I TRULY LAMENT: WORKING THROUGH THE HOLOCAUST

According to the author, Mathias B. Freese ... 

An astute historian of the Holocaust observed that it is much like a train wreck, survivors wandering about in a daze, sense and understanding, for the moment, absent. No comprehensive rational order in sight.

I Truly Lament—Working Through the Holocaust is a varied collection of stories: inmates in death camps; survivors of these camps; disenchanted Golems complaining about their designated rounds; Holocaust deniers and their ravings; collectors of Hitler curiosa (only recently a few linens from Hitler’s bedroom suite went up for sale!);  an imagined interview with Eva Braun during her last days in the Berlin bunker; a Nazi camp doctor subtly denying his complicity; and the love story of a Hungarian cantor, among others.

A description meant to entice booksellers, librarians, reviewers and readers might be this: A weirdly wonderful short story collection exploring the Holocaust from diverse perspectives in literary styles ranging from gothic and romantic to phantasmagoric.

Moreover, this book in manuscript form was chosen as one of three finalists in the 2012 Leapfrog Fiction Contest. It was selected from out of 424 manuscripts.

My most recent work is This Mobius Strip of Ifs, a collection of essays, and the winner of the 2012 National Indie Excellence Book Award for autobiography/memoirs, nonfiction as well as one of five finalists for the same category, Global Ebooks Awards.

Author of The i Tetralogy (Wheatmark, 2006), a Holocaust novel, winner of the Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award 2007, and Down to a Sunless Sea (Wheatmark, 2007), a collection of short fiction, Indie Excellence Finalist Book Awards, I am a retired psychotherapist and teacher.

Memorial Day, 1938: New York socialite Lily Dane has just returned with her family to the idyllic oceanfront community of Seaview, Rhode Island, expecting another placid summer season among the familiar traditions and friendships that sustained her after heartbreak.

She Left Me The Gun

Documents the author's investigation into a shattering childhood trauma in South Africa, tracing the discovery of her grandfather's abuse of her mother, which compelled her mother's unsuccessful attempt to kill him before fleeing the country.

Susan Steinberg

In this inventive collection of linked stories, women confront loss and grief as they sift through the wreckage of their lives. A woman struggles with the death of her friend in a plane crash. A daughter decides whether to take her father off life support in the Pushcart Prize-winning “Cowboys.” And when a man hits his girlfriend, she calls it an accident. Spectacle bears witness to alarming and strange incidents: carnival rides and plane crashes, affairs spied through keyholes and amateur porn, vandalism and petty theft. Steinberg challenges conventional gender roles and subverts assumptions about narrative with a fierce, lyric intensity, as these wounded women stand at the edge of disaster and risk it all to speak their sharpest secrets. A vital and turbulent book from a distinctive voice, Spectacle will break your heart, and then, before the last page is turned, will bind it up anew. (graywolfpress)

M c S W E E N E Y ' S

The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

From the author of Nureyev, the definitive biography of the celebrated Russian dancer, now comes the astonishing and unknown story of Marie Duplessis, the courtesan who inspired Alexandre Dumas fils’s novel and play La dame aux camélias, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata, George Cukor’s film Camille, and Frederick Ashton’s ballet Marguerite and Armand. Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Greta Garbo, Isabelle Huppert, Maria Callas, Anna Netrebko, and Margot Fonteyn are just a few of the celebrated actors, singers, and dancers who have portrayed her. (Amazon.com)

The First Rule of Swimming

Bobcat and Other Stories

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

The Dog Stars

Start Your Councils!

When journalist Bruce Feiler was diagnosed with a serious illness, he gathered six of his best friends to be there in their own ways for his daughters, writing about the experience in his touching book, The Council of Dads. Here are five easy steps for creating your own Council of Moms or Council of Dads.

Lionel Shriver

From the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist, "So Much for That" and the international bestseller "We Need to Talk About Kevin," comes a striking new novel about siblings, marriage, and obesity.

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
by Andrew Sean Greer
From the author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli, the story of a woman who undergoes electroshock therapy only to find her life splitting into three lives—one that is happening in 1918, another in 1941, and the other in the present. 

Greetings From McSweeney's

The Spirit of the Heart

Written by former leading cardiac surgeon Dr. Ismael Nuño – The Spirit of the Heart is a collection of heart-warming stories that resonate at the core of our humanness.

Fixing "broken" hearts gave Dr. Nuño a unique and intimate view into the power of the heart. Over the years he learned that even while coming face to face with death and losing patients, there is a beauty that can exist, even in loss.

Dr. Nuño graciously offers the insights he has gained from occupying a front-row seat at some of life's most real and raw moments. Part memoir, part self-help - these tender stories teach us about what it means to be human, to be connected to others, to love, to live, to forgive.

The Myths of Happiness

The Mermaid of Brooklyn

News from Dzanc books

Recent Print Title (also available as eBooks)

 

Jen Michalski's collection of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now, has been receiving praise since it hit the reading world:
 

"...the book feels like a tour de force statement on how--and why--novellas continue to be written."

--Baltimore Fishbowl

 

 

"This is an admirable and original book. Michalski is a skilled storyteller."

--Chamber Four

 

 

"Jen Michalski explores what it means to be vulnerable in a modern society."

--Little Patuxent Review

 

 

"The two very different styles in Could You Be With Her Now, not only make the case for the novella as a form, but also for Michalski as a wise writer and a master stylist."

--Baltimore City Paper

 

 

"Jen is an astonishingly sensitive writer."

--HTML Giant

 

 

The Sunshine When She's Gone

Good Kids

In this tragicomedy, two 15-year-old classmates see their parents exchange an illicit kiss and vow never to cheat on anyone.

— Abbe Wright