FICTION AND DRAMA Alissa Nutting UNCLEAN JOBS FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS 978-0-9842133-2-0, $18, paper, 152 pp.
Dawn Paul THE COUNTRY OF LONELINESS 978-1-934851-07-4, $16.95, paper, 176 pp.
STARCHERONE BOOKS 2010
MARICK PRESS 2009
Fiction. Winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, chosen by Ben Marcus. In this darkly hilarious debut collection, misfit women and girls in every strata of society are investigated through various ill-fated jobs. One is the main course of dinner, another the porn star contracted to copulate in space for a reality TV show. They become futuristic ant farms, get knocked up by the star high school quarterback and have secret abortions, use parakeets to reverse amputations, make love to garden gnomes, go into air conditioning ducts to confront their mother’s ghost, and do so in settings that range from Hell to the local white-supremacist bowling alley. “These fine stories, anthropologically thorough in their view of the contemporary person, illuminate how people hide behind their pursuits, concealing what matters most to them while striving, and usually failing, to be loved”—Ben Marcus.
Fiction. What happens to a soldier after war? What happens to the people he comes back to? THE COUNTRY OF LONELINESS is about concentric circles of the effects of war—on soldiers and survivors, on mothers, sisters, widows, wives and children. Dawn Paul’s richly nuanced book portrays the life of a Depression-era boy who naively hopes that soldiering will allow him to escape poverty and isolation. Though he returns physically intact from battle, he is scarred psychically—a bully and a terror to his family and himself. The novel alternates between a daughter’s memories of growing up with this man who was both father and stranger, and the stories she creates of his boyhood and youth. It is through these acts of imagining and remembering that she seeks forgiveness and compassion. THE COUNTRY OF LONELINESS is a testament to the power of the imagination to transcend loss, estrangement and grief.
Daniel A. Olivas ANYWHERE BUT L.A. 978-1-931010-69-6, $16, paper, 184 pp.
Ted Pelton BARTLEBY, THE SPORTSCASTER 978-0-9801098-8-7, $14, paper, 72 pp.
BILINGUAL PRESS 2009
SUBITO PRESS 2010
Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. ANYWHERE BUT L.A. ranges from contemporary narratives to more traditional cuentos de fantasma, giving us a vivid and honest portrait of modern Latinos in search of their place in the world. Funny yet poignant, Olivas’s characters frequently amuse, sometimes disturb, and often remind us of our own vulnerability. People who at first seem ordinary and uncomplicated reveal their deepest secrets and anxieties related to a variety of issues, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and the human condition in general. We glimpse into the complex emotions and attitudes of characters who are trying to cope with the mysteries of life. These stories ring with humor, insight, and power, and like the cities they describe, they shift and slide and refuse to be pinned down as they drive the reader to the very core of human existence through the colorful mural of a thriving Latino community.
Fiction. “Pelton’s modern cover of this great 1853 American novella makes the mind toggle from Pelton to Melville and back. In the middle of this read a moving personal digression honors the universality of the iconic Melville story. Ah humanity! You speculate about Bartleby the Waitress, Bartleby the Bus Driver, Bartleby the ticket seller, and you burrow into the lonely faceless steeps of American night. This is a wonderful homage, humane and readable, an engrossing take on an oracular Melville work”—Steve Katz.
Lance Olsen HEAD IN FLAMES 978-0-9815027-5-5, $14.95, paper, 190 pp. CHIASMUS PRESS 2009
Fiction. HEAD IN FLAMES is an astonishing collage novel composed of chips of sensation, observation, memory, and quotation shaped into a series of narraticules told by three alternating voices, each inhabiting a different font and aesthetic / political / existential space.The first belongs to Vincent van Gogh on the day he shot himself in Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890. The second to Theo van Gogh (Vincent’s brother s great grandson) on the day he was assassinated in Amsterdam in November 2004. The third to Mohammed Bouyeri, Theo’s murderer, outraged by the filmmaker’s collaboration with controversial politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali on a 10-minute experimental short critiquing Muslim subjugation and abuse of women. The aggregate: a restless, haunting exploration of art’s purpose, religion’s increasingly dominant role as engine of politics and passion, the complexities of foreignness and assimilation, and the limits of tolerance.
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Adam Peterson MY UNTIMELY DEATH 978-0-9801098-1-8, $10, paper, 43 pp. SUBITO PRESS 2008
Fiction. MY UNTIMELY DEATH is a collection of short prose pieces about a series of touching but absurd deaths. Death here doesn’t simply mean the expiration of life, but a meandering through metaphors, similes, explanations, often hilarious, always poetic and spot-on in their language choice. “Wildly funny, poignant, exhilarating meditations that fracture and reassemble everything we know and believe about living and dying. Adam Peterson reinvents the notion of story here, dismantling the lines between genres and creating a gorgeous new kind of prose with voice that is simply irresistible. You can’t stop reading this book again and again”—Jonis Agee. Gary Phillips, Editor ORANGE COUNTY NOIR 978-1-936070-03-9, $15.95, paper, 300 pp. AKASHIC BOOKS 2010
Fiction. California Studies. Orange County, California, brings to mind the endless summer of sand and surf, McMansion housing tracts, a conservative stronghold, and tony shopping centers. It’s a place where pilates classes are run like boot camps, real estate values are discussed at your weekly colonic, and ice cream parlors on Main Street, USA, exist side-by-side with pho shops and taquerias. ORANGE COUNTY NOIR pulls back the veil to reveal what lurks behind the curtain. Features brandnew stories by: Susan Straight, Robert S. Levinson, Rob Roberge, Nathan Walpow, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Dan Duling, Mary Castillo, Lawrence Maddox, Dick Lochte, Robert Ward, Gary Phillips, Gordon McAlpine, Martin J. Smith, and Patricia McFall.
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