HOME | BOOKS | SUBMISSIONS | NEWS & EVENTS | ABOUT US | SITE MAP
BOOKS | ORDERING INFORMATION | BROWSE BOOKS | FEATURED WEB PAGES |
| ISBN: | 0898232031 |
| Title: | Alone with the Owl |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2000 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 138 |
| Book Description: | "Alan Davis's voice transports and sings," writes Dorothy Allison in the New York Times Book Review. "I kept thinking that I wouldn't mind winding up as a character in one of his stories." In these pages you'll meet men and women who ask unanswerable questions: Who am I this time? Is there a place for me in the world? A minor league ballplayer protected by a mystical owl robs a convenience store; a woman gives away everything she owns, last but not least a gleaming bicycle; one man buys an aquarium as a way to bond with his stepson while another swims nude across a snake-infested bayou to save his marriage; a counselor at a state hospital for the criminally insane cures schizophrenia with ketchup. Such rituals and ceremonies unfold in a style that Booklist has called "fast and sharp and full of pain." Walker Percy has written that Davis "has an original talent, a feel for action, a sparse yet vivid style, a sharp satirical sense, a keen eye and ear for the follies of the age." Davis's first book, Rumors from the Lost World, was published by New Rivers Press in 1993. Kirkus Reviews wrote that it "moved easily between blue-collar types and Social Register summer people, New Age dancers and Old World immigrants, underground poets and Elvis freaks." Davis, who teaches and coordinates the MFA Program at Minnesota State University Moorhead, is the coeditor of American Fiction. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Davis,Alan -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231728 |
| Title: | American Fiction, Volume Eight |
| Price: | $19.95 |
| Year Published: | 1998 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 232 |
| Book Description: | The stories in this eighth volume of American Fiction, chosen from nearly a thousand submissions, are quirky, compelling, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.They dramatize, as guest judge Charles Baxter points out, "a moment when terror has become one of the standard household emotions of common life. Not Holocaust terror, historical and genocidal, but the soul-shocks and ordinary violence of daily existence." American Fiction, which Writer's Digest in 1998 chose as one of the top fifteen short story publications in the country, is the only annual anthology of previously unpublished fiction by emerging writers ("everyone not yet famous enough to enjoy the certainty of publication elsewhere," according to previous judge Tobias Wolff). The best new work by such writers appears in book form instead of in literary periodicals and competes for prizes awarded by the guest judge and for the increase in literary reputation that sometimes follows. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Davis,Alan -- |
| Editor(s): |
White,Michael Davis,Allan |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231729 |
| Title: | American Fiction, Volume Nine |
| Price: | $19.95 |
| Year Published: | 1997 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | |
| Book Description: | Twenty short stories by new writers, chosen by editors Alan Davis and Michael White. These stories were judged by Joyce Carol Oates, who chose four winners, and one honorable mention. Authors of the stories live in states and cities throughout the United States. Winning authors are: Elizabeth Graver of Lincoln, Massachusetts, who tied with Margo Rabb of Tucson, Arizona, for first place; Dulcie Leimback of New York City for second place; Nancy Reisman of Madison, Wisconsin, for third place; and an honorable mention to Jim Nichols of Thomaston, Maine. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): | Unknown Author |
| Editor(s): |
White,Michael Davis,Allan |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231647 |
| Title: | American Fiction, Volume Seven The Best in Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers |
| Price: | $18.95 |
| Year Published: | 1995 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 316 |
| Book Description: | Featuring twenty short stories selected by Alan Davis and Michael White, this collection represents the best of unpublished new fiction. The breadth and excellence of writing lives up to the other six volumes in the series, which is now part of the New Rivers Press publishing program. Tim O'Brien, nationally acclaimed author, picked the four prize-winning stories, and wrote the introduction. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Davis,Alan -- |
| Editor(s): |
White,Michael Davis,Allan |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231922 |
| Title: | American Fiction, Volume Ten The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers |
| Price: | $19.95 |
| Year Published: | 1999 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 304 |
| Book Description: | Twenty short stories chosen by editors Alan Davis and Michael White. Guest judges Robert Boswell and Antonya Nelson chose four winners and wrote the introduction. The first place story is Model Home, by Karen Halvorsen Schreck, second place is Born Lucky, by Sarah McElwain, and tied for third place are The World Dirty, Like a Heart, by Brock Clarke, and Boss Man, by Cathy Day. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Davis,Alan -- |
| Editor(s): |
White,Michael Davis,Allan |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 978-0-89823-239-4 |
| Title: | Bend with the Knees and Other Love Advice |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2008 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 115 |
| Book Description: | Interlocking fast-paced stories. |
| Excerpt: | You know I'm the only man in my family with ten fingers, right? |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Trade Paperback |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Drevlow,Benjamin -- Benjamin Drevlow grew up just off Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin, where he farmed, played basketball, and acquired various semiserious, non-life-threatening injuries. He and his ten fully intact and operable fingers currently live in Madison, Wisconsin, and teach at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231167 |
| Title: | Borrowed Voices |
| Price: | $7.95 |
| Year Published: | 1990 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 150 |
| Book Description: | Roger Sheffer's extensive background in music—particularly choral groups—figures everywhere in Borrowed Voices. Sheffers teaches every chord from the petty and mundane to the mystical and sublime in his stories. "The chorus of characters residing in Roger Sheffer's fictional midwestern town of White River Falls sing the familiar melodies of pain and love and devotion, or rivalry and triumph. . . .Sheffer's words continue to hum in your mind long after their final notes have been sung." Davida Kilgore, author of Last Summer |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Sheffer,Roger -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 978-0-89823-234-9 |
| Title: | Cars Go Fast |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2007 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 220 |
| Book Description: | "Written with descriptive simplicity and easy grace."-Joseph Caldwell Characters leave: They hunker into cars and head out of town, book flights and hit the skies, or leave by drink or drugs or acts of violence. But they're all going-loners by default, part Jack Kerouac, part James Dean, part Charles Bukowski. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Chattin,John -- John Chattin holds the B.A. in Journalism from Western Kentucky University and the M.F.A. in Creative Writing from The New School. His work has appeared in many literary journals including Bayou, Powhatan Review, and Bellevue Literary Review. Chattin is a human resources associate for The Vera Institute of Justice in New York City. |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898230411 |
| Title: | Casualties |
| Price: | $5 |
| Year Published: | 1982 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | |
| Book Description: | Casualties captures the pitch and rhythms of the Midwest, its discords and occasional harmonies. The characters are finely drawn, and while they are not the usual literary specimens, they resonate the daily battles of life, whether it is a lab technician mixing the right does for a terminally ill patient, or a young Oregon woman try hard to be a proper Muslim wife. Running through each story is the certainty that it is through each other that we are saved or damned. "Carlson. . . tells us that this brave new world is is not a killer. It is filled with opportunities for strength and courage; it offers the chance for lives to be lived with dignity, foregiveness, and humor. . ." Marie Vogl Gery, Great River Review |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Carlson,Katherine -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231965 |
| Title: | Dakota Incarnate A Collection of Short Stories |
| Price: | $15.95 |
| Year Published: | 1999 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 204 |
| Book Description: | The focus of this deftly written, remarkably diverse collection of short stories is South Dakota from the early 1900s to the present day. Bill McDonald tells of the hard work and determination that forged his beloved Dakota and those who settled it. McDonald uses the strength of his narrative gift to bring to life in vivid and sometimes heartbreaking detail the tragic results of a lonely young farmer’s search for a mail-order bride, the persecution of the Hutterites during World War II, the effects of an essay contest on a young boy in a one-room school during the depression, and the remarkable time travels of a man just back from attending the 1893 Chicago World Fair who meets his present-day grandson in an airport in 1993. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
McDonald,Bill -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231698 |
| Title: | Dance Hall at Spring Hill |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 1996 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 224 |
| Book Description: | Duke Klassen's stories recall a coming of age in rural Stearns County, Minnesota. The Church with its overwhelming influence on community affairs, and the dance hall with its "wide open" policies, form a dichotomy that Klassen explores, sometimes humorously and often with compassion, for people caught in the eddy formed by these two powerful and conflicting forces. Klassen is a fifth-generation American who portrays life in German-American small town with vivid details and memorable characters. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Klassen,Duke -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231876 |
| Title: | Dirty Shame Hotel and Other Stories |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 1998 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 160 |
| Book Description: | A collection of short fiction by Ron Block of Nebraska that focuses on quirky characters from the Midwest. The title story is loosely based on a man the author interviewed who ran "the most organized junk yard I have ever seen," and who had constructed an elaborate theory of the universe based on the principle of suction. Other stories are similarly whimsical and grim, and all of the stories in The Dirty Shame Hotel twine together outlandish imagination and lived experience. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Block,Ron -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0-89823-219-8 |
| Title: | Egg Lady and Other Neighbors, The |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2004 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 136 |
| Book Description: | "A poignant, truth-telling collection about what it means to grow up female in the rural Midwest where gender elevates or dooms a person. Readers will be cheering for these ingenious young women who survive the hard lessons and exact their revenges with a glee and courage that makes them irresistible!" Jonis Agee |
| Excerpt: | We called Marlene the egg lady, we had for years. Jim, the egg man from Johnson Egg Company, says she used to be a teacher before she married Harlan. But once she tied the knot, she took up the egg business. |
| Reviews: | "Tricia Currans-Sheehan has succeeded in illuminating the truth of a rural childhood .... it is a first collection worth reading and the harbinger of a new author worth watching." Dan O'Brien |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Trade Paperback |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Currans-Sheehan,Tricia -- Tricia Currans-Sheehan is a native of Emmetsburg, Iowa. The ninth of ten children, she grew up on a 280-acre farm and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of South Dakota. She teaches at Briar Cliff University, where she founded The Briar Cliff Review in 1988. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines. The River Road is a novel-in-stories, a sequel to The Egg Lady, that is also available from New Rivers Press. |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 089823154X |
| Title: | Falling in Love at the End of the World |
| Price: | $9.95 |
| Year Published: | 1994 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 160 |
| Book Description: | In this collection of twenty-one supurbly crafted short stories, Rick Christman sidesteps the tired stereotyping of American servicemen in Vietnam as degenerate perpetuators of savagery and immorality. Christman's objectivity, sense of place, and spare prose make Falling in Love a fine companion piece to the works of Tim O'Brien, Michael Herr, and Robert Mason. "In this fine book, Rich Christman carries me back to Vietnam as few writers can. With his tight, compact prose, each paragraph stripped to essentials, Christman offers vivid and memorable snapshots of that horrifying piece of history - the ghouls, the whores, the decadence, the gallows humor, the redeeming moments of human courage and human kindness. This is a book that makes me remember." Tim O'Brien, author of Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Christman,Rick -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231663 |
| Title: | Heathens |
| Price: | $21.95 |
| Year Published: | 1996 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 176 |
| Book Description: | David Haynes's third novel Heathens combines brilliant dialogue, ingenious characterization, and a probing of the social relationships of urban communities. This bright, fresh look at how families work in the 1990s is peppered with humor, and engaging plotlines. The story is filled with strong women who often resist the authority of institutions. The characters are quirky, self-reliant, revealing relationships between age groups in the setting of a neighborhood. "Irreverent, witty, and compassionate, Heathens is a laugh-out-loud operetta that sings of the joys and frustrations of middle class African-American life. David Haynes deftly blends American kitsch- K-mart, daytime television, a trip to Mount Rushmore - with a dazzling chorus of Black voices to give us a multicultural slice of American life that is irresistable. A wonderful, wise book from a talented new writer." Ron Rindo, author of Secrets Men Keep |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Haynes,David -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898230268 |
| Title: | Heron Dancer |
| Price: | $5 |
| Year Published: | 1981 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 155 |
| Book Description: | Solensten, a novelist, playwright, and poet, was winner in the novel competition of the Associated Writers Program (1983) for Good Thunder. Many of these stories reflect his small town Minnesota heritage, but like Faulkner, Weldy, and other so-called regionalists, he transcends his origins and establishes himself as a major voice in American fiction. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Solensten,John -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231027 |
| Title: | High Price of Everything |
| Price: | $7.95 |
| Year Published: | 1988 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 125 |
| Book Description: | Coskran focuses on the two places where she is most aware of her vision as the outsider: Georgia and East Africa. The High Price of Everything exemplifies why short stories are making a comeback strong characters, carefully crafted themes, and the opportunity for the reader to step out of his/her domestic environment. "[This book] is humane and convincing, and without the self-absorption that mars so much contemporary writing." John Haines "A stunning debut" Publishers Weekly |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Coskran,Kathleen -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898232090 |
| Title: | Hunger Bone: Rock and Roll Stories |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2001 |
| Trim Size: | |
| Pages | 197 |
| Book Description: | Short stories and short-short stories about traveling rock musicians that focus on the unseen, less-than-glamorous side of touring as a struggling rock band - the personal costs, the poverty, the hunger for fame, and the unlikely moments of redemption. These characters are slowly realizing that their dreams are slipping away, that age and hard living have worn them down, that their funky, rootless, rock'n'roll lives have not taken on the grandeur that they had envisioned. The truck breaks down, someone slips the drummer acid, the bass player forgets his ax, the guitar player runs out of ideas, but the clubs are full of dancers and fighters and smoke and booze and zippers and leather and stiletto heels. It's a frank, stark, raucous, raunchy, hilarious, and terribly sad book. Deb Marquart toured with several rock and heavy metal bands during the 1970s and 1980s. Since 1992 she has been the lead singer in a jazz-poetry performance band called the Bone People. They have released two CDs. From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly Marquart knows her characters and their world inside out, and musicians will find much to identify with in her stories.Marquart's prose is so spare, direct, and free of posturing that one wonders at first just what attraction rock music holds for her. As these twenty-one tales play out, it becomes apparent that she is not so much fascinated by the music as she is by the curious states of suspended animation and solitude her characters occupy offstage. It's important to note that Marquart doesn't write here about loud, garish stadium rock, crowds of thousands, or Jumbotron-size egos. Her characters are working-stiff musicians who play the clubs and biker bars of small-town America and nourish (or abandon) their dreams in crowded, rickety vans and reeking motel rooms. (Jan.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Marquart,Debra -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231450 |
| Title: | Jump Rope Queen |
| Price: | $9.95 |
| Year Published: | 1993 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 139 |
| Book Description: | Whether she's writing about the craze for Hawaiian shirts in Florida or teen-aged jump-rope rivalries, Karen Loeb puts you right there in the center of her stories. She is fresh, alive, and sensitive to both the showiness of her subjects and their nuances. Her stories are set in Chicago, Florida, and Wisconsin. A wonderful beginning to a promising career. "Loeb populates her fiction with interesting and engaging characters who force her narrators to reevaluate their relationships to language, to the self, and to the idea of community and connection." --Choice |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Loeb,Karen -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 8-89823-218-X |
| Title: | Landing Zones |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2003 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 113 |
| Book Description: | Landing Zones is a profound and funny take on growing up in a poignant world where men are told to fight in wars that make no sense and where some of them survive to suffer through postwar trauma. It's a humorous, ironic world where adolescents with hormones on fire race like whippets through a world of costumed adults who are too busy doing God's work to acknowledge children at play and teenagers in anguish. It's a world of touching stories about love's tender complications, where the awkwardness of courtship sometimes gives way to the consolation of finding someone who is real in a world that can too often seem surreal. Men thirty to fifty will love this book. Married women and daughters will want to give it as gifts. Military vets will buy it to remember and digest. Others, including Catholics and relatives of soldiers, will also want it. Readers will buy it to remember what it was like to fall in love, to reminisce about childhood, and to enjoy the camaraderie of men. It will also appeal, like the stories of Tim O'Brien or James Jones, to aficionados of the short story who have a passion for language, which, as Micus writes, is "all we ever leave behind." |
| Excerpt: | "It was a goddamn heart," Langton says. "No. A lung, maybe." "A heart. It had to be a heart," Langton says. "Or a kidney." "I'm telling you, Grabowski, it was a fucking heart." "You want it to be a heart, Langton, it was a heart." "I told you it was a heart." |
| Reviews: | "What it also comes down to is a profound understanding of - and a boundless sympathy for - human beings. The sense of intimacy beteween writer and reader here is exactly what Walt Whitman was referring to when he wrote, "I won't tell everyone, but I will tell you." When you finish this book you'll feel that you've lost some dear souls. And you will have." Terry Davis |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Trade Paperback |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): | Unknown Author |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231779 |
| Title: | Laundromat Blues |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 1997 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 200 |
| Book Description: | These stories are drawn from Solis's dual Polish-Chicano heritage. They show the despair of urban life, and poignantly portray love and death in the family. "Laundormat Blues. . . .reveals the turbulent adolescent years and the cruelty of urban streets. An yet there is tenderness in the stories. An arresting new voice in the great stream of Midwest literature."Rudolfo Anaya , author of Jalamanta |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Solis,Lupe -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231329 |
| Title: | Learning to Dance & Other Stories |
| Price: | $0 |
| Year Published: | 1992 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 173 |
| Book Description: | In this exceptional debut collection, Sharon Oard Warner draws on the Southern literary tradition of her past to bring together a group of determined women from a teenage girl given a baby on the street to a reclusive baker who uncover hidden strengths through "the kindness of strangers." Warner's women come from splintered, incomplete families, but they all share a drive toward wholeness. Like the strangers that figure so prominently in these stories, the collection has the exhilaration of something unexpected, but wholly wonderful. "Through the gentle accretion of sad facts and painful truths, these stories gather a radiance and emotional power that is deeply satisfying." Lucia Nevel, author of Star Game |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Warner,Oard -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231582 |
| Title: | Mal D'Afrique |
| Price: | $11.95 |
| Year Published: | 1995 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 120 |
| Book Description: | In this enchanting collection of thirteen stories, the author's imagination and deft prose carry the reader from war-torn Eastern Europe to a remote village in Africa into the mind of a South Seas shell diver. Although Cervenka's subjects range far beyond the Czechoslovakia of his youth, he displays, like Milan Kundera, a distinctly Eastern European sensibility and ironic worldview. "In his ability to concisely, and seemingly without effort, evoke the curious mix of deep delight and overpowering loss that is Cervenka's gift." Publishers Weekly |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Cervenka,Jarda -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898232120 |
| Title: | Mozart's Carriage |
| Price: | $13.95 |
| Year Published: | 2003 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 80 |
| Book Description: | In this vital collection, Daniel Bachhuber faces the terrors of his life - alcoholic parents, a stillborn child, clinical depression. "This is a brave book," Robert Bly writes. "There isn't much that he's afraid to look at." "Dandelions," the book's centerpiece, is a powerful meditation on the Holocaust that places his situation in perspective. He survives hospitalization and in the book's last section celebrates his family, his world, and poetry. Daniel Bachhuber, who was born in Milwaukee, now teaches at a Montessori school in St. Paul, Minnesota. His poetry has appeared in many places, including The Christian Science Monitor and The Atlantic Review. "Mozart's G Minor Symphony" won the Billie Muray Denny Poetry Prize. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Paper |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): | Unknown Author |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231930 |
| Title: | Music of the Inner Lakes |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 1999 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 160 |
| Book Description: | Set within music and choral singing, Sheffer's stories are filled with human frailty and gentle humor. Each story focuses, to one degree or another, on the elusiveness of perfection, the compromises that musicians must always make. "Music of the Inner Lakes is a tightly knit but beautifully modulated collection of stories about the loss and recovery of music, a metaphor for aging and remembrance, death and rebirth. When the hand cannot play, when the voice cracks, when the choir begins to disintegrate, that is the exact moment Mr. Sheffer begins his deft exploration of one life's ending, another's turning toward new commitments and love." -Eugene Garber, author of Metaphysical Tales and The Historian: Six Fantasies of the American Experience "The music here is the singing of the human spirit: most often a solitary voice, plaintive, urgent, heartbreaking-sometimes a little off-key, but no less compelling.... Occasionally, voices will blend into a perfect chord, even a perfect song, before the singers separate back into exile. 'I only want to sing beautiful music: says one. In this collection, Roger Sheffer does just that." -William Trowbridge, author of 0 Paradise |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Sheffer,Roger -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231760 |
| Title: | Natural Father |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 1997 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 200 |
| Book Description: | Robert Lacy's characters live in mobile homes and Marine Corps barracks. They work as cocktail waitresses and gas station attendants. Each is known to us intimately after reading these stories as if we had visited them at home. "The Natural Father is that good thing, a book which both sweetens and illuminates our lives."William Kittredge, author of Hole in the Sky |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Lacy,Robert -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898232155 |
| Title: | Nice Girls and Other Stories |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2003 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 144 |
| Book Description: | Nice Girls is a collection of interlinked stories about children, students, teachers, mothers, wives and daughters, set in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in Pittsburgh, Illinois and Minnesota and filled with the extraordinary circumstances that faced ordinary women in the 20th century. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Abartis,Cezarija -- Cezarija Abartis was born in Germany and came to the United States at five. She grew up in Pittsburgh, attended school at Duquesne and received a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University. She teaches at St. Cloud State University. Her work, which has been read on NPR, has been published in places as diverse as The Quarterly, Ladies Circles, Manoa and Twilight Zone magazine. |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898230403 |
| Title: | Night Sale |
| Price: | $5 |
| Year Published: | 1982 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 135 |
| Book Description: | This is Broderick's first book and consists of short stories he wrote over a fair number of years. Some of them, like the title story, are realistic and entirely belivable accounts of working ordinary jobs and trying to get ahead (as in a department store). Others, like The Chinook, deal with unsatisfactory relationships. Still others, like Caliph's Dream, can best be described as historical fantasy. What ties this whole collection together is Broderick's exquisite gift for narrative and irony, as in the last words of Caliph's Dream: Thus does Allah confirm His gift of free will, allowing men to delude themselves even in their dreams, and to fashion even from such fond self-deception the yoke and harness of their fate. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Broderick,Richard -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 089823123x |
| Title: | No Peace at Versailles and Other Stories |
| Price: | $7.95 |
| Year Published: | 1991 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 152 |
| Book Description: | The thirteen stories collected her take the reader around the globe, but their true setting is everyday life, its rewards and especially, its pains. "In her first collection of stories, Nina Barragan tells quiet stories in such diverse places as Spain and small town America, she focuses primarily on women who struggle to find room for themselves amid the unrelenting pressures of marriage and children." The New York Times Book Review |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Barragan,Nina -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 9780898232332 |
| Title: | Not a Matter of Love |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2006 |
| Trim Size: | 6 X 9 |
| Pages | 183 |
| Book Description: | |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | “Not a Matter of Love invites us into that still largely unexplored territory in which Hispanics and Anglos share their lives as lovers, students, drug dealers and users, spouses, parents, step-parents, and siblings. But, more important, these artful and surprising stories bring us a cast of diverse, powerfully drawn individuals as they struggle to find their own truth.” |
| Review Source: | Elizabeth Evans, author of Suicide’s Girlfriend |
| Cover Type: | Trade Paperback |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Alvarado,Beth -- Beth Alvarado's story collection, "Not a Matter of Love," won the New Rivers Press 2004 MVP competition and was published in fall 2006. Her story, "Just Family," appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of Ploughshares and a short prose piece, "Maurilio Miguel," is slated for publication in Cue. A University of Arizona lecturer, Alvarado has published fiction and creative non-fiction in spork, Northwest Review and Calyx.
|
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898232295 |
| Title: | Numerology & Other Stories |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2006 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 172 |
| Book Description: | “ Michener’s characters live with, and love, those whose lives they do not understand. The revelation of family secrets, the inexplicable lives of lovers and the difficulties of desire, are rendered is subtle stories filled with unexpected pleasures and ethical reckonings. The characters, in spite of their obliquities, journey to connect with one another, and the pleasure in reading these stories is the pleasure of sharing in the revelations the character gain along the way.”—Elizabeth Oness, author of Departures |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Trade Paperback |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Michener,Christian -- Christian Michener is a tenured Associate Professor of English at Saint Mary’s and has taught in the Department of English, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Lasallian Honors Program since joining the Saint Mary’s faculty in 1995. He has twice served as chair of the faculty, has chaired the English Department, and is currently the Associate Dean of General Education.
Michener earned his B.A. in Great Books from the University of Notre Dame in 1985 and later completed a dual Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Missouri in 1994. In addition to presenting talks on Irish and Irish-American Literature and publishing essays, short stories, and book reviews, Michener is also the author of two books, From Then Into Now: William Kennedy’s Albany Novels (1998) and the short story collection, Numerology (2006). |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231132 |
| Title: | Out Far, In Deep |
| Price: | $7.95 |
| Year Published: | 1990 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 111 |
| Book Description: | Born and brought up in New York City, Alvin Handelman has also lived in Providence, Rhode Island, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Vermont before settling in Northfield, Minnesota in 1975. Over the years, he has been employed as a librarian, case worker, bank clerk, carpenter, Vista Volunteer, day-care facilitator, woodworker, cameraman, senior editor for a business communications firm, and movie critic, a variety of occupations and interests often reflected in his stories. "In these strange, tender, often funny stories, Alvin Handelman performs the magic of a gifted and accomplished storyteller. It's all here characters with spirit, themes that reach across human history, dialogue that makes you smile in recognition, plots that do crazy zig-zags like life itself. This book of stores dazzled me." Tim O'Brien, author of The Nuclear Age |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Handelman,Alvin -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 089823204x |
| Title: | Pact: A Novel |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2000 |
| Trim Size: | |
| Pages | 180 |
| Book Description: | In the summer of 1948, young Mike Dougherty and Ricky Stedman become firm friends and begin a series of adventures in their working-class Minneapolis neighborhood. Their pleasurable pastimes are overshadowed, however, by harsh family realities that the boys are slow to reveal to each other. Readers of all ages will appreciate Walter Roers's sensitive and insightful handling of the boys' efforts to understand and defend themselves against the sometimes brutal weaknesses of the adults who control their lives. Although it is a novel, The Pact is possessed of the same authenticity, generosity, and power as Russell Baker's Growing Up, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. This is an unforgettable first book, essential and beautiful. Ken McCullough |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Roers,Walter J. -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898232139 |
| Title: | Paper Boat |
| Price: | $13.95 |
| Year Published: | 2003 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 72 |
| Book Description: | Graceful, generous, deeply felt poems about loss and love, especially the sudden and tragic death of a sister. Cullen Bailey Burns grew up in Michigan and attended Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Sonoro Review and other publications. A 1999 Minnesota State Arts Board fellow, she lives in Minneapolis and teaches at Century College. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Burns,Cullen Bailey -- Cullen Bailey Burns grew up in Michigan, attended Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Sonora Review, Hayden's Ferry Review and elsewhere. A 1999 Minnesota State Arts Board fellow, she lives in Minneapolis and teaches at Century College |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231566 |
| Title: | Peace Terrorist |
| Price: | $9.95 |
| Year Published: | 1994 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 120 |
| Book Description: | Each of these nine stories describes a character grappling with a specific injustice, such as Nan, a lesbian ridiculed and shamed by police after her arrest at a weapons protest. "Carol Masters is one of the most faithful justice and peace activists in Minnesota. In her public life she is a real peace terrorist. Her writing manifests astute observation and bare bones reality and it is an ode to the heart of the underdog who struggles relentlessly for dignity against great odds." Marv Davidov, director, Midwest Institute for Social Transformation |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Masters,Carol -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231248 |
| Title: | Primary Colors |
| Price: | $7.95 |
| Year Published: | 1991 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 135 |
| Book Description: | Barbara Croft's stories look at ordinary lives disrupted by extraordinary events: a fallen meteor, dinosaur bones emerging in a corn field, the birth of a two-headed calf. Her finely crafted depiction's of setting and character in this case, the unyielding landscape of the Midwest and its inhabitants would be sufficient to make Primary Colors an important debut, but Croft's ability to push her fiction and her readers to the emotional edge makes this collection nothing less than remarkable. "Barbara Croft's short stories have a comfortable, old-fashioned way of getting their business going: they sit you down right there, where you are, and take hold, and take you a good long stretch farther than you expected - the best of them delighting, surprising and even - ohclanky workd - instructing. Primary Colors is a nifty debut." Gary Gildner |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Croft,Barbara -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231981 |
| Title: | Record Player |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2000 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 140 |
| Book Description: | Moranville's prose is subtle and precise, quietly working its way into the reader's subconscious until we cannot help but love her characters, in spite of (and also because of) all their faults, as we would members of our own families. We find them at family funerals, in Paris chaperoning students, in a hotel bar at the beginning of an illicit tryst, and their stories move to simple yet powerful moments of insight. Moranville's special ability is to evoke the past, creating shared memories of the preceding seventy years that will resonate with many readers. "Moranville is an insightful chronicler of those small moments that provide the pivots for larger changes in life. There is nothing obvious about the stories in this wonderful debut collection; rather, their satisfaction lies in their subtlety, their realistic rendering of Midwestern emotional life, and their careful weighing of the loss and gain exacted by our most intimate relationships." -Osha Gray Davidson, author of Broken Heartland: The Rise of Arnerka's Rural Ghetto |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Moranville,Winifred -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231612 |
| Title: | Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers |
| Price: | $11.95 |
| Year Published: | 1995 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 120 |
| Book Description: | Each of these eight stories is, in some way, about human loyalty. Whether she's writing about a father and daughter in "Molly and Skip," about an extramarital affair in "The Job," or about a family trying to deal with the tragedy of a young man dying of AIDS in "First Born Son," Ann Grunke has an unfailing eye for the details that reveal the essence of character. Winner of the Minnesota Book Award for 1995 in the short fiction category. "Ann Lundberg Grunke brings the grace of insight and the fluid beauty of language not to mention the occasional eccentric knock-out punch to the bedrock experiences of ordinary life." Diane Lefer, author of The Circles I Move In |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Lundberg Grunke,Ann -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 978-089823-238-7 |
| Title: | River Road, The |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2008 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 207 |
| Book Description: | "A tender, unsentimental coming-of-age tale" (Jenna Blum) set in Iowa, "a lovingly detailed, compassionate look at lives that rise and fall with the erratic heartbeat of relationships in a rural community...." Jonis Agee |
| Excerpt: | He turned the pickup around in J.B. Bruning's field lane and we headed home. Everywhere I looked I saw plowed fields, dark and expectant, waiting to be planted. Things would start growing again-soon the fields would have life. They'd be fresh and green. Would that happen to me when I left the river road and my dad? |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Trade Paperback |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Currans-Sheehan,Tricia -- Tricia Currans-Sheehan is a native of Emmetsburg, Iowa. New Rivers Press published her first book, The Egg Lady and Other Neighbors, in 2004. Her work has been published in Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, CALYX, Connecticut Review, and many other journals. She teaches at Briar Cliff University and founded The Briar Cliff Review. |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898230454 |
| Title: | Rivers, Stories, Houses, Dreams |
| Price: | $4 |
| Year Published: | 1983 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 74 |
| Book Description: | Madelon Sprengnether is a naturalist of the body. At times her mind floats above her body, documenting its nuances of movement and feeling. Always, there is the sense of wonder - and curiosity. "For the past two days, I've been savoring Rivers, Stories, Houses, Dreams. The prose is direct, sensuous, fresh, rising and falling with the rhythms of real speech, of a real human being; it activates curiosity and memory at the same time. Its presence in the world is valuable." Emilie Buchwald, editor, Milkweed Chronicle |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Sprengnether,Madelon -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231426 |
| Title: | Rumors From the Lost World |
| Price: | $10.95 |
| Year Published: | 1993 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 125 |
| Book Description: | "A magical collection of stories." Tim O'Brien "His voice transports and sings." Dorothy Allison Moving easily between blue-collar types and Social Register summer people, New Age dancers and Old World immigrants, underground poets and Elvis freaks, newcomer Davis (coeditor with Michael C. White, of the American Fiction series) demonstrates an impressive range in this debut collection of 12 stories. The pieces fall roughly into two groups: Those dealing with problem relationships between spouses or lovers, and those in which characters work to recover the past. The relationship stories capture the edgy back-and-forth of couples in crisis, whether Bruce and Lydia in ``Incoming Rounds,'' Hugh and Deb in ``Raccoons,'' or Annie and Doug in ``Sidewalks White Like Bones,'' though their obsessions (Bruce's Vietnam thing, Annie's immersion in New Age culture) sometimes extrude awkwardly. Where Davis comes into his own is with his stories of death, disappearance and loss; here the survivors try to reconnect with the past. In the moving ``AWOL,'' Leon, a Chicago roofer, struggling to make sense of his son's desertion in the Philippines, courageously keeps on keeping on; Sidney, in ``Waiting for Ruth,'' stubbornly maintains his vigil for his drowned lover; teenage Diane, racked with pain over the death of big sister Melinda, escapes into fantasy in ``Growing Wings.'' Those are losing battles; the victories belong to the narrator of ``Shooting the Moon,'' who restores his dead grandfather, a feisty nonconformist, to the family pantheon (a tender portrait, clear as a bell), and the mother in ``Ramparts Street'' (the collection's standout), who celebrates, at her daughter's behest, the rout of two federal agents by her Italian immigrant parents in New Orleans in 1942. Here past and present are seamlessly conflated in a triumph of technique and sensibility. Davis's sure touch with parents and children reflects his greatest strength--an acute sense of what keeps us all afloat in the sea of time. -- Kirkus Reviews, Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Davis,Alan -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0-89823-224-4 |
| Title: | Second Language |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2005 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 251 |
| Book Description: | "The 'second language' of these beautifully crafted stories is desire; is an unrealized longing, a secret unearthed, a passion suppressed or - unexpectedly - yielded to. The situations of Ronna Wineberg's characters are diverse, but they circle one inescapable theme with flawless emotional accuracy: that few are fulfilled, and even fewer will live out their lives without at least trying, bravely, to make a break for it." Rosellen Brown |
| Excerpt: | After her husband died, Sonia Chernoff was left with a hamper of silver coins. A white wicker hamper filled halfway to the top, each coin a nugget of memory. Saul had collected them as a hobby. Years ago, the thick, gray glass ashtrays in tehir bedroom had overflowed with coins, and he'd dumped them into the hamper that stood in a corner of the bathroom. A hiding place, he'd said. They laid clothing to be washed on top. Over the years, the layers of silver grew. Sometimes nickel and copper coins were interspersed. Sonia finally purchased another hamper, but the craftsmanship was poor, the wicker thin and flimsy. "I'm not surprised," Saul had said. "People have no pride in anything anymore. Nothing new is meant to last." |
| Reviews: | "Reading the stories in Second Language is like entering a series of complete and absorbing worlds. I marvel at how much Ronna Wineberg knows about so many different areas of life and how deeply she imagines her characters. This is a beautifully written and deeply satisfying collection." Margot Livesay |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Trade Paperback |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Wineberg,Ronna -- Since 2000, Ronna Wineberg has been the fiction editor of the Bellevue Literary Review. Her work has been broadcast on National Public Radio and has been published in many literary journals. She has also been a public defender and had a private law practice. She was educated at the University of Michigan and the University of Denver College of Law. She was a 2004 Fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and has been the John Atherton Scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and has been awarded residencies to the Ragdale Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in New York with her husband and children. |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231639 |
| Title: | Secrets Men Keep |
| Price: | $11.95 |
| Year Published: | 1995 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 120 |
| Book Description: | Rindo presents his sad and eccentric characters in stories full of violence and infidelities with unmistakable compassion and even affection. As each new character tells his story, he is at once a person we've never met and the soul we've been afraid of all our lives. From the title story, a wild satire of the men's movement, to "The Glue Heron," in which we see a boy observing his father coping poorly with his wife's death, this collection is filled with sudden small surprises of plot and language. "Despite its title, the men in Mr. Rindo's book are not intentionally keeping secrets, nor are they at all unfeeling. Their emotions are simply beyond words."New York Times Book Review |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Rindo,Ron -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231833 |
| Title: | Self Storage |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 1997 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 144 |
| Book Description: | In this short story collection, Iowa writer Mary Helen Stefaniak explores life in the late twentieth century. She gives the reader a tour that includes the eccentric culture of a self-storage facility, letter from an elderly woman to the columnist Mike the Mechanic, and a family that must deal with the death of a neighbor's child. Stefaniak deftly handles the details of the many recognizable if surprising personalities of millennial America. "What a joy these stories are! Spun from the stuff of everyday life, they are carefully constructed, lovingly sewn, and touched here and there by the miraculous. Mary Helen Stefaniak knows her craft, and she is a wonderfully humane writer. These are transformative tales. Like the woman in 'The Dress from Bangladesh,' we slip into them, expecting the same old thing, and suddenly, we shiver all over, as if touched by 'an electric tingle.' The world around us is the same but we are changed, our awareness heightened, our empathy renewed." Sharon Oard Warner, author of Learning to Dance and Other Stories "Much like Bailey White but with more salt in her sauce, Mary Helen Stefaniak spins stories on the wheels of the laugh-out-loud neighborhoods in which we live. Read these stories to your friends and loved ones, to the cop on the corner or the regulars at the laundromat. You'll love Stefaniak's fiction." James Harris, owner, Prairie Lights Books, Iowa City, Iowa "Unlike so much new fiction today, these stories are not jagged little pills meant to evoke some dramatic literary response. Rather, these are sensitive, humane stories so artistically depicted that the reader senses an unfolding of everyday life, wondrous and sometimes quirky. The ideas developed are the special kernels of wisdom gathered through living, nuggets involving interesting characters with exquisite facets, brought to awareness to examine and enjoy for truth, beauty, strength, and understanding. . . . Add this volume to your collection. Read these stories out loud. They are magic. Each will tingle and inform you in unexpected and joyous ways." Iowa Source |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Stefaniak,Mary Helen -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 978-0-89823-235-6 |
| Title: | Signaling for Rescue |
| Price: | $14.95 |
| Year Published: | 2007 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 180 |
| Book Description: | These stories dramatize the harrowing path from fear or abuse to hope and redemption. Whether mourning miscarried children while caring for a pregnant sister, surviving childhood sexual abuse in the Wisconsin woods, traveling in Italy after the death of a sister, or dealing with a mother's death by torturing a father's new girlfriend, characters confront the strangeness lurking beneath familiar domestic situations. |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | "Intelligent, even brilliant, but never merely cerebral, these stories pulse with life. If you have ever wondered how life would appear without the dodges and filters we bring to our interactions, if you have ever yearned for an understanding broad and deep enough to bless and celebrate people's misaimed, tangled, confused yet determined attempts to love, then read these vivid, luminous, heartbreaking stories." |
| Review Source: | Richard Hoffman, Half the House |
| Cover Type: | Trade Paperback |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Herrmann,Marianne -- Marianne Herrmann holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MA in English/creative writing from the University of Minnesota. She studied art history at the Florence, Italy, campus of the University of Michigan. This is her first book. |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231140 |
| Title: | Suburban Metaphysics |
| Price: | $11.95 |
| Year Published: | 1990 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 98 |
| Book Description: | Ron Rindo is out to find wonder in the oddest places, and study it with a clear and steady eye. The metaphysics of suburbia is one of possibility rather than despair, and of transcendence rather than mediocrity and limitations. "Ronald Rindo writes with intelligence and sensitivity about suburban life and the emotional politics between generations. Like Cheever, he has a highly developed understanding of longing, of desires without any object. This is a clear and honest book, and it is well worth reading." Charles Baxter, winner of the 1988 National Book Award |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Rindo,Ron -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231558 |
| Title: | Thin Ice and Other Risks |
| Price: | $9.95 |
| Year Published: | 1994 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 160 |
| Book Description: | none |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Eller,Gary -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898230934 |
| Title: | Villy Sadness |
| Price: | $7.95 |
| Year Published: | 1987 |
| Trim Size: | NA |
| Pages | |
| Book Description: | Villy Sadness is a novella in the best traditional sense of the word--strong plot-line, well-developed characters (Father/Daughter/Son-in-Law) in serious conflict with one another centering on the collision between traditional values (Norwegian-American) and contemporary ones. "Rodney Nelson has captured a vital piece of America in this thoughtful and introspective novel. It is a part of our recent history that some people have tried to forget and others have not known about. And it is a refreshing antidote to the multitude of mindless novels currently occupying shelf space in our bookstores." John Milton |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Nelson,Rodney -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898230853 |
| Title: | Wind |
| Price: | $7.95 |
| Year Published: | 1987 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 128 |
| Book Description: | In an ambitious novella, Patricia Barone explores the complex relationship between a young woman and her therapist. "Patricia Barone is both poet and artist, and not surprisingly her first novella is infused with the compact beauty, strong imagery and symbolic layering of a painting or poem. Each [character] works for a deeper understanding of the past so that when they finally break through, . . . the reader feels the power of that freedom." The New York Times Book Review |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Barone,Patricia -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu
| ISBN: | 0898231396 |
| Title: | Wounded and Other Stories |
| Price: | $9.95 |
| Year Published: | 1992 |
| Trim Size: | 6x9 |
| Pages | 152 |
| Book Description: | In this first collection by a promising new writer, ten stories (two of them novellas) encompass the heartbreaking failure of love between fathers and sons as well as, finally, the possibilities of reforging the bond. The stories take place in England, Switzerland, India, and Minneapolis, spanning 40 years since the dissolution of the British Raj and the rise of the U nited States as new empire, but they are all bound by their creator's bold vision. Starkly realistic, not always kind, yet tenderly told, the stories in this remarkable collection will not be forgotten. "Once again, New Rivers Press has taken the risk of publishing a unique and innovative work of fiction. Ian Graham Leask's The Wounded is a dense, complex, and richly rewarding collection of stories, always engaging, always challenging both the intelligence and the moral sensibilities of the careful reader. It is not an 'easy' book; it is a good book." Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried |
| Excerpt: | |
| Reviews: | |
| Review Source: | |
| Cover Type: | Cloth |
| Subject: | Fiction |
| Author(s): |
Leask,Ian -- |
| Editor(s): | Unknown Editor |
Return to Search Menu