Excerpt: Remembrance of Blue Roses by Yorker Keith
About the Book: Remembrance of Blue Roses follows a man and a married couple in New York City, whose intricate relationship oscillates among friendship, love, love-triangle, and even obsession. Its romantic ambience is interwoven with classical music, opera, art, family legend, and international affairs, illuminating the lives of international civil servants at the United Nations […]
Excerpt: Almost Mortal by Christopher Leibig
About the Book: http://www.chrisleibig.com Emerging criminal defense attorney Sam Young has always known he had a gift. Or a curse. He thinks of them as minor psychic abilities. When Sam is hired by an attractive young nun named Camille Paradisi, he agrees to help discover the identity of a serial killer in order to prevent […]
Excerpt: Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving
About the Book: http://www.debbyirving.com For twenty-five years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. As a colleague and neighbor, she worried about offending people she dearly wanted to befriend. As an arts administrator, she didn’t understand why her diversity efforts lacked traction. As a teacher, she found her best efforts […]
Review: Single Stroke Seven
by Lavinia Ludlow casperianbooks.com If gross-out humor has a tragic cousin, then Lavinia Ludlow is a master of the form. Her new novel, Single Stroke Seven, begins with the protagonist, Lillith, castrating a drug-crazed former coworker in self-defense and then blasts off into a stratospheric series of riffs on trying, failing, and trying again to […]
Poetry: Jeff Steudel Author of Foreign Park
Expanding the Community Garden by Jeff Steudel Kale raised in cedar boxes between the SkyTrain pillars. The propinquity of corn along boulevards. A dream of zero emissions for the wheat leaning beside highways. And from the rooftops, fields next to airstrips. Golf courses. Freedom Space Station Grow-ops and the back of a Dodge Ram. Bush […]
Feature: Success by Jake Kerr
my self-publishing journey Entering September of 2015, Tommy Black and the Staff of Light had sold less than 200 books and was sputtering along with no real hope for a future. Book two, Tommy Black and the Coat of Invincibility, was delayed to a January 2016 release, and I had a final plan to kickstart the […]
Excerpt: The Making of the American Essay edited and introduced by John D’Agata
About the Book: For two decades, essayist John D’Agata has been exploring the contours of the essay through a series of innovative, informative, and expansive anthologies that have become foundational texts in the study of the genre. The breakthrough first volume, The Next American Essay, highlighted major work from 1974 to 2003, while the second, The Lost Origins […]
Interview: Sara Majka Author of Cities I’ve Never Lived In: Stories
Sara Majka’s debut collection of connected stories is a haunting, mesmerizing dreamscape. Shelf Unbound: Your style is sparse and dreamlike. How did you decide on and create this style? Sara Majka: This answer could probably work for most questions, in that it just sort of happened that way, because of the experiences in my life and […]
Interview: George Singleton Author of Calloustown
Persevering against hard knocks and strife, the residents of Calloustown are rendered with humanity and humor by short story master George Singleton. Shelf Unbound: How did you come up with the book’s title and what does it mean? George Singleton: Calloustown, the setting, appeared in my head as just one of a hundred or so […]
Interview: Mary Volmer Author of Reliance, Illinois
Richly rendered characters populate Reliance, Illinois, which examines the lives of women in the late 1800s. Shelf Unbound: How did you come up with the name of the imaginary town, Reliance, Illinois? Mary Volmer: I titled the book Reliance after Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance.” I remember loving the essay in college. It still moves me. […]