teeters on the brink of World War Three.

Award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader tells the backstory of the Berlin Airlift in Cold Peace, the first book of the Bridge to Tomorrow series.

“Sharp research meets vivid storytelling in an absorbing novel of the postwar period.”

Ten years from now, you will serve the soil in Lord’s Town.

Lord's Town is a refuge in a hungry world destroyed by climate change. Serving the soil is hard and cruel, but the seeds of humanity may yet survive in a young tender called Charlotte, and the new family she gathers on her journey to discover the dark secret at the heart of Lord's Town.

Check

out these titles from Black Rose Writing

Florida’s crime scene-boats, drugs, and money

DEA Agent Sam Dahl helps a friend find out what happened to her parents who went missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Follow Sam’s quest as a beautiful woman steals his heart and a drug kingpin robs his soul.

A story of love, romance, and secrets

I Carry Your Heart is a story of undying love, the sacrifices we make for those we love, and the unbreakable strength of family.

The perfect steamy summer read

When a body is found near town, Grace’s family comes under scrutiny for murder. Determined to prove they’re innocent to the new detective, Grace unearths a web of secrets and deception — and mysteriously, her prized family heirloom is at the center of it all…

Laugh out loud women’s fiction

When Katy stumbles onto the secrets her Hungarian parents tried to leave behind after immigrating to America, the little white family lies become the key to understanding her own destructive behavior.

The Ripple Effect.

By John Crawley

“911– What’s Your emergency?”

“We’ve got a shooter in the mall. Send help.”

It’s November 13th in Lincoln, Texas. Scores of people are flooding into the food court at the local mall for a bite of lunch while shopping or out with friends or on a school trip with teachers. Suddenly, a lone shooter emerges from the shadows of the hallways and opens fire with his assault rifle. Mass chaos erupts. Lives are lost. Dreams are crushed and statistics grow in the nation’s epidemic of gun violence.

In his latest novel from Archway Publishing, The Ripple Effect, awardwinning author, John Crawley explores the devastating repercussions caused by a mass shooting. It is about the lives and deaths of the victims and the casualties to their families, also victims of the horrendous act.

In this twist on a plot, we know who did it, we just don’t know who will stop it. Maybe you?

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Archway Publishing and at a bookseller near you.

www.johncrawleybooks.com

Interview with Wes Davis

Author of An American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs

BY V. JOLENE MILLER

Wes Davis’ book An American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs takes readers to a crossroads between pre-industrial and modern America and intersects with a friendship between three men. Two of them (Ford and Edison) are responsible for the forward movement of the country while the other (Burroughs) is known for immersing his readers in nature. I had the opportunity to speak with Wes and learn about how he came to tell this story of a friendship that was cemented in time on the back roads of America.

I WAS INTRIGUED BY YOUR BOOK BECAUSE IT’S ABOUT ROAD TRIPS, AND I LOVE A GOOD ROAD TRIP. BUT I WAS ALSO INTERESTED IN THE EARLY 1900S HISTORICAL ASPECT OF IT. WHY THESE PEOPLE? FORD, EDISON, AND BURROUGHS? WHY THIS STORY?

WD: I got latched into this story through Burroughs, which I think is interesting because anybody who encounters the book is more likely to know Ford and Edison than Burroughs. My background is in literary studies, I was an English professor for a number of years, a literary critic, and a literary historian. I was digging through his letters and came across one in which he was telling a friend of his that Henry Ford had contacted him to say that he was a fan of his books and wanted to send Burroughs a Model T. Now I knew Burroughs primarily as a naturalist and conservationist, and I thought, Oh, he’s going to turn that down, it’s the last thing John Burroughs would want. I learned that not only did Burroughs accept the car, but he also became close friends with Ford.

Burroughs is somebody who had had friendships with a number of famous people. He went on hiking trips with Teddy Roosevelt. He knew John Muir. He was a close friend of Walt Whitman’s and friendly with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although Ford represented a kind of modern age that was in a lot of ways antithetical to what Burroughs represented, Ford was still kind of the man of that era, in the way that maybe Ralph Waldo Emerson was the man of his era. Burroughs accepted the car, the two became good friends, and they wound up taking these road trips together. Then Thomas Edison comes into the picture.

As I got to know more of the story, I realized that this was an incredibly lucky thing to stumble across. We get to see these famous people doing things that they’re not known for. It also gives us this really interesting glimpse of a world in transition. So this is a moment when the United States is, for the first time sort of moving from a population that’s mostly rural and agrarian to a moment when most people live in cities. This is a really fascinating way to look at it because you have Ford and Edison, who are basically inventing this new world. They’re speeding up the pace of movement there. They’re shifting us from this life that’s lived according to natural rhythms. So we get to see this transition into their world through the lens of these trips in which, in the company of John Burroughs, this naturalist with roots in the 19th century, and links to the transcendentalist movement of Emerson and Whitman. Ford and

Edison with him are basically escaping from that world that they were creating, which is the world that we now all live in.

YOU MENTIONED THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE MAY NOT KNOW WHO BURROUGHS IS. HOW DID YOU FIRST BECOME INTRODUCED TO HIM?

WD: Sort of two reasons. Early in high school I had a friend named John Burroughs, but spelled a different way. His family was interested in John Burroughs and had several of his books on their shelves. I often raided their library because they also had the Harvard five-foot shelf of books or Dr. Elliot’s five-foot shelf of books, which was a Harvard entry into great books and publishing. And my friend John had that so I would often borrow books from him from that collection. One day, I found Burroughs’ first book Wake Robin, on one of those shelves, and started reading it. When I found that letter from him, I was sort of primed to be interested in that.

The other reason is in my earlier life, I was an academic. I knew ultimately I didn’t want to write academic books, I wanted to write for a broader audience. I moved from academia into writing for a trade audience by writing about writers who are doing things outside the study and had escaped from the library or escaped from the study and were doing interesting things out in the real world.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO

WRITE THIS BOOK? WHAT WAS THAT WORK LIKE?

WD: I think it took four years. The contract I signed was for two years. I missed the deadline twice. Most of that time was spent doing research because part of what I wanted to do with this book was get enough sort of factual information about the trips to be able to relate the story in a narrative way I wanted to. Although everything in the book is factual, I wanted it to read like a novel. In order to do that, I really needed a lot of information. So most of the time was spent doing research.

I worked a lot at Vassar College, where they have, John Burroughs’s journals and his correspondence. A lot of the work was at the Benson Ford Research Center of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn where they had an incredible range of artifacts relating to the story. I was able to find thousands of photographs. Many of them were dated and had the location written on the back. I could use the photographs to piece together parts of the story. I knew who the people were, who visited a particular camp on a particular day. The Benson Ford also had correspondence between Ford and Edison and Harvey Firestone, who’s the other figure in this story, and Burroughs. They’re putting the trips together - planning the trips, what the supplies will be, what kind of maps they’re going to use. I also went through newspaper reports. At this point in American history if Henry Ford and Thomas Edison are traveling through a small town, in a rural part of the country, every little newspaper wants to report it. I could track

their progress through the newspapers and get these little glimpses of the trip.

So most of the writing was actually research. I spent a good two years doing research… maybe more like two and a half. Then a year and a half putting it together and rewriting it. This book, unlike my previous book, went through a lot of rewrites. I was so nervous about not being able to get enough information to give this rich narrative account, I wound up getting too much. When you have too much information, it’s almost as challenging as having not enough because as the researcher I wanted to get everything in there. But I had to recognize that a reader doesn’t necessarily want every single bit of information about this story.

ABOUT THE BOOKS

THAT MEANS YOU HAD TO CUT SOME STUFF. HOW HARD WAS THAT?

WD: I mean, it’s always hard. You hate it, but you can’t let anyone else cut it.

Most of the cuts were in a section on the trip that Ford and Edison made to the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. It made sense because they they actually traveled by train. It’s an important part of the story, because although the book focuses on one particular trip, which is this 1918 trip down into the Great Smoky Mountains, I look at several other trips over the course of five or six years leading up to that. One of them was this trip to the Panama Pacific Exposition, which shows the relationship between Ford and Edison becoming stronger and preparing

the ground on which these friendly road trips can take place.

It also shows those two men looking at the world they invented. It was pretty much a celebration of American industrialism. Many of the things on display had actually been invented by Edison or developed by Ford. So it’s a great way of giving us a background story for them and allowed me to show what road travel was like in this country at that point. That was a big chapter. But ultimately, we didn’t need as much of Ford and Edison looking at every exhibit at the fair as I had been able to piece together.

WHAT

DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF MOST - A RESEARCHER, ARCHAEOLOGIST, AN EDUCATOR, HISTORIAN, OR WRITER? HOW WOULD YOU TITLE YOURSELF?

WD: I think, probably writer primarily, but the kind of writing I do lives on that bedrock of research.

WHAT FOSTERED YOUR LOVE FOR WRITING? WAS IT THAT FIVEFOOT SHELF OR SOMETHING ELSE?

WD: The five-foot shelf was the thing I had been looking for. I was an only child and grew up in the Appalachian South. At a time when there was obviously no internet. There was in the town where I lived very little television service. There were two channels if you tilted the antenna the right way. I became interested in books and basically spent my entire

childhood reading. Even if I did something like camping or hiking, it was always a question like, which books would I take with me? How can I have whatever books I would need in any given situation?

AND WHICH BOOKS WOULD YOU TAKE?

WD: For many of those years, the book that I took more than any other was The Rose Walden - a book I took with me and read over and over and over for decades.

IN THE BOOK, YOU DESCRIBED FORD’S WORLDVIEW DURING THIS TIME PERIOD. COULD YOU SHARE A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO WRITE ABOUT?

WD: When I first discovered this story, my first thought was, I don’t really want to write a book about Henry Ford. Because the first thing people think of is the Model T. The second thing is his anti-semitism. Neil Baldwin wrote a great biography of Edison. He also wrote a book I was familiar with called Henry Ford and the Jews. I knew from reading that book what a difficult story that was. It wasn’t until I had read enough of John Burroughs’ journals to realize that Burroughs was himself repulsed by that part of Ford and that gave me a way to talk about it.

Early in the book, Ford, Edison, and Burroughs are following the Leo Frank trial in in 1914, in which a Jewish factory

manager working in a factory in Atlanta is accused of a murder that took place in the factory and winds up getting railroaded. And there’s all sorts of anti-semitism around the trial. This is one of their first trips together, all three of them at Edison’s house in Fort Myers, Florida. And they all agreed that prejudice had played a role in the verdict and that Leo Frank had not gotten a fair trial. They all agreed that he should get a fair trial and that the guilty person should be found. So, you know, at that moment, I see that Burroughs and Edison are sort of influencing Ford. But over time, Burroughs is finally sort of fed up with Ford’s railing against the Jews. When they’re camped near Lake Placid, New York, he goes back to his tent and writes in his journal that Ford has been blaming the war on the Jews, has been blaming the Jews for violence and crime that kind of swept through the US in the wake of the war. … and Burroughs seems to have actually called him out on it. And then he goes back and writes about this in his journal. That gave me the perfect way to sort of deal with this.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR WES DAVIS?

WD: I have a number of ideas simmering. I’m not sure what I’ll wind up on. This book was published by WW Norton, and I loved working for them. I would like to find an idea that they think is the right next book. I love this period - early 20th Century America. I also am very much attached to Greece and Crete. I have some other things cooking that might take me back to Greece but in the same time period.

WHERE CAN READERS GO TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOU?

WD: I have to admit, I’m sort of a social media-phobe. I recognize that at some point I need a website at the very least. At the moment, the only connection I have to that world is an Amazon author page. People told me, while I was writing this book, that I needed to have more of a presence. But I thought about how John Burroughs wouldn’t do that. So, while writing this book, at least, it felt right to stay in John Burroughs’ mode in the 19th century waiting for Walt Whitman to stop by.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE ROAD TRIP? DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE THAT STANDS OUT IN YOUR MEMORY?

WD: I’ve done a lot of them because I don’t like to fly. Yet another thing I share with John Burroughs. I’ve driven across the country several times, but more recently, I’ve tried to take trips that follow the routes of Ford, Edison, and Burroughs traveled. The best is one I did with my two daughters two summers ago. We drove down to Tennessee and drove over the Blue Ridge Mountains into North Carolina following a path that was very close to what Ford and Edison did…That’s a difficult piece of road to drive…The road surface is perfectly fine, but going through the mountains we encountered switchbacks that were just throwing us back and forth in the car…as we’re going through there, my daughters were clinging to the seats as they’re thrown back and forth. That was a great trip…in which the personal kind of

overlapped with the Burroughs’ story.

AND BECAUSE EVERY GOOD ROAD TRIP NEEDS A CAR, WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU DRIVE?

WD: That trip was in a Subaru Forrester. It replaces a Forrester that I drove for twenty years…When I get hold of a car, I tend to hang on to it forever and put a lot of miles on it. Before that, I had a ‘78 Volkswagon Bus. 

In 1913, an unlikely friendship blossomed between Henry Ford and famed naturalist John Burroughs. When their mutual interest in Ralph Waldo Emerson led them to set out in one of Ford’s Model Ts to explore the Transcendentalist’s New England, the trip would prove to be the first of many excursions that would take Ford and Burroughs, together with an enthusiastic Thomas Edison, across America.

Their road trips—increasingly ambitious in scope— transported members of the group to the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, the Adirondacks of New York, and the Green Mountains of Vermont, finally paving the way for a grand 1918 expedition through southern Appalachia. In many ways, their timing could not have been worse. With war raging in Europe and an influenza pandemic that had already claimed thousands of lives abroad beginning to plague the United States, it was an inopportune moment for travel. Nevertheless, each of the men who embarked on the 1918 journey would subsequently point to it as the most memorable vacation of their lives.

These travels profoundly influenced the way Ford, Edison, and Burroughs viewed the world, nudging their work in new directions through a transformative decade in American history. In American Journey, Wes Davis re-creates these landmark adventures, through which one of the great naturalists of the nineteenth century helped the men who invented the modern age reconnect with the natural world—and reimagine the world they were creating.

"Heart-warming story for all!”

“Real, raw and all the feels!”

New Release Roundup: Fall 2023.

A Compilation of Newly Released Translated Literature.

BY CORINNA KLOTH

MARIE NDIAYE

Marie NDiaye was born in 1967 in Pithiviers, France. She is the author of around twenty novels, plays, collections of stories, and nonfiction books, which have been translated into numerous languages. She’s received the Prix Femina and the Prix Goncourt, France’s highest literary honor, and her plays are in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française.

SELF PORTRAIT IN GREEN

Translated from French by Jordan Stump

Who are the green women? They are powerful (one is a disciplinarian teacher). They are mysterious (one haunts a house like a ghost). They are seductive (one marries her best friend’s father). And they are unbearably personal (one is the author’s own mother).

They are all aspects of their creator: Marie NDiaye, an author celebrated worldwide as one of France’s leading writers. Here, in her own skewed take on the memoir, NDiaye combs through all the menacing, beguiling, and revelatory memories submerged beneath the consciousness of a singular literary talent. Mysterious, honest, and unabashedly innovative, NDiaye’s self-portrait forces us all to ask questions—about what we repress, how we discover those things, and how those obsessions become us.

This 10th anniversary hardcover edition of Marie NDiaye’s genre-defying classic restores photographs that appeared in the original French edition alongside Jordan Stump’s dazzling translation, revealing in English, at last, the complete vision of NDiaye’s influential masterpiece.

ELEKTRIK

Translated by multiple authors.

What does it mean to be Caribbean in the 21st century? Is it imprinted in the landscape, the language, or is it perhaps, in the words of Mireille Jean-Gilles (tr. Eric Fishman), “a place that lives in me, and that I unfurl, like a nomad his tent, in each place where I live”? In Elektrik, eight female writers from Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe explore the beauty, pain, and complexity wrapped up in their identity. An undercurrent of silence pervades each story, each poem: a group of women walking silently along the shore, forgotten by the world; a waitress who doesn’t dare stand up to her abusive boss; a teenager discovering her sexuality in the shadow of her more outgoing twin sister; and a poet who summons a chorus of sirens, only to warn them: “Keep your voices’ beauty from waylaying sailors.” In glittering translations from French, Elektrik is a celebration of writing at its very best, of language as defiance.

ABOUT CALICO

The Calico Series, published biannually by Two Lines Press, captures vanguard works of translated literature in stylish, collectible editions. Each Calico is a vibrant snapshot that explores one aspect of our present moment, offering the voices of previously inaccessible, highly innovative writers from around the world today.

MARIA JUDITE DE CARVALHO

Thuy Da Lam was born in Qui Nhơn, grew up in Philadelphia, and now lives in Honolulu, where she works on her next book and teaches at Kapi’olani Community College. She holds a BA in creative writing from Hamilton College and PhD in English from UH Mānoa.

SO MANY PEOPLE, MARIANA

Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.

Maria Judite de Carvalho (1921-1998) is now recognized as a major Portuguese writer of the twentieth century. In the short story she found the perfect vessel for her frank depictions of tragic, ordinary lives, and So Many People, Mariana collects her first four books of short fiction in English for the first time, telling of women and men in moments of existential conflict: with their families; with themselves; with the prospect of a better future—or any future at all. These stories, originally published between 1959 and 1967, when the Salazar dictatorship and the rigid edicts of the Catholic church reigned, are acerbic, artful, and funny. Translated by the renowned Margaret Jull Costa, Carvalho leads readers into the sensuous dark of life under patriarchal capitalism, proffering tragic visions of class-conscious malaise “as precisely and without sentiment as an autopsy” (New York Review of Books).

LAST NIGHT

Translated by Vinko Zgaga.

Candid and unfettered, Sven Popovich’s Last Night is a playfully existential meditation on youth and the search for the self.

Acclaimed in his native Czechia, Popovich’s unique blend of intimacy and contemplation has garnered him a following in the alternative literary scene of Prague—and beyond. With an intellectualism that never takes itself too seriously, an unaffected fluidity of form, and a keen eye for the smallest, strangest moments that color our lives, his stories weave an offbeat tapestry of urban life.

SVEN POPOVICH

Sven Popović was born on September 19, 1989 in Zagreb, now located in Croatia, but back then in Yugoslavia. His short stories were published in the anthology of young Croatian writers („Bez vrata, bez kucanja“, Sandorf 2012), in a collection of short stories „Record Stories“(Aquarius Records, 2011) and various magazines and webzines like Quorum, Zarez and Arteist.

JEAN-PIERRE ATTAL

Jean-Pierre Attal (1931-2014) was an Algerian-French poet, novelist, linguist, and translator—notably of John Donne and Ezra Pound. A professor of English for many years and a scholar of far-ranging interests, he wrote books on subjects as varied as haiku, English grammar, painting, and the authorship of Shakespeare’s works. His groundbreaking 1967 novel The Antagonist bridged the French “new novel” and postmodernism.

THE ANTAGONIST

Translated by K.E. Gormley.

A covert war has begun in which two adversaries of the current regime, Lauménès and Gonamména, have pitted themselves against double agent Karl Résa; woman of mystery Athena Sansadarc; Inspector Loriot and his second-in-command, Hector; and Pierre, the secretary of a revolutionary party out to avenge the murder of Salomon, a childhood friend cut down in his prime by the enemy.

This screenplay-novel resembles a classical tragedy less in its division into five acts than in its hidden, internal structure. Be warned, however, that the unities of time and space are not respected, and even the principle of identity, according to which one cannot be simultaneously self and other, is often violated. In this world, every word spoken seems to echo words spoken long ago, each new event brings an eerie sense of déjà vu, and a shape-shifting opponent always seems to be one step ahead.

A surreal, fast-paced thriller on the surface, a brilliant recombination of literary classics underneath, The Antagonist was one of the first (and best) hybrids of its kind, still unrivaled for its freshness and invention.

MARSHLAND

Translated by Albert Novick.

Otohiko Kaga’s Marshland is an epic novel on a Tolstoyan scale, running from the pre-World War II period to the turbulence of 1960s Japan. At forty-nine, Atsuo Yukimori is a humble auto mechanic living an almost penitentially quiet life in Tokyo, where his coworkers know something of his military record but nothing of his postwar past as a petty criminal. Out of curiosity he accompanies his nephew to a demonstration at a nearby university, and is gradually drawn into a friendship, then a romance, with Wakako Ikéhata, the brilliant but mentally unstable daughter of a university professor. As some of the student radical groups turn to violence and terrorism, Atsuo and Wakako find themselves framed for the lethal bombing of a Tokyo train.

During their long imprisonment the novel becomes a Kafkaesque procedural, revealing the corrupt intricacies of the police and judicial system of Japan. At the end of their hard pilgrimage to exoneration, Atsuo and Wakako are finally able to return to his original hometown, Nemuro, on the eastern-most peninsula of Hokkaido island. Here is the marshland of the title, a remote and virtually unspoiled region of Japan where Kaga sets a large number of extraordinarily beautiful pastoral scenes.

OTOHIKO KAGA

Otohiko Kaga (1929-), is a psychiatrist specializing in prison psychosis and criminology. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tokyo, he worked in Japanese hospitals and prisons before taking up further studies in France. His writing debut came in 1967 with the long novel Furandoru no fuyu (Winter in Flanders).

ANDRES NEUMAN

Andrés Neuman (1977) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he spent his childhood. The son of Argentine émigré musicians, he lives in Granada, Spain. He has a degree in Spanish Philology from the University of Granada, where he taught Latin American literature. He was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists and was included on the Bogotá-39 list.

LOVE TRAINING

Translated by Robin Myers.

LOVE TRAINING, which gathers poems from several of Andrés Neuman’s books into a single unified collection, is divided into three sections. The first, the titular “Love Training,” focuses on family (and its history), loss, relationships, love, and a sense of anchoring in the world. The second, “Fictions of Sight,” are associated with questions of perception, perspective, and creativity. And the third, “I Don’t Know Why” – which is the first phrase of every poem in the section – is a whimsical set of interconnected poems that ask unanswered questions; it serves as a kind of coda to the book. While Andrés Neuman is a celebrated and widely translated novelist, he is also a lucid, sensitive, incisive – and quite prolific – poet. LOVE TRAINING is the first English translation of his poetry.

TAMING THE DIVINE HERON

Translated by G.B. Henson

From the famous Mexican author, Sergio Pitol, comes his 1988 classic translated by George Henson. Taming the Divine Heron, tells the semi-autobiographical story of a novelist working on his newest masterpiece. The protagonist struggles to tell the perfect story–his own, imagined protagonists mere imitations of the likes of Lord Jim and Alyosha Karamavoz. To help eradicate writer’s block, Pitol uses his vessel to praise his own favorite authors. Pitol applauds Bakhtin’s world building, Gogol’s “carnivalesque [literary] breath”, and Dante’s dizzying intensity. The character finds a muse in Marietta Karapetiz who he aptly dubs Dante C. de la Estrella, and the two debate the literary greats.

As the pair attempt to pull from the techniques of the world’s best writers, Pitol creates a love letter to literature from around the globe while simultaneously telling his own magical story. To quote Pitol’s protagonist, “the quality of the story, its effects, its brilliance, its intensity, ma[k]e the most absurd circumstances plausible”. Taming of The Divine Heron, second in a trilogy including already-published The Love Parade (Deep Vellum, 2022), houses history, hyperrealism, myth, folklore, and memoir; to read Pitol is to appreciate the power of language.

SERGIO PITOL

Sergio Pitol Demeneghi (1933-2018) was one of Mexico’s most influential and well-respected writers, born in the city of Puebla. He studied law and philosophy in Mexico City, and spent many years as a cultural attaché in Mexican embassies and consulates across the globe, including Poland, Hungary, Italy, and China. He is renowned for his intellectual career in both the field of literary creation and translation, with numerous novels, stories, criticisms, and translations to his name.

FREDERIKA AMALIA FINKELSTEIN

Frederika Amalia Finkelstein is a French writer and author of two novels: Forgetting and Surviving. Upon its 2014 release in France, Forgetting was met with great critical success and has since been translated into multiple languages.

FORGETTING

Translated by Isabel Cout and Christopher Elson.

Forgetting is a brief but searing sojourn inside the mind of Alma as she navigates the complexity of the past and future within her identity.

On her nighttime wanderings through a Paris saturdated with cultural and historical meaning, she begins the slow work of grieving for her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, and begins to unravel the ways that his experience continues to reverbrate across generations. The journey, both inward and outward, simple and infinitely varied, brings Alma to reconsider her whole life and the circumstances that led to her very birth.

In Forgetting, Finkelstein sheds new light on the oldest dilemmas, asking: “What to do wth the brief time that is given to us?”

RECITAL OF THE DARK VERSES

Translated by Heather Cleary.

Recital of the Dark Verses is a road novel, a coming-ofage tale, and a raunchy slapstick comedy that tells—in careening, charismatic prose—the (true) story of the theft of the body of Saint John of the Cross. In August 1592, a bailiff and his two assistants arrive at the monastery of Úbeda, with the secret task of transferring the body of Saint John of the Cross, the great Carmelite poet and mystic who had died the previous year, to his final abode. When they exhume him, they find a body uncorrupted and as fresh as when he died.

Recital of the Dark Verses follows the three hapless thieves as they sneak the corpse of Saint John of the Cross from Úbeda to Segovia, trying not to lose too many pieces of the body to his frenzied disciples along the way. It is the (true) story of a heist, a road novel, a coming-of-age tale, and a raunchy slapstick comedy told in careening, charismatic prose. It is also a witty and wise commentary on the verse of one of Spain’s most important poets woven from the lines for which he is best known——a revival of words written more than four centuries ago, and a centering and celebration of their intrinsic queerness.

LUIS FELIPE FABRE

Luis Felipe Fabre (Mexico City) is a poet and critic. He has published a volume of essays, Leyendo agujeros, the poetry collections Cabaret Provenza, La sodomía en la Nueva España, Poemas de terror y de misterio, and the book Escribir con caca. He is the editor of two anthologies of contemporary Mexican Divino Tesoro and La Edad de Oro, and Arte & Basura, an anthology of Mario Santiago Papasquiaro’s poetry.

ANTONIO LOBO ANTUNES

Antonio Lobo Antunes was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1942. He began writing as a child, but at his father’s wishes, went to medical school instead of pursuing a career in writing. After completing his studies, Antunes was sent to Angola with the Portuguese Army. It was in a military hospital in Angola that Antunes first became interested in many of the subjects of his novels. Antunes lives in Lisbon, where he continues to write and practice psychiatry.

COMMISION OF TEARS

Translated by Elizabeth Lowe

António Lobo Antunes’s twenty-fifth novel, Commission of Tears (2011, Comissão das Lágrimas) is set during the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002). This is the story of Cristina, admitted in to a psychiatric clinic in Lisbon. In her torrent of memories, dialogues and traumatic episodes, Cristina remembers her early childhood in Africa, at the time when everything inside her head was intertwined with her father's voice, who was a former Black priest and became one of the torturers of the “Commission of Tears.” Cristina’s white mother, a cabaret dancer imported from Lisbon to entertain Portuguese farmers in Angola, marries the Black ex-priest because she finds herself pregnant with Cristina by her the man who exploits her, the cabaret manager. The long, twisting narrative weaves together the three voices of daughter, father, and mother as they recall the terrors of their life in Angola, and their own suffering. Their personal tragedies, scarred by racism and abuse, mirror those of the country that is being torn asunder around them.

THE DEVIL OF THE PROVINCES

Translated by Lizzie Davis.

AFTER A SERIES OF FAILURES, A BIOLOGIST RETURNS TO HIS HOMETOWN TO LIVE WITH HIS GRIEVING MOTHER. BUT IN THIS GRIPPING CRIME NOVEL THAT UPENDS THE GENRE’S CONVENTIONS, STRANGE EVENTS UNRAVEL WHAT HE THOUGHT HE KNEW OF HIS PAST, HIS PRESENT, AND HIMSELF.

When a biologist returns to Colombia after fifteen years abroad, he quickly becomes entangled in the trappings of his past and his increasingly bizarre present: the unsolved murder of his brother, a boarding school where girls give birth to strange creatures, a chance encounter with his irrevocably changed first love. A brush with a well-connected acquaintance leads to a biotechnology job offer, and he’s gradually drawn into a web of conspiracy. Ultimately, he may be destined to remain in the city he’d hoped never to see again—in The Devil of the Provinces, nothing is as it seems.

JUAN CARDENAS

Juan Cárdenas (1978) is a Colombian art critic, curator, translator, and author of seven works of fiction, most recently the story collection Volver a comer del árbol de la ciencia and the novel Elástico de sombra. He has translated the works of such writers as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Gordon Lish, David Ohle, J. M. Machado de Assis, and Eça de Queirós. In 2014, his novel Los estratos received the Otras Voces Otros Ámbitos Prize. In 2017, he was named one of the thirty-nine best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine by the Hay Festival in Bogotá. Cárdenas currently coordinates the masters program in creative writing at the Caro y Cuervo Institute in Bogotá, where he works as a professor and researcher.

MONICA OJEDA

Mónica Ojeda (Ecuador, 1988) is the author of the novels La desfiguración Silva (Premio Alba Narrativa, 2014), Nefando (Candaya, 2016), and Mandíbula (Candaya, 2018), as well as the poetry collections El ciclo de las piedras (Rastro de la Iguana, 2015) and Historia de la leche (Candaya, 2020). Her stories have been published in the anthology Emergencias: Doce cuentos iberoamericanos (Candaya, 2014) and the collections Caninos (Editorial Turbina, 2017) and Las voladoras (Páginas de Espuma, 2020).

NEFANDO

Translated by Sarah Booker.

Six young artists share an apartment in Barcelona: Kiki Ortega, a researcher writing a pornographic novel; Iván Herrera, a writer whose prose reveals a deeply conflicted relationship with his body; three siblings, Irene, Emilio, and Cecilia, who quietly search for ways to transcend their abuse as children; and El Cuco Martínez, a video-game designer whose creations push beneath the substrate of the digital world. All of them are connected in different ways to Nefando, a controversial cult video game whose purpose remains a mystery. In the parallel reality of the game, players found relief from the pain of past trauma and present shame, but also a frighteningly elastic sense of self and ethics. Is Nefando a game for horror enthusiasts, a challenge to players’ morals, or a poetic exercise? What happens in a virtual world that admits every taboo?

Unsparing, addictive, and perverse, Nefando takes us to the darkest corners of the web, revealing the inevitable entanglement of digital and physical worlds, and of technology and horror.

OOB

BOOKSTAGRAM

Each issue we feature a new bookstagrammer highlighting some of their amazing work.

NAME: MAGGIE

FAVORITE GENRE: HORROR & SCI-FI LATELY!

BOOKS READ PER YEAR: AROUND 80 (DEPENDING ON LENGTH)

FAVORITE BOOK: HOW TO STOP TIME BY MATT HAIG

CURRENTLY READING: THE RIVENER BY GARRET GODSEY

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOU.

@Mags.Mix: My name is Maggie Kennedy, i’m 20 years old and a student at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee. I love learning new things, i’m passionate about music and movies, and have many non-book related hobbies such as crocheting and yoga.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR BOOKSTAGRAM ACCOUNT AND HOW IT GOT STARTED.

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WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE INDIE/SMALL PRESS AUTHOR AND WHY?

@Mags.Mix: Matt Micheli, his writing feels so nostalgic but is fast paced and interesting at the same time. I really want to read more from him!

ALLTIME FAVORITE INDIE BOOK?

@Mags.Mix: Scratched by Matt Micheli!

TELL US A BIT ABOUT WHY THE BOOKSTAGRAM COMMUNITY IS IMPORTANT TO YOU.

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Those Who Would Be King.

BY BRENT J. LUDWIG

Greenleaf Book Group Press | July 2023

The condensation from the doctor’s fifth double scotch on the rocks formed intersecting circles on the polished mahogany bar. Though many aficionados would disdain the use of ice in so fine a liquor, the doctor didn’t need to add to the already turgid heat and humidity with the fire of the rare beverage. Ice moderated the burn and made his objective of rapidly ingesting copious amounts that much more attainable. The middleaged man’s tolerance for drink was slight. He hadn’t consumed more than one alcoholic beverage in a sitting in over a dozen years. But this day in the life of Dr. Nkota Kabanga was far from normal. The gods had signed his death warrant.

A lustrous, high-gloss, long-case grandfather clock, said to have been made by the ancient British timepiece master Francis Perigal, stood stoically on watch from the corner of the lounge. No one remembered when it last

worked, not even Freddie, who, since getting the bartending job as a boy thirty-five years ago, had not missed so much as an hour’s work, though he did take a half day off for his maman’s funeral. Whether the clock no longer functioned, or whether it simply had not been wound, the fact that it did not keep time seemed appropriate in a locale where people’s daily lives were only loosely structured upon the earth’s rotations as it trekked around the sun. Other than Freddie, the doctor was the only Black man in the bar. Typically, the sole patrons of so lofty an establishment, located in the finest hotel in the country, the venerable Marlowe, were White tourists. Their currencies, rocks of stability when compared to an average daily 100 percent inflation, stretched a long, long way. Dr. Kabanga didn’t consider himself a run-of-the-mill doctor, though, in a land where physicians fared little better than their

patients, economically. King Mabanda appointed Dr. Kabanga as the royal physician ten years ago, and the good doctor had served this role faithfully and diligently until this very day.

Dr. Kabanga slumped as he swirled the remaining liquid in his glass. Although his professional life was outwardly a resounding success, his personal life was roiling in turmoil. Most of his every waking hour was given to the service of his master, King Mabanda, now benevolent life leader of all Maleziland. The good doctor had long put second his family, friends,

and all personal pleasures and pursuits to the service of his king. Initially, it had been easy. As the king’s personal physician, Nkota enjoyed wealth, comfort, and respect beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary Malezilanders. His family had grown and prospered under the regime whose health he so carefully oversaw. He adored his son and daughter, aged seven and nine, as he did his newest family addition—a bit of a surprise—a little girl who was nearing nine months of age.

But today, thoughts of the family he loved were blurred as the effects of the alcohol set in. Nkota was getting drunk. Shitfaced. Blotto. He drank with purpose. His objective was rapidly being achieved, and only now, on double scotch number six, did the tension begin to ease from the

ABOUT THE BOOK

furrowed brows and rigid jaw muscles that, just one hour ago, had felt etched into his face like chisel marks on Mount Rushmore.  He felt his pager vibrate furiously, but Dr. Kabanga, on call 24/7/365, refused to be roused from his scotch-hazed trance by its urgent pulse . . . . If only his people had the ability to see into the future, even a few short years, to understand the course of action upon which they were setting their little country. Once elected, Aseyo Mabanda never relinquished power. Now his son and heir lived on as the omnipotent ruler of Maleziland.

Yet the king’s servant Nkota would surely die. He knew this full well. As a doctor, Nkota had watched AIDS transform from an affliction of only men who had sex with other men to

the scourge of modern-day Africa. It was surely a bigger threat to the survival of her peoples than any man-made or god-made threat or pestilence in history. Over the years, he’d seen patients affected by the ticking Time Bomb of Death that now lurked potentially behind every coquettish glance and betwixt the legs of every lover, male or female.

Dr. Kabanga didn’t know how he himself had contracted the disease. It didn’t much matter now.

His pager continued to pulse. Nkota’s thoughts, typically focused solely upon serving the king, blurrily drifted elsewhere.

King Mabanda controls his country with a violent, omnipotent fist. The king’s son, Mandebala, is a tyrant-in-training who has grown up with the opulence and privilege of an uber-wealthy prince. But when the king meets Shigeku, the only captive survivor of a border war with a neighboring nation, the prisoner tells of switching his own brother at birth with the king’s actual son.

The king immediately extricates his true heir, Mateyo, from the slums to the palace to take his rightful place as the prince of Maleziland, while the loathsome Mandebala is thrown out and forced to live in the nearby shantytown. The benevolent new prince experiences the trappings and privileges of wealth and power, and ultimately embarks upon a plan that will improve the lives of his people and country. Meanwhile, the true brothers, Shigeku and Mandebala, plot, with the keen support of the Catholic Church, to overthrow the regime so corruption and self-serving depravity can once again reign supreme.

Sacrifices for Kingdoms.

BY PATRICIA D’ARCY LAUGHLIN

Independently Published | July 2013

Michael watched her approach as she walked up to the car, and for the first time since his early 20s, a burgeoning desire flamed up in him and his mind struggled with his body in an attempt to cool it down. He felt like a sexstarved teenager again. An amusing thought flitted across his psyche that whenever he was in her company, he might have to revert to wearing tighter underpants to try to keep his manhood contained, like he used to in those lusty, youthful days. At least for now.

He didn’t consider that having deliberately kept himself celibate for the past several months could possibly be the reason for these present stirrings. He had had many stimulations while dating Princess Teresa, but none had had the profundity of this desire that overtook him now. His celibacy was encouraged by the younger Teresa, who insisted she must be a virgin for her

husband. Strangely, he had no inclination to change her mind, as he had, successfully, with numerous ladies in the past. He simply took himself in hand whenever his manhood grew too painful, convincing himself he could wait, although he was unsure of what, or whom, he was really waiting for. Until now.

Elizabeth seated herself close to the door, smiled at him, and said, “Good evening, Your Royal Highness.”

Michael responded with a warm, admiring smile. “You look absolutely stunning.”

She flushed slightly in appreciation but knew she looked quite lovely in her gold silk gown. It was a perfect color to show off her suntan and flawless complexion. The neckline was flattering to her bust, though discreetly décolleté, but the back dipped all the way down

to just past her waist, hence the reason for the shawl. She wanted to be attractive for him but didn’t want to look too seductive or appear to be intentionally tempting. She felt a flutter in her chest as she took in how debonair he looked in what she recognized to be a Gianluca Isaia black evening suit and told him he looked very handsome.

On seeing his gold silk tie, she exclaimed, “It’s the same color as my dress!”

His delight was obvious as he noted, “Great minds think alike.”

She teased, “Fools

seldom differ,” then she pointed to the Bindi on her forehead and said, “Thank you for the Bindi. It’s absolutely exquisite. You really shouldn’t have. But honestly, I love it. It brought a smile to my face…and to my heart…a wonderful humorous memory of our Roti fiasco. Where did you find it?”

He was pleased with himself. “I had it made for you.”

Impressed, she asked, “Had it made? So quickly?”

The teasing gleam in his eyes appeared. “Perquisites of being a royal personage.”

With a shy smile, she thanked him for the roses, the Waterford crystal vase, and the framed poem, ending with a sincere

ABOUT THE BOOK

remark, “I’ll cherish them forever.”

He teased again. “That might be difficult—the roses are sure to die.”

She laughed as she said, “You know I meant the Bindi, the vase…and the poem.”

Becoming serious, he fixed his eyes on hers. “There’s a lot more where that came from.”

Wanting to change the subject, she quickly asked him what his day had been like. He described parts of it to her in his effortless, unpretentious manner that she liked so much. He asked her about hers, and she told him of her success in getting the grant. Keeping the conversation light and relaxed, she was determined

they should have a cheerful non-confrontational evening this time and steered clear of anything that could turn serious or bring about any unpleasantness. He sensed this and fell right in with her gay, easy mood.

Upon entering the restaurant, Michael shook the fawning maître d’s hand and told him softly, “Play Edith Piaf.”

Elizabeth noticed the man pocketed the money Michael surreptitiously slipped him and, after seating them in the quietest, darkest corner of the room, rushed to change the music.

A sensual, timely, contemporary romance, about a philanthropic beauty from exotic Trinidad, a modern-day socially-conscious European Prince, and the other loves, lives, and lies, that complicate their potentially idyllic life. The story begins with the warm sweetness of falling in love before becoming inflamed with passion, intrigue, and danger. No Cinderella, Elizabeth is sophisticated, wealthy, and hides life-changing secrets. Not merely a figurehead, ambitious courageous fun-loving Prince Michael also has secrets, some life-threatening, all hazardous. Both harbor fears for the survival of humanity and do their parts to alleviate them with speeches. Elizabeth’s is titled ‘God Has No Gender,’ Michael’s, ‘Climate Change, Man’s Fate Or Folly?’ More afraid for her safety than his own, Michael is determined, at any sacrifice, to stop her from doing more of her controversial speeches. But Elizabeth uses them to fund an important charity she co-founded. He rightfully struggles with fears of losing the monarchy, and waiting to, honorably, unravel the mysteries of Elizabeth’s haunting past. Learning about it takes him to a place he never dreamed possible. Their vividly titillating, sometimes humorous, lovemaking, contrasts captivatingly with their involvements in serious social issues. As shocking secrets are progressively revealed, loyalties become divided, but will love conquer all?

Lend Me Your Character.

BY DUBRAVKA UGRESIC

Open Letter Press | April 2023

On Saturday I ran out to the nearest kiosk and bought the Evening News. I could hardly wait to get home, settle down, and read Petar’s story.

His story had a promising title: “The Hot Tongue.” Its main characters were named Peter and Ulla.

I read the story straight through and it took my breath away. I called Petar immediately.

“Terrible! ” I hissed into the receiver.

“You’ve read the story?”

“Yes. Crap!” I said telegraphically.

“You don’t like it?”

“Total shit.”

“Can I come and see you?”

“Yes, urk,” I gargled into the receiver, and hung up.

Still in shock, I hurried to straighten up my offended appearance a bit. I put on a respectable little black dress, as though dressing for the theater, and placed the Evening News into my left hand, rolled up into a truncheon. Petar appeared at the door with a bunch of flowers. I deliberately didn’t put the flowers in a vase of water, but I did offer Petar a drink and sat down, still holding

the Evening News in my hand.

“You didn’t need to borrow her for a piece of trash like this,” I said.

“Why are you using such vulgar language to describe my work?” asked Petar calmly, like an elementary school grammar teacher, not a writer.

“Because my character gives herself to yours after a single . . .”

I opened the Evening News and announced, as though reading out a verdict; “‘After a single moist glance . . .’ Please! Talk about male fantasy! Who ever heard of such a thing? And the hero’s name is Peter! Come on, we’re not children.”

“Wait a second,” Petar tried to interrupt.

“Why should I wait! Male writers always take some female character just so their male character can end up on the floor with her, behind the counter, rolling in a pool of beer! And all they need is one moist glance!”

“What book does that happen in again?”

“It doesn’t matter which book! You’d all like to roll around in pools of beer, that’s what you’d like!” I shouted, waving the Evening

News and taking a gulp of Petar’s drink by mistake. “All this fuss over a simple erotic story,” said Petar in a conciliatory tone. “You mean pornographic,” I specified. “Why pornographic?” I opened the Evening News again, as evidence.

“In just five pages Peter and Ulla moan fifteen times, they are flushed three times, he cries out with passion twice, she shrieks with pleasure twice. He enters her three times, while she surrenders to his caresses once. Hardness is mentioned four times, moist or moistening three times, sweat eight times, eight times!, gushing and flowing three times, animal is mentioned only once but in

connection with biting. Then ecstasy twice, salivate twice, pleasure eight more times, and parts of the body—lips, thighs, loins, armpit, belly, belly button, breasts, tongue, moles, and little hairs—thirty-five times in all!”

I looked at Petar triumphantly, folding the Evening News into a truncheon again.

“I’m the author, I do whatever I want with my characters,” Petar flared up.

“No, you can’t, not where my character is concerned. I lent her to you! And I expected at least a minimal sense of responsibility on your part . . . By the way, how come she has two pairs of tits?”

“I told you my story has fantastic elements. Anyway, I have the right to exaggerate as much as I want!” Petar blustered again.

“It’s because of that male exaggeration of yours that sex is what it is!” I said, sweeping the truncheon

ABOUT THE BOOK

through the air, in a gesture of accusation towards my nonexistent male audience.

“And what is it?” Petar asked, offended.

“Shabby, that’s what,” I said, thumping the bed dramatically with the Evening News. Petar stared at the spot I had indicated with the paper, as though expecting to find some solution there. I followed Petar’s gaze myself. Then I felt something catch in my throat.

“My character deserved something better than panting and heaving under yours,” I said, barely holding back my tears.

“What’s the matter?” said Petar gently, sitting down beside me.

“You’re not going to cry, are you? Just because of an ordinary piece of fiction? Besides, she’s not even your character. Didn’t you notice that her name is Ulla?”

“That’s true,” I said, looking for a tissue.

“Yours isn’t named Ulla, is she?”

From the story of Štefica Cvek to “The Kharms Case,” the pieces in Lend Me Your Character—comprised on the novella “Štefica Cvek in the Jaws of Life” and the story collection “Lend Me Your Character”—are always smart and endlessly entertaining. The former story paints a picture of a harassed and vulnerable typist whose life is shaped entirely by cliches. She searches endlessly for an elusive romantic love in a narrative punctuated by threadbare advice from women’s magazines and constructed like a sewing pattern. The latter story is one of Ugresic’s funniest and is about the strained relationship between a persistent translator and an unresponsive publisher.

“No,” I sniffed.

“There, you see . . . she’s not your character,” whispered Petar, embracing me tenderly. “That’s not the point. I’m not crying over an individual case. I’m crying for all the female characters in the world! I’m crying generally, literaryhistorically, and globally, don’t you understand?” I began to sob. When Petar wiped my tears with his lips, I cried harder and harder and felt warmer and warmer and saltier and moister and softer and . . .

“Come here . . .” whispered Ulla, giving Peter a moist glance.

Good Men.

BY ARNON GRUNBERG

Open Letter Press | March 2023

The Polack was cheerful, more cheerful than he had been for a long time. Even back when their son was still there and he had sat at the table without speaking a word, the Polack hadn’t been this cheerful. That was something he blamed himself for, if only to himself, that he hadn’t enjoyed their eldest boy more than he had. Wen must have seen something or smelled it, because she looked up from what she was doing, she looked at her husband, he saw disapproval in her eyes—or was it suspicion?—and she asked: “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said.

She scrubbed their one, remaining son. The boy laughed, he laughed more than his brother had, that was a good sign, the Polack couldn’t help laughing along with him. Then he said: “I’m going to take care of the pony.”

Wen had soaped the boy’s belly and back, she was just about to rinse it off, and she stiffened. “What?” she asked, her hand motionless on the boy’s back, “you’re going to do what?”

“I’m going to rescue the pony. I’m going to save her.”

“Take care of him, why don’t you?” Wen said, and began rinsing the boy’s back angrily. “Save him.” That’s what the Polack wanted to do, too, take care of Jurek, even save him if need be, but he felt there was enough time left over to save a pony too.

“In a few years’ time, Jurek will have an animal to play with,” the Polack said.

“The animal will be long dead by then, and maybe he’ll feel more like playing soccer. Or hanging around outside. Has it ever occurred to you that Jurek may not have any desire for a pony at all?” She rinsed the rest of the soap away.

“Maybe,” the Polack said. He didn’t want to do anything to make Wen sad or angry, but he had already made up his mind.

Wen lifted the boy out of the water and began drying him briskly.

“No,” she said. “That animal has only brought us grief. Let’s say goodbye to it. What more do you want from that pony?”

Jurek was dry now. She carried him to his room and put on his diaper. The Polack followed her. “You won’t get him back,” she said, “not even if you go out and buy twenty ponies. Borys is gone. Resign yourself to it. He’s gone. Other people get a child with a metabolic disease. We got this. Now there’s just the three of us. That’s good too.”

“That’s good too,” he said quietly. “That the three of us are together is fine. But the old girl doesn’t deserve this. What can she do about it? Why does she have to die too?”

Wen went on dressing the boy. The child was still, he

seemed to be listening. “We don’t deserve this either,” she said, “it’s not about what people and animals deserve. Who gets what he deserves? Do I deserve you? Don’t I actually deserve something better?”

The Polack left the bathroom and remained standing before the closed door, the door leading to their boy’s room, the door they would not open again, not this year, maybe next year, that much was uncertain, probably not even next year, there was no hurry. Maybe they would only open the door to that room once they were old and their one remaining son had moved out. Or maybe they would die without ever having opened that door. That would probably be the best, to never open it again.

During dinner, Wen apologized and laid her hand on the Polack’s arm. She said she couldn’t think of a better

ABOUT THE BOOK

husband, and that it wasn’t nice of her to claim that she deserved something better. Not only unkind, but also untrue.

“Ah, well,” the Polack’s hands were folded on the table in front of him and he studied his knuckles, “ah, well, death causes stress and then we say things we don’t really mean. But now the death is behind us, now we can start cutting back on the stress.”

She kissed him, first on the cheek, his unshaven cheek, then she took his face in both hands, she pressed her mouth against his, she pushed her tongue inside, and, apparently, she didn’t mind the fact that their one remaining son was at the table too. She obviously thought he was too young to remember this or that it was good for him to see this, and the Polack felt like gagging. He wondered whether she didn’t feel like gagging too, whether she didn’t feel

nauseous, he felt like asking her: Doesn’t your food start coming back up? But he kissed her back instead. He kissed the way he ate, with a sense of responsibility indiscernible from fanaticism. And in his chair sat their remaining son with his bib on and he said “Hor-sie, aminal, aminal,” and so on. From the corner of his eye the Polack saw him sitting there, content in fact, and he said: “Come on, let’s go upstairs.”

He was nauseous, but he rose above the nausea. “It’s been a long time,” she whispered in his ear. And she kissed him as though they’d just met and were terribly in love, more in love than was good for either of them, but they were not terribly in love, they had lost their son and he felt like saying: Beckers’s wife wants to console us. You and me.

Geniek leads a seemingly unremarkable life with his wife, Wen, and their son, Jurek, in the sleepy Dutch province of Limburg, where everyone simply calls him “The Pole” because they can’t pronounce his real name. He is the only foreigner and the only vegetarian at the fire station, yet to him the crew feels like a band of brothers.

When he discovers that the wife of his colleague, Beckers, is dying, The Pole is reminded of the role she played in his own life following the death of his eldest son, Borys—namely, by providing consolation in the form of unorthodox sexual acts. Racked by guilt, The Pole confessed the affair to his wife, and the retreated to a monastery for a year, where he ended up living in the henhouse. On his return, he is allowed to rejoin the fire brigade, though everyone in town has their doubts.

Natural Causes.

BY NINA LYKKE

Open Letter Press | November 2023

It’s Friday morning, the time is five to eight. In five minutes, all hell will break loose. Send in the enemy, as one of my colleagues puts it. And even now, after all these years, I find myself sitting here at my desk at the health clinic, on the third floor of an old building off of Solli Plaza, suddenly confused as to why there are people outside my office waiting to see me. These people have taken time off from their jobs to come all this way, but why? My mind is blank and silent. Some papers are stacked on the desk where there is also a computer monitor; beside that is a stethoscope, and over there a sort of big machine on wheels, but what are they for, all of these things, and what is it that’s supposed to happen here, what is it that’s expected? Why am I here. To the left is a window, behind me a bookshelf holding periodicals and books, there are posters on the walls in places, illustrations of human bodies—by all appearances this is a doctor’s office, but where is the doctor, I’m the only person in the room. Where are the adults, how did I land here. This must be a misunderstanding. Maybe I could just leave.

Act like I have to go to the bathroom, sneak past the people waiting outside the door, and simply disappear.

But then the world slides back into focus and I cross the room, open the door, and call in the day’s first patient, of course I do, back into the rhythm, and soon after I’m standing there with gloves on, smearing lubricant onto my fingers. A man is lying on his side on the examination table, his pants around his knees and his white buttocks sticking out, and as I pull his cheeks apart, I can both see and smell that he hasn’t wiped himself properly, hasn’t wiped himself at all in fact, following his last visit to the toilet, even though he knows he is going to the doctor due to hemorrhoids and anal itching, and it’s no problem for me to be professional and examine the hemorrhoids before casually sticking a finger in and checking his rectum— and prostate while we are at it—and then pulling the finger back out again, throwing away the gloves, walking over to the sink and conducting a very thorough, nearly surgical handwashing, and topping it off with three pumps from the antibacterial dispenser.

“I hope it’s okay if I open the window,” I say. “I just need to air out the room.”

In the meantime, he’s gotten dressed. Now he’s sitting there looking like a completely normal person, the blueish-red lumps around his unwiped anus once again concealed behind a pair of ironed black pants.

“Sorry about that. But I don’t really want to wipe much at the moment, I’m worried it’s going to burst.”

“It’s fine.”

No, it’s not fine, Tore says.

Tore is a full-sized, human skeleton standing over in the corner between the sink

and the door. He is made of plastic and is my only witness as to what goes on in here. When I bought him, I named him Tore and for fun put a black hat on his head, that was back when I was interested in such things, the role of humor in the doctor-patient relationship, the significance of laughter for healing. The way we were in those days, we were going to change the world and the Norwegian healthcare system and regard the patient holistically and blah blah blah. We also believed we were an exception, that we were something special, and that this health clinic was going to be something completely unique, and maybe this is what, in the end, motivates all of us and forces us to get up in the morning, this unflinching belief that we are special, that we are the exception.

It isn’t fine. Not at all, Tore continues, he could have dampened the toilet paper and wiped himself carefully. There are several options. He could

ABOUT THE BOOK

have bought wet wipes over at 7-Eleven and wiped himself off before coming here. But he didn’t do any of those things. And if he’s capable of sticking a behind full of fresh feces into the face of a stranger, what else might he be capable of? What else is he hiding, what else might this man be concealing?

As I listen to myself going on to the man about motion, fluid intake, and fiber, I attempt to drive away both Tore’s agitated voice and the strong odor that filled the room only a few minutes ago, and which continues to linger.

During my studies, I took extra shifts at a nursing home. That’s where I learned to compartmentalize, and in only one week, I was able to go straight from washing feces off of bodies and walls and wheelchairs to eating a hamburger down in the cafeteria. I erected a leakproof barrier between here and there, between then and now, and not least: between myself

and the patients.

But I can’t cope anymore. Just like everything else that has grown worn and weak over the years, it’s as if my ability to keep things separated has also begun to fail, and now I actively have to work for something which, only a few years ago, used to come so naturally.

I talk myself through images that play out their own lives on my retinas, clear as day. I talk about salves and suppositories, type in prescriptions on the computer, but the images keep appearing, and they’re getting worse, they are indescribable, images of my own sharp teeth biting down on the hemorrhoids so that blood and feces splatter on the ceiling. Where does this come from? I didn’t used to be like this.

For two decades, Elin has been a regular general practitioner. For at least as long, she has been married to Aksel. But before Aksel there was Bjørn, who a year ago suddenly reached out to her on Facebook, and who has since turned Elin’s world upside down. She’s moved into her office, where her patients march in, all day long, with all their disgusting little infirmities and ailments. And though she likes spending the extra time in her office—even though she has to sleep on her examiniation table, bathe in the employee restroom, and hide from the security guard when he makes his rounds at night—Elin feels abandoned and even more disillusioned with life and people than she did before she stumbled into her affair.

Ninth Building.

BY ZOU JINGZHI

Open Letter Press | April 2023

The bathroom wall is covered in all kinds of pictures, but I’m the only one who can see them. They were invented in my heart. I sometimes think my heart is a kind of passageway to over there, and anything that goes through, once enough time has passed, becomes almost impossible to find again.

It’s not like lowering a bucket for water, and anyway I’ve never understood why water would flow from all over and gather itself in a well. My heart is empty, a complete blank, especially when I’m in the bathroom having a shit and the whole world seems at rest. When a heart is at rest, it concentrates only on beating, nothing else. You can’t be sad while having a shit. I believe a sorrowful person wouldn’t think of crapping—he hasn’t the energy or the time, or simply can’t squeeze anything out. A high school senior I know, Keli, was locked up for being a counter-revolutionary. When they let him out, he told everyone that for the nine days he was inside, he didn’t take a single crap. Afterward, his shit came out as little black balls, painful

as hell, rolling about like stones in the toilet bowl. He said he felt himself turning into a goat, tied up under the hot sun, shooting out pellets of dung. Once all the black balls were out, he felt hungry for the first time in ten days, finally revived, life returning to him. The sensation of hunger is to be cherished. He felt he should eat more, and from then on the business of each day focused on food: eating, pooping, eating some more. He said he knew then that existence wasn’t eternal, because he began feeling more and more hungry, and hunger is the easiest thing to end, in whatever way. If you eat till you’re full, you won’t be hungry anymore. The same applies if you starve to death.

I knew him beforehand, but for some reason he became more talkative once he got out of jail. Maybe not speaking is a kind of language-hunger.

No one lets me say “taking a dump”—the grown-ups keep telling me to use “pass motion” instead. “Taking a dump” sounds rude, they say.

I think this may be because

“taking” is a real verb, too descriptive, and “pass motion” is a euphemism, and euphemisms are mostly polite. For instance, you can’t say “How old are you?” but instead “Could I ask your year of birth?” No one ever explained this to me, but still I only say “take a dump” in my head. The phrase has a kind of glistening joy to it. Taking a dump. Quite often, I feel like calling out, “Going to take a dump!” It’s not a smelly word, it contains only joy.

On the bathroom wall, a pair of glasses is pictured. Other people don’t see this, but when I look at the two circles sort of next to each other— maybe someone bumped

a pipe into the wall while installing it—they’re obvious, though there are no eyes behind them. These aren’t for someone to wear, they only exist in my mind.

And there’s a lady dancing in the wind. Her tattered skirt is a scrap of paint peeling away from the wall, but most people wouldn’t know how to transform this into the image of a dancing woman. If you don’t look carefully, you can’t do it.

There’s another picture—at first I didn’t know what it was, then the edges scraped away and it looked like someone’s bum. When I thought that, I saw it was an invisible person sticking his bum out at me.

I shouldn’t think like that.

It’s not as if I can get a pencil and draw on the wall myself— nothing I draw looks like anything at all. If the world

ABOUT THE BOOK

would allow one thing to be portrayed as another thing—but no, I couldn’t do that either. And actually, I don’t have to draw anything, nothing at all on the bathroom walls. When your heart is quiet, looking at any scratch or mark is clearer than a painting, and there’s no one to disturb you. A scarred wall has life to it, and an unmarked one, a bright white wall, has none. A clean white wall has no eyes and can’t see you. But a smudge is different. It knows when you’re staring intently at it. It may not have eyes, but it knows. And a picture of anything, once it has senses, has life.

As Keli enthusiastically bragged about shitting goat droppings, I had a thought—what would happen if he was locked up again? Perhaps next time they let him out, his words would have grown even more, or else he’d have nothing to say at all. A person’s enthusiasm for suffering is no different to

his enthusiasm for good fortune. He has to speak it out loud. The first time I ate chocolate (a chunk about as big as an eraser), I felt I was tasting good fortune itself. Experiencing it for real. Because good fortune and chocolate are similar in another way—they don’t last long. Even if you ate a second piece, that wouldn’t make it any less short-lived.

If I went to a new bathroom, I might not see anything at all. Recognizing a picture takes a lot of time and calm contemplation before it finally leaps out at you. You stare a long while, then poof, there it is, and you wonder how you could ever have missed it. Like when you spot a faraway balloon in the vast blue sky. It looks like nothing until you spot it, then it gets bigger and bigger.

Ninth Building is a fascinating collection of vignettes drawn from Zou Jingzhi’s experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution, first as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiled to the countryside. Zou poetically captures a side of the Cultural Revolution that is less talked about—the sheer tedium and waste of young life, as well as the gallows humor that accompanies such desperate situations. Jeremy Tiang’s enthralling translation of this important work of fiction was awarded a PEN/Heim Grant.

We’re Safe When We’re Alone.

BY NGHIEM TRAN

Coffee House Press | September 2023

As I listen to Madame, a weariness washes through me. Her words are not making any sense. It seems that Father has made something complicated out of something very simple. Yes, he is lost. That much I understand. But why would love drag him away from me? Why would he ever leave the person he loves? He should follow them. He should follow them and never turn back.

“You doubt me, don’t you?” she says. “I am not a part of your family. I am not even human. You must feel that we are too different.”

I look out the window. The landscape is eerily still. Madame is the oldest ghost in this region. I imagine the three of us as a family, Father, Mother, and Son. Instead of being soothed, my heart aches at this image. I can’t identify the source of this ache anywhere in my memories. I mutter, “He must really love you, to confide all his fears to

you.”

“I find his concerns interesting. I don’t receive such opportunities often. The ghosts cannot discuss their previous lives. We exist without heavy rumination. He challenges me in a way that’s exciting. And I like to tell him what he wants to hear. It’s fun seeing his reactions.”

“You want to be human again, don’t you? Isn’t that what all the ghosts want?”

Madame throws her head back and laughs. I cross my arms. Her fascination with Father and me feels more and more intrusive as we talk. I am a specimen for her to study.

“We are not so different,” she says. “I’ve often asked these questions myself. I came into the afterlife as an adult, and I am the only one among my peers who has stayed here. I didn’t care for my past life as a human. And when the possibility to move on from this world arrived, I refused.

I wanted to continue to suffer. The complexities that loneliness and regret weave into existence are of great interest to me. I’ve been around for so long and yet I still find things to be surprised by. Like you and your father. How utterly fascinating, the devotion you two show each other. I once had a child myself, but I found it very easy to give him up.”

“Did you hurt him?” I ask.

“In a way—yes. He arrived in this world shortly after I did. He must have been around your age. To be honest, I

had no evidence that he was my child. I didn’t have any memories of him. And yet I was possessed by a sense of certainty. He must have approached every ghost in this region, asking if she were his mother. I couldn’t bring myself to answer him. I kept my distance. The kind of love he was asking for terrified me. I couldn’t bear someone needing me that desperately. It was a love that belonged to the land of the living. Eventually, a ghost answered his call. She said that she was his mother, and she took him in, and they created a small family.”

“But how could he believe her? I would never accept anyone but Father.”

“You’re right. Perhaps he didn’t believe her. But that’s the thing about kindness. Once someone decides to give it to you

ABOUT THE BOOK

unconditionally, it’s hard to push them away. And they made a great family. They were very happy with each other, which meant they moved on quickly from this world. And so I was satisfied with my decision. If I hadn’t stayed away, then I might have ruined their chance at peace. And I was able to pursue the eternity that I desired—alone.”

I tell her how horrifying that is.

“What is? That we can’t recognize the people we love?”

“That you abandoned him. You let him live a lie.”

Madame frowns.

I shake my head. “Why was I born here? Why do I have to be around monsters like you?”

Son has lived his entire life inside the mansion. He is a good child. He reads, practices piano, studies, and watches ghosts tend the farmland through a window in the attic. When Father decides it is time for Son to venture outside, Son’s desire to please Father overpowers his fear, and he must contend with questions he never wanted to face. What are the relentlessly grinning ghosts hiding? Has a ghost taken control of Father? What answers or horrors lie in the forest? And who will stop the mysterious encroaching shadows? Nghiem Tran’s debut inverts the haunted house tale, shaping it into a moving exploration of loss, coming of age in a collapsing world, and the battle between isolation and assimilation.

“Isn’t it obvious? You’re here to dissuade the ghosts from wanting to return to the land of the living. You’re here to remind them of how fearful and angry they were in their previous lives. You and your father possess a keen sense of Death. Humans like you are always thinking about him, seeking him out. A few follow that instinct and manage to find the entrance to this world while they are still alive. They find the river where all are tested and, if deemed worthy, are escorted to this side.”

What I Know About July.

BY KAT HAUSLER

Meerkat Press | October 2023

The stalker was literally the only one of Simon’s fans he never thought about sleeping with. No, not literally. His little sister Franzi was always getting on his case about that. You’re not literally dying. Like she’d know. But anyway. Obviously, some of his fans were ugly, some were men, some were too young—pedophilebait rather than jailbait—and there were the girls who spent his whole show making out with their greasy boyfriends without ever looking up. But not the stalker. She wasn’t even bad looking. Not that his standards were very high, which worried him since his therapist acted like he was some sex addict with zero ability to commit. The stalker never even glanced at her phone while he was playing. He didn’t mean to look, but there was something magnetic about the intensity of her gaze. As bad as he felt when a woman didn’t show interest, this was worse. His drummer Micha had been the first to call the short brunette with awful taste in lipstick and an endless array of band shirts “the stalker,” even though only Simon felt threatened by her.

She hung around before and after shows. Venue managers made nudge-nudge references like she was some exotic pet Simon kept, and that was probably what she wanted, having her name linked to his as often as possible. As if they even used her name. It was something ordinary like Julia, but she always acted like Simon should know who she was. And he did, some little warning light flashing when he saw her maneuvering through the crowd toward him: Watch out, stalker!

It was this maneuvering and positioning of herself that put him off, even more than her postcards piling up in the mail

room of Poor Dog Records. He didn’t know her, or if he did, it was only because she’d forced her acquaintance on him. He assumed she lived in Berlin since she’d made every show in town since their first album came out. She sometimes turned up in nearby cities and had once even accosted him in Munich with a story about visiting relatives. It creeped him out to think of her traveling all that way for him. With someone else, that amount of devotion would’ve stroked his volatile ego enough for a positive response, but seeing her stupid knowing smile in the front row that night had almost cost him his rhythm. What gave her the right?

Micha laughed himself silly at the slightest hint that Simon was afraid of her, her, and now Tanja had gotten wind of it. She played bass, and teased Simon and anyone she could get her hands on with the mercilessness of an older sibling. Micha had pointed out that, in addition to her obvious talent, Tanja offered certain demographic benefits. Tom, their first bassist, had quit before they recorded anything after a coke-fueled fight over his girlfriend, and Simon had gone on to have a crushing relationship and even more crushing breakup with the willowy blonde who’d replaced him. Nadine had left the band when they’d been just popular enough for people to notice. Since Tanja wasn’t into men, Simon couldn’t start anything with her. She smoked like a chimney but didn’t touch drugs. She was a godsend. The other advantage was her ruthless careerism. Despite the tough, sarcastic impression she made, or perhaps because of it, she’d soon coerced and charmed the band onto a bigger label.

“I don’t plan on dying

young,” she’d said. “I need something in the bank for when I’m an old hag.” She worked at a temping agency doing everything from data entry to dishes, but had only the usual Berlin savings account, a shoebox full of change.

“When you’re an old hag?” Micha had asked. They’d gotten close enough to be mean to each other almost right away.

Simon liked Tanja, which Dr. Froheifer said was a healthy development in his relationship to women. Of course, he didn’t buy into everything she said. It had taken him a few sessions to notice she had a doctorate in literature, not psychology, but that was what you got for picking your therapist based solely on proximity to your apartment. Between touring, recording and making overpriced lattes at his day job, he didn’t see her that often. He should’ve had the stalker analyze him. She got more face time.

Mostly, though, he went back and forth between worrying that what Dr. F said was true and he’d never be cured, and coming up with reasons why it couldn’t be. Like the sex thing. He didn’t

actually have sex that often. In fact, he never did except after a show. That averaged out to less than with Nadine, though they’d had their ups and downs, and not just in bed. Right now, he happened to be single, which meant he had to divide a perfectly normal amount of sex among different women. He also happened to be incapable of picking up anyone outside of a concert venue.

That was another of Dr. F’s suggestions: meeting someone “the normal way.” He’d tried saying it was normal to meet potential partners at work, but she’d made it into this whole power thing. In actual fact, it was just easier. On his days offstage, he made good coffee and bad small talk if he had a shift at Café Astral, read or listened to music in Volkspark Friedrichshain if he didn’t. A beer with Micha and Tanja was a big night out for him. And when he was himself, Simon Kemper without a guitar or mic, surprise, surprise, women didn’t throw themselves at him.

Sure, he got occasional darting glances. But they always seemed to be asking how far gone he was, whether the downcast eyes and five o’clock-yesterday shadow were intriguing or signs of unemployment, addiction, a life of crime.

Now that Hare vs. Hedgehog was playing bigger venues, people sometimes came up to ask if it was really him. But instead of leading to new love interests, his minor celebrity

ABOUT THE BOOK

status only created more distance. He felt slow and clumsy in the harsh light of day, and never managed to say anything clever. They probably thought he wanted to be left alone. He did and didn’t. They never even asked for autographs, just identified him and drifted away to tell their many loved ones about the slightly famous misanthrope they’d run into. The anecdote would be more interesting than the actual encounter.

It was different at a show. Beforehand, they’d sidle up with breathy compliments and talk of great parties later. He didn’t party much anymore, or at all, really, but admitting that made him feel old. The beauty of these pre-show invitations was the idea that there was some cachet in being seen with him. He loved to play the person they saw him as.

Afterward, he’d scribble signatures on tote bags, t-shirts and skin, and get photographed with countless devices and overheated fans whose heartrate tripled when he put an arm around them. It was easier when you knew you were wanted. He specialized in the very bold and very timid. When he was exhausted, and he almost always was, he liked athletic girls with taut ponytails, fierce smiles and more self-assurance than he’d had on the best days of his life. When he had the energy, though, he chatted up the skittish ones who stammered in search of replies and gulped when he

touched their arms. It felt like charity, bestowing his favor upon those too meek to demand it. But in his heart of losery hearts, he knew he had more in common with these helpless wallflowers who’d never know they were attractive, not even when they were in bed together, not even when they did nervous, breath-holding imitations of sleep as he whispered, “You’re beautiful,” as hopefully and hopelessly as if he were talking to himself.

The stalker was neither of these types. She put a steady arm around his waist when she demanded a picture, and acted like she’d known him before he was famous—if you wanted to call it that. In a way, she had, since she’d been at their first show after their first album came out, but that wasn’t the same. She only knew concert-him, which—even if he liked this persona better than his actual personality—wasn’t the real him. And what was she to him? Her face had the impersonal familiarity of a popart celebrity, Mao Zedong or Marilyn Monroe. He didn’t feel like he’d always known her, but like he’d always known what she was: a standard feature of his surroundings, like the sticky bars and foul, graffitied bathrooms of clubs— unpleasant, but expected.

Simon Kemper is on the up and up– he’ s out of rehab, and his band is gaining moderate success around Berlin. But out of the corner of his eye and over his shoulder, he’ s always aware of her. The stalker. She’ s at every show, no matter what city. She sends hundreds of postcards to his label. Worst of all, she acts like she knows him. Like she owns him. When the stalker disappears at one of his shows, Simon is the prime suspect. Initially an effort to clear his name, his search for July quickly becomes a deeper psychological quest: to prove that his fears were warranted? That she couldn’ t have given up her obsession that easily? The threads of July’ s disappearance turn out to be tangled into every corner of Simon’ s life: a trusted band member, a tenuous new love interest, a resentful ex, and the self he’ s supposedly left behind. Narcissistic, insecure, and consummately relatable, Simon is the anti-hero of his own life— trying to want to be better; hoping that’ s enough.

Storyboarding for Wim Visions of Wenders.

BY STEPHANE LEMARDELE

Humanoids, Inc. | February 2023

“His 54 films record Japan’s transformation. The slow decline of its national identity, Without disdaining or denouncing it. We feel Ozu’s love for what he films. Even the objects. You can always tell what’s behind the camera, and with Ozu, it’s filled with love.”

- Yasujiro Ozo (19031963)

“The most important thing I learned from Ozu’s films is that in film, life itself is the biggest adventure. While you can see American movies in all four corners of the globe. Ozu’s films are the ones that are universal: they’re so close to their own essence.”

-After “Floating Weeds” (Yasujiro Ozo. 1959)

They offer a useful image. A real image of 20th

century man that helps him to know himself and learn about himself. Ozo’s films are my ideal.

[PAGE 26] ---

“The camera follows them up to here. Then the crane up starts.”

After that, well cut and pick back up here with a countershot. But since we’re still away from the house, we’ll have to use three different shots.

“We have to make sure no one walks on the path.”

“Yes. For the final wide shot of the car and the path, with just Tomas’ and the child’s steps visible.”

“Okay, I see.”

[PAGE 64] ---

“Wow! Those colors! If you painted it, they’d tell you it’s not realistic... HAHA!”

“I hear that the second most beautiful sunsets in the world are along the lower St. Lawrence. They don’t say where the most beautiful ones are. HAHAHA!”

“There should be a movie made of the sunsets in Quebec.”

“Hmm... I don’t know...

lighting is too much a part of filming to be the subject.”

[PAGE 68]

---

“If photographers don’t take charge of this tool themselves, they won’t have the right to complain if photos no longer match their notion of them.”

“So we have to take ownership of these new technologies.”

“The only way I’ve found to keep my photos from being swept along in the torrent of all the rest. From being the victims of competition and commercialization, is to tell a story.

“From the time of cave paintings, through artists’ canvases. We only had the ability to represent reality via painting. Every image was unique. You had to travel if you wanted to gaze upon an image or visit a church...”

“With printing, drawings and engravings were reproduced and traveled. So with photography, a new relationship between reality and how it was depicted arose.”

[PAGE 87]

---

FRIDAY MORNING, JANUARY 31, MONTREAL

Since the production staff

ABOUT THE BOOK

With this book, Stéphane Lemardelé traverses uncharted territory, linking the sequential art form with the often overlooked medium of a storyboarder—the two intrinsically tied but the former seen as an end in and of itself, and the latter a means to someone else’s end.

In this case, that “someone else” is legendary, cult-classic filmmaker Wim Wenders (Paris Texas, Wings of Desire), and the “end” is his 2015 film Everything Will Be Fine (starring Rachel McAdams and Charlotte Gainsbourg).

Through this graphic novel, Stéphane captures not only the formation of this film, but moments of artistic reflection from Wim himself: intimate interactions between the two where Wim ponders the trajectory of his career and evolution as an artist, and the meaning of film as a tool with which to examine our own humanity. A collector’s item intended for fans of cinema and memoir, featuring actual storyboards from the production.

will let me document the filming, I’ll do so. Today, we’re in the studio.

“Hard” lighting is high contrast and creates sharp shadows. “Soft” light is more diffuse; it doesn’t even create shadows.

By setting up a slot between two boards in the cabin, we’ll create a mesh light inside.

[PAGES 124-127]

Sap Hunters.

BY LAURENT GENEFORT (AUTHOR) & ALEXANDRE RISTORCELLI (ARTIST)

Humanoids, Inc. | April 2023

“Did you know about this state of decay?”

“We lost touch with their hunters ages ago. But granted, we didn’t trade information. Big mistake, but it’s a little late to admit it.”

“A sap column!”

“Some of the tubes still contain a little yarbo essence. We can use that. Hurry, diviner. This place gives me the creeps.”

“Look at that! We’re not alone.”

“Greetings, travelers, if you come in peace. I am Oulipali of the village’s last guardians.”

“What’s left of your village?”

“What do you guard it against, elder woman? Nothing worth stealing here.”

“Against things you cannot see. Death mainly. Death doesn’t just come for living beings. It also takes the souls of things and empty places... Three of us had to stay behind. At first we were six, but after a month... it wasn’t due to a lack of food... our nest is here.”

“Oulipali... why the exodus?”

“The sap went bad and the gods suggested we leave. Since we elders couldn’t walk, we stayed behind... with the memories of the past...We aren’t

able to offer you the hospitality you deserve. We have very little to eat.”

“Then we will share with you the arm we caught earlier in exchange for shelter for the night.”

“An arm!”

“How wonderful!”

“A single carcass can feed ten people!”

“Our goddess is called

Yggo”

“Yggo was conceived by Yeis...Yeis, the cosmic tree... whose roots reached into the other world and who was the father of us all. Instead of fruit, Yeis produced Gods. When Yggo reached maturity... Yeis was old and dried out and no longer bore Gods, only simple men. Meanwhile, the Gods had died, but their ghosts could come back as statuettes called idols. Later, before dying, Yeis created the antropes.”

---

“We’re done loading the Dolias with clay. Hakelous is already

ABOUT THE BOOK

coating our capes with it to protect us... How are you feeling today, Askel?”

“I can walk...”

“It burns!”

“Stay vigilant!”

“The heat of the sap bakes the clay and turns it into a powdery crust. We’ll have to coat our capes again every two hours.”

“Askel is burning up, lets rest.”

“Your friend is fine. His wound is dry. Probably thanks to the clay.”

All is not right within the branches of the sacred World Tree. Towering huge, its life-giving sap sustains the many divided clans living within it… until the Chasm Strider clan’s diviner, Pierig, discovers the Tree’s sap has become infected! Before he can warn his clan, tragedy strikes and he is violently captured by the Sap Hunter clan, warriors who demand he use his special divining skills to track the source of the corruption. As the sickness eats away at the World Tree, the party works its way down the levels of the massive Tree, inching closer to its roots. But what secrets do the dense roots hide? How deep will this unlikely group descend to save everything they love?

Mad Max meets Avatar in this brand-new graphic adaption of the novel from French science fiction novelist Laurent Genefort, as skillfully adapted by Alexandre Ristorcelli.

“Tomorrow, I leave you. I have just enough clay to make it back.”

“We were foes who part ways as friends. You’re welcome to come with us.”

“Thank you for your trust, but my little twins would object... I’ll certainly never forget you though.”

“Hey look! This animal seems to appreciate my music!”

“Brutes!

The Love Report .

BY BEKA (AUTHOR) MAYA (ARTIST)

Astra Publishing House | June 2023

“Don’t you like the movie, Grace?”

“It’s not that, Lola, I just know what’s going to happen. Romantic comedies always end the same way... the cute boy kisses the sad, lonely girl, and they live happily ever after.”

“Doesn’t that sound perfect?”

“The problem is. things don’t really happen like that.”

“You don’t think?”

“For sure they don’t. You go out with a guy, he kisses you a couple of times at school or on the bus... if you’re lucky, he asks you to a movie or --yuck!-- to watch him play soccer... then after four or five days, he ghosts you and it’s over.

My personal best was last summer; we lasted ten days. He doesn’t even look at my insta stories anymore. You know what I mean Lola?”

“Oh, totally. For sure, that’s how it’s been with eeeevery guy I’ve gone out with.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Real life is nothing like the movies.”

“So true, Grace.”

“But don’t let that stop you from going after Noah!”

“Noah? But...What does Noah have to do with anything?”

“Um... you talk about him, like, ten times a day!”

“No I don’t!”

“You don’t? ‘Did you see

Noah’s haircut?’ ‘Is that Noah in the lunch line?’ ‘Noah was absent today...’ You have a crush on him! It’s obvious.”

“I mean... he is cute, it’s true. But you know, I feel like he doesn’t even notice me!”

“Yeah, he’s not the type to make the first move.”

“It’s worse than that! Everytime we run into each other at school, he goes the other way... at the library, he doesn’t even sit at my table. I don’t know

why he avoids me.”

“Maybe he already has a girlfriend?”

“I’ve never seen him with a girl.”

“Maybe a boyfriend?”

“Nope.”

‘Ugh! What can you do? Love is complicated, it’s impossible to understand any of it. And with Noah? I have no idea what to suggest...”

“Know what we should do, Grace? We should conduct a major investigation on love! We can observe it, study it, and analyze it... and I’m sure we’ll find a logical

ABOUT THE BOOK

explanation for all these mysteries!”

“You really think so, Lola?”

“For sure! We can write down all of our findings in this notebook. It’ll be like a report. We can start now and write down everything we know about love and boys.”

“Okay. Maybe it’ll help...” “...”

“There’s only one thing I can only think of for now...”

“You got that right.”

“See you tomorrow, Grace.”

“Bye Lola. Don’t think about Noah too much!”

BFFs Grace and Lola talk about everything related to romance—and have lots of questions: What about the mysterious allure of the popular girl at school? And the rebellious goth with the reputation?

And boys. They don’t quite understand what makes some school romances soar to legendary heights, while other flirtations fizzle. Lola has an idea—they’ll observe, study, and analyze all the couples at their Junior High—and compile their findings as The Love Report. Surprises await them, and force them to learn to see beyond appearances in this fast-paced series opener. They’ll also discover secrets between themselves.

Grace is my best friend, I shouldn’t lie to her. But that’s exactly what I did back there. I feel bad about it, but... I’m too embarrased to tell her my secret. She’d probably laugh! I don’t understand why Grace doesn’t believe in love...

“Dinner’s almost ready, honey!”

“Coming!”

I mean she has two parents, a brother... and a big family with so many aunts, uncles, and cousins...

The Hive

BY MELISSA SCHOLES YOUNG

The Fehler sisters wanted to be more than bug girls but growing up in a fourth- generation family pest control business in rural Missouri, their path was fixed. The family talked about Fehler Family Exterminating at every meal, even when their mom said to separate the business from the family, an impossible task. They tried to escape work with trips to their trailer camp on the Mississippi River, but the sisters did more fighting than fishing. If only there was a son to lead rural Missouri insect control and guide the way through a crumbling patriarchy.

Ninety-Nine Fire Hoops

BY ALLISON HONG MERRILL

Allison Hong isn’t a typical fifteen-year-old Taiwanese girl. Unwilling to bend to the conditioning of her Chinese culture, which demands that women submit to men’s will, she disobeys her father’s demand to stay in their faith tradition, Buddhism, and instead joins the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Six years later, she drops out of college to serve a mission—a decision for which her father disowns her.

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Hot Air.

BY CHARLIE SUISMAN

A sequel to the awardwinning novel Arnold Falls, Hot Air features the characters of the small, upstate New York town during the summer following the events of book one. The "incredibly funny" (Kirkus) antics continue as Arnold Falls has several identity crises all at once. Our narrator, Jeebie, has a life-changing moment with a cow, there's trouble brewing at the hospital, and Arnold Falls may change its name to Emollimax, for a payout. This is a character comedy about life in a small, extremely quirky town, for fans of Armistead Maupin and P. G. Wodehouse.

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

KARL’S DIARY: IT’S A DOG’S LIFE

BY SHARON WINTERS

In December 2014, chocolatecolored dogs with golden eyes is found wandering in Arizona‘s Yuma Desert. A kind hearted man brings the lost dog to a rescue facility. Sadly, no one chooses to adopt the stray, who’s desperate wish is for a family to love and cherish him. Soon however, while he is at a second animal rescue, his picture is published in a local newspaper paper and a compassionate couple adopt him, name him Karl, and bring him to his forever home, one filled with unconditional love. Parents and children alike will be captivated by this tender, humorous look at Karl’s now happy life told from his point of view and with pictures of the real Karl, a handsome Boykin spaniel.

The Revolution: Captain, Pirate, Heroine

BY CHERYL BARTLAM DU BOIS AND DEBRA ANN PAWLAK

Fanny Campbell lived during the revolution as British Colonies revolted against the Crown, witnessing such rebellious acts as the Boston Tea Party. When her fiancé was imprisoned in Cuba’s La Cabana, she sailed the seas disguised as a man, commandeered a British brig, and orchestrated a daring rescue. Fighting Pirates, and English enemies, she won two more British vessels, sent a notorious Pirate ship into eternity and helped the newly-formed Colonial Navy with her spoils.

The Cardiff Giant

BY LARRY LOCKRIDGE

Jack Thrasher, investigative reporter, arrives on the scene to look into the weird disappearance from the Farmers' Museum of a huge human figure. Jack confronts locals and outsiders who all have a theory, including that the giant has been reanimated and is lurching throughout the community. They are enmeshed in self-punishing belief systems such as alien abduction, astrology, kabbalistic numerology, New Age rebirthing, and religious dogmas reduced to literal absurdities. These characters group and regroup, with romance always on their minds, and finally come to recognitions at once surprising and moving.

The Weight We Carry

BY CHRISTINA CONSOLINO

Marissa feels responsible for her parents' health. When her father falls and refuses to stay at rehab, she moves into her parents' house, taking precious time from her family and jeopardizing her job. Soon, Marissa recognizes that life is about to change: her dad’s falls are worrisome, but her mother’s memory loss might be a more urgent dilemma. A heartbreaking and emotional story of the toll that health crises can have on an entire family.

20 Ways to Increase Your Psychic Abilities

BY JOHN RUSSELL

My third book, 20 Ways to Increase Your Psychic Abilities, is a series of practical how-to lessons in psychic development that will take you by the hand and walk you step-bystep through the learning process as you discover how to: successfully learn and practice psychometry; accurately interpret your dreams; safely conduct your own seance; practice effective candle magic; make your own amulets and talismans; practice healing; record spirit voices; attract the perfect mate; and much more.

Wullie The Mahaar Gome

BY DAVID KENNEDY MCCULLOCH

Touch

BY REBECCA MILLER

Finnley McDougall’s boring schoolboy life in Seattle gets turned upside down when Great Uncle Hugh gives him a most unusual gift – a scruffy, rude, bad-tempered Scottish rock creature called Wullie who brings danger and disaster with him wherever he goes.From French snobs in fancy hotels, rusting barges on the Seattle waterfront, abandoned coalmines and flooded quarries in the Scottish hillsides filled with bullies, gangsters, slobbering dogs and weird food Finn is drawn into an evil plot that threatens to destroy everything he loves… including Edinburgh Castle.

Feast of Fates

BY CHRISTIAN A. BROWN

Morigan lives a quiet life as the handmaiden to a fatherly old sorcerer named Thackery. But when she crosses paths with Caenith, a not wholly mortal man, her world changes forever. Their meeting sparks long buried magical powers deep within Morigan. As she attempts to understand her newfound abilities, unbidden visions begin to plague her—visions that show a devastating madness descending on one of the Immortal Kings who rules the land.

www.christianadrianbrown.com

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

After her mother's sudden death, artistically gifted Megan lost her will to draw as she watched her family crumble. When her father unexpectedly moves what's left of them halfway across the country to mend, Megan must try, yet again, to rise from the ashes and create a new existence for herself. She's intrigued when she sees Shawn-a secluded classmate who sparks unexpected drawing inspiration. Shawn is protecting a terrible secret and teeters on the edge of letting go. With each layer Megan strips from him, she gets hints about how broken he is.

There She Lies

BY MICHELLE YOUNG

We all have secrets—little white lies we tell ourselves. Everyone has them, but no matter how hard we try to keep them hidden, even our deepest secrets can come up to the surface.

When the Millers move across the province to pursue William’s lifelong dream of becoming a helicopter pilot, Quinn, a new mother, feels isolated from everything she’s ever known, only, Quinn has been there before. Struggling with severe postpartum depression, Quinn turns to her elderly neighbour for help, but how much does she really know about Mrs. Westover? Only what she chooses to reveal. Mrs. Westover never lies, in fact, she despises liars. What will she do when she finds out Quinn’s been dishonest with her?

BOOK SHELF

The Home For Friendless Children

BY C.L. OLSEN

Abandoned on a remote mountain in eastern Pennsylvania by his father at age five, and discarded at an orphanage by his mother a few years later, this is the remarkable true story of one boy's impenetrable resilience and courageous hope; holding onto his dreams in the face of heartbreaking loss, loneliness and betrayal.

Little Robbie Olsen, his two brothers, sister, and mother would be saved from starving to death by the kindness of the Mennonite family who farmed the hills far below. Forced to leave their mountaintop home, they would walk fifteen miles into town, carrying what little they had in paper bags, finding lodging in a two-room apartment above Arlene and Ray's Bar.

Haelend's Ballad

BY IAN V. CONREY

A young man signs his own death warrant when he joins an already failing militia. A teenage girl is haunted by her childhood abuse and begins to crave the very things she hates. A childless mother finds herself on the run as a convicted murderer. Yet they are all unaware that their own fates are tied to a young orphan who has drowned and come back to life in a foreign land where he will be the death of everyone he meets. Haelend's Ballad is a grimdark fantasy/ steampunk tale about what happens when men and women from two colliding cultures realize they may not be on the right side. Heroes are villains. The persecuted are oppressors. And when rumors begin to spread that the world is dying, the darkness of their own hearts betrays them.

The Talking Drum

BY LISA BRAXTON

The fictional city of Bellport, Massachusetts, is in decline with an urban redevelopment project on the horizon expected to transform this dying factory town into a thriving economic center. This planned transformation has a profound effect on the residents who live in Bellport as their own personal transformations take place.

The Talking Drum explores intra-racial, class, and cross-cultural tensions, along with the meaning of community and belonging.

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Sunflowers Beneath The Snow

BY TERI M. BROWN

A Ukrainian rebel. Three generations of women bearing the consequences. A journey that changes everything. When Ivanna opens the door to uniformed officers, her tranquil life is torn to pieces - leaving behind a broken woman who must learn to endure cold, starvation, and the memories of a man who died in the quintessential act of betrayal. Using her thrift, ingenuity, and a bit of luck, she finds a way to survive in Soviet Ukraine, along with her daughter, Yevtsye. But the question remains, will she be strong enough to withstand her daughter's deceit and the eventual downfall of the nation she has devoted her life to?

Black, White, and Gray All Over

BY FREDERICK REYNOLDS

Cold as Hell

BY JAIME CASTLE AND RHETT C. BRUNO

From shootouts and robberies to riding in cars with pimps and prostitutes, Frederick Reynolds' early manhood experiences in Detroit, Michigan in the 1960s foretold a future on the wrong side of the prison bars. Frederick grew up a creative and sensitive child but found himself lured down the same path as many Black youth in that era. No one would have guessed he would have a future as a cop in one of the most dangerous cities in America in the 1980s---Compton, California.

Leo Trevelion and the Lion Ring

BY IAN FLINT

Deep below the earth’s surface is a hi-tech alien world where the highly evolved Leonisians live, having escaped annihilation on their home planet. There they thrived undetected for over eighty-years until a rare planetary event threatens their very existence. Now their survival depends on awakening and transforming the last survivor of a guardian race - Leo Trevelion. As his awareness and powers grow, Leo is drawn into a battle for the survival of their world. But is it in vain?

In the West, there are worse things to fear than bandits and outlaws. Demons. Monsters. Witches. James Crowley's sacred duty as a Black Badge is to hunt them down and send them packing, banish them from the mortal realm for good. He didn't choose this life. No. He didn't choose life at all. Shot dead in a gunfight many years ago, now he's stuck in purgatory, serving the whims of the White Throne to avoid falling to Hell. Not quite undead, though not alive either, the best he can hope for is to work off his penance and fade away.

Climate Change Family: Lord’s Town

BY MATT BOXALL

Lord's Town is a refuge in a hungry world destroyed by climate change. Serving the soil is hard and cruel, but the seeds of humanity may yet survive in a young tender called Charlotte, and the friends she makes on her journey to discover Lord's Town's disturbing secret.

Here is the future we don’t want. A decade from now, Charlotte lives in Lord’s Town –a tyrannical horticultural fortress cobbled together from the remnants of the old world. A forever-hungry slave, clever Charlotte grows food in her sealed “greenhome” for the brutal elite. But after saving the citadel from disaster, the mysterious “Lord Himself” grants Charlotte the opportunity to embrace a new family… and uncover a horrifying truth.

Squeeze Plays

BY JEFFREY MARSHALL

Adventures On The Bloody Trail

BY SUSAN FIEBIG

A financial thriller and satire, Squeeze Plays is a contemporary morality tale set principally in New York and London. It centers on a bank CEO, a tabloid publisher, and a cunning Russian oligarch who steps in when the bank’s loan to the publisher goes sour. An intrepid financial reporter catches wind of the gambit and develops a front-page expose.

Professional reviewers have called the novel “captivating” and “thoroughly entertaining.”

Grenadine and Other Love Affairs

BY CAROLYN GRACE

In this sensuous debut poetry collection, Carolyn Grace explores meaning through body, image, form, music, myth, history, and language. To read these poems is to touch, taste, and hold love deeply in body and soul, to celebrate love, unflinching and painful and joyful.

Come, enter this magical, essential world. Let its music sound your depths, its precision sharpen your mind. Then prepare to leave changed, your self challenged and enlarged.

Adventures On The Bloody Trail is a travel guide that sends you to the best Bloody Marys in Wisconsin and so much more! If you're looking for those out-of-the-way places where good food and great views can be found, Fiebig's guide will take you there with Bloody Mary stops along the way. Filled with the history of the cocktail and instructions on how to score Bloodys using Fiebig's 50-point criteria, this is a fun-filled adventure guide to Wisconsin with a twist. As always, please take a designated driver with you on your adventures. Cheers!

Thirteen Thousand Lonely Nights

BY KENDALL KENNETH FOLKHARDT

The biggest fear of a millennial, born in one of the most xenophobic countries in the world, was that he would be alone for the first 35 years of his life. Was his fear realised? Did he escape that country?

This is an extraordinary story filled with life lessons. It is not just a memoir. This is a dissection of a soul, a confession, a performance, a manifesto, a love letter.

Held And Free.

In one moment, author Meagan O’Nan’s life changed. She suddenly found herself an outsider, both to the life she had known and to the life she did not yet know. A gay woman in Mississippi, she had been outed —and she wasn’t ready for it.

Feeling unworthy of the life she had always wanted, Meagan left her home and all that was familiar to her in order to find herself. At rock bottom, she screamed to the Universe, “I want to be loved the way that I love!” It was in this desperate moment that her answer came. It wasn’t what she had expected; it required her to break down all the walls she had built around her heart from her coming out experience. It required her to heal.

The only way for her to be Held And Free was to return to Mississippi and come out of her story

Available on : Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Meagan's website

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meagan O’Nan is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, and vulnerable storytelling expert. She is the author of the award-winning book, “Creating Your Heaven on Earth,” “Courage: Agreeing to Disagree Is Not Enough,” and "Held And Free." Meagan is also a member of the Forbes Coaches Council where she produces regular content for Forbes.com. Meagan has spoken to thousands of people at live events since 2008, including alongside internationally recognized spiritual leaders such as don Miguel Ruiz, author of the bestselling book, “The Four Agreements,” and she has appeared multiple times in local and national media. Meagan even received a personal note from Desmond Tutu after hearing a talk of hers on forgiveness.

Last Liar Standing.

Vonny Kwan wakes up in a Nevada hospital, the victim of a hit-and-run accident she doesn’t remember. As she struggles to recover from her injuries, she learns that she also has no memory of the past nine years, including her marriage and what she was even doing in the West.

While she’s still reeling from the shock of her amnesia, two detectives visit and inform her that her husband, John, was recently murdered. As more information comes to light, Vonny grows increasingly suspicious of everyone around her.

Vonny realizes she must piece together the last decade to uncover the truth. The missing chunk of time holds secrets about the person she became, the mysterious man she fell for, and the life she never wanted.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DANIELLE M. WONG

Danielle M. Wong is a bicoastal author with a permanent case of wanderlust. An extended trip abroad inspired her debut novel, Swearing Off Stars. The book was published to critical acclaim, garnering an Independent Press Award, a Benjamin Franklin Award, and an International Book Award. Danielle’s writing has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, HuffPost, PopSugar, and Writer’s Digest. She is currently working on her next novel.

Doctor Refurb.

An unconventional, satirical, controversial, time travel comedy!

What if you could reach back in time to deport the world's worst environmental villains to a depository planet before their greed condemns Earth to an ecological apocalypse? What if each time you did so, an alien instantly extracted a body part and replaced it with a refurbished one? Would you still do it?

Heartrending yet hilarious, Doctor Refurb is influenced by actual historical events and confronts the serious subjects of climate change, far-right politics, and child abuse committed by Christian authorities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MARTY ESSEN

Marty Essen began writing professionally in the 1990s, as a features writer for Gig Magazine. His first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, won six national awards, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune named it a Top Ten Green Book. His second book, Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico, won four national awards. Marty is also a popular college speaker. He has performed the stageshow version of Cool Creatures, Hot Planet on hundreds of campuses, in forty-five states. Marty's latest books, Time Is Irreverent and Time Is Irreverent 2: Jesus Christ, Not Again! are science-fiction political-comedies.

DOGMATIC .

It’s a dog’s life. Isn’t it just? Some days are diamonds. Some days you just get left behind. Where is the justice?

If only dogs could talk. I feel that way about racehorses. In this instance, I have given my imagination free reign and come up with a number of stories that generally put your pet in a favourable light. Yes, the woofers in these short stories belong to my friends and, for the most part, they are beyond reproach; being cunning, courageous, a little complicated, but lovable and funny. You’ve got no idea what they get up to.

These adult yarns are unbelievable and I say that in the true sense of the word. This is what fiction is all about. If you are comfortable with murder, intrigue, dancing dogs, and an author who is too clever by half, this is the book for you. We already laud our heroes in the form of Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and Snoopy. I hope these captivating stories will now shine a light on the likes of Baloo, Atticus, and William, the Wet Nose Wonder. In the meantime, give your dog a bone.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dogmatic is the author’s fifteenth book. A former advertising copywriter, Gerry brings to these pages all the humour and creative flair that marked his professional career. His books have been as diverse as one could hope and he has bounced between novels, short stories, and social commentary. This offering, available in September, is a collection of sixteen short stories and is sure to be well received. He is a perennial winner or finalist in multiple international writing competitions and has acquired 17 awards for 11 of his books.

You Are Still Alive Now Act Like It .

After a life-altering brush with death, a former atheist embarks on a profound spiritual journey. Determined to conquer past traumas and unravel the mysteries of existence, Ray Catania emerges as a spiritual warrior. With unapologetic candor, he recounts his personal struggles, mystical encounters, and the transformative evolution from skeptic to neardeath experience survivor, intuitive, and budding medium. By blending personal anecdotes and scientific theories, Ray imparts accessible techniques that empower others to embark on their own transformative quests. Each story, written with humility, humor, and a touch of sarcasm, is based on real-life events that are certain to surprise and entertain you.

Available on : Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Walmart

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RAY CATANIA is a metaphysical teacher, master-certified life coach, and award-winning author. He believes that modernday spirituality is best taught at the intersection of science and spirituality. He is passionate about helping others get unstuck, harness the power of their mind, and create their own reality.

His first book, The Atheist and The Afterlife is the true story of his own spiritual awakening. With no holds barred, he shares vulnerable stories of personal trauma, mystical experiences, and his ultimate transformation from an atheist to an Intuitive, Clairvoyant, and developing Medium. His second book, You Are Still Alive, Now Act Like It shares how he developed the ability to help others. Through personal experiences and scientific theories, he shares techniques that anyone can use to replicate what he’s learned.

Buddies.

A bashful and friendly Red Rose named Rosaline is the only rose in the garden. The garden is full of an assortment of flowers, especially a certain flowery group made up of an orange Tulip; a Violet flower, a white Orchid and a very tall and beautiful Sunflower.  Rosaline has been bullied by the flowery group since she budded out of the ground. It has made Rosaline very sad, she doesn't like herself anymore and does not enjoy her daily activities as she used too.  One day a swarm of Bumblebees arrives to collect pollen from the flowers, well all but one bumblebee. Bobbee the Bee is different from the other bees. He has a short-wing that makes it difficult to keep up with the other Bumblebees.  Bobbee befriends Rosaline and notices how badly the other flower's treat her. Bobbee stands up against the annoying flowers and explains to Rosaline what it means to be different and they quickly become buddies.

This inspiring and emotional story is the perfect way to explain to your child how much bullying affects a person.  It is a way to show children how to be empathic to someone being bullied.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Delaina M. Waldron is an Author/Screenwriter/Producer/ Filmmaker and Entrepreneur. She published her children's book about bullying called, "Buddies." She also published a paranormal/thriller novel called, "HerStory."

She produced, directed and edited a short visual/audio book adapted from her Children's book "Buddies" that was selected by the 2021 KidFilm Festival and the 2021 USA Film Festival Dallas. Delaina M. Waldron is a single mother of one and is currently a City Train Operator and a military veteran in the U.S. Army Reserves in New York City.

Dragony Rising.

“His stories capture me, entertain and challenge me and leave me wanting just one more of his books.”

What happens when Ironton, N.J. Detective Frank Nagler discovers that the explosion that levels part of downtown is not the worst thing to happen? In Book 5 of the Frank Nagler mysteries, DRAGONY RISING takes Nagler deep into the city’s past as he traces the founding of the gang called The Dragony, its surprising connection to his family and a long-simmering conspiracy. The story burns through the pages as Nagler, assisted by companion and city planner Lauren Fox and police Lt. Maria Ramirez, peel away the layers of lies and hidden identities to revel the Dragony and its goals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL STEPHEN DAIGLE

Michael Stephen Daigle lives in N.J. with his family. He was an award-winning journalist for more than three decades. After graduation from Binghamton University, he wrote his first novel at 22, and a second at 24. The second one years later became the first book of his multi-award winning Frank Nagler Mystery series: “The Swamps of Jersey” (2014); “A Game Called Dead” (2016); and “The Weight of Living” (2017), “The Red Hand” (2019) and “Dragony Rising,” (2022). Kirkus Reviews called Nagler, “One of modern fiction’s expertly drawn detectives.” He posts samples and other writing at www.michaelstephendaigle.

The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way.

For Scott Hatcher, a former television writer turned struggling novelist with a failing marriage to boot, social-distancing and mask-wearing feel like fitting additions to his already surreal life. When his wife Marie and neighbor John Bergman disappear in the middle of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, Scott is naturally mystified and disturbed, but he is also about to learn that his picturesque neighborhood hides more than just the mundane routines of suburban life. When a fire claims the empty house for sale next door, the entire community is shocked when the charred remains of Marie and John are found inside. Stranger still, stockpiles of valuable PPE clearly stolen, were destroyed in the blaze alongside them. As the neighborhood reels from the loss, Scott and Bergman's earthy and enticing widow, Rachel, not only find themselves under investigation for the crime, but also inexorably drawn to one another. As tensions reach a fever pitch, the tale--which is at once familiar and ordinary, yet bizarre and eerie--shows that, just like life in 2020's uncertain times, dread and danger lurk below the hidden underside of everyday suburbia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RAYMOND BENSON

Raymond Benson is the author of over forty published books. He is most well-known as the third--and first American-author of continuation James Bond novels, commissioned by the Ian Fleming copyright holders. In total, six original 007 novels, three film novelizations, and three short stories were published worldwide between 1997 and 2002. His bestselling and critically praised five-book serial, The Black Stiletto, is in development as a possible film or TV series. Raymond's other recent acclaimed novels of suspense are Blues in the Dark, In the Hush of the Night, and The Secret on Chicory Lane.

Tapestry: A Lowcountry Rapunzel.

If your stepmother were a sociopath, how would you know? And who would you turn to?

Life is not as ordinary as it seems for Gaynelle and Vivian, who only understand that the woman they now call 'Mama' is complicated and difficult to please. Is the romantic love that Gaynelle finds at a tootender age going to last? And will Vivian uncover the truth about her parentage while recovering from a strange illness?

Rural South Carolina meets the Roaring 20's in this tale of two sisters who face separation and trauma with the resilience of the young and find their way, despite everything.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SOPHIA ALEXANDER

Sophia Alexander is the mother of two college-age children and a number of manuscripts. Her character-driven historical fiction grips readers' emotions and surprises them with unexpected twists. A full-time author with a passion for genealogy, she resides near the beautiful Southern city of Savannah, Georgia, but studied in the magnificent Pacific Northwest at Bastyr University, where she earned a doctorate in naturopathic medicine-and thus her characters are often found swallowing decoctions or slathering on herbal salves. Her narratives have appeared in local anthologies, and she was awarded first place in the Savannah Authors 2017 Short Story Contest.

Truth and Other Lies.

Megan Barnes' life is in free fall. After losing both her job as a reporter and her boyfriend in the same day, she retreats to Chicago and moves in with Helen, her over-protective mother. Before long, the two are clashing over everything from pro-choice to #MeToo, not to mention Helen's run for U.S. Congress, which puts Megan's career on hold until after the election.

Desperate to reboot her life, Megan gets her chance when an altercation at a campus rally brings her face-to-face with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jocelyn Jones, who offers her a job on her PR team. Before long, Megan is pulled into the heady world of fame and glamour her charismatic new mentor represents.

Until an anonymous tweet brings it all crashing down. To salvage Jocelyn's reputation, Megan must locate the online troll and expose the lies. But when the trail leads to blackmail, and circles back to her own mother, Megan realizes if she pulls any harder on this thread, what should have been the scoop of her career could unravel into a tabloid nightmare.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MAGGIE SMITH

Maggie Smith loves a challenge. In a career that’s included work as a journalist, a psychologist, and the founder of a national art consulting company, in 2022 she added published author to her resume with the release of her debut novel, Truth and Other Lies, released by Ten16 Press. She makes her home in Milwaukee, WI with her husband Scott and her aging, but adorable Sheltie.

The Breadth of Human Experience.

BY WYATT BANDT

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been translated into 505 languages since its publication in 1943. The French novella trails only the Bible in global reach, which is saying a lot when it’s in contest with a holy book with a following in 2023 A.D. Unsurprisingly, these books were the first two translated works I encountered as a child.

I remember begging my mother for “just one” of the cookies set out for her Tuesday night Bible studies in 2002. A group of women from our church would come to my home, quietly talking in our kitchen until 9 p.m. I’d sit in my room, enduring my younger brother’s antagonistic efforts to get attention until I heard the laughter die down and the backroom’s door slam one last time. My brother and I would then rush out to see if there were any leftovers.

Years later, I’d be sitting on the powder blue carpet of my mother’s rental home. The women for church were gone, abandoning my mother during her divorce, but our blackand-tan chihuahua dozed in my small lap as I read The Little Prince.

“About 1% of fiction and poetry books sold in the U.S. are translations from foreign authors"

I remember the story being sad. High school Spanish class was the next time I encountered The Little Prince. A chipper student teacher we called Señorita Westby set up a video call for the class with a high school student she knew from her time studying in Spain. A classmate asked what the girl’s favorite book was, and she responded “El Principito,” The Little Prince.

Outside of the Bible and The Little Prince, translated work – especially fiction – makes up a small fraction of what American readers can easily encounter. About 1% of fiction and poetry sold in America is translated from foreign authors, which is a damn shame. Nearly all of the most

significant books in my life were written in languages other than English. Leo Tolstoy’s Confession, Silence by Shusako Endō, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince. Beyond that, a large chunk of the contemporary fiction I consume comes from overseas. I discovered manhua, light novels and manga as a teenager and haven’t looked back. Tuesday stands strong as my favorite weekday because a new chapter of Chainsawman drops.

But that percentage is for translated fiction in American is understandable. Translation takes a lot of work. Someone needs to know both languages fluently and be a strong enough writer to match the author’s original style. Reading manga in English is a great example of the translator bottleneck.

Each time a new chapter comes out, it needs to be translated. Official translations often take time to come out – weeks to months – and it’s even longer until it’s available for purchase in English. In the meantime, loyal fans do

fan translations on bootleg sites so the community can read the story closer to release. On all of those sites, there are constant calls for more translators because it’s nearly impossible to keep up.

That’s just in one genre, and it’s likely one of the easiest genres to translate because of its comparatively low volume of words compared to traditional fiction.

Beyond the sheer quantity of fiction that needs to be sifted through, the book needs to be found in its home market and make it through the marketing team and the publisher’s need to turn a profit. Then once it’s in stores, it needs to compete against established authors like the Danielle Steeles, Steven Kings, JRR Martins and their ilk.

Unless a reader knows exactly who they’re looking for, their only exposure to translated fiction at their local bookstore maybe be a little table off to the left. Atop it is a small tent card that reads “Translated Fiction: Our Picks from Around the

World.”

Like I said, it’s a damn shame. So much of it is so good, and just like untranslated fiction, translated fiction has the ability to connect readers to another person, another life.

I recently read Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü, a Turkish writer. She passed in 1986, but her autobiographical novel was recently translated into English. I’d have to say, it was one of the more challenging reads I’ve had lately because I was thrown into the deep end of Özlü’s life experience.

Each time a Turkish word or piece of local geography came up, I paused and went and read a wiki page to have some understanding of what Özlü wanted to get across. This process got easier once I stumbled upon the glossary in the back, which was included by the translator who spent time on the same streets.

In retrospect, I find it stunning that I’ve read books set in other worlds,

other realities, and none felt as real, as personal, as foreign as what I experienced in Cold Nights of Childhood. Reading it was one of the only times a novel gave me a sense of sonder – the feeling when you realize each random passerby is living a life as complex as your own. I was a foreigner in Özlü’s land, and she laid her life bare. Translator Maureen Freely helped bridge the gap, bringing me in with the glossary and making the novel available in a language I could understand.

I’ve always loved reading because it connects me with another person’s experience. That same connection is why I write: to share myself with others so they can see someone they recognize parts of or at least gain understanding of someone they’re unfamiliar with. These shared moments, sitting down with someone’s life in your hands, are what grow us as people.

The understanding you gain through those moments is the first step to loving others and loving others well.

NEW TO SHELF UNBOUND!

Shelf Media Group's digital young adult community designed to connect readers with YA authors and books.

The Take-Over Friend.

BY CAROL DINES

Released in October 2022, Carol Dines’s The Take-over Friend is a young adult novel about friendship and growing up.

Starting her freshman year of high school, shy Fran meets outgoing Sonja on the second day. They start a friendship that seems as though it would last forever. With the girls having opposite personalities, they compliment each other. Of course, friendships do have their ups and downs as they discover along the way.

One of the things I enjoy about young adult novels is they are usually written in first person, and Carol does that with this novel. Once I started reading it, the story pulled me in—that plus I could definitely relate to the shy Fran. Growing up, I moved a couple of times in middle and high school, and I was that shy girl much like Fran. Eventually, I befriended a girl who had a similar personality as Sonja. I could understand the problems the two girls were having because I had been there myself. Throughout the novel, I cheered for Fran to find her voice, but at the same time I felt sorry for Sonja and her own situation—her mom’s attempted suicide.

Carol makes these characters real and memorable, and I think that helps draw readers in as well. Nowadays, we read so much about mental health, and Fran and her family are dealing with that—her dad has bipolar disorder. Some readers may prefer to get lost in books that don’t deal with real issues, but honestly, I think it helps us understand them better even if it’s in a fictional setting.

As I approached the ending, I predicted what I thought would happen, and I was caught in an unexpected turn. If you enjoy young adult realistic fiction, I highly suggest you give The Take-over Friend a try.

WHAT TO READ IN YA FICTION

Young adult fiction continues to become one of the most popular genres – mostly for adults. Join us each issue to find your next YA read.

THE TAKE-OVER FRIEND

BY CAROL DINES

THE TAKE-OVER FRIEND .

RECOMMENDED

AS YOUR NEXT YA READ

On the second day of ninth grade, introverted Frances meets Sonja, a witty and outgoing newcomer recently moved from France, and the girls become instant soulmates. The two teens are euphoric about their blossoming relationship, relishing a depth of understanding for each other they’ve never experienced with anyone else. Frances is charmed by Sonja’s energy and worldliness, while Sonja adores Frances’s sense of calm and dependability. She’s also taken with Frances’s close-knit family, especially her older brother, Will. Led by Sonja, the girls declare their goal to become “visible” at their high school, dubbing themselves “The Poets” and rallying their classmates to enter the homecoming parade with a poetrymobile built from Frances’s father’s old band bus.

But as their friendship grows, so do the expectations. Family crises impact both girls— Sonja’s parents are caught in a bitter divorce, and Frances’s father suffers from bipolar disorder. When Sonja’s mother attempts suicide, Sonja temporarily moves in with Frances and her family. Sonja’s dominating personality begins to overwhelm Frances, causing her to doubt herself and her own talents. And when Sonja’s infatuation with Will becomes obsessive, Frances feels manipulated and attempts to set some boundaries. For Sonja, there is no middle ground, and she sees Frances’ efforts to regain her independence as the ultimate betrayal.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT GIRL + BOOK

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100 Book Review Blogs For Book Readers and Authors”

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“The awesome Girl+Book YA book review blog.....I smiled to see Blue Karma recommended for "tom-boys, tree climbers, adventure seekers, and backyard-campers" because I have answered (or still do) to all of these descriptions....The Girl+Book blog continues to make my day.”

- J.K. ULLRICH, AUTHOR OF BLUE KARMA

“I Just Read Girl Plus Book’s Review Of Revelation, And It Made My Night!”

- ELLERY KANE, AUTHOR OF LEGACY SERIES

Interview with Maureen Freely

Translator of Tezer Özlü’s Cold Nights of Childhood

BY WYATT BANDT

I had the opportunity to sit down with Maureen Freely, the woman who translated Tezer Özlü’s Cold Nights of Childhood. Maureen shared with me about how she started in the trade, the charm of it and how her experience as a novelist lends itself to her work.

WB: SO! HOW DID YOU BEGIN WORKING IN TRANSLATION?

MF: I’ve been translating informally since the age of 8, when my family moved to Istanbul, and it emerged that I picked up languages easily. I did my first proper translations in my 20s, while I was working as a secretary at Amnesty International. Mostly these were accounts written by political prisoners. I was already writing my own novels by then. I was struggling with my sixth novel (while making my living as a journalist and teacher) when my friend Orhan Pamuk asked me to translate Snow. And that’s where it all kicked off.

WB: HOW DID YOU COME TO TRANSLATE COLD NIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD?

MF: I am one of the lucky ones. A

few years after we started working together, the author of my first published translation won the Nobel Prize. He kept me very busy – I translated five of his books over five years. After that I was in the enviable position of having more offers than I could handle. I have certainly never had that problem with my own novels! In any event, I always need to make time for my own work, my family and my overwhelming day job, so I almost always say no. But I fell in love with Cold Nights and could not let it go.

WB: TEZER ÖZLÜ PASSED AWAY IN 1986. WHAT WAS IT LIKE TRANSLATING A BOOK WHEN YOU WEREN’T ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE AUTHOR?

MF: Communication with authors is not always easy! Particularly if their English is fluent but not quite as nuanced as they seem to think. As it happens, most of the books I’ve translated have been 20th century classics that should have been translated into English many decades ago. It’s great that there is more interest in Turkish literature now, but

there’s a lot of catching up to do. Oh, but how I regret never having had a chance to tell Tezer how much I cherish her writing.

WB: WHAT DOES YOUR PROCESS FOR TRANSLATION NORMALLY LOOK LIKE?

MF: I take it page by page. Spending the most time on the first page. Each book, each writer, has a distinct music, a voice like no other. And until I have figured out how to bring that voice and that music into English, I do not let myself move on to page 2.

WB: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CORE DIFFERENCES OF TURKISH AND ENGLISH?

MF: Turkish is an agglutinative language, so a root noun typically carries five, six, seven suffixes in a particular order. The vowel in those suffixes change to allow for vowel harmony. This makes the language flow more beautifully. Pronouns are genderless. There are no freestanding definite orindefinite articles and no verbs for to be or to have. There is, however, a very useful distinction between things I have seen with my own eyes, and things I have heard

from others. And there is a reliance on the passive voice. I could go on, but you get the idea….

WERE THERE ANY SURPRISES OR CHALLENGES WHILE YOU WORKED ON THIS BOOK?

MF: It was a shock and a treat to find myself on one familiar street after another. Tezer was ten years my senior, but we may well have crossed paths over the years, because we lived in many of the same neighborhoods. And one of her best friends was also a good friend of my father’s. So with almost every new page, there was the thrill of recognition.

WAS THERE ANYTHING THAT HAD TO BE REMOVED OR CHANGED THAT YOU FEEL THE ENGLISH DOESN’T CAPTURE?

MF: The novel gives great importance to place, and Tezer’s place names will mean a great deal to Turkish readers but very little to readers but very little to anyone else. Rather than remove them or attempt to overexplain them, I wrote an afterword to give a sense of the novel’s geography. There is also a glossary of place names, which will, I

hope, make it possible to distinguish between the Istanbul locations and the towns elsewhere in Turkey that she also mentions.

WB: WHAT’S IT LIKE BALANCING THE AUTHOR’S VOICE, STYLE, CADENCE AS YOU TRANSLATE IT INTO A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE?

ABOUT THE BOOKS

MF: Because I am a novelist first and foremost, I go where I go in my own fictions. After absorbing the Turkish words, I dive deep down, do my best to understand what sort of artistic effect the author might have been after. Then I swim to the surface and try to create that same effect in English. The emphasis being on the word try.

WB: ARE THERE ANY WAYS YOU FEEL THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THE BOOK DIFFERS FROM THE ORIGINAL?

MF: I hope not!

WB: WHAT DID YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT COLD NIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD?

MF: I like (love) the way she chops and changes the rules of grammar

and narration to evoke a particular state of mind – ever changing, ever swinging to extremes. She was bipolar and suffered a great deal at the hands of the medical establishment. She describes her ordeals unflinchingly, but here is another thing I admire about her way with autofiction: she refuses to be contained or defined by what has been done to her. Her eyes are always on the beauty that is just beyond her reach, if not her understanding.

WB: WHAT ARE YOU READING RIGHT NOW?

MF: Time Shelter by the Bulgarian novelist Georgi Gospodinov, which won this year’s International Booker. It’s sublime – and timely.

WB: WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT TRANSLATION?

MF: When I’m translating, I’m no longer a foreigner in the country of my childhood. I am free to roam, discover, question, rejoice and grieve. After my husband died very suddenly some years ago, I went into translation for company and consolation. If I think back on the

dozen or so books I’ve translated since then, I cannot find a single one that isn’t sad. That doesn’t acknowledge my own sadness, and give me back my heart.

IS THERE ANYWHERE PEOPLE CAN FOLLOW YOUR WORK?

MF: My daughters keep promising to build me a website. Maybe next year. I’m not on Twitter – too many friends destroyed by pile-ons. 

“A profoundly moving account of desperation, exhilaration, and endurance.”--Kirkus Reviews

The Bell Jar meets Good Morning, Midnight, by one of Turkey’s most beloved writers.

The narrator of Tezer Özlü’s novel is between lovers. She is in and out of psychiatric wards, where she is forced to undergo electroshock treatments. She is between Berlin and Paris. She returns to Istanbul, in search of freedom, happiness, and new love.

Set across the rambling orchards of a childhood in the Turkish provinces and the smoke-filled cafes of European capitals, Cold Nights of Childhood offers a sensual, unflinching portrayal of a woman’s sexual encounters and psychological struggle, staging a clash between unbridled feminine desire and repressive, patriarchal society.

Originally published in 1980, six years before her death at 43, Cold Nights of Childhood cemented Tezer Özlü’s status as one of Turkey’s most beloved writers. A classic that deserves to stand alongside The Bell Jar and Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight, Cold Nights of Childhood is a powerfully vivid, disorienting, and bittersweet novel about the determined embrace of life in all its complexity and confusion, translated into English here for the first time by Maureen Freely, with an introduction by Aysegül Savas.

Cold Nights of Childhood.

REVIEW BY WYATT BANDT

“The warmth embracing us. The cold nights descending. The stars those nights bring to the skies.” - Tezer Özlü.

Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü was originally published in 1980. Some forty years later, we can now walk the streets of Turkey in English thanks to the talent of translator Maureen Freely.

The autobiographical novel follows a narrator who escapes from a patriarchal and nationalistic society only to later endure the tortures of electroshock “therapy.” Throughout it all, she searches for happiness while brushing away the pain of life.

I’d be remiss to say I’ve read anything like Cold Nights of Childhood, as Özlü’s style is truly unique. The writing was choppy and unrestrained. It’s simultaneously evoking feelings of lightness and claustrophobia as the narrator brought me into small, dimly lit spaces – both in the world and her heart. The stream of consciousness storytelling was intimate and familiar, and the narrator feeling deeply what Özlü also felt.

Where the pain of life mingles with the pleasure, that’s where Özlü’s narrator finds herself. Trysts with lovers mix with the fear of being killed in a psychological ward, running on the sand mingles together with thoughts of suicide. Özlü shares it all, always circling back to muse on how these “cold nights” bring attention to the beauty of existence.

Freely’s hand in the novel can’t go unpraised. She spent time in Instanbul not long after Özlü did, and Freely brought outsiders in with a glossary for those who aren’t as familiar with the language or Turkish geography. Most of all, Freely’s reflection at the end of Cold Nights brought the story to reality for more, grounding me in Freely’s shared experience, showing me the people that walk the streets of Arnavutköy.

Cold Nights of Childhood will demand you to share in Özlü’s joy and sorrow. Just shy of 100 pages, it’s a quick read, but it’s a story that isn’t afraid to look you in the eyes and share itself unflinchingly. 

SMALL PRESS REVIEWS

TEN16 PRESS

TEN16 Press, a division of Orange Hat Publishing, housing fiction, non-fiction, YA and poetry books.

WWW.ORANGEHATPUBLISHING.COM

The

Wordsmith by David Malone.

Review by Jenna Zerbel | Ten16 Press

This August, we’d like to shine a light on David Malone, whose debut middle-grade novel The Wordsmith is launching on October 17, 2023!

The Wordsmith tells the story of twelve-year-old Evie sine Wittington, who craves adventure . . . as long as it is safely contained between the covers of one of her fairy tales. But when Evie unwittingly discovers that nearby Babeltown’s Wordsmith has been kidnapped by the mythical Wordragon, she is thrust into an adventure of her own! Armed with the Wordsmith’s magic dictionary, Evie and Babeltown’s apprentice baker, Myles von Wicker, depart on an adventure across the Great Kingdom.

To hear more about David Malone and his witty, action-packed book, check out this excerpt from our interview!

Congratulations on being just months away from the launch of your book! With so many new experiences happening in your life, it must be hard to describe what you’re feeling. Want to take a crack at inventing a new word, just like the Wordsmith does in the story? I would have to steal a word that the Wordsmith has already created: “anteadventium.” It means “the nervous excitement felt before a big trip or journey.” While it isn’t a literal trip or journey I’m about to embark on, this whole process has been a journey, nonetheless.

Where did you get the idea to write The Wordsmith?

I am fascinated by language and word origins, and there were only so many times I could go to my wife and tell her (what I perceived to be) an interesting word origin before I couldn’t ignore her eye rolls anymore. (For example, did you know “peninsula” comes from two Latin words that translate to “almost an island”?) I decided, why not try to work this interest into a story? At this time, my wife was pregnant with our first kid, so it just felt natural to try and make it a children’s book.

This book is full of laugh-out-loud jokes but also heartfelt, tender moments. How do you find a balance between the two while you’re writing?

The way I look at it is, you can be much more liberal with the addition of humor throughout a story than the heartfelt moments, especially in a children’s book. Humor tends to build on itself and enhance the funny moments—both the ones that come before and the ones that follow. Too many heartfelt moments, on the other hand, can work in the opposite way by cheapening what comes before or after. Fewer heartfelt moments create larger impacts, which is what you want. Plus, an abundance of silliness and whimsy are two of the best qualities kids have that far too often dissipate as we get older, so I like to play it up as much as I can. And like Dr. Seuss said, “Why is humor so important? Without humor we’d have nothing, I don’t think.” 

Twelve-year-old Evie sine Wittington craves adventure… as long as it is safely contained between the covers of one of her fairy tales. But when Evie unwittingly discovers that nearby Babeltown’s Wordsmith has been kidnapped by the mythical Wordragon, she is thrust into an adventure of her own. Armed with the Wordsmith’s magic dictionary, Evie and Babeltown’s apprentice baker, Myles von Wicker, depart on an adventure across the Great Kingdom to rescue the crotchety old coot. Evie quickly realizes real life is not a fairy tale. She cannot hide from danger by closing a book. She cannot rescue the Wordsmith by skipping ahead. A happy ending is not guaranteed. Evie must face and conquer any dangers that confront her (like, say, a sentient forest and a curious gatehouse guarding an upside-down mountain), lest the Wordsmith remain imprisoned forever.

RETURN OF PODSTER!

Shelf Media Group's digital magazine about podcasts and podcasters.

Debutiful.

BY ADAM VITCAVAGE

About the Podcast

Each episode of Debutiful’s podcast features an in-depth conversation with a debut author about their first books, how they became writers, and what drives them.

In addition to the feed’s in-depth interviews, Debutiful also hosts the First Taste Reading Series. Episodes release every Monday and feature an author reading a short selection!

READ THE INTERVIEW ON THE NEXT PAGE.

FIND YOUR NEXT PODCAST

BY CORINNA KLOTH

Podster is a column for podcast listeners and serves as a curator for the best of known and unknown podcasts.

DEBUTIFUL BY ADAM

VITCAVAGE

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF.

Debutiful is a website and podcast that features in-depth interviews with debut authors hosted by me, Adam Vitcavage. I spent years writing freelance and working in indie bookstores learning the craft of a good interview and discovering good under-the-radar books. I eventually married the two passions and started helping tell the story of unknown and emerging debut wdriters. So much of the coverage these authors get is about their beautifully written books but their own stories are rarely told. So Debutiful gets down to what makes writers tick and how they’re inspired.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED WITH THE PODCAST?

The podcast came for my love of helping share the stories of creatives. My career started when I wrote about music and television for Paste Magazine then transitioned to literary coverage for Electric Literature, The Millions, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. When I started Debutiful, I had a lot of connections in the literary community and felt like I was relatively respected as an interviewer. Initially Debutiful was a website only with written interviews but a few publicists and

authors gave the advice that it should be spun off into a podcast.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PODCAST?

Debutiful is a podcast where readers can discover debut authors through in depth interviews. Each episode features debut and emerging writers discussing their lives, work, and inspiration. There are a lot of literary podcasts out there that have a specific point of view. My point of view is to be very casual but informative. I’ve been told it’s like eavesdropping on two relatives at a coffee shop. I don’t have an agenda when I talk to authors and I don’t try to hit talking points. It’s a winding conversation that features awkward pauses, moments of brilliance, and off-the-cuff remarks.

WHAT’S THE MOST CHALLENGING AND MOST SATISFYING PART OF RUNNING A PODCAST?

Time constraints. I work a full-time day job in communications and media, so trying to find time to read and prep in addition to actually recording and editing is difficult. There’s a lot of pre-breakfast and post-dinner work. There are definitely times when I get burnt out and times when the podcast

takes a month hiatus to recalibrate and refocus.

HOW DID YOU GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT YOUR PODCAST IN THE BEGINNING, AND HOW HAVE YOU GROWN YOUR AUDIENCE?

There was a lot of grassroots support at the beginning and it blossomed from there. A lot of soon-to-be published authors and their publicists knew my name because of work I had done for the outlets I referenced earlier. Most of my promotion comes from word of mouth. Writers sharing other writers’ episodes. Bookstores have

been instrumental in helping the podcast grow. I frequently see stores from Phoenix, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Brooklyn re-sharing episodes.

WHAT’S ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE EPISODES?

I’m obsessed with Brandon Taylor and think that he’s a genius. He was one of my first episodes ever and listening to it really highlights how much myself and the podcast has grown. Other favorites include Torrey Peters who discussed being a trans writer, Jessamine Chan and Rachel Yoder’s episodes featured a lot of discussion about motherhood, and recently Ruth Madievsky and I had a very chill conversation about what kind of vibes we gravitate towards reading.

WHAT IS YOUR UPLOADING SCHEDULE, AND WHAT CAN WE EXPECT?

Two longer form interviews are uploaded twice a month. These are thirty minute conversations with debut authors about their backgrounds, writing and editing processes, and reading recommendations. Additionally, weekly episodes of our First Taste Reading Series come out on Mondays where an author reads a short selection of their book and answers a few questions after!

PRIDE & PUBLISHING

Do you really need an Author page?

by Chrissy Brown | C.A.A.B Publishing

Well, yes.

Why would you not want to show off your work, and let your readers know about upcoming projects, events or books?

This can be a lifeline and a way of connecting with the buying public. But also, a way of connecting with other authors, podcasters and people who might be able to help you on your literary journey.

C.A.A.B PUBLISHING

CAAB Publishing Ltd is a traditional, small, indie company helping unknown authors have a voice and inspiring new writers to take that first step into the world of publishing.

A website can tell a prospective reader all about you and the genre you write in, it can turn them on to your style of writing, it can get them interested in other books you have written, and it can let them know when you will be available for book signings and other events.

If you are looking to make a living out of your books then you should have a way for fans to contact you, they may have questions that only you can answer, or they may want to invite you along to events. This is also an opportunity to have a way for them to buy from you. Signed copies can be highly sought after.

Have nothing published yet? You should still get a website and author page started.

You may not be published yet, but that shouldn’t stop you. Agents and publishers may look around for any information about you and a great author page could pique their interest.

You might want to start a blog or simply add updates on the progress of your work, you can put up any short stories that you write, or advertise any books/magazines that publish your work. If you win a writing competition, put it on. Meet a famous author? On it goes. You could keep a diary on the site, detailing your writing struggles and let others know they are not alone.

This can help create interest and followers for your social media.

(P.S. Make sure you are utilizing social media to the fullest.)

Even if you are not particularly tech savvy, you can always ask other authors what platforms they used for their author pages or get a friend to help. Take a good look at what type of site will work for you, how much is it? Will it let you have a selling page? Is it good for those that are not technically minded? Can you list books and add photos? Does it incorporate a calendar or a blog?

Many authors say they tried three or more sites before finding the one that worked for them. So, there is no rush. Just find one that you understand and that offers all you need. Some webpages can cost a little money, some can be expensive, and some are free. It all depends on your budget and your requirements.

There are tutorials out there for most sites.

Use them.

A great idea is to look at other authors webpages and see how they have set them up.

It can give you new ideas and you might be inspired by what you see.

Be careful not to put too much of your work in progress on your author page, it may put off a potential agent or publisher if your work is all over your site and free to read.

But if you are self-publishing, go for it. Do put on a profile picture, if you can, and a way to contact you. A bio and any links to work that is available to buy.

Keep it updated, keep it fresh.

Start a list for newsletter receivers.

You can make them bi-monthly or twice a year, or just send one out when you have news that your readers might find interesting.

Good luck and have fun.

Penfold Towers is just another tower block in London, but this high rise made of glass and steel has many stories to tell and many strange things can happen in just one day. Things that may make you smile, cry, or feel the true terror of Penfold Towers.

Written by a talented bunch of authors, each story is a day in the life of a resident of Penfold Towers. The same day, but for each character this day will end with their lives changed forever. Available on Amazon.

Bart’s Books.

OJAI, CA

FEATURED INDIE BOOKSTORE

Bart’s Books is the world’s largest outdoor bookstore, serving the Ojai community since 1964. We believe that there is a book for everyone, and that reading is the catalyst for a connection amongst passionate people. Bart’s hosts a collection of over 130,000 used and new books, ranging from rare out-of-print gems to well loved paperbacks.

The staff - composed entirely of dedicated book-lovers - can not only help you find a book but can also offer a recommendation for a new favorite. Over 50 years after its conception, Bart’s lives on as a haven for passionate readers, intrigued travelers, wandering artists, and those just looking for a good “beach read.”

WHAT IS THE BACKGROUND ABOUT YOURSELF AND THIS BOOKSTORE?

BB: I’ve been a used bookstore frequenter since the age of 10, including a patron of Bart’s. Bart’s has been here since 1964 , founded by Richard Bartnsdale after he was inspired by the book carts along the Seine in Paris.

The majority of Bart’s Books inventory (about 130,000 books) is made up of second hand books of various subjects. Most of the used books in the store come from book trades, donations, or entire acquired estates.

And of course, we have our instagram famous cats!

WHAT KIND OF READING TRENDS DO YOU SEE WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS?

BB: It’s difficult to see trends in the used books outside of the evry most popular titles as we don’t catalog our used inventory.  Given that our customer base extends to the greater los angeles and southern california area  popular titles skew towards california authors like steinbeck, eve babitz, bukowski and didion.  We have over 100,00 titles spanning all subjects and sell something from every section each day.

WHAT OTHER SERVICES AND PRODUCTS DO YOU PROVIDE FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS?

BB: We sell merchandise related to the store including mugs made by a local ceramicist, who we also sell other pottery works by. We also stock seeds from a local heirloom seed company.  We occasionally rent the space out for private after hours events, as well as host events that are open to the public.

A few years ago, a blog post wrote about us as a “bookstore coffee shop” despite the fact that we have never served coffee. We’re not really sure why this article credited us as

a coffee shop, but we want to clear up the confusion: we do not serve coffee.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT WORKING IN AN INDIE BOOKSTORE?

BB: It’s an opportunity to provide a service that has the potential to edify its customer and keep alive the best efforts of human knowledge.

FIT LIT

Body, Mind and Quill ABOUT THE

COLUMNIST

Quadragenarian fitness model, lifestyle coach and bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Feast of Fates, Christian A. Brown received a Kirkus star in 2014 for the first novel in his genrechanging Four Feasts till Darkness series. He has appeared on Newstalk 1010, AM640, Daytime Rogers, and Get Bold Today with LeGrande Green. He actively writes and speaks about his mother’s journey with cancer and on gender issues in the media.

Running with Hobbits and Alchemists.

BY CHRISTIAN ADRIAN BROWN

Venture beyond the realm of ordinary exercise and mundane fitness routines for a world of inspiration that can ignite both body and mind. Journey into the captivating landscapes of heroic fantasy, where dragons breathe fire, elves roam enchanted forests, and knights wield gleaming swords. Among these fantastical tales penned by revered international authors like Paulo Coelho and J.R.R. Tolkien, lies a treasure trove of insights that intertwine fitness, mindfulness, and health with the allure of fiction.

Let's start with The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, where we embark on a quest alongside Santiago, a young Andalusian shepherd, as he traverses the shifting sands of the Sahara desert in search of his legend. Like our fitness pursuits, Santiago's journey begins with a spark of inspiration, a motivation that sets him on his path to self-discovery. We, too, experience this initial motivation when we embark on a fitness journey – whether it's the desire to fit into our favourite pair of jeans or simply embrace a healthier lifestyle. This spark ignites the flame that fuels our determination.

Throughout the novel, Santiago encounters hurdles and temptations, much like the challenges we face in our own lives. However, his mindfulness and resilience ultimately allow him to overcome these obstacles. We, too, must cultivate mindfulness, the awareness of our body's signals and needs. It's akin to Santiago learning the language of the universe; we

come to understand the importance of rest days, the value of nutrition, and the significance of listening to our bodies.

Now, let us delve into J.R.R. Tolkien's magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings, where we are transported to a world that celebrates unity, courage, and physical prowess. The diverse Fellowship of the Ring exemplifies the power of teamwork, each member bringing their unique strengths to the table. Aragorn's endurance, Legolas' agility, and Gimli's brawn showcase the various facets of physical fitness. They teach us that achieving greatness often requires us to recognize and embrace our individual abilities while appreciating and supporting those of others.

Moreover, The Lord of the Rings is replete with instances of mindfulness amid chaos. Characters like Gandalf and Galadriel exemplify the importance of mental strength, temperance and clarity. The grand battles fought in the War of the Ring illustrate the sheer physical prowess and spiritual fortitude of characters like Aragorn and Éowyn. These warriors inspire us to push our limits and reveal our untapped potential. If they can face the terror of the Nazgûl, we can conquer our self-doubts and

lose those love handles! (Excess visceral fat is one of the biggest precursors of poor health outcomes. We must focus on this goal above other body goals because it is the one most pivotal to our longevity and quality of life.)

The bond between fitness and literature is far from coincidental; rather, it is a symbiotic connection that enriches both aspects. Heroic fantasy often mirrors the hero's journey we undertake in our pursuit of personal betterment. Much like the protagonists' quests for greatness, our fitness journeys are riddled with challenges, allies, and moments of self-discovery that shape us into stronger individuals. These fantastical tales remind us that the journey is just as important as the destination. We learn the value of perseverance, the joy of small victories, and the significance of resilience in the face of setbacks.

So, the next time you lace up your running shoes or roll out your yoga mat, remember that you are embarking on your own epic quest.

Brother & Sister Enter The Forest .

BY RICHARD MIRABELLA

PUBLISHER: CATAPULT

While the title of Richard Mirabella’s debut novel, Brother & Sister Enter the Forest, might be evocative of the fairy tales we read as children, the story is anything but a fairy tale. Instead, it’s an emotional story of two siblings, Justin and Willa, and the events and relationships that shape their lives. When the novel begins, Justin and Willa haven’t spoken for a year. Justin shows up at Willa’s door, but Willa, open to having him with her, also maintains her distance. The reader soon learns why: Justin is emotionally heavy for Willa. He’s battled addiction and depression, he is estranged from their mother, and he’s often homeless. What the reader doesn’t readily learn is the why behind Justin’s circumstances. And that’s where Mirabella’s storytelling comes in. He weaves together timelines, teasing the reader with just enough information to move forward in time before pulling back to the past again. We learn of Nick, the older man a young Justin looks up to and gets involved with, the one Justin relies on for love and affection, the one who assaults another boy, the one who abuses Justin and leaves him deeply scarred. Justin truly wants to be loved, but is it possible to find love if he doesn’t know, or hasn’t been taught, how to love himself?

Willa, meanwhile, is more successful in society’s eyes—she holds a steady job and plans to be married—but she, too, is hurting. She has a need to make something beautiful and meaningful, to shape her art—building miniature dioramas of past events—in a fulfilling way, which supplants the life that hasn’t fulfilled her and provides some power over that painful past. Willa tries to support Justin as much as possible, but her brother, whether consciously or subconsciously, refuses to completely open up to her.

Mirabella’s spare prose here is exactly what this story needs. Anything more would have overshadowed the narrative and colored the trauma in an unwanted fashion. Instead, the author paints a dramatic and heart-wrenching portrait of Willa, Justin, their relationship, and the authentic, often painful world in which they live.

Kate Winters.

BY GEOFFREY WORKENRICH

PUBLISHER: IUNIVERSE

Geoffrey Workenrich’s novel, Kate Winters, follows the titular character from age five to early adulthood.

Adult

Having lost her mother at an early age, Kate is exceptionally close with her father. He challenges her to not only be true to herself but to resolve issues using her intellect. He also encourages her to be sensitive yet strong, both physically and mentally. Kate embraces the challenges by excelling academically and athletically through sport and martial arts. In high school, Kate befriends Jen, a loner whose backstory includes seeing her mother shoot her father and then kill herself. She’s raised by an alcoholic grandmother. Kate and her father become Jen’s de facto family. Their friendship endures numerous hardships, including when Kate is violently attacked near the end of her senior year.

The young women attend different colleges and pursue different careers but remain steadfast in their friendship, even after Kate meets the man of her dreams and becomes engaged.

Despite detailed descriptions of Kate, her relationships with her father, Jen and others whose lives intersect with hers, there’s little here to capture the imagination. The author has crafted an intelligent and loyal main character, but he tells more than he shows regarding how she interacts with those in her world.

Additionally, Workenrich relies on the passive voice throughout and frequently states the obvious: “She could feel her heart. It was beating.” Many of the descriptions are replete with mundane detail: “In addition to the living room, the house consisted of a small kitchendinette, a tiny bedroom and a little larger bedroom that generously could be termed the master. There was one bathroom, [sic] there was a cellar.” There’s also an element of racism; those involved in Kate’s attack, who also are later charged with a similar crime, are unnecessarily identified as black. No one else is recognized by race.

While the pace is slow and the ending ambiguous, some readers might appreciate Kate as a passionate, caring character.

American Scholar.

BY PATRICK E. HORRIGAN

PUBLISHER: LETHE PRESS

Adult

American Scholar is a skillfully told, emotionally powerful tale about intellectual discovery and relationships.

The novel recounts one night in the life of James Fitzgerald, a literature professor celebrating the release of his novel about influential 20th century academic F.O. Matthiessen and his love affair with an older male artist. In alternating chapters that jump back in time, James remembers his first serious relationship with brilliant but troubled Gregory during the late 1980s, when he discovered Matthiessen as a recently out graduate student.

Early on, the story portrays the younger James’s (called Jimmy) first meeting of Columbia’s Gay Study group, where members analyze and debate various texts, while also amusing each other with Barbra Streisand and Gypsy quotes, combining serious inquiry with playful, flirtatious banter.

When Gregory, a group founder, asks out Jimmy, Jimmy is awed by Gregory’s wide-ranging knowledge and “mature” understanding of romantic affairs. As their relationship

develops, however, he experiences Gregory’s demanding nature and mood swings. Jimmy also becomes obsessed with Matthiessen, dragging Gregory to the scholar’s Boston home where he committed suicide after his lover’s death.

Meanwhile, in the novel’s present, James tries to understand his fight that morning with his partner, with whom he shares an open relationship, meets with his younger boyfriend, and grapples with Gregory’s sister’s gift of the now-deceased Gregory’s documents and photos, including some of Matthiessen’s letters Jimmy gave to Gregory.

The novel skillfully explores the characters’ complexity and relationships. For instance, on their first date, Jimmy desires Gregory but worries he might not be smart or attractive enough for him, yet panics at going “all the way.” In their messiness, his thoughts feel realistic and human. The book also celebrates scholarly work, the joy of finding books, authors, and ideas that speak to one’s life and how to live it. Readers who don’t appreciate scholarly pursuits will still enjoy seeing how Jimmy and Gregory’s relationship unfolds.

All told, American Scholar is a fine work, one sure to grip those looking for an unusual story with irresistibly complex characters. 

Specks of Dust

BY WILL DUNCAN

PUBLISHER:

WILL DUNCAN

burning flesh…”

Adult

When a young man flees Uganda searching for a better life in America, he faces struggles not so different from his homeland: He’s betrayed by friends, mistreated by the law and naïve about the church and those who claim to be Christians. Umaru Moses attempts to sleep in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot near Atlanta when a corrupt police officer approaches, asking Umaru questions he can’t satisfactorily answer. Umaru ends up in jail, where he reflects on his unfortunate journey.

Umaru led a comfortable life until his father died following a motorbike accident. With his mother struggling to support the family, Umaru takes to the streets, where he befriends other street kids, and together they survive however they can, many huffing “chengay,” or jet fuel.

When police sweep the streets before a parade, they encounter children sleeping in empty sugar bags the children use to gather bottles. “Military troops stormed in silently and in a simultaneous effort grabbed the bags and tied them shut with the kids inside. The ones in the field they threw over the garbage fires. Even the garbage couldn’t mask the stench of

Presbyterian missionaries take the children in after they promise to love and obey Jesus. Eventually, Umaru is recognized as a bright boy and sent to St. Paul’s Secondary School, where he’s allowed to join a field trip to New York and Chicago. Recognizing his chance, Umara flees the school group in Chicago.

This is a gripping, often gut-wrenching tale of impoverished, third world life, but also one of hope and faith. The writing is stellar: “He shivered when he thought about his past, as if a cold, bony finger were running along his spine, a death-rattle hiss reminding him of when…the sunrise was a little bit closer and the half-dollar memories went for pennies.”

The author’s knowledge of Uganda, its poverty, religion and hypocrisy, informs every sentence, as do authentic characters and dialogue. Umaru is steadfast in his belief in Jesus, even as the officer beats him. “You love Jesus?” the officer asks. “’Yes,’ Umaru said through choked sobs…The officer chuckled, then spit… ‘Well, he don’t love you.’”

This isn’t a light story, but its exploration of those who persevere—and even dare to dream— despite great challenges will surely stay with readers well beyond the last page.

Pine Creek.

BY KAMILLE ROACH

PUBLISHER:

KAMILLE ROACH

Adult

In Pine Creek, a young boy is discovered dead, setting in motion questions that won’t be answered until years later. Alec, who lives with his father in Sydney, is an actor and singer in a gifted school arts program who is rumored to be gay. When he begins visiting his divorced mother on weekends, young teen Sara Hamilton is intrigued and hopes to get to know him better. But then Alec is found dead in a channel by the road.

It’s quickly determined Alec was the victim of a hit-andrun, leading to speculation that he must have intentionally jumped in front of the car; news of AIDS is everywhere, heightening homophobia, and people assume Alec must be depressed or otherwise mentally imbalanced.

But things don’t add up. Alec’s shoe and coat are missing, and Sara is bothered by small things she remembers before his death: a last glimpse of him, the letter she left in his mailbox.

Meanwhile, Sara’s homelife is miserable as her father Len, a homophobic violent man, abuses her mother and siblings. But that doesn’t stop Sara from sneaking out with the young farm worker who is her first love.

Years later, as Sara continues to piece together the puzzle, disturbing secrets evolve, and she must follow the thread of evidence to its dark end.

This story is written in clear language, skillfully revealing the intricacies of family relationships. In one well-drawn scene, Len Hamilton flies into a rage over some romance novels Sara’s mother brought home for her. Seeking to calm things, Sara’s mother takes her children out for ice cream. “‘Have some, Mum,’ Anne said, offering a shiny spoon… Mum shook her head. ‘I enjoy it more when I watch you.’”

As the book unfolds, the author pulls together the varied threads to divulge several, well-setup surprises, culminating in an engaging read for anyone who enjoys a bit of mystery and romance and a satisfying ending.

Forever Child.

BY MARK LAVINE

PAGES: 317

ISBN: B0BYR88TXK

Adult

Mark Lavine’s dystopian science fiction novel delivers a common premise: Elite members of society live in closed-off, luxurious enclaves, while the poor live “outside” in abject poverty and squalor.

Here, crime has become so rampant that there aren’t enough prisons to house the criminals, so rich folks live in “Hives” such as the one in Los Gatos: 20 miles long, ten miles wide and 1,500 feet high.

Outside, the criminals run free, although they and their descendants must raise food for those in Hives and barely subsist on synthetic food provided for them. Life is miserable for the “outsiders,” who grow old and eventually die.

By contrast, the 24th century elites can live for centuries; however, the treatments to extend life must begin in childhood, and once started, physical growth ends. Therefore, although some Hive residents are centuries old, they look like 10-yearolds.

Kianno is an actual 10-year-old living in a Hive. One day, on a Disney World-like ride, an accident sends his car plunging to the outside, and Kianno is presumed dead. Meanwhile, Seelin, an outsider 10-year-old gets lost and is claimed by Kianno’s parents to replace their son. The result is that the two boys unwittingly trade places.

Meanwhile, the elites discover how to live even longer, transplanting their brains into outsider children they kidnap. A revolution looms to thwart this immoral practice, and some elites have joined the outsiders in their fight.

Lavine delivers credible, imperfect protagonists. For example, the outsiders and elites sympathetic to their cause think nothing of killing innocent people to effect societal change. Adding to believability, the story is built on the idea of today’s sharp division between the “1%” and the rest of society. ForeverChild is an entertaining offering and a welcome addition to the dystopian canon.

Roll Back The World.

BY DEBORAH KASDAN

PUBLISHER: SHE WRITES PRESS

Adult

Deborah Kasdan’s heartfelt debut, Roll Back the World: A Sister’s Memoir, is a look at the impact mental illness has on an entire family. The book is divided into six parts, with several sections depicting a different aspect of Kasdan’s life along with that of her sister, Rachel, who lived with schizophrenia for thirty years. Kasdan gently talks about “the aftershocks and the pain of loving a sister who couldn’t find a place to live in this world,” giving the reader a raw glimpse into what schizophrenia looked like from her point of view. Kasdan also had another intent in writing the book: to tell “how illness deprived [Rachel] of the life she set out to lead and how she survived the ignorance of those who had no way to help her.” Other sections of the book launch readers backward, centering them in the historical time period and backstory of Deborah and Rachel’s parents, which, Kasdan admits, played roles in their children’s childhood and how they reacted to Rachel’s schizophrenia.

Scientists now believe that physical, genetic, environmental, and psychological factors can make a person more likely to develop schizophrenia, but less was known about the disorder during Rachel’s lifetime. The narrative takes a deep look at Deborah’s grief and guilt over not being able to reach her sister. Kasdan asks the reader to contemplate multiple questions over the course of the book. How much does each factor play into a diagnosis like schizophrenia? How responsible should one be for a sibling? Should one prioritize a sibling over a partner and/or children? How can someone living with schizophrenia have their freedom and live safely? What can society and the medical community do to better help those living with schizophrenia and other disorders? In cases like this, does one ever feel like they’ve done enough?

The book relies on Kasdan’s memories, letters, and family documents to flesh out the story. But Kasdan also chooses to share some of Rachel’s poetry, which she intersperses at certain points in the narrative. The readers get a rare look into Rachel’s mind—her intelligence, her spirit, her creativity—driving home the point of how much Kasdan and her family lost with Rachel’s passing. Roll Back the World is a complex, layered story that will stick with readers for a long time.

The Glassmaker’s Wife.

BY LEE MARTIN

Adult

On the surface, Lee Martin’s The Glassmaker’s Wife seems to be an uncomplicated story. Betsey Reed, a beautiful yet discontent housewife, is accused of killing her husband, Leonard, a glassmaker by trade. Eveline Deal, a young girl who works for the Reeds, testifies to the coroner’s jury that she “saw [Mrs. Reed] put white powder into the Mister’s coffee” a few days before Leonard dies. Examination of Leonard’s stomach contents reveals arsenic as the probable cause of death, and the community, influenced by past rumors that Betsey is a witch, quickly condemns the woman before a trial has even begun.

But, as Eveline’s father says to her one day, “There’s more than one way to spin a story.” And that’s where the complexity in The Glassmaker’s Wife unfurls. Several characters hold tightly to pieces of the story the reader needs to understand the whole picture, including Eveline; Heinz Ernst, a German immigrant with an ax to grind against Mrs. Reed; the local apothecary, James Logan; and Ethan Dalz, a dry goods salesman accused of selling arsenic to Mrs. Reed. Even Betsey herself retains secrets. Witzh this strategy, Martin keeps the reader guessing—will the characters reveal the truth, or will Betsey Reed be hanged for a crime she might not have committed?—and even toward the end of the book, everyone’s motives, actions, and desires are questioned.

Set in 1844, the novel is aptly awash with historical details that give the reader a robust view of life at that time, especially for women, who had very few rights. Because of the timeframe, the ending, though not unexpected, is fitting, and it allows the reader to reflect on what came to pass in the hearts of these characters over the course of the novel, prompting questions. Did those involved question their own integrity and that of others? What were their reasons for holding onto information instead of being forthright from the outset? Who is allowed to judge someone and their actions? What is forgiveness, and who should grant it?

This novel is a quick read by a master storyteller. Readers who enjoy stories with authentic, flawed characters will truly appreciate the book.

PUBLISHER: DZANC BOOKS

Chicken Dinner News.

BY JEFF BILLINGTON

PUBLISHER: VINE LEAVES PRESS

Billington’s novel about a man who has to make a choice is heavy with nostalgia. White Oak City, where the story takes place, is filled to the brim with charm. Despite the town’s years of neglect, the old buildings and the newspaper draw you in. Perhaps Billington’s close connections to small town life in the Ozarks that bring to life the cozy diner, quaint downtown, and the sparkle of fireflies on a warm summer night.

Ryan Shipley is the main character in Chicken Dinner News. His grandfather, the patriarch of White Oak City, passes away leaving Ryan with the responsibility of dealing with his estate. Unbeknownst to Ryan, his grandfather’s estate includes most of the town. It’s a hard pass for Ryan, a journalist living in L.A. Besides, he never knew his grandfather so he doesn’t have any real ties to the small town. Yet this easy decision to settle the estate and return to California gets complicated. And not just because he falls for Olivia. There’s something in White Oak City lying beneath the racism and bigotry. Is it enough?

If you’ve ever found yourself flailing over a life-altering decision, this book is for you. Wrestle with the choice like Ryan does. Dig deep. Ask the tough questions. And maybe catch a firefly or two.

Little White Lies.

BY MARGARET FENTON

PUBLISHER:

AAKENBAAKEN & KENT

Adult

Released in March 2023, Margaret Fenton’s Little White Lies is a short mystery with an amateur female sleuth.

When the mayor’s office is bombed, the mayor is fine, but his campaign manager, Jason O’Dell, isn’t as lucky. Then a daycare calls Claire Conover, and she gains a new client—Jason’s daughter. The mystery unravels from there as Claire tries to keep the little girl safe and investigate Jason’s death. At the same time, Claire is also dealing with her personal life, including a man she’s dating and a foster daughter.

First of all, I liked the way Margaret used the first person point of view. I’ve read plenty of mysteries, and usually they’re written in third person. However, to me, Margaret did a good job of knowing that Claire’s story needed to be told in first person. I felt like I was right

there in the story with Claire as she was dealing not only with her work life but her personal life. While I know a bit about child protective services, Margaret obviously knows much more since she worked in that field, and she uses that to her advantage to tell Claire’s story, making it seem more realistic.

Second, I had a hard time putting this book down because I kept wanting to know what happened next. This book is shorter than most mysteries I’ve read, but it still had plenty of suspense to keep me reading. Margaret does a great job of keeping us guessing on what will happen next, and sometimes I was surprised at what happened. To me, that’s what makes a great story—the twists and turns that Margaret weaved throughout the story.

Overall, Little White Lies is a book that will make you want to keep turning the pages. So, if you’re looking for a quick mystery to read, I highly recommend you choose this one.

The Shadow Dancers of Brixton Hill.

BY NICOLE WILLSON

PUBLISHER:

INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED

Adult

It’s 1937, and Kate Montgomery and her father are trying to revive their family circus, Montgomery’s Marvels, after the economic loss of the Great Depression. Kate travels from Baltimore to Richmond, Virginia, where she meets with Lewis Oswald, a former performer with Montgomery’s. Oswald now serves as a trainer for performers of all sorts—jugglers, acrobats, and illusionists—and allows the Montgomery family the first chance to sign his most promising pupils. When Kate arrives, Oswald is eager to show Kate his latest find: a very special set of performers. “I assure you,” Oswald tells Kate, “nobody in Baltimore, or anywhere else, has seen the likes of them.”

Those performers are The Shadow Dancers, a group of three girls whose shadows are able to dance independently of their bodies. Their routine instantly

captivates Kate, but something keeps her from immediately signing a contract with Oswald. As the reader finds out, her hesitation is warranted, but what comes to pass is eerie, unexpected, and captivating.

Willson is a skillful horror writer, and in this novella, she makes the darkness of circuses come alive. That darkness is mirrored in the dismal and creepy setting of the book—the boarded up storefronts, dim alleyways, and dusty roads—as well as in the actions of The Shadow Dancers, who, when not dancing, seem to want to fold into their bodies, as if they’re trying to hide. Their behavior makes sense: Lewis Oswald might be a master at finding new talent, but he’s also a misogynistic terror, and he treats his proteges poorly, both emotionally and physically.

Willson does a fantastic job of building up the narrative and drawing out the reveal— of the dancers, their abilities, the secrets, the climax—which lends tension and suspense to the story. The Shadow Dancers might only be a novella, but it packs the same punch as a full-length book. Fans of atmospheric writing should take note!

The Island Sisters.

BY MICKI BERTHELOT MORENCY

PUBLISHER: BHC PRESS

PAGES: 314

ISBN: 9781643973302

Micki Berthelot Morency has written an important and poignant debut novel that will sit with readers for a long time. The Island Sisters is told in four voices and follows the lives of Monique, Ella, Cecilia, and Lanei. Hailing originally from Haiti, Guam, and St. Thomas, these four young women meet at university in Miami, where each woman dreams of something more. They want to be able to put the past behind them, to make their own choices, to forge their own paths, and to be free of domestic violence. They want to stand as independent women, untethered from the bonds of the patriarchy. But much of this story takes place in the eighties, at a time and place when women in many cultures were still vulnerable and dependent on men. And while Monique, Ella, Cecilia, and Lanei do not succeed in reaching every dream, their friendship, cemented by common experiences, helps each of them move beyond their challenges with hope and positivity.

One of Morency’s strengths lies in these characters. All four women are distinct, engaging voices with similar yet different stories. Their hopes and dreams, their want for love and family, are relatable to many, as are the preconceptions these characters must deal with in terms of expectations for women and how to live their lives. Authenticity abounds from their points of view as they exhibit their fortitude and resilience. Another strength is Morency’s decision to tackle domestic violence and abuse head on. She’s not quiet about what happens in these women’s lives and how those experiences affect the characters, both physically and emotionally. The raw and sometimes brutal honesty allows the reader to sympathize and empathize with the characters. Their pain becomes ours. Their sadness too. Other heavy themes include racism, addiction, and misogyny, but this book is ultimately uplifting, hopeful, and satisfying. Full of beautiful descriptions and emotional moments, The Island Sisters reminds the reader of the power of women and friendship and that the world is, indeed, a better place when sisters of all kinds look out for each other.

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THE UNDERSTORY

by Saneh Sangsuk, Translated by Mui Poopoksakul

The lovable, yarnspinning monk Luang Paw Tien, now in his nineties, is the last person in his village to bear witness to the power and plenitude of the jungle before agrarian and then capitalist life took over his community. Nightly, he entertains the children of his village with tales from his younger years: his long pilgrimage to India, his mother’s dreams of a more stable life through agriculture, his proud huntsman father who resisted those dreams, and his love, who led him to pursue those dreams all over again. Sangsuk’s novel is a celebration of the oral tradition of storytelling and, above all else, a testament to the power of stories to entertain.

IVAN AND PHOEBE

by Oksana Lutsyshyna, Translated by Nina Murray

Ivan and Phoebe chronicles the lives of several young people involved in the Ukranian student protests of the 1990’s, otherwise known as the Revolution On Granite or the “First Maidan.” The story bounces between politically charged cities like Kyiv and Lviv, and protagonist Ivan’s small, traditional hometown of Uzhgorod. As characters come to exercise their rights to free speech and protest, they must also re-evaluate the norms of marriage, family, and home life. While these initially appear to be spaces of peace and harmony, they are soon revealed to be hotbeds of conflict and multigenerational trauma.

Married couple Ivan and Phoebe grapple with questions about family, trauma, and independence. Although Ivan tells the story, Phoebe’s voice rings through the text as she divulges her own traumas through poetic monologues. The two reflect on the traumatic aftermath of revolution: torture at the hands of the KGB and each other. While Ivan refuses to talk about his pain, Phoebe describes her past through poetic monologues.

FREEDOM HOUSE by

KB Brookins

In this debut full-length collection, KB Brookins’ formally diverse, musicinfluenced poetry explores transness, politics of the body, gentrification, sexual violence, climate change, masculinity, and afrofuturism while chronicling their transition and walking readers through different “rooms”. The speaker isn’t afraid to call themselves out while also bending time, displaying the terror of being Black/queer/trans in Texas, and more — all while using humor and craft.

What does freedom look like? What can we learn from nature and our past? How do you reintroduce yourself in a world that refuses queerness? How can we use poetry as a tool in the toolbox that helps build freedom? This collection explores those questions, and manifests a world where Black, queer, and trans people get to live.

DAUGHTERS OF MUSCADINE

by Monic Ductan

Two events tie together the nine stories in Monic Ductan’s gorgeous debut: the 1920s lynching of Ida Pearl Crawley and the 1980s drowning of a high school basketball player, Lucy Boudreaux. Both forever shape the people and the place of Muscadine, Georgia, in the foothills of Appalachia.

The daughters of Muscadine are Black southern women who are, at times, outcasts due to their race and are also estranged from those they love. A remorseful woman tries to connect with the child she gave up for adoption; another, immersed in loneliness, attempts to connect with a violent felon. Two sisters love each other deeply even when they cannot understand one another. A little girl witnessing her father’s slow death realizes her own power and lack thereof. A single woman weathers the excitement and rigors of online dating.

ANNIKA ROSE by

Cheri Johnson

Ancient and contemporary myths—including both Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby—overlay a coming-of-age story set in remote northern Minnesota.

Seventeen-year-old Annika Rose and her father Wes have spent the years since the death of Annika’s mother in selfimposed social isolation on their farm on the edge of the woods. When a young woman named Tina moves into a house down the road, the result is a sudden explosion of feelings in both father and daughter and a fierce rivalry. At stake in the competition is not only their relationship, but the life of the vulnerable young woman at the center of it all.

PROFESSIONAL LOLA

Tuazon

Professional Lola is a collection of short stories that blend literary fiction with the surreal to present the contemporary Filipino American experience and its universal themes of love, family, and identity. A family hires an actress to play their beloved grandmother at a party; a couple craving Filipino food rob a panaderya; a coven of Filipino witches cast a spell on their husbands; a Lolo transforms into a Lola. These are just a few of the stories in the collection that represent its roster of stories beautifully grounded in culture and vividly and meticulously painted to make the absurd seem mundane and the commonplace, sinister. Professional Lola embodies the joy, mystery, humor, sadness, hunger, and family that inhabit modern-day Filipino American virtues.

by E.P.

ON OUR SHELF

DARK DAYS

by Roger Reeves

In his debut work of nonfiction, award-winning poet Roger Reeves finds new meaning in silence, protest, fugitivity, freedom, and ecstasy. Braiding memoir, theory, and criticism, Reeves juxtaposes the images of an opera singer breaking the state-mandated silence curfew by singing out into the streets of Santiago, Chile, and a father teaching his daughter to laugh out loud at the planes dropping bombs on them in Aleppo, Syria. He describes the history of the hush harbor—places where enslaved people could steal away to find silence and court ecstasy, to the side of their impossible conditions. In other essays, Reeves highlights a chapter in Toni Morrison’s Beloved to locate common purpose between Black and Indigenous peoples; he visits the realities of enslaved people on McLeod Plantation, where some of the descendants of those formerly enslaved lived into the 1990s; and he explores his own family history, his learning to read closely through the Pentecostal church tradition, and his passing on of reading as a pleasure, freedom, and solace to his daughter, who is frightened the police will gun them down.

MEN IN MY SITUATION by

Per Petterson

Five years ago, ordinary Americans fell under the grip of a strange new malady that caused them to sleepwalk across the country to a destination only they knew. They were followed on their quest by the shepherds: friends and family who gave up everything to protect them. Their secret destination: Ouray, a small town in Colorado that would become one of the last outposts of civilization. Because the sleepwalking epidemic was only the first in a chain of events that led to the end of the world--and the birth of a new one.

The survivors, sleepwalkers and shepherds alike, have a dream of rebuilding human society. Among them are Benji, the scientist struggling through grief to lead the town; Marcy, the former police officer who wants only to look after the people she loves; and Shana, the teenage girl who became the first shepherd--and an unlikely hero whose courage will be needed again.

Because the people of Ouray are not the only survivors, and the world they are building is fragile. The forces of cruelty and brutality are amassing under the leadership of self-proclaimed president Ed Creel. And in the very heart of Ouray, the most powerful survivor of all is plotting its own vision for the new world: Black Swan, the A.I. who imagined the apocalypse. Against these threats, Benji, Marcy, Shana, and the rest have only one hope: one another. Because the only way to survive the end of the world is together.

OWLISH by

Dorothy Tse

Translated by Natascha Bruce

In a city called Nevers, there lives a professor of literature called Q. He has a dull marriage and a lackluster career, but also a scrumptious collection of antique dolls locked away in his cupboard. And soon Q lands his crowning acquisition: a music box ballerina named Aliss who has tantalizingly sprung to life. Guided by his mysterious friend Owlish and inspired by an inexplicably familiar painting, Q embarks on an all-consuming love affair with Aliss, oblivious to the protests spreading across the university that have left his classrooms all but empty.

The mountainous city of Nevers is itself a mercurial character with concrete flesh, glimmering new construction, and “colonial flair.” Having fled there as a child refugee, Q thought he knew the faces of the city and its people, but Nevers is alive with secrets and shape-shifting geographies. The winner of a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, Owlish is a fantastically eerie debut novel that is also a bold exploration of life under oppressive regimes.

ELIXIR by Kapka Kassabova

In Elixir, in a wild river valley and amid the three mountains that define it, Kapka Kassabova seeks out the deep connection between people, plants, and place. The Mesta is one of the oldest rivers in Europe and the surrounding forests and mountains of the southern Balkans are an extraordinarily rich nexus for plant gatherers.

Over several seasons, Kassabova spends time with the people of this magical region. She meets women and men who work in a long lineage of foragers, healers, and mystics. She learns about wild plants and the ancient practice of herbalism that makes use of them, and she experiences a symbiotic system where nature and culture have blended for thousands of years. Through her captivating encounters we come to feel the devastating weight of the ecological and cultural disinheritance that the people of this valley have suffered. And Kassabova reflects on what being disconnected from place can do to our souls and our bodies. Yet, in her search for elixir, she also finds reasons for hope. The people of the valley are keepers of a rare knowledge, not only of mountain plants and their properties, but also of how to transform collective suffering into healing.

STILL FALLING by Jennifer

Grotz

Still Falling expands on Jennifer Grotz’s precise sense of craft and voice to investigate new territory in this astonishing collection. These poems are emotionally raw and introspective, exploring the profound capaciousness of grief. Grotz carefully and deftly carries the weight of losses and their aftermaths—the deaths of the poet’s mentors, friends, and mother; the endings of relationships; and the enclosures of a life spent in attendance to the world in a state of wanting rather than truly living. Here also are poems that movingly and crucially decide what dedicating one’s life to poetry might require.

But in the wake of painful loss, Grotz writes toward “this world, the living.” Her poems reveal and meditate on the paradoxical relationship between the literal and the figurative, at the heart of poetry itself, like the darkness and light of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro. Still Falling is a book to be read slowly, calling readers back into the stillness of being, finding hope, “not death / where darkness and silence and dust are / only darkness and silence and dust.”

SHY by Max Porter

This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy.

You mustn’t do that to yourself Shy. You mustn’t hurt yourself like that.

He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him.

Got your special meds, nutcase?

He is escaping Last Chance, a home for “very disturbed young men,” and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past, and the heavy question of his future.

The night is huge and it hurts.

In Shy, Max Porter extends the excavation of boyhood that began with Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and continued with Lanny. But here he asks: How does mischievous wonder and anarchic energy curdle into something more disturbing and violent? Shy is a bravura, lyric, music-besotted performance by one of the great writers of his generation.

ON OUR SHELF

SWIMMING WITH GHOSTS

by Michelle Brafman

It’s June 2012. The magical and slightly cultish River Run swim club is alive with the spirit of fun competition when a perfect storm brews between team moms and best friends, Gillian Cloud and Kristy Weinstein. The ghost of family addiction has turned up, looming over their carefully planned pasta parties, tie-dye nights, and pep rallies, forcing them to face their unresolved childhood trauma.

Gillian responds by trying to control everyone around her, while Kristy relapses into her dangerous addiction to love. Real sparks fly on the night of the derecho—a freak land hurricane— which sweeps through Northern Virginia, knocking out power for days. The storm ignites a tinder box of secrets, leaving Gillian and Kristy alone in the hot dark—their shame their only company.

At times humorous and devastating, Swimming with Ghosts is a hauntingly dark, yet uniquely tender story of the various entrapments of addiction and lingering trauma, and what it takes to overcome our hidden legacies of disgrace and discover a once unimaginable freedom made possible by confronting life’s greatest storms with the people closest to us.

BOAT GIRL

by Elizabeth Foscue

Fifteen-year-old Caitlin Davies’s life is challenging enough. She’s short. She’s scrawny. She prefers Evernote to SnapChat. She’s two years younger than everyone else in her grade. And now her parents are taking the family to the British Virgin Islands (BVI)—for a year—to live on a derelict sailboat, bought sightunseen from navigationally-impaired cigar smugglers. So when her best— and only—friend suggests she use the move as a chance to reinvent herself, Caitlin has nothing to lose.

And it works. People (plural!) in the BVI actually like her, and not only because of the interesting stuff she found beneath her new home’s splintery floorboards. Even Tristan, the cutest guy on the island, is beguiled by her easygoing air and artfully padded bikini top. She just can’t help wondering, though, if New Caitlin and the real Caitlin have anything in common. And when the sailboat’s former owners come looking for their forgotten contraband, she wonders if she’ll ever get the chance to find out.

With a fresh style and perspective, and bursting with humor and charm, Boat Girl is a quirky and fast-paced YA coming-of-age story that will have you laughing out loud.

L.A. BREAKDOWN by Lou

Mathews

With gleaming detail and blinding precision, Lou Mathews freeze-frames a hidden corner of L.A.’s outlaw culture in the moments before it becomes extinct. The heart of the culture is the drive-in, where street racers meet to challenge their rivals and place their bets. This world comes to life after dark, lit by headlights and street lamps, a moveable feast of drag races, peopled with its own lost generation: young men and women who have left high school but have no thoughts of college.

Drifting from one dead end job to another, supplementing their income through thieving, doing the occasional stint in prison, and reluctantly entering the armed services when there is nothing else left, they live, and sometimes die, for the excitement, the danger, the money of racing. In the world of drag racing— fleeting and bittersweet, like the end of summer—the stakes the stakes grow higher and higher as, one by one, each player spins out and disappears from the scene:

Here, we meet Vaca, crippled in soul and body, prefers the armor of his car to a wheelchair. The ex-con Brody—Vaca’s driver—is the best street racer in town. Reinhard, a loner who has no one and nothing but the exquisite machines he builds and races. Charlie, the race organizer who tells the story. And Connie, who rolls her eyes at the whole parade, never without a sarcastic riposte, but who can’t stay away from the boys and their toys.

ON OUR SHELF

GLASS BOTTLE SEASON

by Fletcher Michael

A middle-class Cuban American— freshly graduated from college— reckons with his fragile standing among the wealthy community in which he was raised, from which he might be cast out before the summer ends.

Raymond Wilson-Domingo has never felt entirely comfortable among the elitist crowd of Newport’s old-money aristocracy—partly because he’s Cuban, partly because of his modest upbringing in the city’s undesirable Fifth Ward neighborhood. But this summer, Ray’s job at a boutique wine shop, a lobster theft, a misguided plan to become a lawyer, an exclusive beach club, an ill-timed car crash, the Moon View mansion’s mysterious and controversial new resident, and a doomed romance with the doyenne of Newport—not to mention the impending Campbell-Doheny wedding and all of the money, gossip, and drama which surrounds it— will collide, casting the differences between Ray and his peers in high relief. Ray would do anything to cement his place among New England’s most elite social circles, but will it ever be enough?

BUT STILL THEY SING by J.F.

Riordan

In the lyrical prose style familiar to her readers, author J.F. Riordan records a natural world minutely observed. From an examination of life’s fragility via a bathtub spider, to a tree-borne cluster of raccoons huddled together in a polar vortex, the essays capture the peculiar isolation, focus, and intensity of the pandemic lockdown, while marking the contrast of nature’s ruthlessness with human suffering.

“Our life’s landscape isn’t geographical. It’s human. When you are young, life is an endless horizon of years ahead. It’s hard to realize how fast time goes, and how quickly the people we assume will always be here can suddenly be gone, changing the world forever. It’s easy to allow the demands of every day to take up our energy and our hours. But in this, in every day, we have the essence of our lives. Our lives are only time, and, however far off the horizon seems, finite.”

Deeply insightful and personal, by turns soulful and humorous, But Still They Sing belongs at the bedside of anyone in search of the comfort and companionship of a humane voice.

ILLUSIONS OF CAMELOT by

Peter Boal

Peter’s story starts in the pastoral and privileged town of Bedford, New York: a rare enclave 40 miles north of New York City where private schools, country clubs, and families hold their own rules and secrets. Within the town, views of race, morality, and sexuality are unspoken yet evident. Meanwhile, at home, Peter and his family are left to grapple with his father’s alcoholism and untimely death.

As a young boy finding his way, Peter soon turns to ballet. Ultimately his passion becomes a beacon, leading him to work at the New York City Ballet as a teenager, living on his own while discovering the pitfalls and pleasures Manhattan has to offer.

Throughout Peter’s deeply personal work, you’ll meet Hattie Lindsay, Peter’s caregiver, whose love for Peter matches her disdain for Henry, the family dog. You’ll step onto the club house floor during ballroom dancing lessons in Bedford, into the studios of the School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center, and onto the stage in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker as Peter performs the title role of the Nutcracker Prince.

ON OUR SHELF

NEED BLIND AMBITION

by Kevin T. Myers

The desire for relevance—and to save his marriage—is ultimately what pushed Peter Cook to leave his beloved Alaska for the prestigious Parker College. Lured by the chance to work with his childhood political idol turned college president, Peter moves his family to Portland, Oregon to help promote his hero’s fundraising initiative that would eliminate financial status from the college’s admissions process.

Peter arrives on campus as the Great Recession looms, the stock market is trending toward disaster, and the opioid crisis has breached the walls of the privileged college. He quickly learns the reality of Parker College strays far from its professed idealistic mission after discovering a plot to cover-up felonious drug activity in return for a seven-figure payday to the Need Blind Campaign.

While plumbing the depths of his conscience for the conviction to do the right thing, Peter’s untreated childhood trauma resurfaces, threatening to cloud his perception when it needs to be at its sharpest. Peter must stabilize his mental health while also trying to parse competing versions of “the truth” as law enforcement investigates the criminal conspiracy.

BACK TO THE WOODS

by Cynthia Cruz

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Cynthia Cruz reevaluates the paradox of the death drive in her eighth collection of poetry, Back to the Woods. Could it be that in ceaselessly snuffing ourselves out we are, in fact, trying to survive? In “Shine,” Cruz’s speaker attests that “if [she] had a home, it would be // a still in a film / where the sound / got jammed.” This book inhabits the silence of the empty orchestra pit, facing “dread, and its many / instruments of sorrow.” The quiet asks, “Did you love this world / and did this world / not love you?” We return to the site of our suffering, we perform the symphony of all our old injuries, to master what has broken us. To make possible the future, we retreat into the past. “I don’t know / the ending. // I don’t know anything,” our speaker insists, but she follows the wind’s off-kilter song of “winter / in the pines” and “the dissonance / of siskins.” Cruz heeds the urgency of our wandering, the mandate that we must get back to the woods, not simply for the forest to devour us — she recognizes in the oblivion “flooding out / from its spiral branches” an impossible promise. At the tree line, we might vanish to begin again.

WHALE ARIA by

Rajiv Mohabir

“For seasons I was faceless // trying to swallow constellations, / to roll a starmap on my tongue,” recounts Rajiv Mohabir’s speaker in “Boy with Baleen for Teeth.” As formally visionary and acoustically attuned as ever, Mohabir has composed an interspecies opera in Whale Aria. This collection examines the humpback whale as a zoomorphic analog of the queer, brown, migratory speaker breaching these pages; just as a person navigates postcolonial queerness across geopolitical boundaries, traveling from India to Guyana to London to New York to Honolulu, these singular cetaceans wander through disparate waters. Undersea, whales call to one another through their marine music, and, using the documented structure of humpback vocalizations, Mohabir translates the syntax of their songs into poetry. In our search for meaning, in our call and response, kinship resonates; “the echo is amniotic.” “Once you immerse yourself in unending strains / the tones will haunt you: // ghosts spouting sohars you’ve called / since childhood.” Fluid and inexorable as the ocean, Whale Aria articulates the confluence of ecological fate and human history. In “Why Whales Are Back in New York City,” Mohabir notes the coincidence of current events: humpback migration returns to Queens for the first time in a century while the state expedites deportations of undocumented people in the same burrough.

ON OUR SHELF

STATUS PENDING

by Adrian Blevins

A riotous yet deceptively serious addition to Adrian Blevins’ oeuvre, Status Pending exquisitely leverages the lyric to fathom the liminality of human experience. These poems comprise a stenography of our lives as the buffering consciousness between voided states. Blevins straddles various faultlines as a woman who writes and mothers, who emerges from a second divorce as an Appalachian transplant in New England, who sees from midlife the stringent but unspoken socioeconomic strata framing class conflict. If marriage “was a rope across a twilight abyss (an abscess),” if aging brings the hateful labels “OUT OF ORDER / & LATE FEE,” every disappointment uncovers rejuvenating clarity. “Bereavement status” engenders both heartbreak and hope, somehow, as “then you lose your losses.” Blevins triumphs in her reclamation of the spectacular in the mundane. “America is a flub. // A hack. A crime! America, fuck you for making // despondent bandits of us — / for blinding & hooding // & chaining & gagging us.” Even perched on shifting tectonic plates, Blevins wins the last word: “You don’t seem to know it, // but there are foxes / crossing meadows // out there fast as disco lights. There are loons on your lakes.” Amen.

CREATURE by Michael Dumanis

Creature is a complex poetics of vitality, and it immaculately cleaves: even as it underscores how living in an inherently inhospitable environment will dispossess us of the world and one another, making animal of man, it sutures the rent evolutionary tree, glorifying the interdependence of each extant thing. Michael Dumanis expertly cultivates the multiplicity of language and makes of “creature” a marvelous contronym; we are a creature as in a beast, debased, beholden to nature, and we are creature as in an extension of creation, improbably sentient, mortal, here.

In “Autobiography,” the speaker attests to the contradiction at the root of cognizance: “Am, as an animal, // anxious. Appendages always aflutter, / am an amazing accident: alive.” How does the human mammal embody both and neither — communal and itinerant, leaving home to approach it, as an immigrant and a geographic nomad, as someone’s child and another’s parent, as being and thing? How do we negotiate our ouroboric identities while attuned to not just our own fragility, but an impending global extinction event?

THE MANSIONS

by Daniel Tobin

From award-winning poet Daniel Tobin comes The Mansions, an epic trilogy of book-length poems which examines exemplary 20th-Century figures Georges Lemaître, Simone Weil, and Teilhard de Chardin, all at the crossroads of science, history, and religion. Capacious in their philosophical explorations, immaculate in their form, stirring in their alchemy of faith and empiricism, each complete section works both autonomously and as part of the whole, building a house that contains many mansions, simulating the dynamic enormity of creation itself — always already entire and yet unfinished, borderless, infinite. Immersed in a time when cataclysmic geopolitical events coincided with revolutionary scientific progress, The Mansions charts a Dantean journey as it confronts the exigencies and contingencies which define modernity: history, religion, our planet’s fate, and the purpose of humankind. A fractal symphony of voices, Tobin’s tripartite collection represents a staggering literary achievement — a lyric narrative that can hold the totality of the divine and of godlessness, that harmonizes time as change and as eternity, that sees “pendant grapes” as “embodied wine.”

ON OUR SHELF

BEIJING SPRAWL

by Xu Zechen

Muyu, a seventeen-year-old from a small village, came to Beijing for his piece of the dream: money, love, a good life. But in the city, daily life for him and his friends—purveyors of fake IDs and counterfeit papers—is a precarious balance of struggle and guile. Surveying the neighborhood from the rooftop of the apartment they all share, the young men play cards, drink beer, and discuss their aspirations, hoping for the best but expecting little more than the comfort of each other’s company. In these connected stories translated from Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen and Jeremy Tiang, Xu’s characters observe as others like them—workers, students, drifters, and the just plain unlucky—get by the best ways they know how: by jogging excessively, herding pigeons, building cars from scraps, and holding their friends close through the miasma of so-called progress.

OUT OF THE SUGAR FACTORY

by Dorothee Elmiger, Translated by Megan Ewing

The narrator of Out of the Sugar Factory, Dorothee Elmiger, is a writer and archivist—and possibly a hoarder—of objects and stories that speak to the profound impact of the sugar industry on the world. Seated in the room where her vast collection sprawls across the floor, she obsessively connects a violent global industry to our unsettled present and her own desires. Elmiger’s deeply researched and innovative novel brings together subjects as varied as the institutionalization of Ellen West, the Haitian Revolution, Chantal Akerman, and Karl Marx to uncover the vast network of entrenched relationships lurking just below the surface. Out of the Sugar Factory, in Megan Ewing’s matchless translation from German, is a prismatic account of a writer’s overwhelming need to tell a story that is true, to follow the sugar wherever it may lead.

SELF PORTRAIT IN GREEN

by Marie Ndiaye, Translated by Jordan Stump

Who are the green women?

They are powerful (one is a disciplinarian teacher). They are mysterious (one haunts a house like a ghost). They are seductive (one marries her best friend’s father). And they are unbearably personal (one is the author’s own mother).

They are all aspects of their creator: Marie NDiaye, an author celebrated worldwide as one of France’s leading writers. Here, in her own skewed take on the memoir, NDiaye combs through all the menacing, beguiling, and revelatory memories submerged beneath the consciousness of a singular literary talent. Mysterious, honest, and unabashedly innovative, NDiaye’s self-portrait forces us all to ask questions—about what we repress, how we discover those things, and how those obsessions become us.

ON OUR SHELF

SO MANY PEOPLE, MARIANA

by Maria Judite De Carvalho, Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Maria Judite de Carvalho (19211998) is now recognized as a major Portuguese writer of the twentieth century. In the short story she found the perfect vessel for her frank depictions of tragic, ordinary lives, and So Many People, Mariana collects her first four books of short fiction in English for the first time, telling of women and men in moments of existential conflict: with their families; with themselves; with the prospect of a better future—or any future at all. These stories, originally published between 1959 and 1967, when the Salazar dictatorship and the rigid edicts of the Catholic church reigned, are acerbic, artful, and funny. Translated by the renowned Margaret Jull Costa, Carvalho leads readers into the sensuous dark of life under patriarchal capitalism, proffering tragic visions of class-conscious malaise “as precisely and without sentiment as an autopsy” (New York Review of Books).

CROSS STITCH by Jazmina

Barrera, Translated by Christina Macsweeney

A debut novel of female friendship and coming-of-age from Jazmina Barrera, acclaimed author of Linea Nigra and On Lighthouses, translated by Christina MacSweeney.

It was meant to be the trip of a lifetime. Mila, Citlali, and Dalia, childhood friends now college aged, leave Mexico City for the London of The Clash and the Paris of Gustave Courbet. They anticipate the bookstores, cafés, and crushes, but not the realization that they are steadily, inevitably growing apart.

That feels like forever ago. Mila, now a writer and a new mother, has just published a book on needlecraft, an art form long dismissed as “women’s work.” After hearing that her old friend Citlali has drowned, Mila begins to reminisce about their years together for the first time since becoming a wife and mother. What has come of all the nights the three friends spent embroidering together in silence? Did she miss the signs that Citlali needed help?

THE LONG COMING OF THE FIRE

by Aco Šopov,

Translated by

Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer

A collection celebrating the Centennial of seminal modernist Macedonian poet Aco Šopov. This substantive collection represents Šopov’s creative career, starting with his first book of poetry in 1944, when he was fighting in the Yugoslav resistance to the German occupation. In the early 1950s, he published two collections that signaled a new direction for Macedonian poetry as a whole, announcing the arrival of new form “intimate lyricism”. Over the next 25 years, Šopov’s work deepened further, acquiring a philosophical cosmic dimension and at times venturing into surrealism. The Long Coming of the Fire shares the work of a consummate craftsman little-known in the Anglophone world, achieving a “penetrating, resonant, and melodic” poetic language with “a lively and pregnant imagery that binds together the experience of the author and reader” (Graham W. Reid).

RECITAL OF THE DARK VERSES

by Luis Felipe Fabre

In August 1592, a bailiff and his two assistants arrive at the monastery of Úbeda, with the secret task of transferring the body of Saint John of the Cross, the great Carmelite poet and mystic who had died the previous year, to his final abode. When they exhume him, they find a body uncorrupted and as fresh as when he died.

Recital of the Dark Verses follows the three hapless thieves as they sneak the corpse of Saint John of the Cross from Úbeda to Segovia, trying not to lose too many pieces of the body to his frenzied disciples along the way. It is the (true) story of a heist, a road novel, a coming-of-age tale, and a raunchy slapstick comedy told in careening, charismatic prose. It is also a witty and wise commentary on the verse of one of Spain’s most important poets woven from the lines for which he is best known— —a revival of words written more than four centuries ago, and a centering and celebration of their intrinsic queerness.

TOSKA by

Alina Pleskova

Toska explores a sense of rootlessness and a sort of antinationalism; how the pervasive sense of being an immigrant or “in but not of” a place never quite dissipates, particularly amid the dissonance and alienation felt within U.S. culture gunning towards a vision of imperialist capitalist white supremacist hegemony. Still, within this bleak reality, there’s an insistence on documenting and noticing the multivalence of desire — its delights and pitfalls alike. These poems come to the weary conclusion, time and time again, that sexual liberalism/ liberation and hedonism are only one sort of revelation — that this sort of openness and exploration isn’t enough to save anyone from despair or the existentially weary feeling of toska from which the title takes its name. But desire is not just Eros — the poems carry a strong desire for a different world, for everyone.

THIS BRUTAL HOUSE by Niven Govinden

In this new poetry collection, Pulitzer Prize finalist Ron Padgett illuminates the wonders inside things that don’t even exist--and then they do.

In Dot, Ron Padgett returns with more of the playfully profound work that has endeared him to generations of readers. Guided by curiosity and built on wit, generosity of spirit, and lucid observation, Dot shows how any experience, no matter how mundane, can lead to a poem that flares like gentle fireworks in the night sky of the reader’s mind.

“For decades now, Ron Padgett has built up a body of work that, like the tenderly deadpan ballads of Jonathan Richman, has at its heart a sort of wry, pickled innocence. . . . The charm of his lines--and their power, because his work has a way of disarming you and pulling you in again and again--often comes from his allergy to anything pretentious or even ‘poetic.’ He makes plain niceness look like the most radical stance of all.” --Jeff

Gordiner, The New York Times

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."

– F. SCOTT FITZGERALD.

WHAT

SHELF