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"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.

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.

"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."

Quick, composed and physically dominant – Virgil van Dijk is the defender who has it all. But from washing dishes while he tried to secure his first professional contract to facing rejection and serious illness, it didn't always seem as if Virgil was going to make it to the top. 

This is the inspiring story of how a boy from Breda used his determination and self-belief to become one of the greatest defenders in the world. 

This biography is one of the new titles in Leapfrog's Tales from the Pitch series. These fast-moving reads offer a fresh take on the familiar football biography format. 

• Each book focuses on one up-and-coming football superstar, often players who are still to reach the summit of their career. 
  
• The players are from all walks of life and have faced failure, injury and rejection, making these moving and inspirational stories. 
  
• The books are brimming with football banter that will have the knowing fans smiling. 
  
• And each players story is littered with football tricks and tips, so readers can learn the arts of the glorious game. 
  

At only 120 pages long, Tales from the Pitch are easy to read and very fast-paced reads. So meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

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.

Desmond Morris was born in 1928. Educated at Birmingham and Oxford universities, he became the Curator of Mammals at London Zoo in 1959, a post he held for eight years.

In 1967 he published The Naked Ape which has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and has changed the way we view our own species forever.

An accomplished artist, TV presenter, film maker and writer, Desmond Morris's books have been published in over thirty-six countries.

"An insightful and beautifully rendered love-story about two rarely portrayed characters I hope we see more of."
Blair Fell, author of novels The Sign For Home  & upcoming Disco Witches of Fire Island

WHAT I FORGOT TO TELL YOU is an engrossing coming-of-age love story, sans any sugar-coating, about two neurodivergent young people dealing with the often unjust, ableist world and their right and ability to find love and joy. 

Insightful, touching, gut-wrenching, original and important. A book which gives voice to characters we rarely ever hear from in fiction. A story that is a resource to open our minds to other ways of experiencing the world and everyone's right to experience love and commitment.

Winner of the Pushcart Prize and the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize

"Molly Giles’ stories have always been among my favorites since I first read her work thirty-seven years ago. This collection is her best ever. What an irreverent, original voice! I found myself gasping in shock and laughter, feeling at the end of each tale that I had garnered strange wisdom on the human heart and its unerring sense for finding trouble."--Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

The speakers in Molly Giles’s Wife With Knife offer their truths with surprising starkness: “[T]he actual heart looks more like a tongue than a valentine” states the grief-flayed aunt of “Agate Beach,” while the careless driver of “Accident” thinks “If I rear-ended anyone in California, I might be sued or shot but I would not be prayed upon.” Many of the stories are not traditional narratives but glimpses of the trouble or healing that lies ahead: teens refusing to heed traffic, lovers staring down death and betrayal and closure. Like a street magician’s trick, Wife With Knife holds out each everyday tragedy or quiet triumph only to replace it seamlessly with another.

WINNER OF THE PUSHCART PRIZE

"This collection is her best ever." AMY TAN

Wife with Knife is a collection of quick and quirky short stories, that are an utter delight and winner of the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize 2020

"Molly Giles’ stories have always been among my favorites since I first read her work thirty-seven years ago. This collection is her best ever. What an irreverent, original voice! I found myself gasping in shock and laughter, feeling at the end of each tale that I had garnered strange wisdom on the human heart and its unerring sense for finding trouble."--Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

The speakers in Molly Giles’s Wife With Knife offer their truths with surprising starkness: “[T]he actual heart looks more like a tongue than a valentine” states the grief-flayed aunt of “Agate Beach,” while the careless driver of “Accident” thinks “If I rear-ended anyone in California, I might be sued or shot but I would not be prayed upon.” Many of the stories are not traditional narratives but glimpses of the trouble or healing that lies ahead: teens refusing to heed traffic, lovers staring down death and betrayal and closure. Like a street magician’s trick, Wife With Knife holds out each everyday tragedy or quiet triumph only to replace it seamlessly with another.

Winner of the 2024 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize for Young Adult Fiction

Cat and Josie belong to different worlds, but they share a lifeline – their small town’s high school cross country team. Can they set aside their differences to do what’s best for their teammates – and themselves?

Cat Shultz needs a fresh start. After spending several months at an eating disorder treatment facility, she comes home to the realities of her older sister leaving for college, her best friend growing distant, and the stress of sophomore year looming. When an unlikely invitation lands her a spot on Plain City High School’s cross country team, Cat discovers a natural talent for long distance running, and what she hopes is a step toward recovery. The only problem? She’ll have to lie – to her parents, her team, and ultimately herself.

Josie Romero lives for cross country. When Coach Davis – the closest thing she has to a father – announces this will be his last season, she believes a championship win against their rivals will convince him to stay. As team captain, Josie has always fiercely supported her teammates, but when Cat challenges her spot as the fastest runner, Josie must confront her own insecurities in order to become the leader they deserve.

As the championship race approaches, conflicts arise on and off the course, and suddenly winning feels less likely than ever. When Cat can no longer outrun her lies, Josie finds herself racing for something much more important than the finish line.

Wolfpack is a heartwarming tale of healing, hope, and learning that you always go farthest if you run as a pack.

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.