Shelf Unbound February/March 2013

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013

Odyssey 68

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

Fact or fiction?

Science or con job?

The Myth Makers, The dark, new novel from John Crawley The invention: was it real or a hoax? Fact or fiction? Were the men who created it scientists or con artists? Only five people in the world know for sure. A nd two of them are dead.

Journalist Jack Lawrence traces the orig ins of an old myth back to the men who claimed to have created a perpetual motion machine. A nd by merely uncovering the dusty facts of their past, Jack and his colleagues at a dying daily newspaper are placed in harms way.

Some people will g ive anything to get the story. Others will do anything to keep that story from seeing the light of day.

w w w.johncrawleybooks.com

Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Lulu.com.

staff

Margaret Brown fo u n d e r a n d p u b l i s her Anna Nair e d i to r i n ch i e f Christina Davidson c re a t i ve d i re c to r Ben Minton c i rc u l a t i o n m a n a g e r Patricia McClain c o py e d i to r Marc Schuster c o n t r i b u t i n g e d i to r Kelly Bergh yo u n g a d u l t / ch i l d re n ’s reviewer

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Photo: Eileen Ramsay

what to read next in independent publishing

A SORORITY OF ANGELS A revenge thriller by Gus Leodas

A Sorority of Angels brings together the unique stories of five women working as aides to influential diplomats.

Each woman is embroiled in a dangerous, violent scheme of personal revenge. The effect is immediate and dramatic. The interesting premise makes for an entertaining read with more than one unexpected turn.

KIRKUS BOOK REVIEW

AN AMAZON BEST SELLER Available at Amazon.com

www.gusleodas.com

february/march

contents

DEPARTMENTS

6

the odyssey a gorgeous graphic remix

12

who by fire an interview with author Mary L. Tabor

14

solo pass an interview with author Ronald De Feo

16

way of the dog an interview with author Sam Savage

18

space odyssey Kubrick and the classics

20

have dog, will travel a cross-country road trip memoir

22

all manner of odysseys from lobster to gone with the wind

4

a note from the publisher

32

novel thinking

34

indie spotlight

36

afterword

40

photo essay

72

poetry

74

staff picks

76

small press reviews

78

middle shelf

80

last words

81

contributors

On the cover: photo by Eileen Ramsay from Eileen Ramsay: Queen of Yachting.

what to read next in independent publishing

a word from the

publisher

“I

ODYSSEYS

t goes against my grain to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly,” says Odysseus in Homer’s tale that has, conversely, been repeated, and reimagined, perhaps more than any other. We’ve got an irrepressible literary crush on complicated heroes and their epic journeys: Think Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. Gillian Cross’s new retelling of the Odyssey—with gorgeous, graphic illustrations by Neil Packer—inspired this issue, which includes all manner of odysseys, real and imagined. We’re also introducing a few new departments: Novel Thinking, author essays on the writing life; Indie Spotlight, a sampling of the best of self-published works; and Middle Shelf, cool reads for kids. So set sail, dear readers, into a sea of awesome books.

Margaret Brown publisher

Like what you read? Click on any book cover to purchase from an online bookstore, or click on the publisher website for more information.

CORRECTION: In our review last issue of Casual Day at the Crazy House, we had the website and author name wrong. The author is Helen W. Mallon and the website is www.helenwmallon. We regret the error.

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Photograph: Belinda Baldwin

of of

A psychological thriller and thought-provoking discussion about the meaning of life. This book is definitely going on my list of favorite books of all time.

— Kathy Schneider, NetGalley

ew p n a r e n io it t al prac ic h p o s o ht il g h li p s ’t n s e o d Eric is a but easonpractitioner—a r Ericpishaasphilosophical s e iz ow n is m d n ie r that enew lf ir old g profession that emphasizes is h t u b , h ic r toge k c isn’t but doesn’t slight a b t Hereason e g o t emotions. wants e h S . s u er o v m e r a d faisn’t rich, but his old s le anHe girlfriend y t s nd life a ls a o g ir e h wa s t n She but tboth rich and famous. e li c himis, now is H . going with him, is d in m wants to get back together ’s r e ir lives.

His fath e h t e v li o t owlifestyles are very but their goals h and

different. His father’s mind is going. efo b n e e s r e v His clients want atonknow how to live e e’s n h m o w a d Anlives. their to kill him.

And a woman he’s never seen before 0-947 6 5 3 9 1 8 ISBN 97 wants to kill him. n Amazon.c

See reviews

o

ISBN 978-1-935670-94-0 See reviews on Amazon.com

Dialogue is razor-sharp. Hilarious, incisive observations about all things great and small.

— Robert Bidinotto, author of the bestseller Hunter

feature

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greek out

The Odyssey retold by Gillian Cross illustrated by Neil Packer

Candlewick Press www.candlewick.com

A gorgeously illustrated retelling of Homer’s classic epic, the Odyssey brims with heroes, monsters, gods, and adventure. It’s a treasure worthy of Odysseus’s coffers.

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he Odyssey is one of the greatest pieces of storytelling in the world. And one of the oldest. For almost three thousand years, people have read about the adventures of Odysseus as he roamed the wide sea after the Trojan War, struggling to get home to the rocky island of Ithaca. But what about the storyteller? Who was Homer? That’s one of the great mysteries of literature.

The Greeks of Homer’s time were very different from us in many ways. Their attitude to religion seems strange to us, and so does their glorification of battles. But the way Homer presents Odysseus’s adventures makes it easy to sympathize with him. He’s a hero who still has a wide appeal today. When I told my friends I was working on a retelling of the Odyssey, the most unexpected people said, “I love the Odyssey! I’ve loved it all my life!”

And that’s the real mystery, of course. That thousands of years ago, a man whose name we can’t be sure of could sit down at a time that we don’t know exactly, in a place we can only guess, and write something that still moves and excites us today.

—Gillian Cross THE ODYSSEY. Retelling copyright © 2012 by Gillian Cross. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Neil Packer. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA on behalf of Walker books, London.

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Neil Packer’s illustrations for the Odyssey took many years — “nearly as long as Odysseus’s journey,” he says.

We talked to him about the book and his work.

Shelf Unbound: How did you get involved with this book project?

Neil Packer: I was approached by Amelia Edwards, who was the designer of the book.

The text had already been commissioned and finished at that point and Amelia had spotted some work I had done on another book and thought it would be suitable, so tried to track me down. Apparently it took some effort and she eventually found me through an American agent I had at the time. It turned out we only lived a few streets away from each other in London. I loved working with the people at Walker on this book, it was a very special time for all of us and visualising Gillian’s wonderful text was a huge joy. I am very lucky, in that it is a relationship that continues as we are now all hard at work on Gillian’s retelling of the Iliad.

Shelf: Your images strike me as both classic and modern. How did you come up with your style?

Packer: This is the first children’s book that I have tackled in a long time. Since then, apart from an awful lot of commercial work, the only books I have illustrated have been adult fiction for The Folio Society. I got to illustrate some of the greatest works of 20th century literature for them and it really helped me to understand how to interpret complex stories concisely and sympathetically.

I chose to not try to make the pictures either historically accurate, or stylistically like anything surviving from the classical period. Instead I used 18th-century embroidery from the Greek Islands and Epirus region as a starting point. Thus freeing me up to take the now much simpler images anywhere the text needed. There are many other influences outside of Greek mythology that to me are quite easy to spot on the pages.

These range from Folk Art and Outsider art, the classic American illustrators of the ’50s and ’60s to George Cruikshank and James Gillray. There is not really any reason for this other than it is stuff I really like.

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“For nine long, bloodstained years, the Greek army besieged the golden city of Troy, battering at its walls in vain, while the gods watched from their home on high Olympus.

For nine lonely years, Penelope stayed in Ithaca, taking care of the kingdom and waiting for the war to finish. As Telemachus grew tall and strong, she told him about his father, Odysseus, the cleverest king in Greece.

‘When the war ends,’ she said, ‘he will come back to us.’”

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odysseys

interview

Who By Fire

by Mary L. Tabor Outer Banks Publishing Group www.outerbankspublishing.com

Mary L. Tabor’s ingeniously constructed and emotionally rich Who by Fire has a middle-aged widower traversing the downward spiral of his marriage.

Highly recommended for your book club.

Shelf Unbound: You have your main character creating the story of his deceased wife’s affair through memory and invention. It’s a novel approach to narrative — how did you arrive at it?

Mary L. Tabor: It’s fascinating to me that you use these two words memory and invention.

Robert invents the story he didn’t know as he tries to discover what his wife actually did while she was alive. Perhaps the biggest risk I take in the novel is that use of invention. But I still have to make clear to the reader that real time, what I call the “now” or the present action of the story, is always operating, driving the plot forward, driving my narrator Robert forward.

As Robert and I invented the story he didn’t know, my own memories invaded as they inevitably will for the writer of any story. Memory 12

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by its very nature is flawed, but the need to revisit memory over and over again is part and parcel of being human and alive. Revisiting memory is the way we search for meaning in our lives, for the narrative of who we are and who we might become. In some sense, we’re inventing. But in fact we’re searching for emotional truth.

As writers, we aspire to find that. When fiction rings true like a bell, we believe it.

Shelf: The story reveals the fissures in two marriages. You’ve written about marriage before — what interests you about the subject?

Tabor: The ultimate challenge to our humanity gets played out day in and day out in marriage.

When E.M. Forster asserts in the epigraph to Howard’s End, “Only connect…”, he sets the challenge for all of us. In a committed relationship with another, whether there be a contract or not, we romantics hope for transcendence in love. But, of course, our flawed humanity that includes the baggage of our past gets played out in daily living. It gets played out in the ordinary: buying the groceries, commuting, sweeping up the messes that occur again and again. The only way through all that, I think, is to believe that transcendence in love comes hand-in-hand with the transformation of one’s self — not the other, not the beloved. But that’s only part of my answer. Marriage as subject provides for me a solid place to search for answers about the meaning of existence. Not to get too philosophical on you, but the search for meaning is the reason I write — and read.

Shelf: One of the main female characters is named Evan. I’m wondering why you chose a masculine name for her?

Tabor: Until you asked me, I hadn’t realized Evan is a male name. The unconscious mind is tricky, isn’t it? I love the character Evan more than anyone else in the book. The answer might be as simple as this: As I’m heterosexual, perhaps I unconsciously gave her that name.

Shelf: You’ve taught creative writing. What did you learn in the process of writing this book that you would share with your students?

Tabor: Save everything. I think most writers are hoarders. When a student has told me after a workshop that he’s going to trash a story, I’ve reacted in horror, but until I wrote this book, I’m not sure I fully understood why. Many years ago, I read an article in the newspaper about a baby’s bones found in a suitcase in the attic of a house after it had been sold on Veazey Street in DC. I cut it out and saved it. Didn’t know why, just couldn’t forget it. Later I wrote a short story about what might have happened and titled it “The Suitcase.” That story reenvisioned became a key part of the novel.

Shelf: You recently posted on your blog: “I’ve written a novel entitled Who by Fire, ten years in the making, and I’m pretty sure not many folks will ever hear of it or read it.”

What would it mean to you if people did read it?

Tabor: I know from all your questions that you understand the risks, the unusual structure of this novel. If it ever got read, I would cry because I’d be so indebted to those readers, as I am to you. I would cry in gratitude.

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odysseys

interview

Solo Pass

By Ronald De Feo Other Press www.otherpress.com

Ronald De Feo’s new novel Solo Pass is both darkly comic and philosophical, a great read that examines the merits of sanity.

Shelf Unbound: In your debut novel, Calling Mr. King, a psychopathic hit man attempts to reinvent himself. In Solo Pass, a man who has suffered a breakdown fakes normalcy in an attempt to pass as sane. What’s your fascination with the mentally unstable?

De Feo: I’m attracted more to outsiders than unstable people, and I regard both these characters as outsiders. Despite a contrary view from some readers and reviewers, I never considered the contract killer in Calling Mr. King as a psychopath. Certainly he is a rather enclosed, alienated soul, but killing is just a business to him, as it is to actual professional hit men and mercenaries. Amoral, yes—crazy, no. In fact, he finds himself growing bored with the routine nature of his job. As for the narrator of Solo Pass, he is clearly disturbed and haunted and 14

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suffers from a rather extreme panic disorder, but I wouldn’t consider him crazy. Compared to the other patients on his ward, he’s far less ill and quite a bit more aware and perceptive—sane and intelligent enough to manipulate the doctors and tell them what they want to hear. He may never become completely normal, but one hopes that he at least will be able to function again in the outside world. I don’t think he is faking normalcy so much as he is suppressing provocative and sometimes violent thoughts.

Shelf: Where did the idea for this character come from?

De Feo: He really was born from personal history. Many years ago, during a very dark period in my life, I went through an experience somewhat similar to his. Mercifully, it was relatively short and I survived intact. But a few years later, when I had enough emotional distance from it, I decided to use the experience and my feelings at the time as the basis of a short story.

The piece eventually appeared in The Hudson Review. And years after that, when I managed to get an agent, he read the story and suggested that I expand it into a novel. I was hesitant at first since I resist writing confessional or even semi-autobiographical fiction, but I then realized that the piece still had power and was worth fleshing out and that I could now give the character a deeper background and context than had existed in the earlier version. You might say that the novel contains elements of me—or a me that once was—but that I added a lot more anguish and obsession.

Shelf: This novel is funny, but you take your characters seriously and do not make fun of them. How do you walk that line?

De Feo: Partly it’s a matter of tone, of not pushing so far that you end up creating a caricature rather than a character. And it’s a matter of focus, concentrating more on what the character is experiencing and his reactions to a situation than on the character’s particular foibles. Joseph K., for example, is not an especially funny character. In fact, he’s rather serious and pathetic. But the bizarre situations Kafka creates for him, along with the bizarre characters he must engage with, turn him into a sadly comic figure. We can feel his frustration and yet be amused by it at the same time.

Shelf Unbound: What are you working on now?

De Feo: I just completed a new novel, Jennifer Dreams, and I’ll probably spend a lot of time refining it until I’m fairly satisfied that it all holds together. It’s a complicated narrative, too dense to go into here, but essentially it’s about being trapped in identities we ourselves create and reluctantly choose to live out. It focuses on two men, of very different character, who become vague friends for a while, drawn together by failure—a writing professor who never succeeded as a writer and a businessman who once dreamed of becoming a painter.

Years later, long after the friendship dissolved, the professor learns that his former friend has been convicted of murder. He starts visiting him in prison—though pretending to do so out of friendship, he is really after the man’s story to create a book and realize his dream of authorship.

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odysseys

interview

The Way of the Dog

by Sam Savage Coffee House Press www.coffeehousepress.org

Assessing his life as he nears the end of it, Harold Nivenson, who had been a minor art patron, sees himself as a failure, a sycophant, an embarrassing specimen of humanity.

His ruminations take the form of a philosophical journey exploring the meaning of life. Sam Savage has crafted a rich and thought-provoking small masterpiece.

Shelf Unbound: Life, says Harold Nivenson, is “meaningless, completely pointless, and stupid.� He has failed at it, and it has failed him.

Did Harold lead you to a different conclusion for him as you wrote the story, or did you lead Harold there?

Sam Savage: When I start a novel I have only a 16

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Photograph: Nancy Marshall

vague idea of where it will go. Once I have a feel for the characters I pretty much try to just get out of their way. In so far as I thought ahead at all I assumed the present novel would be a long downward slope and was surprised when it took a different turn.

Shelf: Nivenson has become a misanthrope yet he is also obsessed with people, evidenced by his fixation on the comings and goings of his neighbors. Why the dichotomy?

Savage: I am not sure that we should call Nivenson a misanthrope. At one point in the novel he describes his fascination with the doings of others as a “waning art impulse” and a “disinterested caring.” He is a writer of sorts, and a writer’s business is people, whether he likes them or not.

Shelf: Where did the character of Nivenson come from, and how did you go about building him?

Savage: I spend a lot of time writing stuff that I throw away, groping in the dark, as it were. After a while I sometimes get lucky and become aware of something, not quite a character yet, more like a mood or state of mind, and if I can maintain that mood for a little while, write a couple of pages while holding on to it, then the character becomes clearer, not as a collection of “personality traits” but as the bearer of that initial state of mind, which becomes the defining feature of the character and to which I can return when searching for direction.

Shelf: Your previous novel, Glass, was also a first-person, stream-of-consciousness narrative. What attracts you to this style of writing?

Savage: Glass is more stream-of-typing than stream-ofconsciousness. Edna is writing, and obsessively revising and correcting. Nivenson is also writing, jotting his thoughts on index cards. Both are attempting, through writing, to escape the imprisoning solitude of the self, to travel, so to speak, on the vehicle of their writing, out of themselves and into the world with others.

I don’t know that I am particularly attracted to this style of writing. I suspect that I wouldn’t know how to write in any other way, that I just do what I can with the talents I have.

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In using preexistent art music in 2001: A Space

Odyssey Kubrick was bucking the established practice of having a single composer write the score for his film. But, perhaps unintentionally, Kubrick’s musical choices drew on an even older tradition from the early days of film, when newly written film scores were not the norm. In fact, in the silent era, musical accompaniment was often at the discretion of individual film pianists, who were called upon to choose appropriate music for scenes and to play that music live, often without the opportunity of viewing the film ahead of time. Sometimes the “score” consisted of 18

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a list of suggested preexistent pieces to play during specified scenes in the film. These lists, called cue sheets, provided recorded timings of scenes and the intended emotional tenor of the images.

In 1924, Erno Rapée, a conductor and virtuoso pianist, published a collection of classical and popular tunes (transcribed for keyboard) categorized into general emotions or physical actions. The collection was called Motion Picture Moods for Pianists and Organists: A Rapid-Reference Collection of Pieces. The subtitle refers to the table of contents printed in the margin of every page listing the fifty-two moods and situations in the book. The organist could then easily switch from one mood to another.

Rapée categorized film sequences into three groups: those depicting actions, those showing psychological situations, and those whose main purpose is to provide atmosphere. Similar collections were published toward the end of the silent era.

In truth, by the time these collections categorized the music, the sound era had just about begun. More and more, directors called upon composers to write new music for their films, and the use of preexistent music began to wane, although it never disappeared altogether. It was Kubrick himself and 2001: A Space Odyssey (and a few years later A Clockwork Orange) that thrust the preexistent classical score back into the public consciousness.

From Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films by Christine Lee Gengaro, Scarecrow Press Inc. 2013, www.rowman.com.

Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

New ebook release of the works of Arthur C. Clarke ndependent eBook publisher RosettaBooks has announced the first-time digital release in the U.S. of 35 titles from renowned science fiction author Sir Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most influential science fiction writers. The eBook collection, led by Clark’s masterworks “Childhood’s End” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” unifies his work, originally published in print by more than 50 imprints. www. rosettabooks.com.

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Also Sprach Zarathustra > CLICK HERE TO SAMPLE < he use of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra has garnered a lot of attention and has become closely associated with the film; once one has seen the movie, it is difficult to hear this work without thinking of the Dawn of Man sequence or the striking visual tableau—moon, earth, and sun—of the opening. Kubrick had originally planned to have narration over the opening sequence, but it’s hard to imagine that now. It’s also hard to believe that any words could be more eloquent than the music and the images alone.

—CLG

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Blank Slate Press www.blankslatepress.com > WATCH THE BOOK TRAILER HERE <

We were approaching the halfway mark on what would end up being fifty seven days on the road and, as things turned out, we were just about at the halfway mark of the total number of miles we would travel as well.

In complete coincidence (I wish I could say I planned it this way) our halfway point occurred in Adrian, Texas, which just happens to be the exact midway point on Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. In a bit of providential timing, this is where I began to loosen up the chokehold Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d had on Libby.

It had taken 4,322 miles for me to relax. From the night I lay on top of the slippery floral bedspread at the Red Roof Inn in Springfield, scared to death, disbelieving that I had actually managed to leave town, my single biggest fear was that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d somehow lose Libby.

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In Chicago when she’d bolted at a dog park next to Lake Michigan, I was afraid she’d run all the way to Canada. In Atlanta, she took off with my niece’s dogs out into the woods and I was afraid she wouldn’t find her way back again.

In Graford, she’d taken off after a jackrabbit. From that moment on, unless I had visual confirmation of a chain-link or barbed wire, I wouldn’t let her loose.

Until we got to Adrian. I had stopped to take some photos of a football field adjacent to an outdoor rodeo arena, both empty in the summer. The ghost-town quality of two iconic Texas pastimes, smashed together in a single field, fascinated me. I let Libby jump out of the back seat free as a bird. It was a large field, far away from the highway.

She looked at me quizzically, as if saying, “Didn’t you forget something?

“Stay with me,” I said in my best dog-whisperer voice.

She did. She just hung out. She sniffed the few remaining traces of petrified cow patties, trotted along beside me when I pushed open the creaky cattle chutes and climbed up on the rusty gate to snap a few shots.

“Good dog, Libby.” I praised her more than I normally did.

We celebrated with a genuine Texas roadside diner meal a short piece down the road, a mighty-fine BLT and a piece of coconut cream pie to die for. She didn’t dog on the coconut too much. As we sat on a bench in front of the restaurant eating, it was threatening rain, which is all it’s done in Texas for about ten years now. People coming out of the diner with toothpicks clenched in their teeth stopped to pat Libby on the head, saying how cute she was. I met some cool cats from Canada: four guys who were on a whirlwind tour of the American Southwest. We swapped photos and then I had to ease on down the road.

Albuquerque beckoned.

From Off the Leash: How My Dog Inspired Me to Quit My Job, Pack My Car, and Take a Road Trip Across America to Reclaim My Life by Jean Ellen Whatley, Blank Slate Press 2012, www.blankslatepress.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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READ LOBSTER In which the humble crustacean has a role in the very first sci-fi tale ...

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he lobster plays a part in history’s very first science fiction adventure, Lucian’s True Story. Not a leading part it’s true, for the author himself takes that role. Lucian was born around 125 CE in the ancient Assyrian city of Samosata.

Lucian’s amazing journey began “once upon a time” when he set out from the Pillars of Hercules with fifty of his equally adventurous acquaintances to discover where the ocean ended. After enduring a storm that lasted seventy-nine days, he and his colleagues escape from an island with mortally dangerous sirens—only to have their ship spun around by what I Lobster, A Crustacean Odyssey must have been a tornado and lifted

by Nancy Frazier into the air on a waterspout. They sailed through space for seven days and University of New Hampshire Press nights and then landed on the moon. www.upne.com During their lunar visit they engaged in intragalactic warfare before happily returning to the ocean. “It would seem, however, that a change for the better often provides a prelude to greater ills,” Lucian wrote. “The third day was breaking when toward sunrise we suddenly saw a number of sea-monsters, whales.” The largest whale—150 miles long— swallowed them, ship and all, in a single gulp. Inside the whale they found [… foes] named the Broilers, the Mergoats, the Crabclaws, the Codheads, Clan Crawfish, and Solefeet. The worst were the Broilers, people with faces like lobsters and eyes like eels—bold and cannibalistic.

It is curious that Lucian combined the lobster with a fish that is its prey. Even so, the result seems to be a prototype for several thousand years of hybrid monstrosities.

From I Lobster, A Crustacean Odyssey by Nancy Frazier, University of New Hampshire Press 2012, www.upne.com.

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STAN CRADER T H E

C O L B Y

S E R I E S

Paperboy The Bridge A glimpse of rural America through the eyes of a young boy during the summer of 1967.

“Paperboy” tells the story as only an afternoon paperboy in rural America in the sixties can.

The Longest Year Like all of his friends, Tommy Thopson dreams of obtaining the ultimate ticket to freedom: a driver’s license.

All proceeds from The Bridge, Paperboy, and The Longest Year benefit America’s wounded warriors.

RESURRECTING LIVES Supporting research, treatment, advocacy, and education of Traumatic Brain Injury for America’s warriors.

Learn more at resurrectinglives.org

W W W . S TA N C R A D E R . C O M

GONE GIR L In which the valiant author battles deadlines, fact-checks, and semicolons …

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n Atlanta, Margaret Mitchell waited for the galleys to arrive from Macmillan and continued to fret over the manuscript. One issue in particular that caused her to worry was whether she had identified the appropriate planting season for pre-boll weevil cotton.

On February 12, a mere two weeks after the final chapters had been sent to New York, the Marshes received the initial set of galleys. They stayed up most of the night reading the pages and taking notes. They thought Susan Prink, Macmillan’s copy editor, had done a “sympathetic and understanding job” in tidying Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the up the manuscript. That said, Mitchell Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from and Marsh had an extensive list of conAtlanta to Hollywood cerns. Of chief concern were adjustby Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley Jr. ments Prink had made to the dialect and punctuation, such as removing quotation Rowman & Littlefield marks Mitchell had put around Scarlett’s www.rowman.com thoughts. The author also had strong feelings about exclamation points, preferring to use them on rare occasions, and colons, which she never used. As for semicolons, she was “definitely Anti.”

Imagine their reaction when they learned, a few days later, that the galleys had gone into production without waiting for the author’s comments. There had been a storm on the East Coast, and the plane carrying Marsh’s letter had been grounded. Given the time crunch, and not realizing the extent of their concerns, Macmillan had gone ahead and revised the galleys based on its own edits. By the time Cole received Marsh’s letter, almost all of the type had been set.

From Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood by Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley Jr., Taylor Trade/Rowman & Littlefield 2012, www.rowman.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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WAKE UP AMERICA

Deep within our own United States Government and elements within and outside our nation, there appears to be an insidious plot to destroy our Christian heritage and our American way of life.

This will never happen as long as our citizens are armed as provided for in our Constitution. Unfortunately, most citizens are immersed in their day-toA Decision Paper day activities to provide

by Col. Ellis D. Bingham, for their families and do USA, Retired not have the time to sift through and analyze the wealth of information provided by modern technology. Those that have the time to monitor the internet and other media are flooded with information, much of which is disinformation. This causes uncertainty, fear, worry and stress on our citizens. This Decision Paper puts together seven situations that, if not acted upon and corrected, will destroy this great nation. All nations should realize that if America as the world knows it is destroyed, the free world will cease to exist.

Before itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

too late!

Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com., and BooksaMillion.com

PIT STOPS In which a food writer and barbecue fan goes on the road in search of smoked meat and legendary pit masters …

F

or a hundred years, from the end of the Civil War to the mid-1960s, cotton was picked by hired hands. They moved from south to north, following RO BB WA L S H the ripening of the cotton. There were O. RU F U S LOV E T T often more cotton pickers than local residents for the several weeks it took to bring in a crop. Regardless of whether they were African Americans, Mexican nationals, or poor whites, cotton Barbecue Crossroads: Notes and pickers were at the bottom of the social Recipes from a Southern Odyssey scale. They weren’t welcome in restaurants or cafes where townspeople ate.

by Robb Walsh Cotton pickers bought their food in gas stations, convenience stores, and University of Texas Press meat markets. In Lockhart, Texas, cotwww.utexas.edu/utpress ton pickers were dropped off after work in the parking lot of a meat market now named Smitty’s, and formerly known as Kruez market. The front door of the retail meat market is on the town’s main square. The parking lot and back door are located across the street from the cotton gins and railroad tracks. Migrant workers came in the back door and either got their smoked meats to go or ate them at picnic tables in the back of the market. The same scenario was repeated in other meat markets run by European immigrants.

In the days before refrigeration, butchers followed the traditions of eastern Europe, grinding their scraps into sausage and smoking them along with unsold meats. They probably had no idea what the cotton pickers were talking about when they called the smoked sausage and pork “barbecue.” But the butchers knew that when the cotton pickers were in town, they sold a lot of it. Soon enough, the eastern European immigrants were calling it barbecue, too.

NOTES & RECIPES FROM

A SOUTHERN ODYSSEY

P H OTO G R A P H S

BY

From Barbecue Crossroads: Notes and Recipes from a Southern Odyssey by Robb Walsh, University of Texas Press 2013, www.utexas.edu/utpress. Reprinted with permission.

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“Remarkable...The characters are richly drawn, the plot compelling the atmosphere palpable, the writing remarkable for its depth and lucidity...

Deserving of more than five stars.”

Russell Blake, bestselling author of the JET and Assassin series

“You may read this story once, but you’ll remember it forever.”

Gail Gentry, Chickletslit.com

Crime’s an ugly constant in the big city. L.A., Chicago, New York. But when a savage murder brutalizes a small town and neighbor turns on neighbor, a tough-as-nails cop is essential to restoring order. Blood Land is a gritty, emotional saga set in the Wyoming badlands with both greed and vengeance at its core.

When billions of dollars in natural gas rights hang in the balance and the town’s top law officer’s wife is slain by her own blood, a reluctant hero is forced to battle his own demons and ultimately choose between justice, revenge, and duty.

In the tradition of Dennis Lehane, Tony Hillerman and James Lee Burke, Guthrie’s sparse, haunting storytelling compliments his talent for creating richly-drawn, unflinching law officers with human frailties and a sense of justice.

WWW.RSGUTHRIE.COM

GIR L TALK In which a teacher introduces the power of words and literature to a class of impoverished girls...

A

licia took out the pacifier she had in her mouth. Even though the girls in my literature class were now in fifth grade, some of them occasionally brought a pacifier into our classroom.

I wasn’t really sure if this was some kind of symbolic clinging to early childhood, or a new preteen mode of expression. Maybe a little of each, I thought, as Alicia began to speak.

“You guys want to know a secret?” she said.

Alicia sat in one of our two wicker armchairs. She glanced quickly around The Road Out: A Teacher’s the circle of six girls and me, their Odyssey in Poor America teacher, that made up her audience.

by Deborah Hicks “I got to talk to my daddy and he might be getting out of jail.”

University of California Press From outside our classroom winwww.ucpress.edu dows, tightly shut on this late winter afternoon, came the distant calls and laughter of the children on the playground.

“He got charges pressed against him because when he was living with us down here, one night he was drunk and he started coming up the steps and he started beating on the door ‘cause he was wanting his clothes.” Alicia drew a breath.

Alicia went on to fill in more of the details: the drug dealer her mother met, the fighting and bruises, the nights when Alicia was left alone in the house. She still looked like a young girl — Alicia was only ten, and tiny for her age — but the neighborhood was growing her up fast.

From The Road Out: A Teacher’s Odyssey in Poor America by Deborah Hicks, University of California Press 2013, www.ucpress.edu. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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SIMON SAYS A NOVEL BY WILLIAM POE A gay man escapes the cult of Reverend Sun Myung Moon after ten years and becomes a successful movie distributor in Hollywood.

But the deep self-loathing that brought him to the Reverend Moon’s congregation leads him down a dark path of drugs and broken relationships until one final, traumatic moment defines whether he will live or die. A profound journey of self-discovery and acceptance, William Poe’s debut novel is a probing look into the darker reaches of the human psyche.

“Simon Says is a journey of self-destruction, selfdiscovery and ultimately, redemption.”

—IndieReader “A coming of age story of finding what really matters, Simon Says is a choice read, not to be overlooked.”

—Midwest Book Review “Poe has done a marvelous job in penning the gritty details of Simon’s hard-partying lifestyle, and readers will find it hard to turn away from the mess that his life rapidly becomes. The book is well-written and remarkably smooth to read, despite its dark storyline; Simon Says is a snapshot of a dark period in a young gay man’s life, and will leave readers hungry to know whether or not Simon succeeds in picking himself back up again.”

—Sacramento/San Francisco Book Review

Press Release [ CLICK HERE ]

Available at: Amazon.com [ CLICK HERE ]

BarnesandNoble.com [ CLICK HERE ] UNBOUND

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MAD MEN In which the author tells the story of his coming of age through the books that shaped him, A to Z...

Brinley, Bertrand R. The Mad Scientists’ Club.

New York: Scholastic, 1965.

W

hen I was eleven and in that sunset year of childhood when it took actual concentration to discern the diaphanous line between daydreams and reality, when the stories I read so fully colored my day-to-day loafing in rural Idaho that I seldom knew where the page ended and the world began, I picked up a particular book about a gang of goofy kids whose lives I wanted to be mine so badly that it left me aching in the joyous Works Cited: An Alphabetical way books often leave us: high, yet abanOdyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior doned somehow. The feeling, when you

by Brandon R. Schrand have it, is tactile and intoxicating. It is like love or victory or surrender.

University of Nebraska Press Set in the nostalgic and quaint town www.nebraskapress.unl.edu of Mammoth Falls, The Mad Scientists’ Club centers on a group of boy-geniuses whose singular occupation was to hatch harebrained schemes to save their town (or themselves) from one kind of danger or another. Led by Jeff Cocker and the bespectacled Harry Mullitan (the main brain), the club met daily in their headquarters, which was outfitted in the loft of Jeff Crocker’s barn. They had an in-house laboratory complete with microscopes and vials of solutions and compounds. They had telescopes. Transmitters. Tool Boxes. Plenty of books. And endless days to fill. It was a world that to me felt actual, a realm whose cinematic stories stamped my imagination, and I never wanted it to end.

From Works Cited: An Alphabetical Odyssey of Mayhem and Misbehavior by Brandon R. Schrand, University of Nebraska Press 2013, www.nebraskapress.unl.edu. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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How can a pint-sized, self-avowed word nerd master otherworldly forces when she hardly has the wherewithal to master calculus? That’s exactly the conundrum for Ariel Robinson, a college freshman at Montana State University who’s been lured to Montana by feuding Fallen Angels in search of the Coveted Piece of Home.

“Think Twilight meets The Hobbit with a strong heroine and a dash of humor ... a smart fantastical foray into the surprisingly human world of the Fallen Angels.”

Available on and all eBook retailers

www.bablackwood.com

Siren Song: Book 1 of the Siren Song Trilogy is author B.A. Blackwood’s first of a trilogy of wildly inventive, humorinflected young adult fantasy novels starring fallen angels who roam the earth, and the unsuspecting who happen across their highflying paths.

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novel thinking

Mythic Journeys

by Jeffrey Arnold tktk Dog Screaming Press tktkt rawdogscreaming.com

Nobody’s Laughing

by Jeffrey Arnold Richard Bonhom is a postmodern portrait of success, despite his failed marriage, delinquent drug-addicted daughter and looming financial scandal at work.

He’s turning 50 and it’s time to take stock of it all. Learn more at www. jeffreyarnold.ca.

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O

dysseys are often thought of as physical journeys into unknown places. Writers depart known, familiar shores each time they begin to tell a story. Ours are inner journeys, ones that take us along emotional and psychological and spiritual pathways previously unknown and unmapped by us. That is what happened to me when I wrote the novel Nobody’s Laughing. I wanted to take the reader on an odyssey whose destination I did not know. I only knew that, with luck, the journey itself would help prepare them for their lives in this new emotional place. We have been told a lot of stuff that isn’t necessarily true throughout our lives. These things often seem to have readymade answers to complex questions. I don’t see our odyssey in this same light. Our journeys are rife with human flaws and frailties.

We often struggle to keep ourselves above the sometimes turbulent currents that pull us and push us. I wanted to create characters and situations in Nobody’s Laughing that were real, yet at the same time absurd, and let the main character figure it all out as he journeyed through his daily life. He didn’t find any formulaic answers to the problems and questions being presented to him. What he found was the strength of human will to face them and deal with them as best he could at the time. I think that’s one of the most compelling and beautiful of human character traits. We keep moving. It’s why I write.

How much would a father sacrifice for his child?

Attorney Dani Trumball has just six weeks to save the life of George Calhoun, who’s scheduled to be executed for a crime he claims was never committed.

“Unintended Consequences is an engrossing, well-conceived legal thriller. Most enjoyable.”

— Scott Turow, NY Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent and Innocent

“This one will grab you by the neck from the very first page!”

— Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning author of Die A Stranger

“Unintended Consequences is a gripping legal thriller. A pageturning, compassionate, and thought-provoking debut.”

— Sharon Potts, author of The Devil’s Madonna

w w w.mar tigreen.net Winner of the Royal Palm Literary Award/suspense, thriller category. 33 Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

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indie:

spotlight

Shelf Unbound talks to Joel Mark Harris about A Thousand Bayonets’ journey from novel to film Shelf Unbound: Where did the idea of writing A Thousand Bayonets come from?

Joel Mark Harris: It came to me back when I was in journalism school. The characters in the story are based on, in various degrees, my professors and also guest lecturers, some who had been reporters in war zones and had the most amazing stories to tell. The morality questions of if a journalist should help or take sides really intrigued me.

Shelf: The book is being made into a movie.

Tell us about the process of going from page to screen.

Harris: It’s a very different process from writing a novel. A novel is usually very free flowing while a script is as structured as a poem. The inciting incident has to be on page ten, the second act has to start on page twenty-five, etc.

Also, when you write a novel you just sit down and write and then you finish and you send it to your editor and your editor makes some sugges34

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013

tions and then you go back and write another draft. Movie-making is very much a collaborative effort from the beginning. I have a producing and directing partner I work with and we’ve hired a story editor and are now looking at hiring a casting agent. All these people influence the end product one way or another.

Shelf: You’ve had another book made into a movie. Do you write your books with a potential movie in mind and does that impact your writing?

Harris: That is a good question. It’s tough to say.

I would have to say yes. I tend to write novels and scripts simultaneously. I’m writing the book sequel to A Thousand Bayonets as well as the script for A Thousand Bayonets (view updates at www.thousandbayonets-movie.com) and also a script for a horror film called Witches of Whitewater and they influence each other. My novels become more visual and my scripts become more idea driven.

AN APPLE A DAY DOES NOT KEEP CONSPIRACY AT BAY

in

the debut novel by Lord R. Benson

S

iPlot

et in London and Australia, iPlot is a mystery thriller in the style of Lee Childs.

Carla Moore was Australia’s first female Prime Minister. However, just eighteen months into her reign, she was on the verge of dying. Initially hailed a hero, her fall was quick. She was now the most unpopular Prime Minister ever. Her methods had earned her the nickname ‘Carliar’. Many wanted her removed. But would any go so far as trying to kill her?

“This debut thriller by Lord R. Benson is, simply stated, terrific, first-class entertainment. It is well plotted and well paced, with believable characters and mounting suspense throughout...One looks forward with great anticipation to the next thriller

by Lord Benson.”

— R. Dixon Smith, Amazon (5 stars) “I thought this was a very good first novel by this writer. With a plot that twists and turns it keeps one guessing all the way to the end.”

— Cookie, Amazon (5 stars) “Complete page turner. Fantastic read!”

— L Christie, Amazon (5 stars) “Lord Benson writes in a cinematic style.

Perhaps this book will be made into a film.”

— Tsavvy, Amazon (4 stars)

When Derek and Beth Rosengold inadvertently picked up someone else’s iPad going through Heathrow airport security, the material he discovers leads him to believe its correct owner must be involved in the Prime Minister’s mystery illness.

The iPad leads them on an intriguing journey, that takes over their lives and holiday, entangling them in Australian Federal police operations, political back-stabbing, attempted murder and suicide.

Lord R. Benson’s novel is highly topical and technology led, an unmissable modern thriller.

AVAILABLE NOW ON ISBN 9781780883663 (pb) / 9781780883670 (hb) / 9781780887548 (eBook)

www.lordrbenson.com Like Us on FaceBook

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afterword

Robinson Alone

by Kathleen Rooney >

Gold Wake Press www.goldwakepress.com

WATCH THE BOOK < TRAILER HERE

R

obinson Alone is a novel in poems based on the life and disappearance of the poet, painter, critic, and musician Weldon Kees (1914-1955?). In it, I borrow his quasi-alter ego Robinson to trace Kees’ travels from Nebraska to New York City to San Francisco and — maybe — to Mexico.

Although Kees is a very American personage, I discovered him in England.

A professor assigned me Simon Armitage’s 1992 collection of poetry Kid, which includes some of his own “Robinson” poems, and in that book’s sixth poem, “Looking for Weldon Kees,” he writes, “I’ve heard it said by Michael Hofmann/that Collected Poems would blow my head off…” Duly, I went and got Collected Poems, and it blew my head off.

I started the project in the fall of 2001, shortly after returning to the States, and arrived at the finished manuscript in 2009. Even during the times when I wasn’t actively writing new poems for it — and when I was immersed in writing other, very different books — I’d be thinking about this project: doing research, re-reading Kees’ books, and learning more about the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s than I’d ever be able to fit into the completed project.

Robinson Alone is as much a scholarly work as a creative one, because I wanted to supersaturate the manuscript with texture and detail. I wanted to achieve a voice that would sound like it came naturally even if it didn’t exactly — and that would do justice to Kees’ own writing. And to his life.

— Kathleen Rooney 36

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DEAR AGENTS AND NON SUBSIDY PUBLISHERS You can call it contemporary crack, new adult or a thriller

I call it Dust Pan Girl A completed and professionally edited manuscript.

(71,000 words) It all starts on this bridge and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll end on this bridge.

From there the story jumps back 4 days.

BOOK ONE PUPPETS

The daughter of a struggling baker is stabbed in the dark by her own deranged father.

JAMES FOX

She lives because she carried in her coat an old metal dust pan.

Read the first 2 chapters on the Dust Pan Girl Facebook Page

The story quickly makes the news and brings to town a con man of unquestionable skill.

He exacerbates the situation to make money.

JAMES FOX jamesrfox.foxorchards@gmail.com

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ROBINSON TEARS PAGES FROM THE RAND MCNALLY ROAD ATLAS one for each state they’ve driven through so far.

Keeps the maps on the black upholstered seat of their car because Maine, for instance, has been printed on the back of Maryland.

The jagged eastern half of the continental U.S. shows through three-quarters worth of Alabama, &—held to the light—Mexico looks like one of Canada’s Atlantic Provinces.

Eyeing the other poor saps in their rolling coffins, Robinson’s almost forgotten why they left, so he stops.

Beneath the picnic shelter of an Iowa rest area, Robinson & Ann consult atlas-as-medical text: vein-blue State Routes, red Principal Highways, thin pink capillaries of unpaved road.

They & their fellow motorists are honed straight razors, nicking the land.

Over a tinny speaker, the AM station squawks the approach of an electrical storm before the signal dissolves like salt in water. Their cat, Daughter, hollers & the fat, smooth air seems ready to burst.

From Robinson Alone by Kathleen Rooney, Gold Wake Press 2012, www. goldwakepress.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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Artwork by and copyright: JennaSueDesign.com

Divergent Lives

by Minnie Lahongrais RJ and Adina enter the world as fraternal twins, one raised by old-world, controlling immigrants in El Barrio, the other sold into a religious home filled with lies and scorn. Both are sociopaths. Turns out, RJ’s got a secret that enrages him with the flip of a switch. Adina uses her sexual power to dominate every man in her life. They are on a mysterious trajectory to cross paths in New York City, where the end of their lives culminates in an apex of horror and carnage.

Twitter: @Lahongrais Facebook: fb.com/lahongrais Blog: divergentlives.blogspot.com Supporting other authors: minnielahongrais.com/GuestBlogs.html Available at Amazon.com

“...Lahongrais possesses this innate talent at peeling the layers, exposing the real truth about her characters one page at a time, forcing you to put up with their vices and witness their demise.

There’s no redemption, no happy ending. All you will find in this story is the raw description of what a sociopath really is, and what he really does. Life at its most realistic and horrifying stage...”

—JKP, Amazon customer reviews

feature

photo essay

Eileen Ramsay: Queen of Yachting Photography

By Barry Pickthall

South Atlantic Publishing www.southatlanticpublishing.com

B

etween the ‘50s and ‘70s when photography became popular, Eileen Ramsay carved a name for herself, with creative skills shouting out from her studies printed in nautical books and magazines. Her style was unique and inventive.

Finding her niche mainly in dinghies, day boats, larger cruisers and racing yachts, she developed an emphasis on action, taken mostly by hanging precariously over the side of her photo-boat with her camera at sea level.

—Kenneth Beken From Eileen Ramsay: Queen of Yachting Photography by Barry Pickthall, South Atlantic Publishing 2012, www.southatlanticpublishing.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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They pushed the fir mast high and stepped it firm amidships in the box, made fast the forestays, then hoisted up the white sail on its halyards until the wind caught, booming in the sail; and a flushing wave sang backward from the bow on either side, as the ship got way upon her, holding her steady course.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;The Odyssey 44

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45

Sips Card puts short fiction and poetry into local coffee shop venues around the country. We are a publication run by artists, for artists.

Each card contains a QR code, loaded with a short story, or set of poems, from an independent writer, meant to last as long as a cup of coffee. Our passion is to share the work of other artists with likely readers. Visit

www.sipscard.com for more information.

Call for submissions: We are accepting short fiction and poetry submissions for our October 2012 issue from August 1st through August 31st. Guidelines can be found at www.sipscard.com/submit.

BOOK Debut for a Spy

by Harry Currie

F

Fleeting Memory

by Sherban Young

T

ormer military pilot David Baird is a rising-star singer in the UK. David thinks his life is in control. Engaged to perform at a Soviet Embassy reception, British intelligence engage him to snoop a bit—nothing dangerous. They lie, of course.

Drawn into a morass of espionage, deceit and death, compounded by a beautiful Soviet agent, David’s life and music are altered forever.

wo amnesia victims, two couriers without a package, two dead bodies (or rather one body dead twice), and one cryptic message regarding the poet Keats. Check out the first in the Enescu Fleet detective series: the book Kirkus called “an utterly winning, deceptively smart collection of mishaps, plot twists and grinning oneliners.” (Named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2011; read the Kirkus review here.)

Available at Ebookit.com, Amazon.com, KoboBooks.com, iTunes.apple.com, and other online booksellers.

www.mysterycaper.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and iTunes.apple.com.

Night Buddies, Imposters, and One Far-Out Flying Machine

by Sands Hetherington

M

ore Adventures After Lights-Out! Join John and Crosley in Book Two of the Night Buddies Adventures series as they scoot around the Borough in their fantastic flying machine, trying to snare the Crosley look-alikes popping up everywhere.

They’ll do anything to restore Crosley’s good name and put a stop to all the evildoing, but it won’t be easy!

Juvenile Fiction/Readers/Chapter Books, ages 7 and up. www.nightbuddiesadventures.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

*

Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK The Soldier’s Seed

by Sharyn Bradford Lunn

T

he series that brings Australia to the hearts of readers worldwide: Southern Skyes. Sydney-born author Sharyn Bradford Lunn makes waves not just in her homeland but through the world with this historical fiction collection, which she dedicates to the First Tasmanians. Now three books into the series, it’s reminiscent of other great family sagas that have captured the interest of the world. Purchase Book One, The Soldier’s Seed, and prepare to be immersed. www.sharynbradfordlunnauthor.com Available at Amazon.com, KoboBooks.com, and Smashwords.com.

Secretsincity

by Deray Ogden

B

RINEY RUZA has created a bizarre graffiti game, but the walls she paints on begin using her to release secrets they were built to contain. One secret lures Briney to Terezin, once a Jewish Ghetto under Nazi control during WWII. Here the walls draw her deep into the conspiracies surrounding the Holocaust, corruption and rise of neo-Nazism … with a deadly outcome. www.ogdenimprint.com Available at Xlibris.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, iBookstore, and most major online bookstores.

The Beautiful American

by Marilyn Holdsworth

E

lizabeth Monroe, James Monroe’s wife, and Jasmine, a young slave girl, develop an extraordinary relationship as they are united by pivotal historic events and personal tragedies. From a bucolic Virginia plantation to the bloodied streets of post-revolutionary Paris, this powerful tale follows the lives of two courageous women from the past as they inspire a woman of today’s world. www.marilynholdsworthauthor.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

The Stonehenge Scrolls

by K.P. Robbins

A

ncient scrolls reveal Stonehenge secrets, and an archaeologist blogs about their meaning in this thought provoking e-novel.

You’ll meet Myrddin the monument builder, his mind-reading daughter Sulis, Ogwyn the medicine woman, and the impetuous chieftain Gwyr.

Midwest Book Review calls it “a fine saga and a pick for any who enjoyed Auel’s ‘Earth’s Children’ series and similar historical novels.” www.thestonehengescrolls.com Available on Amazon Kindle and from MuseItUpPublishing.com.

BOOK A Prison of Lies

by Robert Thomas Doran

W

Thieves

by Robert Crawson

A

ith its brutal honesty, witness one man’s odyssey into the darkness of mental illness and his slow emergence out of that darkness where a broken spirit is healed and a life begins anew.

A Prison of Lies offers a candle in the cave for those seeking to understand and for those who are themselves lost and unable to find their way.

(Mature content)

second chance for a priest going through a mid-life crisis requires risking everything to witness the most significant event in history.

Taking a new assignment requested by his Bishop, Father James Foster befriends Frank Javan, who has perfected time travel. Now James has to consider staying behind and explaining Frank’s disappearance or go with him.

www.aprisonoflies.com; www.stopharm.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and iUniverse.com.

Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

The Definitive Guide to Buying Craft Beer

by Dan Koester

Twists of Fate

by William Bain

A

o you love craft beer, but don’t know much about it? It can take years to become a craft beer connoisseur and to learn how to properly appreciate beer. With The Definitive Guide to Buying Craft Beer you won’t have to wait that long! Learn the most important facets of this booming industry today and become an instant aficionado.

dventure, intrigue, romance and suspense blend into a compelling story of three lives over a seven-year period, beginning with a fateful encounter in Scotland. Their lives split apart until a dramatic encounter in Toronto in 1982 where two people confront a U.S. Senator who is running for President. They intend to have revenge and thwart his ambition.

www.thedefinitiveguidetobuyingcraftbeer.com Available at Amazon.com.

www.williambain.net Available at Amazon.com and on Kindle.

D

BOOK Nobody’s Laughing

by Jeffrey Arnold

J

Alpha Male

by Mike Walsh

effrey Arnold’s focus is on the ultimate cost of modern life to humans as social, political, cultural and spiritual beings. We are running flat out but continue to lose ground.

Ultimately Mother Nature is our scorekeeper, not our opponent.

With irony and humor Arnold poses fundamental questions about the well-being of the human race and the planet.

Thrilling adventure novel set in deep Alaska.

Man versus wolf in the wolf’s environment … who wins?

iles Coffin, an authority on wolves, takes some New York City businessmen on a hunting trip in Alaska. Their prey: wolves. Coffin guides them but he secretly plans to hunt and kill Midnight, a large black wolf with whom he has a personal vendetta.

www.jeffreyarnold.ca Available at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Indigo/Chapters.

www.mikewalshart.com Available as hardbound, paperback or Kindle at Xlibris.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Abebooks.com, and iPad.

Unlocking the Consciousness of Your Soul

by Terry Newbegin

A

good teacher is not afraid to explore what lies beyond conventional beliefs. Are you looking for clarity, abundance, and healing in your life?

Discover how by dropping the old way of using the mind, hope, and prayer, and discover a better way to achieve it. Read Unlocking the Consciousness of Your Soul by Terry Newbegin.

www.terrynewbegin.com; email: terry@nei.net Available at Amazon.com and www.

TerryNewbegin.com.

M

Kids, Dogs, Canaries, and Other Curiosities

by Hal Reichardt

H

al writes about family life in a way that is laugh-out-loud funny, outrageous, delightful, off the wall, ridiculous, wry, and droll. Selecting everyday subjects we all can relate to, Hal finds the greatest humor in the illuminating details of life. All the while, with his inner child working overtime, Hal’s humor is grounded in good values and decent common sense.

www.whimsystreet.us Available at Amazon.com.

BOOK Jerusalem Diary

by Joanna Kujawa

B

ased on a true story, this bestselling travel guide is an adventurous journey of intrigue and discovery in the Holy Land. After finishing her PhD, Joanna joins two Australian men who discovered new sites that could be Jesus’ home in Nazareth and his tomb in Jerusalem. A fresh and sharply intelligent account that reads like a novel.

www.joannakujawa.com Available as an e-book and paperback at Amazon. com, The Book Depository, and Lybrary.com.

Spies and Lies: The Paradox

by Fred Malphurs

S

pies and Lies: The Paradox is a gripping story about espionage, politics, deceit, and romance as one man, David Pearl, risks everything to defend his country—and his reputation— from evil forces. With national security at stake, Pearl must overcome adversity and the ultimate betrayal in order to determine whom he can trust, before an assassin strikes again.

www.fredmalphurs.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Books-a-Million, and other online stores.

Statehood of Affairs

by Dr. Daniel R. Cillis

S

et in 1911 New Mexico with implications for today’s immigration issues, this political adventure imagines a history that places the U.S. and Mexico on a collision course. The unjust commitment of a woman to an insane asylum reveals a conspiracy to find a secret document. If found before New Mexico statehood, Mexico could recover her lost territory—and change history. www.statehoodofaffairs.com Available in print and as an e-book at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

The Devil’s Son

by Jennifer Loren

F

irst there was The Devil’s Eyes, then The Devil’s Revenge and now … The Devil’s Son. The Devil’s Eyes series is dark, sexually intense and dangerous. Nick and Kayla are two imperfect people overcoming the brutal realities of their worlds and finding life as criminals comes naturally to them both.

“This series is so powerful, I dream about it.”

—SKoen www.thedevilseyesbyloren.com; www.jenniferloren.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and other online bookstores.

BOOK Code Name Rustler

by Charles Wolstenholme and Douglas Sipple

A

n explosive spy thriller of international intrigue, family secrets and romance, using the Soviet highjacking of a U.S. nuclear submarine as a ploy to defect by Colonel Zelta Rensky. She works frantically to outwit the KGB, Cuban Military Intelligence, and her estranged brother, Joseph Rendman, in the CIA. www.blacklabpublishing.net Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble. com, iBooks and Kobo Books. Also soon to be released as a paperback on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

10 Keys to ebook Marketing Success

by Karen Baney

I

s it really possible to make a living as an author? Yes it is! Author Karen Baney shares the 10 keys that helped her achieve over 200,000 downloads in her second year as a published author.

“A must-have marketing manual for both the new and veteran author…”

—Matt Patterson, My Emily www.myauthorservices.com/10Keys Available at Amazon.com.

Hex: The Haunting of Barrington County

by Stacy Charasidis

I

n 1595, the witch Willow Kellar is hung and burned, but before she dies, legend says she cast a vicious hex on the townspeople who executed her. Hundreds of years later, teens Nathalie, Dean, Luke, and Sadie anticipate a wonderful summer of fun and romance. Witchcraft and ancient hexes are not a concern until their town starts to go crazy.

Sometimes, legends come true. www.stacycharasidis.com Available in print and on Kindle at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and www.chapters.indigo.ca and as a PDF at www.ebookpie.com.

5.4%

by Juliette Guidara

W

ith her husband’s cancer diagnosis just days before their first wedding anniversary, Juliette’s world came crashing down. “Guidara’s moving portrayal of the agony of coping with such a deadly cancer is riveting. … A stirring, inspiring account of one couple’s story of surviving cancer.”

—KIRKUS 5 STARS! “… this stunning and well-written work will provide guidance, comfort, and most of all, inspiration.”

—Elizabeth Millard, Clarion Review Available at Amazon.com.

BOOK A Life to Rescue: The True Story of a Child Freed from the Bonds of Autism

by Karen Michelle Graham

A

couple faces the heartache of their two-year-old son being diagnosed with autism. Yet amid the tears, they turn their hopelessness into an all-out rescue mission.

This is an emotionally charged account of one family’s triumphant response to autism and the wonder of their son’s deliverance from autism. “ … so compelling I actually read it twice!”

—Susan Lynn Perry, Radio Show Host www.alifetorescue.com Available on Amazon and many other online bookstores.

Men Don’t Pee Straight

by Mr. Rick Dean

C

hock full of stuff about men that you’ve always suspected yet hoped would change, Men Don’t Pee Straight confirms your worst fear—male stereotypes are real, accurate, and here to stay.

Blunt and comedic, these cartoon-illustrated pages soften this sad reality. From diapers and driving thru fragile egos and toilet seats, this poignant yet tactless book brings a smile. www.betterbathroombooks.com Available at Amazon.com.

South of Burnt Rocks, West of the Moon

by G.J. Berger

I

n this “captivating debut historical fiction, a young Iberian-Celtic she-warrior makes a stand against the invading Roman army.

Smartly written, the novel moves quickly…. The simple yet powerful narrative relies on a commanding cast of characters. … Berger beautifully crafts them as more than one-dimensional warriors. … Berger also builds an elaborate world full of small details that add depth and historical context.”

—Kirkus Review, September 2012. www.writerschoice.org Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and most other booksellers in e-book, soft cover, and hard cover formats.

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Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Operation Doublepayback

by Jack Freeman

A

I Want To Do Yoga Too.

by Carole P. Roman

H

fast-paced thriller set in 1961. An ex-CIA officer turned London-based beat generation bookseller, blackmailed into infiltrating a revolutionary terror group (RPI), is quickly involved in an attack on the U.S. London Embassy, assassination in Amsterdam, bombs in Berlin, fire fights in Venice and L.A., affair in Miami, torture in Mayfair, and a conspiracy to provoke all-out nuclear war in N.Y.C.

allie and Mommy are going to the yoga studio and Hallie is very unhappy.

She wants to do yoga too! In this delightful tale, Carole P. Roman shows how you can find yoga poses in everyday life and enjoy them as well. Roman’s first book, Captain No Beard— An Imaginary Tale of a Pirate’s Life, was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2012.

jackfreeman_writer@hotmail.co.uk Available at Amazon.com.

www.caroleproman.com Available at Amazon.com.

I Will Never Forget

by Elaine C. Pereia

I

Pepper Parrot’s Problem With Patience—A Captain No Beard Story

by Carole P. Roman

Will Never Forget is the exquisite story of the author’s talented mother’s humorous and extraordinary journey through Dementia.

Through stories of Elaine’s childhood her mom’s wonderful character is revealed. As their relationship evolves, Elaine referees her mom’s uncharacteristic verbal assaults and Houdini-like disappearances. She witnesses her mother’s stunning rally to control her destiny and finally accompanies her mom as her brilliant mind is slowly destroyed by Alzheimer’s.

his time the crew tackles dyslexia as well as handling emotions correctly, teaching children to manage stressful circumstances.

Watch the crew of the Flying Dragon work together to overcome challenges. Roman’s first book, Captain No Beard—An Imaginary Tale of a Pirate’s Life, was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2012.

http://elainecpereira.authorsxpress.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and iUniverse.

www.caroleproman.com Available at Amazon.com.

T

BOOK

Made in China

by Mark Reutlinger

Sanctuary

by Kris Kramer

L

Another book from www.the4threalm.com.

ook at the labels on your clothes, appliances, tools, and toys. What if everything “Made in China” suddenly disappeared from the American scene and we had no way to replace them? In Made in China, love, murder, industrial espionage, and international intrigue combine in a timely political thriller that will hit very close to home.

Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

The Fingerprint of Jack: A Time Savers Club Adventure.

by Christopher Marshall

A

n old newspaper with a bloody fingerprint, a book of incantations, and the eccentric Mrs. Steers take eleven-year-old Sam Henry on an extraordinary trip back to 1888 London where he comes face to face with the famous serial killer, Jack the Ripper. What Sam didn’t realize was he would find himself involved in a dangerous mission to save time. http://christophermarshallwriter.blogspot.com/ http://thetimesaversclub.blogspot.com Available at Amazon.com.

I

n 9th century Britain, a young priest witnesses a lone warrior save his village from savage raiders.

Believing he’s seen a miracle, he follows the reclusive warrior on his mysterious trek across the island, hoping to find his own path in this brutal, chaotic world.

www.the4threalm.com Available at Amazon.com.

The Vampire Girl Next Door

by Richard Arbib

M

ark falls in love with Sylvia, the beautiful, but quirky girl next door, not realizing that she’s a vampire who killed his last neighbor.

When Mark first meets Sylvia, he tells her, “You’re the girl of my dreams!” Sylvia smiles and responds with a warning—“Be careful what you wish for.”

“Alternately eerie and funny, the novel blends horror, romance, and humor.”

—from the publisher’s press release. www.thevampiregirlnextdoor.com Available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

Paperback and all e-book formats available on author’s website.

BOOK My Prison Without Bars

by Taylor Evan Fulks

Backseat

by Tom Wascoe

I

n 1969 failure from college or dropping out meant the draft and possibly Vietnam.

Michael’s freshman year has not gone well. He believes that pledging a fraternity will put him on the right path. To get in he must hitchhike 1,500 miles in one weekend. The rides he gets, the people he meets change his life.

Sometimes the strongest manacles in this life are bonds forged from painful memories of a past so horrific, they shackle and incarcerate the very essence of one’s soul. Inevitably, the constraint is a life sentence. I have a secret … a really dark, and dirty secret. It’s a prison. A prison I can’t be pardoned from. My prison … without bars.

www.TomWascoe.com Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, and iBookstore.

The Day the Earth Moved Haiti

by Elaine Hughes, Patricia Koenig, Christina Ruotolo, Elizabeth Thompson, Lynne Wigent

A

n emotional compilation of pictures, stories, poems and journalistic accounts personalizing the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The writings come from individuals touched by this tragic force of Mother Nature, as well as mission team members who helped with recovery efforts in Haiti. All profits from the book go to three NPO’s that directly help the people of Haiti. http://haitibook.wix.com/ thedaytheearthmovedhaiti BOOK TRAILER LINK | FACEBOOK LINK Available in paperback at BarnesandNoble. com, Amazon.com, and Tate Publishing and in hardback from the authors’ website.

www.taylorfulks.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

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Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK The Book

by Jessica Bell “Jessica Bell’s surprising risks with language capture a child’s clear vision in a world of adult heartbreak. Indelible.

Courageous.”

—Thaisa Frank, author of Heidegger’s Glasses and Enchantment

Condemn Me Not

by Dianne Venetta

T

“A curiously captivating read that somehow manages to encapsulate the length and breadth of love and family in one slim volume.”

—Josh Donellan, author of Zeb and the Great Ruckus

he words no mother wants to say, and every mother yearns to hear.

Bound by friendship, two women find themselves at common crossroads. Neither planned to look back on the road they traveled with regret—yet that’s exactly what’s at stake when their daughters issue opposing proclamations with regard to college. Choices have consequences. Can they bear them?

www.jessicabellauthor.com Available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, BarnesandNoble.com, and KoboBooks.com.

www.dianevenetta.com Available at Amazon.com.

HerStory

by Delaina M. Waldron

H

erStory set in the beginning of slavery in America, is a paranormal thriller about a young African slave woman who is rescued by a Native American tribe. The young African slave woman has a dark secret. A dark secret that is beyond her control.

She can see the past and the future and she can also speak to the dead.

www.herstorynovel.com Available at Amazon.com.

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Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK You probably haven’t met a woman like Judy before - described by some as a female Ripley. A working-

class woman living in Palm Beach with her millionaire husband, she’s outwardly normal but copes

B

- in her own unusual way - with a hurricane, an overcrowded house, a workplace accident, and an

unfaithful husband. Readers will be

intrigued as they try to figure out Judy’s decision-making process.

ISBN 978-1466360044

9 781466 360044

JOHANNA CONSTANCE HUNT

urned out, widowed, Alex Cole takes his daughter to live the lazy life in a Florida fish house. His emotional struggles are soon the least of his worries as his life erupts in conflict between fishermen, neighbors, City Hall, and a mob boss’ missing luxury yacht.

THE END OF SUNSHINE STREET

Fish House

by Stephen Dougherty

THE END OF

SUNSHINE STREET

The End of Sunshine Street A novel

by Johanna C. Hunt

“Wow, at first I thought I was reading just a sweet book about a A NOVEL BY JOHANNA husband and wife and CONSTANCE HUNT their comfortable life in Florida until ‘Bang!’ everything seemed to change. My final word was, “WHAT?” Give it a try, I think you will enjoy it.”

—Shirley Priscilla Johnson, Author/Reviewer

“..a poignant, humorous delve into life, with much to think about - recommended.”

—The Midwest Book Review

“A strong pick for contemporary fiction collections.”

—Midwest Book Review

www.stephen-dougherty.com Available at Amazon.com.

Available on Amazon.com and Kindle.

For What Is Sacred

by F.J. Harmon

T

The Hunt For Moby Dick

by Brian G. Spare, PhD

he obsession of Muslims and Jews for religious and political dominance of Palestine is exploited by the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks to exact revenge. He entangles his nephew of Israeli-Muslim parentage and the Israeli Prime Minister in his plot. This story spans two continents, leaving a scathing scar in Haifa and targeting the sleepy town of Smithville, NC.

t’s the most readable Moby Dick! A story of yesterday rewritten for today’s reader. From Nantucket ’round Africa to the Sea of Japan, Ahab stalks his foe Moby Dick in a mad quest for vengeance. “... To the last I grapple with thee ... thou damned whale ...” Set sail now in The Hunt For Moby Dick.

www.fjharmonbooks.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, iBookstore, Sony, eBookPie, Copia, Baker & Taylor, and Gardner’s.

I

BOOK He Only Died Twice

by Chris Elgood

T

he second of a trilogy about Nshila Ileloka, consultant assassin. Born in a remote African village, she is befriended by a witchdoctor. Higher education in England wins her BA and MBA degrees. Under cover of a legitimate business she removes evildoers by cleverly mixing witchcraft and science. In this book UK Security hires her to eliminate an otherwise untouchable villain.

www.chriselgoodbooks.co.uk Available at Amazon.com and Kindle.

Crispin Scales and the Golden Pearl

by Ruby Blessing

C

rispin Scales and the Golden Pearl is the first installment in an exhilarating fantasy series for 8- to 12-year-olds.

With a twist that will drop your jaw to the floor and charming supernatural characters both boys and girls can imagine as their best friends, Crispin Scales is the children’s series we’ve all been craving. www.crispinscales.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Broken Collar

by Ron Mitchell

T

he Catholic Church reassigns Father Bob to the steel mill village and people of his youth. He struggles with longings for both the heavens and the heart. His past loves and relationships resurface in these Appalachian foothills. Father Bob’s turmoil turns gritty and exuberant in a working-class world of sinners and saints as he searches for redemption. www.ronaldgmitchell.com Available at Amazon.com, Bottom Dog Press, BarnesandNoble.com, Kindle and Nook

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Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK

A

Lamb to the Slaughter is a novel about love and courage, sin and redemption.

“Iron” Mike McGann, 32 years old, is facing the twilight of his prizefighting career. Desperate for his future, he has refused to honor his promise to his wife to quit the ring and start a family. In despair, his wife, Madge, is leaving him.

Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard, Mike’s next opponent, is the most menacing

story of hope, of lives well lived and the choices we make in the face of tragedy.

“Beautifully written, sensory-laden, and impeccably timed, this ªxHSLEQFy3 9270zv*:+:!:+:!@ book is a gift to all. It leaves us purposed to not forget the moment, while fighting wholeheartedly for the future.

Some books stay with us forever; In the Morning Light is one of them.”

presence in prizefighting. He has won all 22 of his fights by knockout and is said to be a former enforcer for something called The Black Mafia. But behind Rufus Hilliard’s menacing ring presence lives a man nobody knows, a complex man who despises his own image. Unexpectedly left alone before his bout with McGann, Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard is forced to confront the past that haunts him and the future he dreads.

Charles “Charliehorse” O’Connell, Rufus’s cornerman, has been terrorized by a mob kingpin to sabotage him. O’Connell, who is an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler, blames himself for the ring deaths of two prizefighters.

Trapped in a moral crisis, Charles “Charliehorse” O’Connell must finally confront his “Cardinal Sin.” Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard vs “Iron” Mike McGann, just another fight shown on The Continuous Sports Network, but by the time it is over the lives of these and many others will be forever different.

(101870)

DELOHERY

ISBN: 978-1-4653-3927-0

Lamb to the Slaughter

by Pete Delohery

PETE DELOHERY LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER

In the Morning Light

by Patricia Robbins

Don’t miss this rare treat.

One of the nicest surprises I have had this year. Delohery weaves his engrossing LAMB TO THE tale around the inner S l au g h t e R nightmares of an intriguing host of professional prize fighters. Colorful characters become memorable as each emerges from the chaotic disorder of their respective lives to stand firm as men or die trying. I loved this book and so will you.

—Stringer Literary Services

www.petedelohery.com

www.patriciarobbins.com FACEBOOK LINK Available at Amazon.com, Kindle, BarnesandNoble.com, Nook.

Harry

by Maximillian Emmenegge

W

hen schoolboy Harry Hughes goes missing, police search his computer. It looks like a case of chat room grooming, but it turns out to be far more sinister. The secret Harry is carrying is to lead to the deaths of four people. Also by this author: Another Boring Day In Paradise, The Kiplock Affair, and Will You Tell Her, Or Shall I?

Available at Amazon.com, xlibris.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

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Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Available on Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPod, iPhone, and Kobo.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK tHRe3

by T.J. Connor

By Linda Florke

A

fter winning a big case, Trey, a young attorney, gets involved with a vicious motorcycle gang. Surrounded by dangerous thugs, he wonders how he will escape the situation. With the help of an unlikely guardian angel, Toby (aka Animal), a gang enforcer, Trey gets back on track, extricating himself from the gang—or so he thinks.

“A compelling moral tale.”

September Woods

by Linda Florke Woods September

—Kirkus Reviews

www.tHRe3.net Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and the iBookstore.

Scrappy Cupcake Angels

by Kristah Price

W

hen Angeline opens a scrapbooking shop in a small New Zealand town, four women are drawn to Wattle Lane Keepsakes for widely different reasons.

Through friendship, food, and scrapbooking, each learns to confront her fears and understand what is important in life. But can the Scrappy Cupcake Angels help Angeline overcome her own greatest fear and fulfill a lifelong dream? www.kristahprice.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Abbott Press, and all major online booksellers

A

young girl is abducted by a dangerous escaped prisoner. She vows if she survives her Read how one girl horrific ordeal to achieves right triumph the Available wrongsatthe only Amazon.com, Barnes Trafford.com. wayand she knows how.

In the aftermath of her nightmare, her future is restored by one person who surprisingly becomes the center of her world.

Read how one girl achieves triumph over tragedy.

A young girl is abducted by a danger prisoner. She vows if she survives h to right the wrongs the only way she In the aftermath of her nightmare, h restored by one person who surprisin center of her world.

Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Trafford.com.

Hippo in the Stable

by Mark Trodd, illustrated by Steve Hallam

H

arriet the hippo is captured by Roman soldiers and taken to Jerusalem.

She escapes with the help of a friend, hides in a stable in Bethlehem, and witnesses the arrival of the wise men. When Jesus is taken to Egypt, to get away from King Herod, Harriet follows Him to get home.

www.hippointhestable.com Available at Amazon.com and ebooks.faithwriters.com

BOOK The Path of the Fallen

by Dan O’Brien

S

et against the backdrop of the tundra and a world desperate for hope, the journey of a young man, E’Malkai, will come to define a realm that has been broken by an evil that does not sleep. A bitter betrayal, and the inception of war, forces E’Malkai to confront the past and undertake a pilgrimage that is his by birthright. Follow him on his journey and be transformed.

http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.com/ Available at Amazon.com.

Robin’s Blue, a Novel

by Pam Alster

G

et a jump on your weekend or vacation with this juicy book! Robin’s Blue is an addictive epic about a suburban girl turned high-class call girl, set against the disco ’70s through the Reagan-era ’80s.

“Robin’s Blue” is a brilliantly vivid time capsule of blank generation ’80s decadence fused with a poignant and sensitive coming of age tale that’s totally timeless.

—Erik Himmelsbach, Contributor, L.A. Times www.robinsbluethenovel.com Available in Paperback and Kindle at Amazon.com.

Road to Tomorrow

by Mary Metcalfe

A

ndrea Garrett fears for her life. Leaving her children with her twin brother, she flees home just before her husband returns from Iraq. After falling asleep at the wheel near Boston, her life takes on new directions when strangers step in and help her find a way out of her abusive marriage and be reunited with her children.

www.lakefrontmuse.ca Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Chapters/Indigo.

Captain No Beard —An Imaginary Tale of a Pirate’s Life

by Carole P. Roman

C

aptain No Beard and his pirate ship set sail for a voyage of the imagination with his fearless crew: First Mate Hallie, Mongo the Monkey, Linus the lion, and Fribbet the frog. Normally a boy, his cousin, and three stuffed animals, once they board his bed their world becomes a magical vessel sailing the seven seas on dangerous and exciting adventures!

Winner of the Kirkus Star of Merit. www.caroleproman.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Createspace.

BOOK The Ladies in the Pool

by Patricia Stanley

P

icture the college prof in her cashmere sweater set, pearls and sensible heels, in control of her environment, on top of whatever issue—but a heart beats under that tailored façade, and if it leads her unwisely astray, what are the consequences? These unsentimental, sometimes amusing short stories about career women are open-ended for the readers’ speculations. www.pstanleybooks.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Scrolls of Darkness

by Paul Henry Johnson Scrolls of Darkness is a fastpaced adventure that will keep you enthralled and leave you wanting more.

Independent Reviews: 5.0 Stars: “Exceptional read.”

—Shirley Johnson, senior reviewer 5.0 Stars: “Awesome book.”

—Athena L. Nagel 5.0 Stars: “Terrific book.”

—Don Cook (See more five-star reviews and read a preview of the book at Amazon.com).

Available at Amazon.com.

I Love You Dead

by Yadi J.

W

ho do you turn to when the person you believe killed your father is the District Attorney and your twin sister’s husband is a dirty cop who is in the DA’s pocket? Stan has just discovered that his father did not die in a car accident. And he has little time to warn his sister Mady, before they find him.

www.yadij.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and CreateSpace.

An Illegal President: A Novel

by Pat Lawrence

A

sinister force thrusts Congressman Paul Garrett into the madness of presidential politics.

Who or what is behind the fantastic conspiracy; more inexplicably—why?

With his life threatened, his children endangered, and his wife terrified, Paul is forced to make lifealtering decisions which will forever change his future, his marriage, indeed, his entire existence; and the political future of America hangs in the balance. www.patlawrence.net BOOK TRAILER LINK Available at iBookstore, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com

BOOK The Highlander and the Werewolf

by Tadgh Faolan

L

on is crossing enemy territory, on the run from English soldiers after his clan is attacked and destroyed. Elliot is told by the church he must die, as he has reached adulthood and is now deadly to humans. Can the highlander and werewolf help each other to survive or is it inevitable that they end each others lives?

www.tadghfaolan.com Available at Amazon.com and AllRomanceEbooks.com

The eBay Plot

by Charles A. Salter

I

n this compelling dramatization of the never-before-told true story of how military scientists used eBay to help foil a developing dirty bomb plot, national security is in jeopardy.

Major Brad Stout picks up on the trail, but can he prevent a weapon of mass destruction in the nation’s capital before it is too late?

www.tatepublishing.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Parable.com.

The Dionysus Connection

by Liz Cowan

Learning to Live with Fritz

by E. Rawlins

A

5 Stars: “Spirited, Philosophical and Beautiful.”

n interrupted afterhours pharmacy robbery results in the murder of a pharmacist and his wife.

To catch the brutal killer a respected Dallas detective poses as a male stripper at Club Dionysus.

While the investigation links the destinies of the detective and their daughter, an investigative reporter, the plots twists and turns will keep the reader guessing until the end.

www.facebook.com/lizcowan.author Available at Amazon.com.

“Just as Fritz, the feisty yet irresistible Maltese puppy, drew author E. Rawlins into a pet store one day so that she would take him into her life, Fritz called to me to read his story. I couldn’t put it down. Through this fast-paced, bumpy ride we follow the life of an opera singer while Fritz amuses us and teaches important life lessons.”

—Caryn Hartglass www.learningtolivewithfritz.com Available at Amazon.com, iUniverse.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

BOOK A Thousand Bayonets

by Joel Mark Harris

U

Mama’s Shoes

by Rebecca Elswick

pon returning from Afghanistan, journalist John Webster discovers a gang war in his backyard. Now he must find a way to survive in this Canadian warzone-or die in the crossfire.

The need for redemption may be stronger than the need for survival as John Webster finds himself on his most dangerous assignment yet.

“…Mama’s Shoes is an absolutely wonderful novel, its setting an Appalachian coal town, its characters so vivid they’re practically jumping off the page.

There’s conflict aplenty—between mother and daughter, truth and lies, rich and poor, past and present—as 13-year-old Sassy determines who she really is.”

—Lee Smith, author of twelve novels including On Agate Hill.

www.joelmarkharris.com

www.rebeccaelswick.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Books-a-Million, and Abbott Press.

Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Chapters.com.

Of Saints and Sacred Shadows

by Jason Dean

A

Archimedes’ Claw

by Theodore Morrison Homa, MD

A

s the world unknowingly teeters on the edge, one man reluctantly possesses the ability to save it or let it crumble and collapse into chaos. Angels, demons, vampires, even the Devil himself conspire against him as Sebastian Sane, neither particularly good nor evil, struggles to find a reason to save himself and the world that doesn’t know he exists.

fter his mentor disappears from their lab, professor Finn McGee is abducted by government agents and forced to decipher bloody clues. Only Finn knows the true power of an ancient artifact, an antigravity device dating back to Archimedes, they were studying. And he soon discovers his mentor may be lost in time.

www.theendshallcome.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Kobo Books, Books on Board, and iTunes.

http://archimedesclaw.authorsxpress.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

“Homa marries the sci-fi techno-thriller with philosophy and theology.”

—ForeWord Clarion

BOOK Maggie May

by Marvin Gray

M

Bronze

by B. B. Shepherd

W

arvin Gray’s past has returned to haunt him. Fifteen years ago, he had a love affair with a beautiful Playboy centerfold, Maggie May Esquivel. Now, Marvin must rescue her and their teenage son, Josh, from the Salvadoran criminal gang MS-13.

The investigation also forces him to confront demons from the Salvadoran Civil War, a life of alcoholism and failed relationships.

e all make assumptions every “ day … And things, very often, are not at all what they seem. As highschool freshman Allison adjusts to a new home and school, she finds two new loves: a beautiful boy and a golden horse.

www.MarvinGray.org Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Bangkok Books.

www.theglisterjournals.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and IndieBound.

Playing at Love

by Ophelia London

W

hen it’s glee vs. gridiron, can love level the playing field? Fifteen years ago, Jack broke Tess’s heart. Now, on opposing sides of a fierce budget cut at the high school where they both teach, the stakes have never been higher. Torn between what it takes to win and bring them together, they test boundaries and find love. http://ophelia-london.blogspot.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

“ … will likely keep readers looking for the next entry.”

—Booklist Online

Tropical Temptation, A Novel

by Susan LaDue

K

risten Maroney is living the good life in the tropics. She owns her own beach wear boutique, dates a hot casino manager, and watches TV with her Lab. But all that threatens to change when her friend Amelia’s husband starts to behave strangely. Kristen starts asking questions and that lands her and her boyfriend in the jungle near a band of ruthless men who have nothing to lose. www.susanladue.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Smashwords.com.

BOOK That Which Flows As One

By William M. Kaufman

E

xplore one family’s struggle to find love. Bette is only concerned with securing her own future and raising her social status. But her recently fatherless daughter, Sarath, stands in her way. Can Sarath escape her mother’s grasp and finally find happiness for herself? Discover what happens as one woman struggles to overcome her abusive past and experience true love and family.

www.williammkaufman.com Available at Amazon.com.

Skinny the Cat and the Magic of Kindness: The Cure for the Common Curmudgeon

by Donna Rawlins

C

The Humanity of Medicine: The Story of Mark E. Ellis, MD

by Lynn Hamilton Ellis

T

he true story of a young man, who in 1968 at age 18, defies the odds of a deadly cancer diagnosis, survives a brain operation and five years of intensive chemotherapy, and lives to become a beloved and visionary cancer physician. Take the journey, and experience his remarkable life, just as it evolved for him.

“Masterful. Poignant. An inspirational story told with warmth and humor.”

—Wickham’s Grant Ladies’ Book Club of Williamsburg, VA Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.co, and the iBookstore.

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Special Advertising Section For Authors

at lover, people lover, dog lover. It is about the kindness one can give in life. The story of a scrawny rescue cat who shares a secret that can change the world: how to love with unwavering persistence. A funny, captivating tale complete with heart-warming photographs. Learn how to practice a new verb—“to skinny.”

Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

http://skinnythecat.com/ FACEBOOK LINK Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, the iTunes Store, and eBookstore.Sony.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

BOOK Lost in Infinity

By Travis Besecker “...will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about your world.” ...

LOST IN INFINITY is a fictional psychological mystery hidden in the journal of a chronic insomniac with apeirophobia. Guided by his own splintered subconscious, follow the narrator as he slowly slips into madness searching for the meaning to life, existence, time and the universe beyond.

www.apocalypsecoming.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

TRI WORLDS It’s Time to Think as a Species

by Gil Mulley

t so mehat and

A in tive ons his

TRI WORLDS // GIL MULLEY

narited It’s are our

TRI WORLDS

S

pecies survival and planetary integrity can be assured if we It's Time to Think as a Species human beings begin to think as a species.

GIL MULLEY Ideals of nationalism, endless economic growth and divine salvation—current traits of American society—have dwindling relevance on a planet with finite resources. TRI WORLDS thinking argues for a new social order based on human sameness, sustainable development and natural system integrity and replenishment. www.redfeatherpublishing.com Available at Amazon.com.

A Happy Healthy You

by Mary Johanna McCurley, et al

G

uidance for women over 35 who are beginning physical and/or emotional transitions that can affect their happiness and balance for the rest of their lives.

Five professional women—two medical doctors, a psychologist, an exercise physiologist, and an attorney and certified life coach help empower women during the aging process, combat disease and improve overall health and well-being. www.ahappyhealthyyoubook.com Available at Amazon.com.

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Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK 15 Twitter Tips for Authors & Other Grownups

by Renee’ Groskreutz & Andi Reis

A

uthors, here’s a chuckle while you learn more about using Twitter for your marketing platform. This back-tobasics, step-by-step handbook and tutorial gives the digital newbie author, creative or small business owner both inspiration and preparation for marketing on Twitter, from the best twitter handle for you to tweet-length advice from other authors. www.ralphsdesignanddeli.com Available for Kindle on Amazon.com.

A Passion for Prying

by Nancy Mangano

H

igh heels are a must for sassy private investigator Natalie North. Her specialty? Busting adulterous partners.

And while no one can catch a cheating husband faster, Natalie is ready for a bigger challenge. When a murder-suicide takes place at a nearby diner, Natalie has a chance to prove herself. A Passion for Prying is a spicy read packed with witty humor and a touch of the risqué. www.nancymangano.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and major bookstores.

The Kingdom of AIDS

by Marie-Louise Abia

F

ather Baba received a few confessions from people suffering from AIDS. Bound to keep secret any confession, he had never betrayed his commitment.

But when the weight of the human conscience got the upper hand over his priestly obligations, hours before his death he broke the Seal of Confession, disclosing the secrets to a publisher who then made the confessions public under the title Welcome to the Kingdom of AIDS.

Éditions Dédicaces, www.dedicaces.ca Available at Abebooks.com, Smashwords.com, Biblio.com, and Lulu.com.

*

Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Crimes of Redemption

by Linda McDonald

A

The Immortal Von B.

by M. Scott Carter

A

psychological suspense debut: Albert Raeder is dead, but he wields power from the grave—thanks to the good-ole-boys he left behind. They’re going to see someone pays for his untimely demise. Sheriff Tommy Maynard has always been more babysitter than crime-solver. Until the Viet Nam vet-turned-sheriff realizes he and a grumpy recluse are all that’s keeping a fragile stranger from being railroaded into prison. $24.00 U.S. / ISBN: 978-1-937054-25-0

young adult novel: Josie Brunswick moves to Europe so her dad can head a secret genetics lab. Lonely and adrift, her only solace is her electric guitar—until an accident in her dad’s lab sends her on a mad adventure throughout Vienna and time.

Leaving Josie to wonder: could a girl from this century find love with a young composer from another? $18.95 U.S. / ISBN: 978-1-937054-30-4

www.theroadrunnerpress.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com

Naked Intolerances: Flynn’s Crossing Series Book Three

by Yvonne Kohano

W

hen Gabby Cooley-Burke’s great love dies, she guards her son Jeremy and a lifetime of romantic memories.

Rick Chagres is also protecting his troubled son Will, perhaps a little too much. When the boys clash in science class, their parents collide as well. Is love enough to protect them from the danger looming in their future? www.YvonneKohano.com.

Books available from your favorite ebook or paperback seller or at www.abbottpress.com.

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Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

The Association of Independent Authors (AiA) is a global not-for-profit membership organization representing, advancing, supporting and encouraging self-published (independent) authors. Our membership spans five continents, with directors based in the USA, Asia, Australia and South Africa.

The role of the AiA is to guide, educate, support, encourage and unite authors who have chosen to self-publish.

Our Body of Knowledge (BoK) is a comprehensive resource on all aspects of selfpublishing and running a small business—today’s authors must understand the business side of publishing (sales, marketing, promotion, legal and financial issues) and how to sell a book in a global marketplace.

Our vision is that independent publishing will be the preferred, first choice, for all authors.

Our mission is to create a culture of excellence, teamwork and professionalism in a community environment where sharing and collaboration benefits each individual member and independent authors as a whole.

Annual membership subscription (Associate, Member) US$50. Affiliate level is free. Come join us! (Mention promo code SHELF to receive an additional three months membership for the annual subscription of US$50.)

www.independent-authors.org

poetry

The Artist and Her Fish Fling the wide river of life right around the world.

Fling it round.

Fill it with coral and weed, Whales and whelks and beautiful fish, Fill it with mollusk and minnows and those pearly pink shells You can hear the sound of the sea in.

Spill it onto the land.

Spill it over, Swooning and singing with the voices of angels, Or the roar of a giant, Or the steady murmuring lisp of a baby falling asleep.

Fill it, Lord.

Be bountiful.

Crab. Lobster. Cockles. Flat fish.

Round fish. Jelly fish. Fish with square noses.

Sword fish. Dog fish. Cod fish And my beautiful yellow fish.

Let them swim in the wide river of life you have flung around the world.

From The Artist and Her Fish: A Collection of Faith Poetry by Gwen Grant, Gwen Grant Books 2013, www.gwengrant.co.uk. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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poetry

Among the Rocks the Garden We have certainly failed so far, yet we wake with our hands once again folded together into the girders of a nest, supports for a place to rest. I have never been good at living, but there are other things in the world in which to excel. What if all this is just a false summit? What if what I thought was my body, broken, can be a reservoir, a cradle, the foundation for a sturdier house?

From A Penance: Poems by CJ Evans, New Issues Poetry & Prose 2012, www.wmich.edu/newissues.

Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

UNBOUND

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Lummox Journal

“I

have, in this issue, tried to push the poet behind the poetry,” says RD Armstrong in the new iteration of the Lummox Journal, an indie poetry magazine that he launched in the nineties which has been on hiatus for several years. The new edition features essays, interviews, and reviews, and spotlights the works of more than 160 poets.

The late poet Todd Moore said of Lummox: “It’s got more life and more guts than any mag Human Game I know.” Worth checking out.

—Ben Minton riveting, true-life account of the hunt for the Gestapo gunmen who murdered the Lummox Journal, edited by “Great Escape” airmen at RD Armstrong, www.lummoxthe height of World War II. press.com.

Throughout this meticulously researched work of narrative nonfiction, author Simon Read renders in loving detail the herculean efforts of both the airmen made famous by The Great Escape and the investigators tasked with bringing their murderers to justice.

—Marc Schuster

A

Human Game by Simon Read, Berkley Caliber, penguingroup. com.

A Thousand Morons

T

ranslated from the Catalan by Peter Bush, this collection of short stories from Quim Monzó is a playfully literate set of tragicomedies exploring the absurdities of humanity. A son visits his cross-dresser father in a nursing home, a writer struggles to craft a short story, Monzó masterfully mines these small episodes for their depth and humor.

—Margaret Brown A Thousand Morons by Quim Monzó, translated by Peter Bush, Open Letter Books, www.openletterbooks.org.

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small press reviews The Artemis Effect

by Kasia James www.kasiajames.wordpress.com

I

n The Artemis Effect, author Kasia James offers a compelling tale of humanity’s quest for survival in the face of an ongoing and mysterious natural disaster. The narrative centers on three characters whose lives connect with each other in subtle yet significant ways despite the fact that they live on separate continents and are largely ignorant of each others’ existence. What unites them all — indeed, what unites everyone on Earth throughout the novel — is a growing awareness that society is on the verge of a complete breakdown as a result of natural forces beyond anyone’s comprehension or control: Men are inexplicably turning mindless and violent, pregnancy rates are skyrocketing, tides are rising, communication and power grids are collapsing, and the moon is gradually changing shape.

While the problems that James examines throughout her novel are global and systemic in nature, she renders the proceedings on a human scale by focusing on the lives of her characters. Of course, this is only appropriate, as one of the more prominent themes in The Artemis Effect is that of community and its relationship to technology. As all forms of social and mass media break down, humanity has no choice but to redefine community on smaller, interpersonal terms, if only to ensure the survival of the species.

The Artemis Effect is a tale of the apocalypse as seen through the eyes of a hopeful romantic, an enjoyable and poignant page-turner.

—Marc Schuster, www.smallpressreviews.wordpress.com Shelf Unbound Contributing Editor Marc Schuster is the author of The Grievers, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, Don DeLillo, Jean Baudrillard, and the Consumer Conundrum, and, with Tom Powers, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy: The Discerning Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who. He is the editor of Small Press Reviews, and his work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals ranging from Weird Tales to Reader’s Digest. When he’s not writing, Marc teaches writing and literature courses at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.

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a war…”

“There was always

The Last Death of Tev Chrisini Winner of the Shelf Unbound Writing Competition for Best Self-Published Book

“An exceptionally well-built world... the sheer depth was done brilliantly.”

—Fantasy Book Review UK “Jennifer Bresnick’s enchanting Tolkien-esque epic fantasy The Last Death of Tev Chrisini captivated our judges from page one and held us in thrall through its conclusion 467 pages later. We fell in love with the story and its characters and with Bresnick’s assured literary tale-spinning.”

—Margaret Brown, Shelf Unbound magazine

Available on

and

W W W. J EN N I FER B R E SN I CK .CO M UNBOUND

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SHELF UNBOUND’S COOL READS FOR KIDS.

New in 2013: Shelf Unbound’s Middle Shelf magazine Know any middle-schoolers who are avid readers?

This fall, we’re launching Shelf Unbound’s Middle Shelf—Cool Reads for Kids magazine. Like Shelf Unbound, Middle Shelf will feature the best of small press and indie reads, all directed to a middlereader audience. Like Shelf Unbound, it will include author interviews, reviews, excerpts, and photo essays. And like Shelf Unbound, subscriptions are free. To learn more and sign up for a free subscription, go to www. shelfmediagroup.com/ INFO TK.

J

ust when it seems there’s nothing new and different out there for middle readers, along comes S.S. Taylor with The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man’s Canyon. Her characters are brave young adventurers armed with a metal-legged parrot and a mysterious half of a map as they navigate a strange, unexplored steampunked version of our world. Ingenious and leaving me longing for a sequel, The Expeditioners is sure to have any explorer at heart hooked. Following is my interview with Taylor.

—Kelly Bergh 78

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013

Shelf Unbound: The Expeditioners takes place mainly in the canyons of Arizona. Did anything in particular about the state inspire you to make it the setting of the book?

S.S. Taylor: I’m fascinated by the desert, maybe because I live in its polar opposite—Vermont! When I was a teenager, my family took a trip to Arizona and hiked down into the Grand Canyon, to the Havasupai Reservation. It was an amazing experience and was definitely the seed of the idea for that part of the book.

Shelf: What was your favorite part of the story to write?

Taylor: I love creating characters, so I think building the characters and their relationships with each other is always my favorite part. But, of course, coming up with new adventures and new ways to put the characters in peril was really, really fun.

Shelf: Which character was the most fun to work with?

Taylor: I love the siblings, but I really like Sukey too. I like her spirit and her sense of adventure and I’m interested in how she differs from the West kids. She’s grown up in the world of Explorers like her mother and Alexander West, whereas Kit, Zander, and M.K. have been kept away from that world. This is a story about kids figuring out how to contribute, how to navigate the adult world.

Over the course of the series, besides the usual stuff of adolescence, all of the kids are going to find themselves exploring the conflict between their own beliefs and values and those of the authority figures in their lives.

Shelf: How did you come up with the idea to create an unexplored world?

Taylor: I came up with the idea for a story about kid explorers and loved the characters, but the more I worked on it, the more I kept coming up against the fact that there really aren’t many new places to explore. So I asked myself, “What if there were new places?” I started to imagine a series of events that could lead to the circumstances that exist in the book, earlier reliance on digital technology, the failure of that technology, the realization that digital maps were flawed, the necessity of finding new resources.

Shelf: Are there any plans for another adventure for The Expeditioners?

Taylor: I’m working on number 2 right now! I have a big story I want to tell about this world and about these characters.

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MYTH AMERICA

“

People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales.

”

— from American Gods by Neil Gaiman

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february/march JEFFREY ARNOLD is a former newspaper and CBC radio freelance writer. He blogs at www.jeffreyarnold.ca.

ELLEN F. BROWN is an award-winning freelance writer.

She is currently working on a novel.

GILLIAN CROSS is the Carnegie Medal–winning author of Wolf. She lives in England.

CJ EVANS is the managing editor of TWO LINES: World Writing in Translation and is a contributing editor for Tin House. He lives in San Francisco.

RONALD DE FEO has written reviews for The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The New Republic, National Review, and Commonweal. His debut novel was Calling Mr. King.

NANCY FRAZIER is a former researcher and writer for Newsweek magazine and is the author of The Penguin Concise Dictionary of Art History.

CHRISTINE LEE GENGARO, Ph.D, is associate professor in the department of music at Los Angeles City College.

GWEN GRANT’s children’s book Private – Keep Out! has been in print for 35 years.

JOEL MARK HARRIS is an award-nominated journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and producer. Harris wrote and produced the award-winning feature-length film Neutral Territory.

DEBORAH HICKS works in the Program in Education at Duke University and directs an educational program for girls in Appalachia.

contributors

KATHERINE ROY is an author and illustrator whose forthcoming books include Buried Beneath Us by Anthony Aveni (Roaring Brook 2013) and Shark: The Great Whites of the Farallon Islands (Roaring Brook 2014).

SAM SAVAGE is the bestselling author of Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, The Cry of the Sloth, and Glass.

BRANDON R. SCHRAND is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Idaho.

MARY L. TABOR is the author of The Woman Who Never Cooked, winner of Mid-List’s First Series Award and (Re) Making Love: A Memoir.

S.S. TAYLOR has a strong interest in books of all kinds, expeditions, old libraries, mysterious situations, longhidden secrets, missing explorers, and travel.

ROBB WALSH is the author of ten books and winner of three James Beard Awards.

JEAN ELLEN WHATLEY is an Emmy Award–winning journalist and author who has been published on Salon. com, More.com, and SheWrites.com.

JOHN WILEY JR. is the publisher and editor of The Scarlett Letter, a quarterly newsletter for Gone With the Wind fans and collectors.

Shelf Unbound is published bimonthly by Shelf Media Group LLC, 3322 Greenview Drive, Garland, TX 75044.

Copyright 2013 by Shelf Media Group LLC. Subscriptions are FREE, go to www.shelfmediagroup.com to subscribe.

NEIL PACKER is the illustrator of several classic books, including One Hundred Years of Solitude. He lives in London.

EILEEN RAMSAY established herself as one of the greatest yachting photographers of her time. Her heyday was between 1950 and 1970, when women were not often behind the lens.

KATHLEEN ROONEY is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, and the author, most recently, of the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs.

what to read next in independent publishing