Leapfrog Press

“Exemplary storytelling that grapples with important themes. LaBrie’s collection of misanthropic short stories offers meditations on death, dying, grief, and organ donation.”  — Kirkus Reviews

In her award-winning collection of short stories, Rage and Other Cages, LaBrie offers lessons on grief, loneliness, and relationships that examine what it means to be female in today's America. 

The characters range from a former child actress turned real estate agent who yearns for her past, to a nurse who must convince a murderer to donate his girlfriend's organs, to a bartender at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar who is kidnapped by a customer searching for a mysterious key. Bad dates, bad jobs, and bad situations force these characters to use their wits and wiles to survive. In a voice akin to Lorrie Moore meets Mary Gaitskill, LaBrie has her readers laughing on one page and raging on another. Her voice is memorable, raw, and undeniably skillful.

2025 Recipient of THE ANNE FRANK AWARD FOR HUMAN DIGNITY AND TOLERANCE, from the Dutch Government
2024 Recipient of THE OFFICER'S CROSS OF THE ORDER OF MERIT of the Federal Republic of Germany, Germany's highest civilian medal
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST

“Irene Butter’s book is a triumph of clarity and concision, written with a passionate intent to inform and with not a shred of self-pity. It is by turns profound and intimate, and bears witness to the resilience of a family who drew strength from one another even through the darkness of the Holocaust. It is a shockingly honest and hopeful book.” — Andrew Solomon, National Book Award Winning Author The Noonday Demon and author of Far From The Tree Parent's Children, And The Search For Identity

“Irene Butter’s story is not your standard holocaust memoir. Instead, it recounts what happened to one family both during and after the war, and captures vividly the time from release from concentration camp to greeting a life back. It is compelling reading, and makes one realise how what happened in the immediate aftermath may have overshadowed the rest of Irene Butter’s life...” — Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger

Irene Butter’s memoir of her experiences before, during and after the Holocaust is not a recounting of misery and tragedy; rather it is the genuine story of a girl coming to terms with a terrible event and choosing to view herself as a survivor instead of a victim. When the Dutch police knock on their door, Irene and her family are forced to leave their home and board trains meant for cattle. They are taken to Nazi-controlled prison camps and finally to Bergen-Belsen, where Irene is a fellow prisoner with Anne Frank.

With limited access to food, shelter, and warm clothing, Irene’s family needs nothing short of a miracle to survive. Irene’s memoir tells the story of her experiences as a young girl before, during, and after the Holocaust, highlighting how her family came to terms with the catastrophe and how she, over time, came to view herself as a survivor rather than a victim. Throughout the book, her first-person account celebrates the love and empathy that can persist even in the most inhumane conditions.

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.

Plenty of things in Zora’s youth would seem strange to others, but they’re perfectly normal to her. Her mother’s fixation with germs, and parties, and the power of names. Her father, who Zora rarely sees, disappearing among the stars as his biggest claim to fame. Her role in explaining things to her younger sister, even as Zora works to discover her own philosophies of life. And her neighborhood, a one-way street with an entrance but no exit called "the Aves."

Zora wants more. More than an honorable name. More than glimpses of glory captured in window frames. Surviving childhood can be as intricate as the intertwined streets of Los Angeles. But as Zora grows, so does her story. And in the process, her desire for more is transformed into a tribute of the magnificent people who live alongside her.

"A Dante/Beckett reduction of human struggle to its lowest common denominator."—Michael Mirolla, author of The Formal Logic of Emotion and Berlin

"One of the most original and thought-provoking stories I have ever read...true literary art...Not a word is wasted in this masterpiece. Yes, I call it that. I have read many classics, and I can tell you that The Divine Farce should be counted among them; the finest in American literature."—Geekscribe

Three strangers are condemned to live together in darkness, crushed together in a concrete stall so small that they can never sit down. Liquid food drips down from above. Waste drains through a grid on the floor. So begins one of the strangest, most surreal comments on the human experience, on love and hatred and the human ability to find good in any situation, no matter how difficult. Michael S. A. Graziano delights in the macabre and surreal, yet it is his optimism that lifts this little novel. Like The Love Song of Monkey, this book is deeply thought provoking, horrifying, and funny.

Praise for The Love Song of Monkey:

"Imaginative, intelligent narrative. Twin ideas of forgiveness and mercy twist through this strange, moving, patiently wrought novel."—Publishers Weekly

"Fabulously imagined, seriously considered, and very funny. A kind of fairytale antithesis on the meaning of existence. . . . Fantastic."—Spirituality and Health Books

"Strange but wonderful . . . like nothing I’ve read before. A very short book, but the scope is epic in detail. . . . I enjoyed the heck out of this book."—Geekscribe

"Should be required reading in the writing grad schools. . . . There’s nary a word wasted. What’s left is comedy, retrospection, betrayal, tenderness, meditations on loneliness, a love story that survives all attempts to suppress it . . . not bad within 149 pages."—Barnstable Patriot

"Coe writes like a man with polished wings, flying above it all while watching the high and low tides of life." – E. Ethelbert Miller, co-editor, Poet Lore magazine

“Coe is a poet’s poet, a jazzy, postmodern Ben Johnson . . . understated, but shimmering with wit, compassion, integrity of purpose.” — The Phoenix

"A Dante/Beckett reduction of human struggle to its lowest common denominator."—Michael Mirolla, author of The Formal Logic of Emotion and Berlin

"One of the most original and thought-provoking stories I have ever read...true literary art...Not a word is wasted in this masterpiece. Yes, I call it that. I have read many classics, and I can tell you that The Divine Farce should be counted among them; the finest in American literature."—Geekscribe

Three strangers are condemned to live together in darkness, crushed together in a concrete stall so small that they can never sit down. Liquid food drips down from above. Waste drains through a grid on the floor. So begins one of the strangest, most surreal comments on the human experience, on love and hatred and the human ability to find good in any situation, no matter how difficult. Michael S. A. Graziano delights in the macabre and surreal, yet it is his optimism that lifts this little novel. Like The Love Song of Monkey, this book is deeply thought provoking, horrifying, and funny.

Praise for The Love Song of Monkey:

"Imaginative, intelligent narrative. Twin ideas of forgiveness and mercy twist through this strange, moving, patiently wrought novel."—Publishers Weekly

"Fabulously imagined, seriously considered, and very funny. A kind of fairytale antithesis on the meaning of existence. . . . Fantastic."—Spirituality and Health Books

"Strange but wonderful . . . like nothing I’ve read before. A very short book, but the scope is epic in detail. . . . I enjoyed the heck out of this book."—Geekscribe

"Should be required reading in the writing grad schools. . . . There’s nary a word wasted. What’s left is comedy, retrospection, betrayal, tenderness, meditations on loneliness, a love story that survives all attempts to suppress it . . . not bad within 149 pages."—Barnstable Patriot

NOW AN INDEPENDENT FEATURE FILM
“ The Ghost Trap tells a harrowing tale of love, survival, and heartbreak”  – Kyle Bain, Bain’s Film Reviews , rated 8/10 

The haunting story of  a young lobsterman who is forced to choose between right and wrong when his girlfriend suffers a traumatic head injury and a rival lobstering family sabotages his gear, sparking a deadly trap war.  

“Stephens gives the reader an unvarnished view of the subculture of lobster fishermen in small-town coastal Maine.”  —  James Acheson, author of The Lobster Gangs of Maine

“Stephens has a wonderful clear eye for people, especially Maine people, and The Ghost Trap is populated with dozens from all walks of Maine life.” —  Bill Roorbach, author of Temple Stream

“A salty, tangy read. . . . Stephens plunges you into the back-breaking, heart-breaking life of one lobsterman.” —  Richard Grant, author of Another Green World

“Stephens nails harbor life down to the unwritten rules and defense of imaginary territory lines. . . . Peppered with dark humor and brutal honesty, The Ghost Trap gives it to you straight, the way life should be.” —  Ryan Post, fourth-generation lobsterman, creator of Mainebuggin.com

“Characters and setting that reflect a real, raw piece of Maine. . . . With Anja and Jamie, Stephens introduces us to characters whose stories and situations are heartbreaking. This book reminds us that as complicated as lobster fishing might be, human relationships are always more fraught with difficulty.” —  Portland Phoenix

"Coe writes about his parents with warmth, insight, and grace . . . with celebration as well as regret. A collection that captures the tenderness and intimacy within the black family. His words construct a path from the innocence of childhood into the winter of aging. His book will outlive much of the poetry being written today."—E. Ethelbert Miller

No relationship is more personal, yet universal, than that of parent and child. These richly detailed poems connect readers with their own experiences in that most fundamental of relationships, and are poignant reminders that the lives of those closest to us sometimes offer the deepest mysteries.

"domesticity"

pampered little girl
no crystal ball to warn you
of dirty laundry mountains.

From "How My Father Learned to Cook":

Because of the tomatoes in a neighbor's garden,
my father learned to cook. Because of late summer
home-grown Indiana tomatoes, drooping on the vine
my father learned to cook. Imagine him at twelve leaning
over the fence of the neighbor's garden curious but shy,
and the neighbor pointing to the open gate.
Imagine father digging in the soil, caught in the rhythm
of the gardener's dance
and later handing his surprised mother
the overstuffed paper bag.

A pretty story, but it never happened; here's what did:

Charles Coe's poetry and prose have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, and his poems have been set to music by composers Julia Carey, Beth Denisch, and Robert Moran. Coe also writes feature articles, book reviews, and interviews for Harvard Magazine, Northeastern University Law Review, and the Boston Phoenix. He is also a jazz vocalist, performing and recording throughout New England.

From humble beginnings in Brazil to becoming part of the most feared attacking trio in world soccer, Neymar has come a long way. But his path to the top was far from straightforward. After overcoming an injury that nearly finished his career, he struggled with the burdens and frustrations of carrying the dreams of a nation, at the age of just 24. Join the new Prince of Santos as he embarks on a personal quest – and wins some of the biggest trophies in soccer on the way.  Neymar plays for Al Hilal in the  Saudi Pro League  and the Brazil National Team. 

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.

Messi was Barcelona's star player and one of the world's best footballer players. But as a boy he stopped growing at 11 and coaches worried he wasn't big enough. 

Discover the story of how Messi proved them wrong and how this boy from South America fought to become possibly the greatest football player of all time.

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.

Scoring over 790 goals during his career so far, Cristiano Ronaldo is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. Winning trophies as both a forward for Manchester United and Captain of the Portuguese national team, Ronaldo is one of the biggest names in football. 

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.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD longlist nominee, Helen Phillips's debut novel, And Yet They Were Happy is "A gallery of marvels."--Washington Post

A young couple comes of age in a surreal world of apocalypse, delight, longing, and tenderness. 

A young couple sets out to build a life together in an unstable world haunted by monsters, plagued by disasters, full of longing—but also one of transformation, wonder, and delight, peopled by the likes of Noah, Bob Dylan, the Virgin Mary, and Anne Frank. Hovering between reality and fantasy, whimsy and darkness, these linked fables describe a universe both surreal and familiar.

"From page one, Amphibians is the work of an extraordinary talent. How shrewd and compelling these stories are, as they range from Maine to New York to Japan to the Emirates and back. Their remarkable gift is to show us – wisely and sharply – the crucial contradictions of feeling in whatever unfolds, from passing encounters to long-held ties.” — Joan Silber, PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Improvement and 2019 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize judge

Sophisticated and bright with promise…these stories elucidate incredibly difficult-to-articulate topics such as jealousy, self-hatred, unlikely connection and friendship.… If a writer's job is to make the unseen visible, the stories in VANISHING are flashlights, illuminating the subtle, enormous tragedies we humans encounter every day.— Marie-Helene Bertino, author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas

Praise for Cai Emmons' novels
Gripping. Brings home the power and terror of maternal love. —O Magazine

Emmons…has an eye for the grating intimacy of small-town life and a fine ear for suggestive metaphors.… Unusual and memorable. —The Economist

Lovely writing… Emmons' emphasis is on her characters, and she draws them well. —Seattle Times

With family relations as twisted as a French braid and language as vivid as a platinum dye job, Emmons' potent novel features magnetic characters and complex and compelling secrets. — Booklist
A gift of a book, an affecting story of violence and forgiveness.—Bookpage

Accomplished playwright and filmmaker Emmons tests chilly waters in this ambitious, unsettling debut.—Publishers Weekly

Gorgeous writing throughout makes for an unusually affecting and memorable debut. —Kirkus Reviews

Cai Emmons is the author of the novels His Mother's Son (which won an Oregon Book Award), The Stylist, and her newest, Weather Woman (fall 2018), about a meteorologist who discovers she has the power to change the weather. Emmons was formerly a playwright and screenwriter; her short fiction has appeared in such publications as TriQuarterly, Narrative, and Arts and Culture, among others. She has taught filmmaking at the University of Southern California and Orange Coast College, and creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Oregon.

"A fast-paced narrative. . . . compelling and intense reading, by turns funny, tender, and horrifying, Girl Singer is the real deal—a captivating, well-told tale." —Fred Kasten, Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist

"Carlon is a natural heir of Robert Louis Stevenson. If you like good fiction, you'll like Girl Singer." —Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz

"Carlon is a unique educational force, bringing young readers into the pleasures and drama of jazz." —Nat Hentoff, Jazz Country, Boston Bay, etc.

"An arresting and wonderful story that communicates—through a deep relationship between a singer and a Holocaust survivor—the joy of music, self-discovery, pain, and racism." —Dick Golden, host of George Washington University Presents American Jazz

"Avery's story tackles hard topics—racism, women's rights—which transcend time and place. A tale with deep resonance and educational force, that will keep readers turning pages." –Marilyn Lester, executive director, the Duke Ellington Center for the Arts

Harlem 1938: eighteen-year-old Avery, aspiring singer, is heard by Lester "Pres" Young, Count Basie's tenor saxophonist. Pres recommends her to Basie, and Avery is whisked into the jazz life. Years later, with several hit records to her credit, Avery settles in Greenwich Village. But her life takes a sharp turn when she meets Karl, a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany.

Mick Carlon is a thirty-year veteran English and journalism teacher at the high and middle school levels, and the author of the middle-grade novels Riding on Duke's Train and Travels with Louis. He is a frequent contributor to Jazz Times.

“The power of Raphael’s stories comes from his passion for telling the truth, however painful.”—Hadassah Magazine

“His characters are voices of reason, observers rather than judges. The prose is poetic, the sex scenes sweat with passion.”—Los Angeles Times

When Lev Raphael published the controversial story collection Dancing on Tisha B’av, he broke new ground in the publishing world. Never before in one book had an American writer dealt with the conflicts between homosexuality and traditional Judaism, linked the chilling mind diseases of antisemitism and homophobia, and borne witness not only to the legacy of Holocaust survivors but the suffering and conflicts of their children. Winner of the prestigious Lambda Literary Award, Raphael opened the door to a new kind of American Jewish fiction.

Secret Anniversaries of the Heart unites the best stories from Dancing on Tisha B’av with 12 new stories, including one never before published. Here we encounter tales of antisemitism on the college campus, of self-hatred and body obsession, and of survivor parents whose only response to the Holocaust is to isolate themselves, unconsciously committing a kind of emotional suicide.

In a collection that encompasses over 25 years of his award-winning stories, Lev Raphael proves himself a visionary like James Baldwin and shares Anita Brookner’s gift for dramatizing the pain of seemingly quiet lives in stories that are both passionate and precise.

Lev Raphael is the author of 17 books published in a dozen languages. A winner of the Lambda Literary Award, among many prizes, his short works have appeared in numerous anthologies, including the star-packed Who We Are: On Being (and Not Being) A Jewish American Writer (Schocken/Random House). The author of a popular mystery series, he performs all over the country and hosts a weekly book show on NPR.

A Fast Paced Espionage Thriller for Alan Furst Fans Set In Post-Cold War Poland.

"Sharply drawn characters, rich dialogue, and a clever conclusion bode well for any sequel." – Publishers Weekly 

“Smith skillfully bridges police procedural and espionage fiction, crafting a show-stealing sense of place and realistically pairing the threats of underworld crime and destabilized regimes.” – Booklist 

For International Espionage Fans of Alan Furst and Daniel Silva, a new thriller set in post-Soviet era Poland. 

It is 1992 in Warsaw, Poland, and the communist era has just ended. A series of grisly murders suddenly becomes an international case when it's feared that the victims may have been couriers smuggling nuclear material out of the defunct Soviet Union. The FBI sends an agent to help with the investigation. When he learns that a Russian physicist who designed a portable atomic bomb has disappeared, the race is on to find him—and the bomb—before it ends up in the wrong hands.

Smith’s depiction of post-cold war Poland is gloomily atmospheric and murky in a world where nothing is quite as it seems. Suspenseful, thrilling, and smart, The Fourth Courier brings together a straight white FBI agent and gay black CIA officer as they team up to uncover a gruesome plot involving murder, radioactive contraband, narcissistic government leaders, and unconscionable greed.

"Move over Walt Longmire. Make room for Franz Kafka, aka 'K.' Expertly plotted, beautifully written, eloquent, colloquial, wry, insightful . . . Medhat demonstrates a keen sense of place and Navajo culture and history, with superior attention to language; smart, witty, often humorous and always precise analogies, metaphors, and similes. A sharp eye for detail and sprachgefühl for putting observations into words. Style, grace, a confident, compelling, and controlled narrative voice. The sophisticated narration dances from omniscient to close-third without any false steps or trips. A very smooth operator, this writer. The characters glide off the page. This book is a high-wire act, and the author shines a bright, steady beam on the dark stage where clashing cultures meet."—Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots

Quixotic cop Franz Kafka's small-town routine is disrupted by a mysterious death at Chimney Rock. Navajo cop Robbie Begay joins the murder investigation, which leads the mismatched duo across the reservation into the victim's fraught past, to associates living under the shadow of heinous crimes, cunningly camouflaged meth-merchants, and sweet-natured squash-growers. The killer, it turns out, is much closer to home.

Katayoun Medhat was raised in Iran and Germany and studied anthropology in Berlin and London. Before training as an intercultural therapist, she worked in an adolescent psychiatric unit, which taught her much about human resilience. For her PhD in medical anthropology, she researched mental health and alcohol rehab services on the Navajo Nation, and along the way learned to appreciate the healing power of humor as life force.

A Summer for Moths is the ballad of Booth Baker — working musician and songwriter hiding out in the guise of a handyman and running from childhood trauma. Haunted by his toxic southern upbringing and a death in high school that forced him to flee his hometown, Booth must confront and deal with the trauma of his past before finding a stable home in the future. 

When Booth receives the call from his estranged brother with a summer job offer helping maintain rental properties along the coast of Connecticut, he’s thrust into the secret world of the “Gold Coast.” Meeting Abby Evers one day on a roofing job, Booth is transfixed, leading him to declare that a woman like Abby is “visible wonder.” His desire brings him, moth-like, closer to the flames. He soon learns that Abby’s husband Sam and his business partners operate a secret circle of abuse, and deadly. Unable to leave Abby to these monsters, Booth endeavors to help expose the abusers all while placing his own life and future with Abby on the line.

“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.

"A poignant story of colonization and assimilation, something I know a little bit about. A masterpiece."—Chinua Achebe

"One of our most brilliant writers tells a harsh truth about American history."—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Praise for Edge of Nowhere:

"Smelcer's prose is lyrical, straightforward, and brilliant . . . authentic Native Alaskan storytelling at its best."—School Library Journal (starred review)

"A spare tale of courage, love and terrible obstacles."—The Wall Street Journal

"More psychological depth than Robinson Crusoe."—Frank McCourt

Praise for Lone Wolves:

"A beautiful and moving story of courage and love."—Ray Bradbury

"Smelcer [is] a rockstar of Alaskan literature."—Mushing magazine

"Powerful, eloquent, and fascinating."—Kirkus Reviews

"Smelcer's work has a touch of the classical, combining good old-fashioned adventure and survival themes with heart-tugging moments of clarity and poignancy that recall Jean Craighead George's Julie of the Wolves."—Booklist

Praise for The Trap:

"A gripping and poignant story, made even more so because of its basis in historical fact."—Horn Book (starred review)

Four Indian teenagers are kidnapped from different regions, their lives immutably changed by an institution designed to eradicate their identity. And no matter what their home, their stories are representative of every story, every stolen life. So far from home, without family to protect them, only their friendship helps them endure. This is a work of fiction. Every word is true.

John Smelcer is the author of over forty books, including essays, story collections, poetry, and novels, and five YA novels.

"Poetry at its most satirical and courageous. A tremendous book."—Seamus Heaney

"Few voices in American literature are so honest and daring."—Mark Strand

"One of our most brilliant poets."—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

"I feel the primal grain and temper of the genuine here."—William Heyen

"A lament, a protest, an inextinguishable song."—Sherod Santos

"Among the best and most original poets in America."—Stanley Kunitz

"Nothing short of splendid."—Robert Nazarene

"The kind of energy found in the poems of William Carlos Williams and Gary Snyder."—Joseph Bruchac

These poems tell harsh truths of hopelessness and genocide. The confusion of children whose religion is forbidden; the ironic poverty of a lottery winner; an alternate American history in which Columbus turns and sails away—in deceptively simple language, we hear the protest of survivors. "'Indian' is not a derogatory word. It's what we call ourselves."

AFTER A SERMON AT THE CHURCH OF INFINITE CONFUSION

At ten, Mary Caught-in-Between
came home from sunday school,
told every animal and bird and fish
they couldn't talk anymore,
told her drum it couldn't sing anymore,
told her feet they couldn't dance anymore,
told her words they weren't words anymore,
told Raven and Coyote they weren't gods anymore,
said god was a starving white man
with long hair and blue eyes and a beard
who no one loved enough to save
when they nailed him to a totem pole.

John Smelcer has written over forty books of poetry and prose. He is a member of the Alaskan Ahtna tribe.

"A masterful exhibition in storytelling; a breathless page-turner. Ligon drives his narrative like a formula one racer. Buckle your seat belts and get ready for a thrilling ride."—Jonathan Evison, West of Here

"Part meditation on modern love's dark and often unexamined underbelly; part can't-put-it-down-even-for-a-dinner-break-thriller, this novel contains one of the most convincingly and complicatedly terrifying fictional characters I have run into."—Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted

"A wildly original love story, a ghost story, a tense and suspenseful story in which the wickedly talented Ligon channels voices—of the lost, the longing, and the damned."—Jess Walter, We Live in Water

Praise for Safe in Heaven Dead:

"A superbly convincing first novel….An expertly motivated debut."—Kirkus, starred review

"This debut novel instantly seizes and holds the imagination."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Ligon is firmly in control, laying out the elements of the story like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle."—New York Times Book Review

Nikki has spent her life running from her abusive mother and the violent boyfriend she killed years ago, and now from his brother, Burke, just released from prison. Burke doesn't know yet how his brother died, but he's obsessed with finding Nikki and claiming her—and her daughter—as his own. Now she's run out of room to run.

Samuel Ligon is the author of Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins, 2003) and Drift and Swerve. His stories have appeared in more than twenty literary journals. He teaches at Eastern Washington University's Inland Northwest Center for Writers, and is the editor of Willow Springs.

"A fast-paced narrative. . . . compelling and intense reading, by turns funny, tender, and horrifying, Girl Singer is the real deal—a captivating, well-told tale." —Fred Kasten, Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist

"Carlon is a natural heir of Robert Louis Stevenson. If you like good fiction, you'll like Girl Singer." —Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz

"Carlon is a unique educational force, bringing young readers into the pleasures and drama of jazz." —Nat Hentoff, Jazz Country, Boston Bay, etc.

"An arresting and wonderful story that communicates—through a deep relationship between a singer and a Holocaust survivor—the joy of music, self-discovery, pain, and racism." —Dick Golden, host of George Washington University Presents American Jazz

"Avery's story tackles hard topics—racism, women's rights—which transcend time and place. A tale with deep resonance and educational force, that will keep readers turning pages." –Marilyn Lester, executive director, the Duke Ellington Center for the Arts

Harlem 1938: eighteen-year-old Avery, aspiring singer, is heard by Lester "Pres" Young, Count Basie's tenor saxophonist. Pres recommends her to Basie, and Avery is whisked into the jazz life. Years later, with several hit records to her credit, Avery settles in Greenwich Village. But her life takes a sharp turn when she meets Karl, a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany.

Mick Carlon is a thirty-year veteran English and journalism teacher at the high and middle school levels, and the author of the middle-grade novels Riding on Duke's Train and Travels with Louis. He is a frequent contributor to Jazz Times.

"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.

"Smelcer clearly knows his way around Alaskan mountains."—David Roberts, author of The Mountain of My Fear

Praise for Edge of Nowhere:

"A survival story, but one with a strong heart."—ForeWord Reviews

"A thought-provoking and moving coming-of-age story."—Publishers Weekly

"Another gripping literary triumph for Smelcer."—Midwest Book Review

Praise for Lone Wolves:

"A beautiful and moving story of courage and love."—Ray Bradbury

"An engaging tale of survival, love, and courage."—School Library Journal

"[Smelcer] promises to further solidify his status as 'Alaska's modern day Jack London.'"—Suzanne Steinert, Mushing

"Powerful, eloquent, and fascinating, showcasing a vanishing way of life in rich detail."—Kirkus

"Combines good old-fashioned adventure . . . with heart-tugging moments of clarity and poignancy that recall Julie of the Wolves."—Booklist

"A compassionate and inspiring tale . . . highlights the importance of family, community, and heritage."—Midwest Book Review

Brothers Sebastian and James Savage decide to climb one of the highest Alaskan mountains to prove themselves to their father. Inspired by true events, Savage Mountain is not a story of father-son reconciliation, but a touching story of two brothers who test their limits and learn that no matter how different they might be, the strongest bond of all is brotherhood.

John Smelcer is poetry editor of Rosebud and the author of more than forty books. He is an Alaskan native of the Ahtna tribe, and a skilled mountaineer. He divides his time between Talkeetna, Alaska, and Kirksville, Missouri, where he teaches in the department of communications studies at Truman State University.

"Controlled, poetically laconic prose . . . a perfect distillation of the ways that grief seems unfathomably large and mysterious."—Lev Raphael, author of Rosedale in Love

"Armstrong's characters are . . . elevated to the heights of tragedy through careful attention to detail and voice."—Las Vegas Weekly

These stories occupy the space between dark realities and the fantastic leaps of faith people make to survive. Connecting them is the journey: people searching for solace, insight, purpose; gathering up their lives into discernible pieces of fact and conviction, hoping to get it right.

David Armstrong had received many awards for his stories, which have been widely published in literary journals. He is fiction editor of Witness Magazine and a recipient of the Black Mountain Institute Fellowship.

"More psychological depth than Robinson Crusoe."—Frank McCourt

Praise for Lone Wolves:

"A beautiful and moving story of courage and love."—Ray Bradbury

"Powerful, eloquent, and fascinating, showcasing a vanishing way of life in rich detail."—Kirkus Reviews

"An adept focus on coming-of-age and an illuminating glimpse of Native Alaskan cultures."--The Horn Book

"A gifted storyteller with a unique perspective. . . . A breathlessly paced and thrilling ride for readers of all ages."--Cambridge Book Review

Praise for The Great Death and Alaskan:

"Gripping and poignant. . . . Smelcer's prose is clean and rich; original yet unpretentious."—Horn Book, starred review

"John Smelcer is Alaska's modern-day Jack London."—W.P. Kinsella

"An indispensible contribution to Alaskan literature."—J. D. Salinger

"Smelcer speaks from the land, for the land, and the people who belong to it."—Ursula K. Le Guin

Sixteen-year-old Seth and his dog fall off his father's commercial fishing boat in Prince William Sound. They struggle to survive off land and sea as they work their way home from island to island in a three-month journey. The isolation allows Seth to understand his father's love, accept his Native Alaskan heritage, and accept his grief over his mother's death.

John Smelcer is poetry editor of Rosebud and the author of more than forty books. He is an Alaskan native of the Ahtna tribe, and the last tribal member who reads and writes in Ahtna. He divides his time between Talkeetna, Alaska, and Kirksville, Missouri, where he teaches in the department of communications studies at Truman State University.

"A beautiful and moving story of courage and love."—Ray Bradbury

Praise for The Great Death:

"An amazing story."—Frank McCourt

"Gripping and poignant. . . . An unforgettable survival tale."—Horn Book

"A beautiful, poignant story."—Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize winner

"Graphically illustrates the effects of a plague on isolated peoples."—School Library Journal

"An engaging tale of survival."—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for The Trap:

"An unforgettable story. Brilliant!"—Ray Bradbury

"A gripping example of talented storytelling. Unforgettable."—Tony Hillerman

Praise for The Edge of Nowhere:

"More psychological depth than Robinson Crusoe."—Frank McCourt

Praise for Alaskan:

"Smelcer is Alaska's modern-day Jack London."—W.P. Kinsella

"A celebration of the diversity of cultures. Undeniably important!"—James Michener

"An indispensible contribution to Alaskan literature."—JD Salinger

"This writer speaks from the land, and for the land, and the people who belong to it."—Ursula K. Le Guin

Deneena Yazzie's love of the woods and trail come from her grandfather, who teaches her their all-but-vanished Native Alaskan language. While her peers lose hope, trapped between the old and the modern cultures, and turn to destructive behaviors, Denny and her mysterious lead dog, a blue-eyed wolf, train for the Great Race—giving her town a new pride and hope.

John Smelcer is poetry editor of Rosebud and the author of more than forty books. He is an Alaskan Native of the Ahtna tribe, and the last surviving reader and writer of Ahtna. John holds degrees in archeology, linguistics, literature, and education, and formerly chaired the Alaska Native Studies program and the University of Alaska (Anchorage).

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.

"Coe writes about his parents with warmth, insight, and grace . . . with celebration as well as regret. A collection that captures the tenderness and intimacy within the black family. His words construct a path from the innocence of childhood into the winter of aging. His book will outlive much of the poetry being written today."—E. Ethelbert Miller

No relationship is more personal, yet universal, than that of parent and child. These richly detailed poems connect readers with their own experiences in that most fundamental of relationships, and are poignant reminders that the lives of those closest to us sometimes offer the deepest mysteries.

"domesticity"

pampered little girl
no crystal ball to warn you
of dirty laundry mountains.

From "How My Father Learned to Cook":

Because of the tomatoes in a neighbor's garden,
my father learned to cook. Because of late summer
home-grown Indiana tomatoes, drooping on the vine
my father learned to cook. Imagine him at twelve leaning
over the fence of the neighbor's garden curious but shy,
and the neighbor pointing to the open gate.
Imagine father digging in the soil, caught in the rhythm
of the gardener's dance
and later handing his surprised mother
the overstuffed paper bag.

A pretty story, but it never happened; here's what did:

Charles Coe's poetry and prose have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines, and his poems have been set to music by composers Julia Carey, Beth Denisch, and Robert Moran. Coe also writes feature articles, book reviews, and interviews for Harvard Magazine, Northeastern University Law Review, and the Boston Phoenix. He is also a jazz vocalist, performing and recording throughout New England.

"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."

Praise for Michael S. A. Graziano:

"Darkly inventive. . . . Graziano's grim allegory interrogates human existence with its visceral, sensuous description."—Publishers Weekly

"Not a word is wasted in this masterpiece . . . the finest in American literature."—Geekscribe

"A uniquely human story that proves humorous as well as thoughtful. Solid and very highly recommended."—Midwest Book Review

"A relatively short book, but its heart is huge."—Largehearted Boy

A man dying of cancer wanders naked into Central Park and embarks on a twisted, fetishistic, hilarious journey toward a deeper understanding of life. A story of vulnerability, brashness, and the universal need to find some comfort and philosophy before the journey ends.

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

"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."

Winner of the 2011 Leapfrog Fiction Contest. 

A young naval officer crashes his F-16 fighter jet in the South China Sea, forever changing the lives of the five soldiers who find his body. They move through gritty post-Vietnam Detroit with the women they love in this linked collection of psychological drama, sexual escapades, and latent violence tinged with compassion, grief, and love, arriving finally at the death of one man's son in Iraq. 

Allen Learst's writing explores an interior war—the war of the psyche fought by all returning soldiers—and their attempts to adapt and survive without the knowledge it takes to heal or alleviate their pain.

"An affirmation of life and the indestructibility of one man's will to make the most of it."—Ian Wynne, author of The Pawn and Shadows by My Side, former editor of Human Rights Defender, Amnesty International

Born in the midst of the Ethiopian–Eritrean Civil War, Tewodros "Teddy" Fekadu survives abandonment and famine as his family flings him unwanted across borders and regions, into orphanages, and finally onto the streets of Addis Ababa. Spanning five countries and three continents, the Catholic Church, and Japanese detention centers, this is a tale of defiance and triumph, and also of family love—unacknowledged by his wealthy father, abandoned by his desperately poor mother, Teddy is nurtured along the way by staunch individuals despite his ambiguous place in rigid family tradition: his father's mother, a maternal aunt, a Catholic priest, and even his father's wife.

In 2003, after three years in a Japanese detention center, Tewodros "Teddy" Fekadu won a hard-fought immigration battle, and his visa to Australia was approved. He now resides on the Gold Coast, where he founded an association that shares African traditions and heritage through performance and educational programs. He also works with organizations to resettle African refugees to the Gold Coast. He is an inspirational speaker, presenting to such diverse audiences as adoptive families, human rights groups, and East African immigrants. Tewodros' company, Moonface Entertainment, produces films and documentaries on East Africa. He regularly returns to Africa to shoot footage for his projects, and travels to the United States to promote his work.

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.

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

"A fabulous thriller. . . . A modern psychological tale with strong implications of horror."—MBR The Bookwatch

"Mystery à la Gothic. . . . Historian Malloy does her research proud."—Mystery Scene

The second book in the Lizzie Manning trilogy. Following the path of a medieval pilgrimage, historian Lizzie Manning finds unexpected danger. Chaucer may have based his Wife of Bath on a real woman, whose descendant holds certain artifacts, but will the investigation lead to something more sinister? Are the bones of St. Thomas Becket, believed to have been destroyed nearly six hundred years ago, hidden in Canterbury Cathedral, and is someone willing to kill to protect the secret?

Mary Malloy is the author of four maritime history books, including Devil on the Deep Blue Sea, which won the 2006 John Lyman Book Award for best maritime biography. Her first historical mystery The Wandering Heart introduced historian Lizzie Manning. Malloy 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.

Winner of the 2010 Leapfrog Fiction Contest.

"Excellent and lively. A sharp wit, the apt metaphor, the turn of phrase that pleases and surprises."—Marge Piercy, contest judge

"Bright, brassy, spunky, intelligent. Ingenious writing. . . . Quirky and filled with metaphoric twists that often startle."—Michael Mirolla, contest judge

"Smart, funny, biting, and, above all, touching. A collection to savor over and over."—Michael White, author of Beautiful Assassin

Praise for Joan Connor's previous collections:

"Brilliantly quirky wit and wordplay."—Syndey Lea, author of A Little Wilderness

"A deeply talented writer."—Alyce Miller, author of Water

"Candor, bracing wit, and skewering insight that could kill if she let it."—Rosellen Brown, author of Half a Heart

Joan Connor's collection investigates love and loss, sex, family, and the ways they echo back through memory, sometimes to comfort and sometimes to bite. Some comic, some dark, the stories range from lyrical to laugh-out-loud funny. The title story is a mock self-help manual on how to fall out of love. "Men in Brown" is a rollicking account of a woman infatuated with her UPS man. "Aground" is a dark account of male lust and violence on a lonely island in Maine.

Joan Connor is a professor at Ohio University and at Fairfield University's low residency MFA program. She received the AWP award for her collection History Lessons, and the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize for The World Before Mirrors. Her two earlier collections are We Who Live Apart and Here on Old Route 7.

"Klin is an insightful interviewer and a marvelous writer. We were delighted to have the opportunity to publish the interview with Howard Zinn from Something to Say."—The Bloomsbury Review

The fusion of art and politics is axiomatic in much of the world. In America, their relationship is erratic. What is art in the service of social justice? Is an artist obligated to address the political? This book profiles, in words and photos, disparate creative forces who offer thoughts on their point of engagement with the political sphere. In the words of Pete Seeger, art "may save the world. Visual arts, dancing, acting arts, cooking arts. . . . Joe DiMaggio reaching for a fly ball—that was great dancing!"

Profiles in Something to Say:

• The late Howard Zinn
• Pete Seeger
• Yoko Ono
• Screenwriter Ron Nyswaner
• Palestinian American standup comedian Maysoon Zayid
• Poet Quincy Troupe
• Dominican American painter Freddy Rodríguez
• Filmmaker Gini Reticker
• Slowpoke cartoonist Jen Sorensen
• Performance and installation artist Sheryl Oring
• Children's writer Jacqueline Woodson
• Chef and food activist Didi Emmons
• Chinese American poet and art critic John Yau
• Punk-rock activist Franklin Stein of the band Blowback
• Klezmer fiddler Alicia Svigals

Richard Klin's writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Forward, The Bloomsbury Review, Parabola, The Rambler, and other media.

Lily Prince has exhibited in over fifty national and international exhibitions and has been awarded commissions by numerous hotels and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. She is an associate professor of art at William Paterson University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Newark Star-Ledger, New American Paintings, San Francisco Weekly, and other media.

"Brilliant miniatures. . . . Like the fables of Calvino, Millhauser, or W.S. Merwin. . . . Beautifully blends short story and prose poem. . . . Mermaids, subways, floods, cucumbers, magicians. . . .The book is a gallery of marvels. Phillips guides us through the 'Hall of Nostalgia For Things We Have Never Seen,' 'the factory where the virgins are made,' and 'the Anne Frank School for Expectant Mothers.' A depressed Noah admits he 'didn't get them all,' a wife guesses which of two identical men is her husband, a regime orders citizens to grow raspberries on windowsills. [Helen Phillips'] quietly elegant sentences are as clear as spring water, haunting as our own childhood memories." — Michael Dirda

"A deeply interesting mind is at work in these wry, lyrical stories. Phillips exploits the duality of our nature to create a timeless and most engaging collection." — Amy Hempel

"Haunted and lyrical and edible all at once." — Rivka Galchen

A young couple sets out to build a life together in an unstable world haunted by monsters, plagued by disasters, full of longing—but also one of transformation, wonder, and delight, peopled by the likes of Noah, Bob Dylan, the Virgin Mary, and Anne Frank. Hovering between reality and fantasy, whimsy and darkness, these linked fables describe a universe both surreal and familiar.

Helen Phillips received a 2009 Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, 2009 Meridian Editors' Prize, and 2008 Italo Calvino Fabulist Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in many literary journals and two anthologies. She holds degrees from Yale University and Brooklyn College, and teaches creative writing at Brooklyn College.

Praise for Berlin:

"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

"Intriguing, passionate, sad, hilarious. Mirolla is a master storyteller."—Toronto Sun

"Mirolla's book excels."—Rain Taxi

Mussolini clones that won't stay dead. The power to re-create others—forever. Memory and identity are no longer unique. Trapped inside the cloning facility at a time when humans are undergoing their final death rattle on a prion-infected earth, Fausto struggles to re-create the world he once knew. Or did he ever know it?

WINNER of the 2025 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize

Praise for Squiggle and Billy and the Birdfrogs:

"The characters are exceptional, weird, true to life, funny, scary, different, and definitely perk the story . . . an exceptional job. . . . Children will truly enjoy this book."—Midwest Book Review

"Billy survives by the sheer weight of its own insane internal logic. . . . For those funny-book junkies out there, Billy fulfills a need. Downright weird, and that's a-okay with me, it's worth a gander."—School Library Journal

"One of the best books we have read this year . . . intelligent, well composed, with a strong narrative, likable characters, and just enough scariness and tension to make it hard to put down."—BooksForKids.com

"Mystery, suspense, and conflict build a plot of nonstop adventure. Character development is superb . . . clever illustrations, delightful humor, and a marvelous story. . . . Entertaining, downright funny, and highly imaginative. A great read."—Midwest Book Review

Jem's father, a scientific genius, turns himself into a nine-foot orangutan. When their landlord suggests that they leave, they pack their belongings onto a huge wagon and set out on the ultimate adventure: to find the last resting place of Leonardo da Vinci, who, according to his last notebook, may not have died in Italy. They are joined by an old Indian woman, and the threesome's adventures lead to the most unlikely of places—and meetings. Tidbits of science, fun facts about da Vinci and his works, and B.B. Wurge's trademark wacky humor, minimalist illustrations, and lessons on the importance of family make this third novel as exciting as the last two.

“You already fly, so why should I? You are my wings.”

In the heart of Manhattan, a starving artist survives by sketching strangers in Central Park — until one morning a woman in a power suit sits down and commands him: “Draw me."

She’s rich, brilliant, and utterly unlike the world he knows. He’s drawn to her with an intensity that feels dangerous, and soon their connection blurs the line between art and reality.

What begins as a portrait turns into a relationship — one that spirals into dependence, desire, and coercive control.

"An important, even invaluable book, a moving farewell to the old, more humane way of life as China and all the world become technologized and globalized."—Maxine Hong Kingston

A dam rises on the Yangtze, uprooting a million lives in a government-made, modern environmental and human rights disaster, and a poor salvager who has lost everything finds an abandoned baby girl. A tale of defiance, of a lost man finding his place—and a new kind of love—in modern China, and of a rich man reclaiming his soul and the woman he loved before the revolution tore them apart.

"Honestly strange and strangely honest. . . . Remarkably compelling and powerful. Weaver's authenticity of characters, situations, and bygone eras emanates from sheer originality of style. This amazing novel is a stellar achievement—gritty, funny, fresh, and bold. It will make your eyes bug out and your pulse race. And how it shines, shines with humanity!"—Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife

"Southern Gothic to the core, suffused with a humor as dark as the bottom of a Georgia well. . . .Weaver has stepped forward for the benefit of anyone who reads American fiction."—Kirby Gann, author of Our Napoleon in Rags

"Savagely funny, wildly ambitious. . . . A bawdy, brutal, and beautiful meditation on identity, sex, and mercy. Weaver has a fiercely distinctive vision."—K.L. Cook, author of The Girl from Charnelle

"Darkly comic, deeply poignant. . . . Billie Girl is the adventurer through a long, strange trip that is life itself."—Roy Hoffman, author of Chicken Dreaming Corn

Abandoned as in infant because of her incessant crying, Billie Girl is raised by two women who are brothers. Her life, a gender-bending puzzle filled with dark humor, is a series of encounters with strangers who struggle along with what they are given: a bigamist husband, a long-lost daughter named after a car, a lesbian preacher's wife, a platonic second husband who loved her adoptive father. Twin themes of sexuality and euthanasia run throughout. In a journey from hard-dirt Georgia farm to end-of-life nursing home, Billie Girl comes to understand the mercy of killing.

Plenty of things in Zora’s youth would seem strange to others, but they’re perfectly normal to her. Her mother’s fixation with germs, and parties, and the power of names. Her father, who Zora rarely sees, disappearing among the stars as his biggest claim to fame. Her role in explaining things to her younger sister, even as Zora works to discover her own philosophies of life. And her neighborhood, a one-way street with an entrance but no exit called "the Aves." 

Zora wants more. More than an honorable name. More than glimpses of glory captured in window frames. Surviving childhood can be as intricate as the intertwined streets of Los Angeles. But as Zora grows, so does her story. And in the process, her desire for more is transformed into a tribute of the magnificent people who live alongside her.

"Essential reading for the devout, the agnostic, and the atheist. In tackling the question of the religious brain, Graziano is respectful, sincere, and scientifically plausible. This might even be an Important Book."—Sam Wang, author of Welcome to Your Brain

"A beautifully crafted, tightly scripted account of how the far-flung legions of the brain's neurons give rise to social awareness and our notions of soul, religion and God."—Christof Koch, author of The Quest for Consciousness

"Lucid and engaging. . . . Moves with pace and humor."—Philip Johnson-Laird, author of Mental Models

"Do we know the origins of Gods and ghosts? This well-written book makes the bold case that new discoveries in social neuroscience can illuminate human spiritual experience."—Terry Sejnowski, PhD, Salk Institute/UC San Diego

Writing for the general public, Michael S. A. Graziano explores the controversial relationship between science and religion, first dismissing the "science versus religion" debate as outdated. The cutting-edge field of social neuroscience explains how our perceptions of our own consciousness, of other minds, and of spirits and gods depend on machinery in the brain that evolved to make us socially intelligent animals. In clear prose without technical jargon, Graziano discusses his and others' findings in this twenty-year-old science and the implications for human spirituality and religion.

Michael S. A. Graziano, professor of neuroscience, Princeton University, is the author of numerous articles on the functioning of the brain. He is internationally known for fundamental discoveries about sensory-motor coordination. His previous book on the brain, The Intelligent Movement Machine, was published by Oxford University Press in 2008.

A SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION AWARD WINNER

“Beautifully written and exquisitely conceived . . . an adventure for the coming climate change apocalypse. Jack leads readers through a forbidding continent of ice and other environmental consequences with little more than a willing heart and a fierce intelligence.” – Jane Rosenberg LaForge, author of The Hawkman

Jack, a 200-year-old intersex street kid, knows the world didn’t always look like it does now, with the Great Garbage Ocean spewing plastic and jellyfish along the shores and humanity on the brink of extinction.

As he travels through the desert in search of answers, his love, Joon, by his side, he remembers things from his lives before this one. The massive tidal wave that separated him from everyone he knew. His encounter with a trickster god. A world blanketed in never-ending ice, and his desperate trek across frozen lakes, through still-standing monuments to the past, and over roaring waterfalls to reach the salt sea.

In every life Jack has lived though, one thing has stayed the same: people’s will to survive.

“An inventive prequel to Jellyfish Dreaming . . . [with] post-apocalyptic settings that evoke more of Maurice Sendak than Mad Max, overcoming mounting cynicism about humanity to reactivate a sense of play.” — Michael J. Deluca, author of The Jaguar Mask

“In this strangely comforting skid into the apocalypse, D. K. McCutchen spins ice into electricity.” — Kirsten Mosher, author of Plea$e Steal Me for 100 Plus Dollar-zz

In her award-winning collection of short stories, Rage and Other Cages, LaBrie offers lessons on grief, loneliness, and relationships that examine what it means to be female in today's America. 

The characters range from a former child actress turned real estate agent who yearns for her past, to a nurse who must convince a murderer to donate his girlfriend's organs, to a bartender at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar who is kidnapped by a customer searching for a mysterious key. Bad dates, bad jobs, and bad situations force these characters to use their wits and wiles to survive. In a voice akin to Lorrie Moore meets Mary Gaitskill, LaBrie has her readers laughing on one page and raging on another. Her voice is memorable, raw, and undeniably skillful.

An engineer whose life is in shambles meets a blind oceanographer who spends her life at sea. In this memoir of their courtship, David Fisichella writes of science, love, adventure, and danger on the ocean. He survives heavy weather, an equator crossing, and a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia. He learns how scientists study ocean physics and why their research is so important, how people live for months on a crowded boat, and what it means to be working for, and dating, the chief scientist. Told with humor, gritty details, and a refreshing sense of wonder about our oceans.

Born in a small Pennsylvania town, it was never certain that Christian Pulisic would be able to realize his full potential.  But his youth, agility and impressive skills have taken Christian to some of the most demanding leagues in the world - and made him captain of the United States national team. After playing a crucial role in Chelsea's 2021 Champions League victory, Pulisic has now moved to serial Champions League winner, AC Milan.

This is the astonishing story of how this impressive youngster became the most expensive American soccer player in history.

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.

It didn't always look as though Raheem Sterling would make it as a world-class player. From a difficult start in life to a tough time in the spotlight, Raheem has always had to think on his feet. This is the incredible story of how a boy who grew up in the shadow of Wembley Stadium used his grit and passion to steer himself to the very top.

• 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.

“Marvelously original. . . . Zlotsky has done for conjoined twins what Günter Grass did for midgets in The Tin Drum. . . . A weirdly hilarious Russian fairytale composed with the comedic zeal of Gogol and the rhetorical brilliance of Nabokov.”—Lee Siegel, author of Love in a Dead Language

“Pure joy in language. . . . Nabokov’s Pale Fire mated with Finnegan’s Wake.” —Michael Drout, PhD, language scholar

Meet Alex and Alex, as compelling a Russian portrait as the two sides of Raskolnikov. He is—or they are—a dark-caped anti-hero, conjoined twins stalking, counterfeiting, fleeing the iron curtain, delightfully innocent, seeking what everyone seeks: love, hope, and redemption.

From humble beginnings in Brazil to becoming part of the most feared attacking trio in world soccer, Neymar has come a long way. But his path to the top was far from straightforward. After overcoming an injury that nearly finished his career, he struggled with the burdens and frustrations of carrying the dreams of a nation, at the age of just 24. Join the new Prince of Santos as he embarks on a personal quest – and wins some of the biggest trophies in soccer on the way. Neymar plays for Al Hilal in the  Saudi Pro League and the Brazil National Team. 

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.

"Duke used to say that the individual sound of a musician revealed his soul. Mick Carlon is a 'soul' storyteller."—Nat Hentoff, author of Jazz Country

"A ripping good yarn. . . . Plunges the reader into the world of Duke Ellington and the America of 1939."—Brian Morton, author of The Penguin Guide to Jazz

"Wonderfully convincing and authentic characterizations. . . . A thoroughly enjoyable read."—Dan Morgenstern, author of Living with Jazz

"We encounter not only Duke's genius, but his character and humanity. This is one train you won't want to get off!"—Dick Golden, radio host

"When this marvelously evocative novel finds a home in the school curriculum, kids across America will be downloading Duke."—Jack Bradley

"Excellent command of voice, period, and ethnic dialect . . . clear love and in-depth knowledge of Ellington and his band."—Alexandria LaFaye, author of The Keening

Nine-year-old Danny stows away on Duke Ellington's train one Georgia night. Through Danny's eyes, we meet some of America's finest musicians as he accompanies them on their 1939 European tour, when the train was briefly held in Germany. Says Nat Hentoff, "I knew Duke Ellington for twenty-five years. The Ellington in this book is the man I knew."

Mick Carlon is a twenty-seven-year veteran English/journalism high- and middle-school teacher. A lifelong jazz fan, he regularly plays jazz in his classroom and has turned hundreds of students into jazz fans. He says, "If young people are simply exposed to the music and stories of these American artists, they will make a friend for life."

Mohamed Salah is Liverpool's superstar forward, and he is on a mission to become the best player in the world. This exciting book follows his adventures across the world – from the heat of Egypt to the magic of Rome, the roar of Anfield stadium and – finally – his big chance in a Champions League Final.

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.

Messi was Barcelona's star player and one of the world's best footballer players. But as a boy he stopped growing at 11 and coaches worried he wasn't big enough. 

Discover the story of how Messi proved them wrong and how this boy from South America fought to become possibly the greatest football player of all time.

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.

Scoring over 790 goals during his career so far, Cristiano Ronaldo is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. Winning trophies as both a forward for Manchester United and Captain of the Portuguese national team, Ronaldo is one of the biggest names in football. 

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.

"This is a delightful, passionate and memorable rendition of a familiar and glorious tale. As the son of immigrants who were very much like Anthony Graziano's family, I was especially moved. Thank you for telling our story."—Governor Mario M. Cuomo

“This kind of historical data is rare today. . . . A tapestry of history, biography, personal reminiscence, and lessons.”—Michael Giallombardo, director/producer of La Terra Promessa

“A sweeping narrative of European and American history, and a lovingly crafted reminiscence. Graziano is an excellent storyteller. There is something in this book for everyone, not least of which is a very good read.”—Joan M. Crouse, author of The Homeless Transient in the Great Depression

“Writing in the tradition of C. Wright Mills, who defined [sociology] as the intersection between history and biography . . . this book clarifies the tremendous emigration from Italy. A very enjoyable read, suitable for general readers and students of history and sociology.”—Adeline Levine, author of Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People

A picture of Europe’s nineteenth century and the massive Italian immigration to America: wars and conflicts, popes and kings fighting the people’s demands for democratic government. When religion and royalty failed them, leaders created dictatorships and threw the world into bloody conflicts, killing hundreds of millions and virtually destroying Europe. Caught up were the poverty stricken, powerless common people who became the immigrants, pushed from Europe, pulled to America. Their history comes alive in the author’s deeply personal account of his family’s immigration and survival through the Great Depression.

Anthony M. Graziano, SUNY Buffalo professor emeritus and Italian chef, has written fifteen books and fifty articles in the field of psychology. His brother, parents, and extended family emigrated from Italy. He says, “This book is a celebration of immigrants. It speaks to us because we are all immigrants.”

“What child hasn’t wondered what it would be like to magically transform into a favorite animal? Squiggle, another great read from Wurge, takes us on such an adventure and will encourage children to use their imaginations, while teaching valuable life lessons.”—Jo Gilmour, teacher and children’s book reviewer, Brooklyn Elementary School, Wisconsin

Praise for Billy and the Birdfrogs:

“Billy survives by the sheer weight of its own insane internal logic. . . . There’s definitely an element of Dahl’s fondness for weirdness in this pup. . . . For those funny-book junkies out there, Billy fulfills a need. Downright weird, and that’s a-okay with me, it’s worth a gander.”—School Library Journal

“Mystery, suspense, and conflict build a plot of nonstop adventure. . . . Superb character development . . . clever illustrations, delightful humor, a marvelous story . . . with an appeal for all ages. Entertaining, downright funny, and highly imaginative. A great read.”—Midwest Book Review

When her soul becomes lodged in a stuffed-toy monkey, nine-year-old Lobelia embarks on an outrageous series of New York and Paris adventures, helped by an odd but kindly scientist, before becoming a girl again and being reunited with her family at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

B.B. Wurge began writing children’s books after leaving his first career as an orangutan in a primate house. He says, “I’ve been told the world is crazy. That may be true, but children can navigate successfully through our crazy world if they stick to fundamental principles: loyalty to family and friends, compassion, and an open imagination.” Wurge lives in an elevator in Manhattan.

Now a lethal striker for his boyhood club – and an international superstar – Marcus Rashford is living his dream. But from navigating a ruthless academy to playing under one of the fiercest managers in the game, Marcus's meteoric rise to the top of Manchester United wasn't always easy. 

This is the story of how a boy from Manchester used his passion and his talent to steer himself on a path to greatness. 

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.

Robert Lewandowski is one of the best strikers of his generation – but his journey to the top wasn't always easy. Finding himself without a club at the age of 17, Robert had no choice but to claw his way upthrough the ranks of Polish football. It led him to the top of one of the world's toughest leagues, the German Bundesliga. 

Join Robert on his unwavering mission to become one of the greatest players of all time. 

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.

NOW AN INDEPENDENT FEATURE FILM

The haunting story of  a young lobsterman who is forced to choose between right and wrong when his girlfriend suffers a traumatic head injury and a rival lobstering family sabotages his gear, sparking a deadly trap war.  

“Stephens gives the reader an unvarnished view of the subculture of lobster fishermen in small-town coastal Maine.” — James Acheson, author of The Lobster Gangs of Maine

“Stephens has a wonderful clear eye for people, especially Maine people, and The Ghost Trap is populated with dozens from all walks of Maine life.” — Bill Roorbach, author of Temple Stream

“A salty, tangy read. . . . Stephens plunges you into the back-breaking, heart-breaking life of one lobsterman.” — Richard Grant, author of Another Green World

“Stephens nails harbor life down to the unwritten rules and defense of imaginary territory lines. . . . Peppered with dark humor and brutal honesty, The Ghost Trap gives it to you straight, the way life should be.” — Ryan Post, fourth-generation lobsterman, creator of Mainebuggin.com

“Characters and setting that reflect a real, raw piece of Maine. . . . With Anja and Jamie, Stephens introduces us to characters whose stories and situations are heartbreaking. This book reminds us that as complicated as lobster fishing might be, human relationships are always more fraught with difficulty.” — Portland Phoenix

K. Stephens is a Maine freelance writer, an award-winning journalist, and a screenwriter whose debut lobstering novel, The Ghost Trap, was optioned in 2018. Stephens was then hired to adapt the novel into a screenplay and served as an executive producer on the project. With her friends, Spruce Head lobstermen, assisting as location scouts and captaining boats for shots, The Ghost Trap made its world premiere at The RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina in 2024 after which, Freestyle Digital Media acquired the North American rights. A refresh of the cover will be issued in July, 2024.

As a teenager, Kylian Mbappé was one of the best footballers on the planet. Now – he just keeps on getting better. Kylian's skill, pace and sensational finishing have fired his clubs and his country to incredible victories, whilst he has established himself firmly in the record books. Follow the whirlwind journey of this football-mad boy from Paris, who never let the weight of the world's expectations slow his journey to becoming a legend. 

This fictionalised 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.  Printed on cream paper with a dyslexia-friendly font, these are also ideal books for reluctant and dyslexic readers.  So, meet the footballers behind the iconic tackles and goals, and find out what makes each of these players so special.

Strong, quick, and physically dominant – Erling Haaland is the Manchester City striker who has it all. From an early age, his impatience and his determination to succeed always singled him out as a player to watch. This is the inspiring story of how a boy from Bryne in Norway used his extraordinary skill and his total self-belief to become one of the greatest strikers 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.

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.

“…An adventure-filled journey... In spite of its references to hard academic science, Cretaceous Dawn is a first-class adventure story, an effortless read as engaging as vintage Jules Verne. The descriptive prose is both evocative and illuminating, and the plot has enough twists and cliffhangers to keep readers traveling on to the inevitable conclusion.”—Natural History

At forty-four, Kay Sorensen has quit drinking, smoking, and overeating, and she has almost quit reading self-help books about quitting drinking, smoking and overeating. She has divorced her deadbeat husband, finished college, and landed a job she loves directing a small branch of the county library.

But Kay still has one unconquered addiction: she just can’t say no to someone who needs her.

Praise for other books by Molly Giles

“What an irreverent, original voice!”

— Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

"Roll over, Evelyn Waugh, here's Molly Giles. She's the authentic satiric voice – a rare bird in American Letters – wicked, affectionate, and amused."

— Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun

"Molly Giles is the funniest writer of tragedy this country possesses." 

— Lucy Ferriss, author of The Misconceiver

"Molly Giles is like a dancer who can't put a foot down wrong."
— Cyra McFadden, author of The Serial

“Exciting—edge of your seat—nail-biting—page turning . . . one of the funniest books ever written. Ignoring, perhaps redefining, logic, B.B. Wurge has fashioned an unbelievable story that ultimately makes perfect sense. Wurge has a voice that is unique and fresh among writers of children’s literature.”—Catherine Safer, author of Bishop’s Road and What If Your Mom Made Raisin Buns?

“The charm and humor of The Princess Bride and the intelligence of A Series of Unfortunate Events.”—Steven V. Monte, author of Selected Poetry of Victor Hugo

In this vivid and complex child’s-eye view of the world, we meet nine-year-old Billy, who lives in a row house in New York City with his very odd grandmother. When their house is invaded by mysterious “birdfrogs” who leave three-footed prints but are never seen, Billy’s grandmother takes drastic action. Their adventures lead them deep under the streets of New York, past woolly mammoth fossils to a shaft where the birdfrogs—and other creatures—lie in wait. Off beat humor, crazy villains, and the final triumph of family loyalty combine to delight anyone with an imagination.

B.B. Wurge lives in an elevator in Manhattan. He turned to writing after leaving his first career as an entertainer in a primate house. He says, “I’ve been told the world is crazy, more now than ever. That may be true, but children should know they can navigate successfully through our crazy world if they stick to fundamental principles: loyalty to family and friends, compassion, and an open imagination.”

Lost River is the story of the Van Beest family, which inherits a house at the edge of a magical forest where the dead return from the afterlife. When 10-year-old Anne’s mother, a midwife, delivers a stillborn baby and her father, a mortician, accidentally brings that infant back to life, the Van Beests find themselves at the center of a drama that raises questions about the relationship between the living and the dead. 

“As wickedly funny and hilariously angry as vintage Harlan Ellison.”—Spider Robinson, author of Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon

“A delightful romp through the metaphysical muck.”—Halifax Daily News

“A funny, tragic glimpse into the territory of the absurd, somewhere between Kafka and Vonnegut.”—Calgary Herald

“Weird and wonderful . . . imaginative, unsettling, devilishly layered. Mirolla delights in verbal and situational sleight-of-hand, exposing a disorienting world of labyrinthine dreams and menacing recurrent images. Mirolla likes the macabre and grotesque, absurdities and stylistic play. He mercilessly exposes our alienation and primal fears, forcing us to face the awful possibility that we are no more than the product of our own devising.”—Event Magazine

The Berlin Wall falls. A continent away, a mysterious mental patient awakes from a two-year stupor. His obsession with Berlin is unexplained. His escape from the hospital launches a surreal adventure in which past blends with future, and death is used to change the fabric of the world in a freakish experiment on transcendental philosophy. Like Franz Kafka or Italo Calvino in their blending of the real and surreal, or like a psychedelic drug trip, this story brings the reader into West Berlin’s seamy underlife—the omnipresent wall, transvestite bars, and sadomasochism. It is a secret world where a concentration-camp survivor sells gas stoves, a world of philosophical intelligentsia, adultery, and murder. Frenetic, kaleidoscopic, horrible, brilliant.

Michael Mirolla, author of novels, short stories, poetry, and plays, lives in Toronto, Canada. His writing has won many awards and has appeared in numerous journals in Canada, the United States, Britain, and Italy.

– Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and This Isn’t Going to End Well 

Port Kydd, 1929. Joshua Rivers, his pregnant wife Lily, his criminal sister Olive, a geriatric dog Orla, and a cast of ne'er-do-wells eke out life in The Swill, a speakeasy passed down through the Rivers family. Outside, political and race wars rage in The Bonny, the rough Irish neighborhood where they have always lived. But when Olive's in trouble and asks her brother to help her pull a job--one with roots that reach way back into the Rivers family history--who will take the fall? Can The Swill shelter the family, as it always has, or is their luck gone for good? 

“Why these novels aren’t on the way to a Netflix studio right now is beyond me. Whoever gets to play detective Franz Kafka will have the role of a lifetime.”  — Mark Stevens, Author of the Allison Coil Mystery series

“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).

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.

A young mother fights impossible odds to be reunited with her child in this acutely insightful first novel about an intercultural marriage gone terribly wrong.

Jill Parker is an American painter living in Japan. Far from the trendy gaijin neighborhoods of downtown Tokyo, she’s settled in a remote seaside village where she makes ends meet as a bar hostess. Her world appears to open when she meets Yusuke, a savvy and sensitive art gallery owner who believes in her talent. But their love affair, and subsequent marriage, is doomed to a life of domestic hell, for Yusuke is the chonan, the eldest son, who assumes the role of rigid patriarch in his traditional family while Jill’s duty is that of a servile Japanese wife. A daily battle of wills ensues as Jill resists instruction in the proper womanly arts. Even the long-anticipated birth of a son, Kei, fails to unite them. Divorce is the only way out, but in Japan a foreigner has no rights to custody, and Jill must choose between freedom and abandoning her child.

Told with tenderness, humor, and an insider’s knowledge of contemporary Japan, Losing Kei is the debut novel of an exceptional expatriate voice.

Suzanne Kamata's work has appeared in over one hundred publications. She is the editor of The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and a forthcoming anthology from Beacon Press on parenting children with disabilities. A five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she has twice won the Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest.

In this unforgettable dual memoir of her parents’ lives and her own, Caroline Heller brings to life the lost world of European café culture, and reminds us of the sustaining power of literature in the most challenging of times.

Heller vividly evokes prewar Prague, where her parents lived, loved, and studied. Her mother, Liese Florsheim, was a young German refugee initially drawn to Erich Heller, a bright but detached intellectual, rather than to his brother, Paul. As Hitler’s power spreads and World War II becomes inevitable, their world is destroyed and they must flee the country and continent. Paul, who will eventually become the author’s father, is trapped and sent to Buchenwald, where he survives under hellish conditions.

Though Paul’s life nearly ends in Europe, he reunites with Liese in the United States, where they marry. Their daughter Caroline, restless and insecure, carries the trauma of her parents’ story with her, but her quest to make peace with her heritage is eased by her love of books and writers, part of her family legacy. Through the darkest years of Hitler’s rule, Caroline’s parents and uncle had turned time and time again to literature to help them survive—and so she does as well.

Written with sensitivity and grace, Reading Claudius is a profound meditation on the ways we strive to solve the mysteries of our pasts, and a window into understanding the ones we love.

"From page one, Amphibians is the work of an extraordinary talent. How shrewd and compelling these stories are, as they range from Maine to New York to Japan to the Emirates and back. Their remarkable gift is to show us – wisely and sharply – the crucial contradictions of feeling in whatever unfolds, from passing encounters to long-held ties.” — Joan Silber, PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Improvement and 2019 Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize judge

"Complicated, cool and vulnerable at the same time...you can't help falling for Pagan Kennedy's characters."—Stephen Dubner, The New York Times

Once a brilliant historian with a promising academic future, Win Duncan is at a crossroads in his career when he is mysteriously summoned by Litminov, a wild but brilliant chemist from his college days. Litminov has made millions since, and has bought a pharmaceutical company solely to develop MEM, an experimental drug that gives one the ability to recall life’s best memories with crystal clarity. Duncan becomes a beta tester and loses himself to the most delicious moments of his past—those precious few years with his mother who died tragically when he was just a child; ecstatic sex with his wife when they first fell in love—until he discovers the dark side effects of a drug that turns the past into pornography and renders the present useless.

A proven master of underground lit, beat fiction and narrative non-fiction, Pagan Kennedy takes on America’s obsession with the idealized past with freshness, wit, and an uncanny ability to measure the pulse of post-modern culture.

Pagan Kennedy is the author of seven books. The most recent, Black Livingstone, was a New York Times Notable Book and a winner of the Massachusetts Book Award. Her novel Spinsters won a Barnes & Noble Discover Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award. Her articles appear regularly in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Spin, and Salon.

Sophisticated and bright with promise…these stories elucidate incredibly difficult-to-articulate topics such as jealousy, self-hatred, unlikely connection and friendship.… If a writer's job is to make the unseen visible, the stories in VANISHING are flashlights, illuminating the subtle, enormous tragedies we humans encounter every day.—Marie-Helene Bertino, author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas

Praise for Cai Emmons' novels

Gripping. Brings home the power and terror of maternal love. —O Magazine

Emmons…has an eye for the grating intimacy of small-town life and a fine ear for suggestive metaphors.… Unusual and memorable. —The Economist

Lovely writing… Emmons' emphasis is on her characters, and she draws them well. —Seattle Times

With family relations as twisted as a French braid and language as vivid as a platinum dye job, Emmons' potent novel features magnetic characters and complex and compelling secrets. —Booklist

A gift of a book, an affecting story of violence and forgiveness.—Bookpage

Accomplished playwright and filmmaker Emmons tests chilly waters in this ambitious, unsettling debut.—Publishers Weekly

Gorgeous writing throughout makes for an unusually affecting and memorable debut. —Kirkus Reviews

Cai Emmons is the author of the novels His Mother's Son (which won an Oregon Book Award), The Stylist, and her newest, Weather Woman (fall 2018), about a meteorologist who discovers she has the power to change the weather. Emmons was formerly a playwright and screenwriter; her short fiction has appeared in such publications as TriQuarterly, Narrative, and Arts and Culture, among others. She has taught filmmaking at the University of Southern California and Orange Coast College, and creative writing and screenwriting at the University of Oregon.