Fiction

  • April 5th, 2010

    City of Dragons

    Kelli Stanley

    February, 1940. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, fireworks explode as the city celebrates Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party, a three day-and-night carnival designed to raise money and support for China war relief. Miranda Corbie is a 33-year-old private investigator who stumbles upon the fatally shot body of Eddie Takahashi. The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up. The cops acquiesce. All Miranda wants is justice–whatever it costs. From Chinatown tenements, to a tattered tailor’s shop in Little Osaka, to a high-class bordello draped in Southern Gothic, she shakes down the city–her city–seeking the truth. An outstanding series debut.

    Kelli Stanley is the author of the criticallly acclaimed Nox Dormienda, which won the Bruce Alexander Award for best historical mystery and was nominated for a Macavity Award. She lives in San Francisco, California.

    “Beautifully imagined and beautifully written–this book does everything great fiction is supposed to.”
    - Lee Child

    Published by Minotaur Books – Hardcover – 978-0312603601 – 352 pages – $24.99

  • March 23rd, 2010

    Anthropology of an American Girl

    Hilary Thayer Hamann

    Self-published in 2003, Hilary Thayer Hamann’s Anthropology of an American Girl touched a nerve among readers, who identified with the sexual and intellectual awakening of its heroine, a young woman on the brink of adulthood.  A moving depiction of the transformative power of first love, Hamann’s first novel follows Eveline Auerbach from her high school years in East Hampton, New York, in the 1970s through her early adulthood in the moneyed, high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s.

    Centering on Evie’s fragile relationship with her family and her thwarted love affair with Harrison Rourke, a professional boxer, the novel is both a love story and an exploration of the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world.  As Evie surrenders to the dazzling emotional highs of love and the crippling loneliness of heartbreak, she strives to reconcile her identity with the constraints that all relationships—whether those familial or romantic, uplifting to the spirit or quietly detrimental—inherently place on us. Though she stumbles and strains against social conventions, Evie remains a strong yet sensitive observer of the world around her, often finding beauty and meaning in unexpected places.

    Newly edited and revised since its original publication, Anthropology of an American Girl is an extraordinary piece of writing, original in its vision and thrilling in its execution.

  • January 23rd, 2010

    Spider’s Web

    Jennifer Estep

    Curiosity is definitely going to get me dead one of these days. Probably real soon.

    I’m Gin Blanco. You might know me as the Spider, the most feared assassin in the South. I’m retired now, but trouble still has a way of finding me. Like the other day when two punks tried to rob my barbecue joint, the Pork Pit. Then there was the barrage of gunfire on the restaurant. Only, for once, those kill shots weren’t aimed at me. They were meant for Violet Fox. Ever since I agreed to help Violet and her grandfather protect their property from an evil coal-mining tycoon, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m really retired.

    So is Detective Donovan Caine. The only honest cop in Ashland is having a real hard time reconciling his attraction to me with  his Boy Scount mentality. And I can barely keep my hands off his sexy body. What can I say? I’m a Stone elemental—with a little Ice magic thrown in—but my heart isn’t made of solid rock. Luckily, Gin Blanco always gets her man … dead or alive.

    “Bodies litter the pages of this first entry in Estep’s engrossing Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series. In the corrupt Southern metropolis of Ashland, weather witches mingle with vampires, giants, and dwarves. A mysterious client hires assassin Gin Blanco, known as the Spider, to murder a whistle-blowing financial officer named Gordon Giles. Then the client attempts a double cross and brutally kills Gin’s mentor. Now Gin, a stone elemental with a hard-boiled attitude, a closely guarded heart, and a penchant for throwing knives, has to join forces with one of the few honest cops in Ashland, sexy detective Donovan Caine, who hates her for killing his partner. Fans of Estep’s humorous paranormal romances (Jinx; Hot Mama) may be taken aback by the gritty violence and steamy sex, but urban fantasy fans will love it.” – Publishers Weekly

    Learn more about Jennifer Estep and her books at her website. Listen to David Wilk’s interview with Jennifer Estep at Writerscast.

    Published by Pockets Books – Mass Market Paperback – 978-1439147979 – 432 pages – $7.99

  • December 24th, 2009

    I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex

    Summer Brenner

    “In I-5, Summer Brenner deals with the onerous and gruesome subject of sex trafficking calmly and forcefully, making the reader feel the pain of its victims. The trick to forging a successful narrative is always in the details, and I-5 provides them in abundance. This book bleeds truth—after you finish it, the blood will be on your hands.” — Barry Gifford, author, poet and screenwriter

    About the novel:
    A novel of crime, transport, and sex, I-5 tells the bleak and brutal story of Anya and her journey north from Los Angeles to Oakland on the interstate that bisects the Central Valley of California.

    Anya is the victim of a deep deception. Someone has lied to her; and because of this lie, she is kept under lock and key, used by her employer to service men, and indebted for the privilege. In exchange, she lives in the United States and fantasizes on a future American freedom. Or as she remarks to a friend, “Would she rather be fucking a dog…or living like a dog?” In Anya’s world, it’s a reasonable question.

    Much of I-5 transpires on the eponymous interstate. Anya travels with her “manager” and driver from Los Angeles to Oakland. It’s a macabre journey: a drop at Denny’s, a bad patch of fog, a visit to a “correctional facility,” a rendezvous with an organ grinder, and a dramatic entry across Oakland’s city limits.

    About the Author:
    Summer Brenner was raised in Georgia and migrated west, first to New Mexico and eventually to northern California where she has been a long-time resident. She has published books of both poetry and fiction and given scores of readings in the United States, France, and Japan. In addition to I-5, her nine books include: Ivy, Tale of a Homeless Girl in San Francisco, Dancers & the Dance, and The Soft Room.

    Listen to David Wilk’s interview with Summer Brenner at Writerscast.

    Published by PM Press/Switchblade – paperback – 978-1-60486-019-1 – 190 pages – $15.95

  • November 9th, 2009

    Twilight of Avalon: A Novel of Trystan and Isolde

    Anna Elliott

    Book One in the Twilight of Avalon Trilogy

    She is a healer, a storyteller, a warrior, and a queen without a throne. In the shadow of King Arthur’s Britain, one woman knows the truth that could save a kingdom from the hands of a tyrant…

    Ancient grudges, old wounds, and the quest for power rule in the newly widowed Queen Isolde’s court. Hardly a generation after the downfall of Camelot, Isolde grieves for her slain husband, King Constantine, a man she secretly knows to have been murdered by the scheming Lord Marche — the man who has just assumed his title as High King. Though her skills as a healer are renowned throughout the kingdom, in the wake of Con’s death, accusations of witchcraft and sorcery threaten her freedom and her ability to bring Marche to justice. Burdened by their suspicion and her own grief, Isolde must conquer the court’s distrust and superstition to protect her throne and the future of Britain.

    One of her few allies is Trystan, a prisoner with a lonely and troubled past. Neither Saxon nor Briton, he is unmoved by the political scheming, rumors, and accusations swirling around the fair queen. Together they escape, and as their companionship turns from friendship to love, they must find a way to prove what they know to be true — that Marche’s deceptions threaten not only their lives but the sovereignty of the British kingdom.

    In Twilight of Avalon, Anna Elliott returns to the roots of the legend of Trystan and Isolde to shape a very different story — one based in the earliest written versions of the Arthurian tales — a captivating epic brimming with historic authenticity, sweeping romance, and the powerful magic of legend.

    Published by Touchstone – Paperback – 978-1416589891 – 448 pages – $16.00

  • September 11th, 2009

    Woodsburner

    John Pipkin

    Woodsburner springs from a little-known author on sociology of education. On April 30, 1844, a year before he built his cabin on Walden Pond, Thoreau accidentally started a forest fire that destroyed three hundred acres of the Concord woods—an event that altered the landscape of American thought in a single day.

    Against the background of Thoreau’s fire, Pipkin’s ambitious debut penetrates the mind of the young philosopher while also painting a panorama of the young nation at a formative moment. Pipkin’s Thoreau is a lost soul, plagued by indecision, resigned to a career designing pencils for his father’s factory while dreaming of better things. On the day of the fire, his path will intersect with three very different local citizens, each of whom also harbors a secret dream. Oddmund Hus, a lovable Norwegian farmhand, pines for the wife of his brutal employer. Elliott Calvert, a prosperous bookseller, is also a hilariously inept aspiring playwright. And Caleb Dowdy preaches fire and brimstone to his congregation through an opium haze. Each of their lives, like Thoreau’s, is changed forever by the fire.

    Like Geraldine Brooks’s March and Colm Tóibín’s The Master, Woodsburner illuminates America’s literary and cultural past with insight, wit, and deep affection for its unforgettable characters, as it brings to vivid life the complex man whose writings have inspired generations.

    Published by Random House -  978-0385528658 – Hardcover – 384 pages – $24.95

  • September 3rd, 2009

    Here There Be Dragons

    James A. Owen

    This is the first volume in the Chronicles of Imaginarium Geographica series. The year is 1917 and a professor is found dead at Oxford University. An undergraduate is given a book, the Imaginarium Geographica, an atlas of imaginary places. He is told that this book is the reason the professor is murdered and it is now the young man’s responsibility to safeguard it, even though it may jeopardize his own life. The young man and two companions take refuge on a ship that leads them to extraordinary lands mapped in the volume of the book they carry. They travel through places known from myth, legend, the Bible, and classic literature and as they make their magical journey, they learn that if they don’t succeed in protecting the book, then there will be no peace from the war that rages in our world. With a truly surprise ending that will be sure to have readers talking, HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS is the first novel by acclaimed graphic novel creator James A. Owens.  The Imaginarium Geographica has continued with four additional novels, the newest of which is THE SHADOW DRAGONS due out later in 2009. Best known as the creator of the critically acclaimed Starchild graphic novel series, James A. Owen is also the designer and editorial director of the award-winning publications International Studio and Argosy Quarterly. He works at the Coppervale Studio in Silvertown, Arizona, where he lives with his family. Published by Simon Pulse – 978-1416912286 – paperback – $9.99

  • August 16th, 2009

    The Plated City

    Bliss Perry

    Originally published in 1895, and out of print since, The Plated City is one of the first adult novels that features baseball as a central theme.   The novel treats race, class and sexuality with a surprisingly modern touch, and paints a picture of America during a time mostly unknown to modern Americans.  The story takes place in a thinly disguised Meriden, Connecticut, and one of its main characters is based on the great 19th century black player, Frank Grant, who grew up playing baseball with the author, Bliss Perry.

    “In the 1890s it was fashionable to exhibit grand sentiments.  Before the advent of autos and movies and radio and TV and computers and cell phones and hand-held game devices and other distractions people lived in closer daily proximity to their hopes and fears.  Perhaps they were more swayed by emotion.  In any case, a novel reflects its time, and to step into The Plated City’s richly detailed portrait of a Connecticut town is akin to journeying back to 1895.  You won’t like everything you experience on your trip—casual racism in references to blacks as “childlike people,” for example—but you will come away feeling that you’ve paid a vivid visit to a bygone America.  Best of all, you are in for a good read.  The Plated City will grip you as it informs—and it will also warm your heart.

    Open to the first pages, settle into that crowded grandstand at the ballpark, and embark on a pleasurable, provocative journey in time.”
    — from the Introduction by Darryl Brock, author of If I Never Get Back

    Published by Rvive Books – paperback – 978-0-9801909-6-0 – $17.95

  • August 13th, 2009

    A Great Day for a Ballgame: A Conscious Love Story

    Fielding Dawson

    “It’s a great day for a ballgame.”
    —Ernie Banks

    Almost immediately you are drawn into this story of a surprise, sudden relationship between two highly civilized people, both divorced and roughed up by life but not the least bit jaded. That the protagonist is so clearly the author himself adds a compelling, uninventible edge. And because the writer is post-Beat dynamo Fielding Dawson, the storytelling is bold, unpredictable, and fun.

    Influenced by the no-boundaries creativity of Black Mountain College where he studied art under Franz Kline and writing under Charles Olson, Fielding Dawson (1930–2002) was a visual artist specializing in collage and the author of over twenty books. By the time he wrote A Great Day for a Ballgame, he’d already made his mark with novels such as The Mandalay Dream, the story collection Krazy Kat / The Unveiling and Other Stories 1951-1968, and An Emotional Memoir of Franz Kline. The Black Mountain Book, first printed in 1970 (revised and expanded in 1990), is one of the most personal and colorful memoirs of the legendary college in North Carolina.

    Dawson’s experimental writing pushes the envelope, but that’s the point. What he takes away, the safety net of conventional prose, he gives back with vivid sensations that you might associate with visual art more than the literary. Unusual punctuation and risky placement of words can have the effect of speeding you up, helping you jump ahead, and connecting key thoughts successfully in a swift and satisfying way. At its best, Dawson’s prose is like flashbulbs popping, with words, glimpses of consciousness and feelings communicated with seeming ease. Of course, there’s nothing easy about it, but the effect is clear and on target. — from the Introduction by Jerry Rosco

    A Great Day for a Ballgame was originally published in 1973 in hardcover.  This new edition includes a brief biography of the author by critic and scholar Michael Hrebeniak.  Fielding Dawson passed away in 2002.

    Published by Rvive Books – paperback – 978-1935073-05-5 – $14.95

  • July 30th, 2009

    The Lamoille Stories: Uncle Benoit’s Wake and Other Tales from Vermont

    Bill Schubart

    Author Bill Schubart brings to life the friends and characters of his native Lamoille County, where in the late 1950s and early 1960s, life was lived close to the earth and often against the grain. Schubart’s collection of twenty-two stories captures Vermont in its transition from an enclave of hill farms and small towns where everyone knew your grandfather to a place where vehicles bearing license plates from “away” mix with hippie vans filled with born-again Vermonters getting back to the land…until snowfall. It’s a time and place where the Jeeters of The Lamoille Stories rub elbows with the ladies of the Uplift Club, all to the fiddle accompaniment of Québécois music played by people whose conversations often weave French and English together in a single sentence.  Schubart’s full-hearted and compassionate evocation of this Vermont is by turns poignant, funny and savory. The stories give readers a good excuse to stay up too late to discover how Wyvis will circumvent the new Vermont prohibition on having more than three junk cars in your yard or how Charlie is going to get Edgar to pay him for his new chimney.

    Published by the White River Press – Paperback  – 978-1935052104 – $15.00