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Praise for Michael Mirolla:

"Intriguing, passionate, sad, hilarious. Mirolla is a master storyteller. . . . Berlin will make you laugh, cry, and cringe."—Toronto Sun

"An ambitious novel concerned with the nature of identity, the weight of history, the significance of catastrophe, and the legacies of fascism and communism."—Quill & Quire

"Mirolla . . . is a teller of tales that only the tautest of prose could relate with cohesion and beauty. This book will thrill the mind."—CrimeSpree

"Mirolla's book excels."—Rain Taxi

"The Facility is a fascinating, thought-provoking novel. If you like quirky, mind-bending books, this one is for you!"—Geekscribe

"Mixes theology, cloning, and Beckettlike absurdist alienation. . . . Parallels the division between mind and body, between technology and nature, and between what we can do and what we should do."—Publishers Weekly

The Giulio Metaphysics III is a collection of linked tales on the fluidity of identity and the power of the word. A character named Giulio frees himself from his creator in order to write his own story, only to find himself lost and confused, unable at times to recall his own name. He wanders through landscapes both familiar and alien, struggling to return home.

Michael Mirolla's publications include a novella, The Ballad of Martin B.; two novels: Berlin (Bressani Literary Prize winner) and The Facility, which features a string of cloned Mussolinis; two story collections: The Formal Logic of Emotion and Hothouse Loves & Other Tales; and a collection of poetry, Light and Time. He is publisher and editor-in-chief of Guernica Editions in Toronto, Ontario.

"In a world where the media relentlessly enflames fear and hatred, here is a quiet voice espousing the triumph of love and peace." —Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"This book shows the many similarities between Buddhism and Christianity, such as the practices of compassion, love, contemplation, and tolerance." —The Dalai Lama

"This may be exactly the way it happened. A tour de force." —Tom O'Horgan, director of Jesus Christ Superstar

"May this book bring a lot of benefit to people who read it." —Thich Nhat Hanh, Love in Action

"A book that reminds us again and again of Jesus' gospel of love." —Saul Bellow

2,000 years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher was condemned to crucifixion. A man named Simon, from Cyrene, was compelled to help Jesus carry the heavy cross. What did he and Jesus talk about? Eager to learn more about this "rabbi," Simon returned to Jerusalem the next day. What he learned changed his life, and gave his descendants an incredible secret.

John Smelcer is the author of over fifty books, many translated and published worldwide. With Russian Orthodox Archbishop Benjamin, John contributed to the revised map of global Christianity in the tenth edition of Living Religions (Mary Pat Fisher, Ed.), and with the Dalai Lama, he coauthored a poem on compassion. Dr. Smelcer's education includes postdoctoral studies at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard, where he studied Buddhism, Islam and Sufism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity, including the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

"Precise, moving writing—a powerful and compelling collection."—Joseph Hurka, author of Fields of Light

"The unadorned sentences often reach a conclusion whose truth makes you catch your breath. This unpretentious book is the work of a master."—Edith Pearlman, National Book Award finalist

"One of the most compelling stories published [by the Yale Review]. . . . A thoughtful, reflective, sensitive, and graceful work."—Kai Erikson, former editor, The Yale Review

These are stories of unexpected encounters far from home, told with a vivid sense of place. A white man with more wives than money becomes Africa's least-competent thief, two Americans contemplate love's costs and possibilities in Mexico's mountains, a seasick missionary bumps into God on the equator. George Rosen's characters seek, and sometimes find, a reality in which "everywhere, there is something remarkable."

An excerpt from The Kitchen Man

Everyone else I know accepts temporary malaise, the blues, as an ordinary human infirmity like the flu and sees nothing wrong with a few lackluster days of self-pampering and doughy lying about. But my own chosen love, my Cynthia, the caramel center of my bittersweet life, views depression as indistinguishable from masturbation and weight lifting: a waste of limited male energy.

I admit it. The tides of my disposition fluctuate with my luck at the mail box. Following this morning's letter of rejection I returned to the house with the glazed, magnetized eyes of the children of the damned.

"Uh oh," was all Cynthia said.

"Maybe it's a sign. Maybe I should give up playwriting. Finally admit it. No, I do not have any talent. It's time I grew up, accepted the fact that some people have it and some people never will."

She waited for me to finish. It is no secret that in her women's group I am known as Uncle Vanya.

"Maybe I should just give up and find something I'm good at."

"How about pottery? Or the guitar," she said. "Definitely. The guitar. And give yourself a solid month. Then if the Rolling Stones don't ask you to join them, take up, let's see, sand painting." According to Cynthia you don't pout about rejections

"Neuroscientist and author Graziano has crafted a compelling fantasy based on a semi-plausible “what if.” Imaginative, intelligent narrative…Twin ideas of forgiveness and mercy twist through this strange, moving, patiently wrought novel, making for a trippy but charming read.”–Publishers Weekly

“An hilarious, dark, brittle take on post-modern medicine, love triangles, the dense emptiness of contemporary life, and the power of contemplative self-discovery. Part magic realism, part science fiction, part theater of the absurd, and part over-the-top, unrepentant spoof, this novel packs more into its few short pages than do most epic trilogies. Graziano has fabricated the rare kind of tale that the reader can honestly say ends much too quickly. Perfectly woven, self-enclosed, multifaceted . . . Kosinski’s Being There sprinkled with a strong dose of Frankenstein . . . the kind of simplicity that speaks volumes.”—Michael Mirolla, author of The Formal Logic of Emotion

“An amalgam of fairy tale, satire, science fiction, medical thriller, and soap opera. . . . It is difficult to fathom that a novel so brief can be so epic in scope. Inventive and deftly crafted, The Love Song of Monkey is a tale no reader will soon forget.”—Eric Linder, Yellow Umbrella Books, Chatham, Massachusetts

In a surreal exile on the floor of the Atlantic, a young man faces his own death and his wife’s infidelity. The Love Song of Monkey is a meditation on the simple, inexplicable, and lasting power of love, cast in the metaphor of a journey to the depths of the ocean floor. Precise and beautifully crafted, this modern fable is rich with humor and deep thought.

Michael S. A. Graziano, professor of neuroscience at Princeton University, is the author of the novella Hiding Places (New England Review), The Seclusion Zone (2007 fi nalist in the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition), and The Intelligent Movement Machine (2008, Oxford University Press).

Elizabeth McKim (described in Poetry Flash as "powerfully womanly . . . yet devilish, daring") is a pioneer performance poet. In her bawdy and intimate fifth collection, she looks back—and forward—as she ages, in poems connected by The Red Thread, a bright motif in which all is interwoven and always beats to the rhythm of the human heart.

The poems in The Red Thread wind their way insistently through time and love and the hushed confusion of family secrets; between beloved sisters, daughter and granddaughter, through music, weddings, the blessing of carnal knowledge and across borders and checkpoints: India and the Middle East, where love letters float in the wind in which the innocent body is assaulted and a lover dies in a woman’s arms. Knitting together the heart, mind and body of one of our keenest and most tender observers, The Red Thread is a work of uncommon power.

Elizabeth McKim is a poet whose roots are in the oral tradition of song, story and chant. She performs and teaches in collaboration with artists, musicians and expressive therapists in the U.S. and internationally. Known for four previous books of poetry: Burning Through, Body India, Family Salt and Boat of the Dream, she has published in some of the nation’s most prestigious magazines, including Ploughshares, River Styx, Poetry, Painted Bride, Drumvoices and Epoch. She has been a visiting poet in hundreds of schools and colleges, and has been the Artist-in-Residence for six years at the European Graduate School for Expressive Arts Therapy in Switzerland. She is the co-author of Beyond Words: Writing Poems with Children, a pioneering text which has been in print for more than two decades. She is a member of the National Faculty of Lesley University in the Department of Creative Arts in Learning and lives in greater Boston, Massachusetts.

"Blauner never shies away from the grotesque, or the beautiful. . . . Courageous and innovative and mesmerizing, Frankenstein for a new age." — Helen Phillips, The Beautiful Bureaucrat

"A statement about the nature of evil and its inevitability, even necessity, that reveals the tragic essence of [Blauner's] vision and her adroitness with metaphor." — Jerome Gold, The Moral Life of Soldiers

"If Solace was like its protagonist—built from others' body parts—it might draw its parts from Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and, naturally, Frankenstein. In the end, Solace is its own weird and wonderful creation, the story of the fifth version of a daughter who, despite being haunted by lives she never led . . . simply wants to be herself." — Mark Brazaitis, The Incurables

Created by a grieving father, Mara F. is haunted by previous Maras. One day she escapes into the world. The Solace of Monsters contrasts the creation of life with its ending. How does an artificial creature discover life? What do her adventures tell us about "natural" life and our own attempts to survive—and find solace—in the world?

Laurie Blauner is the author of three novels and seven books of poetry. She received a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship and Seattle Arts Commission, King County Arts Commission, 4Culture, and Artist Trust grants and awards. She was a resident at Centrum in Washington State and was in the Jack Straw Writers Program in 2007. Her work has appeared in many literary journals.

"In the Somme Valley a British soldier teaches his fellows to hide cigarette coals inside their mouths. Half a world away, a war-ruined photographer drinks in a bar beneath a Colorado butchery, blood dripping from the floorboards into ashtrays. Gutierrez writes with a metaphorical gift and fine hand of an age of war and upheaval where anarchists, coal barons, Pinkertons, corrupt police, broken idealists, and broken families fight to claim history's muddied field. . . . The Trench Angel announces a great new talent set to shine for a long time."—Alexander Parsons, Leaving Disneyland

"Breathes new, vivid life into the old wild west."—Mat Johnson, Pym

"Gutierrez's splendid debut bypasses the archives, whisking us straightaway into the seedy saloons, the twisting back alleys, and the trenches. . . . Like Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, this potent, lyrical novel unspools beyond its own time and lands squarely, unforgettably in our own."—Tim Horvath, Understories

Colorado, 1919. Photographer Neal Stephens, home from the War, is blackmailed by the sheriff over his secret marriage to a black woman in France. When the sheriff is murdered, Neal's investigation calls up memories of the trenches and his search for his dead wife, as he untangles the connections among the murder, the coalminers' strike, and his mysterious anarchist father.

Michael Gutierrez, MFA (fiction) and MA (history), teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill, and has published in many literary journals. The Trench Angel was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

Praise for Mary Malloy’s work:

“A tour de force—fascinating, highly readable, and meticulously researched.”—Nathaniel Philbrick

“Meticulously researched and engagingly written.”—Seattle Times

“In the tradition of Byatt’s Possession, Malloy’s debut novel is a complex and masterfully woven tale that will keep readers up far into the night.”—Caroline Preston, author of Jackie by Josie and Gatsby’s Girl

Historian Lizzie Manning didn’t set out to become a sleuth, and she had no intention of becoming personally involved in a medieval mystery. Her expertise lay in eighteenth-century maritime voyages, and her assignment was to find a Tlingit Indian corpse robbed from its grave two hundred years ago during Captain Cook’s Pacific voyage. First accident, then compulsion, pull her deeper into the past, through thirty generations of one British family. Lizzie’s sources aren’t fingerprints and firearms, but documents, artifacts, paintings, architecture, and even the landscape—though modern forensic science helps clarify what happened to a few ancient corpses. Lizzie’s work takes on personal meaning as she is drawn into her own family’s history of insanity and a search for a Crusader’s disembodied heart.

As with Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody and Amanda Cross’ Kate Fansler, Mary Malloy creates a heroine who is a respected scholar in her field, and who draws on her expertise to solve the mysteries that come her way.

Mary Malloy, PhD, is the author of four maritime history books. She is a professor of maritime history at Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and of museum studies at Harvard University.

"Remarkable. Thrillingly well-crafted. A brilliant novel."—Robert Olen Butler

Lucy Lehman has a secret. Everybody loves her eccentric family but nobody knows what's really going on. Her mother is a respected dance therapist, able to calm the most incorrigible delinquents in the Bronx. Her father, just returned from WW2, is a working class hero. On a good night they'll eat snack food for dinner, do the dishes in the tub while the kids are taking a bath and sing old labor songs. But on a bad night, when dad comes home in one of his dark moods and mom retreats to her bed, surrounded by the empty bottles of pills she's charmed out of neighborhood pharmacists, the insults fly along with the furniture.

Told with wit, understanding, and remarkable pluck, The War at Home is a warts-and-all autobiographical novel in the tradition of The Liar's Club, in which an inseparable brother and sister thrive in spite of the crazy household created by their parents and learn to raise themselves to survive.

The War At Home evokes the more innocent world of New York City in the 1950's, where lonely teenagers can find a safe haven in the Botanical Gardens and the Bronx River speaks of freedom as surely to two Jewish run-aways as to Huckleberry Finn.

"This is a profoundly moving and intelligent evocation of the magnificent terrors of family life, the ones that bind us to childhood forever: beautifully written, deeply felt."—Vivian Gornick

Nora Eisenberg is a Professor of English at the City University of New York. Her work has appeared in the The Partisan Review, The Village Voice Literary Supplement, and Tikkun. She is the co-author of four popular books on writing, most recently The American Values Reader (Allyn & Bacon, 2001). She lives in Manhattan.

Praise for Mary Malloy's The Wandering Heart:

"An impressive fiction debut. . . . Malloy mixes history and fantasy with flair and delivers a wonderfully satisfying puzzler."—Publishers Weekly

"Mystery a la gothic. . . . Historian Malloy does her research proud, inserting humanity into the too-often dry history some of us suffered through in school."—Mystery Scene

"Malloy's use of medieval tales, the Knights Templar history, ancient artifacts, and naval history deftly guides the reader deeper into the character and her motivations. . . . This novel itself reads like a seafaring voyage—full of swift turns, unknown frontiers, and the desire to answer the big questions we all ask ourselves."—ForeWord

"Malloy provides a terrific tense thriller."—Midwest Book Review

Professor Lizzie Manning is creating a centennial exhibition for her college's one hundredth anniversary. Discovering that the founder's daughter married an Italian prince with a family collection dating from the Renaissance, she travels to Bologna, where she finds ancient alligators, old master paintings, and unicorn tusks, among other rarities. But it is the unexpected mummified occupant of a sarcophagus that begs the most attention, and draws her into a mystery that spans ancient Egypt and German-occupied Italy of the 1940s.

Mary Malloy is the author of The Wandering Heart and Paridise Walk, the first two Lizzie Manning Mysteries, and four maritime history books, including the award-winning Devil on the Deep Blue Sea. She has a PhD from Brown University and teaches maritime history at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and museum studies at Harvard University.

"When Louis was home in Queens, neighborhood kids would gather around as he brought them into jazz. His music still vibrantly lives around the world, and his spirit of humaneness lives in Travels with Louis by Mick Carlon, teacher of jazz to the young of all ages."—Nat Hentoff

"Thanks to his friendship with the great Louis Armstrong, twelve-year old Fred sees his world expand from ice cream and baseball in Queens to jazz at the Village Vanguard, a civil rights sit-in in Nashville, and ecstatic concerts in London and Paris. A wonderful story, which rings true on many levels."—Michael Cogswell, director, Louis Armstrong House Museum

"Carlon is driven by a love divided evenly between the subject and the act of writing itself."—Brian Morton, author of The Penguin Guide to Jazz

Praise for Mick Carlon's Riding on Duke's Train:

"In schools where students are lucky enough to experience classroom jazz studies, this title, combining rich musical history and a 'you are there' approach, is a natural."—Kirkus Reviews

"Enthralling. . . . An adventure story with a smart, historical framework."—ForeWord, Recommended Books for Kids

"A ripping good yarn."—Brian Morton

Queens, 1959. Twelve-year-old Fred loves reading, baseball, and playing trumpet with his neighbor, Louis Armstrong. Fred accompanies Louis to Nashville, where he encounters a Civil Rights lunch counter strike, and to London and Paris. Characters include Langston Hughes, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington. Says jazz photographer Jack Bradley, "Reading this book is like visiting my friend again. This is the way he was, folks."

Zany, over-the-top and sexy, while achingly poignant and real, Waiting for Elvis is the bitingly funny follow-up to Toni Graham’s award winning collection The Daiquiri Girls. In 11 darkly comic, interconnected stories that read as seamlessly as a novel, Graham exposes the hilarious side of loneliness and introduces Jane, the most beguiling single woman since Bridget Jones.

Nearing 50, Jane is a San Francisco psychotherapist-turned-dog walker, a wild woman in an ever-changing body. She hasn’t had a lover since Lars, the unfaithful, hedonistic love of her life, was decapitated in a car accident after a New Year’s Eve quarrel. But grief be damned! With equal parts alcohol and attitude, Jane lurches after all life has to offer—ever reminded that meeting the right man is as likely as a proposal from a dead Elvis.

“Remarkable . . . Graham takes characters who could easily become dreary stereotypes—and fleshes them out beautifully. Graham doesn’t wallow in these women’s vulnerability, but she doesn’t apologize for it either. She uses their loneliness and confusion as backdrops for the action, not as personality traits. And her prose is entertaining without being forced: Graham allows a good deal of brainy good humor to flow naturally.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Toni Graham’s stories are as intimate, intelligent and intensely ‘feminine’ as those of Jane Bowles or Jean Rhys. Her work is full of heart, smarts, honesty and a wickedness that is uniquely her own. Classy stuff from a very cool writer.”—Molly Giles

Toni Graham is a native of San Francisco, currently an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University. Her first book, The Daiquiri Girls (University of Massachusetts) was the winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction. Among many magazines, her stories have appeared in Other Voices, Writers Forum and Playgirl.

As the anti-Vietnam War movement drew to a close, a twenty-six-year-old unknown playwright began an affair with a glamorous older woman, a feminist activist and acclaimed poet/novelist at the height of her career. What she saw in a neurotic, sexually naïve, poorly educated but very sweet guy was apparent to no one, especially him. Using a wildly self-skewering but oddly sympathetic narrative voice that fulfills The New York Times' assessment of his "special gift for heartwarming comedy," Ira Wood re-imagines his early years with Marge Piercy in a series of chronologically linked essays, never failing to raise the question that few have failed to ask: You're married to Her?

With the brazen candor of Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and the wicked lunacy of David Sedaris, Wood tells tales of his first true love, who he told his parents were dead; his disastrous affair with a promiscuous single mother, while he was involved with Piercy; his childhood dependence on speed; and running for public office on a lark—and winning—only to find himself responsible for the government of a small town. Thirty years later he's still married to Her, confident enough to share, and laugh at, what men do when their behavior slips to the level of their self-esteem.

Ira Wood is the author of two novels and the co-author, with Marge Piercy, of two highly acclaimed books, a novel and a writing text. His talk show The Lowdown streams on WOMR-FM, a Pacifica network affiliate.