Asks one of the most controversial and important questions of our time. What do we do with a child that commits murder?

The Ripple Effect by Ken Coleman

A cold blooded murder is committed in a sleepy, quiet, North Carolina town. The Ripple Effect explains, the character of a man is not in the way he acts. It’s in the way he reacts, even more so, the way he reacts to tragedy. Because, in one moment in time, through controversy and the court of public opinion, everything can change.

                                                                                                                                         

The story explores the relationship of a solid, Godly family that breaks, as well as a broken family that find their way back together.  Sterling Sharpe, the suave and handsome defense attorney, uses the event to rekindle past relationships, while the urban and gritty talk show host Great Dane, uses the controversy to gain national popularity. The riveting tale is not so much about true crime, as much as it is real life.

Nancy Méndez-Booth

Nancy Méndez-Booth (fiction) was born and raised in Queens, New York. After receiving her BA from Amherst College, Nancy made a temporary move to New Jersey to pursue and complete an MA at Rutgers University. Seventeen years later, she’s still in Jersey and returned to Rutgers Newark to complete an MFA. During those in-between years, Nancy worked as a copywriter and editor (most recently in financial services), taught in corporate and academic settings, completed numerous marathons, and learned to drive.  Nancy’s work has appeared inphat’titude Literary Magazine, Jersey City Magazine, examiner.com, and she is a frequent featured blogger on mamapedia.com She lives in Hudson County with her husband, John, an ardent supporter of her pre-dawn writing, running and upcoming  June 2012 residency at the Vermont Studio Center.
(Nancy blogs weekly at http://www.nancymendezbooth.com). 

Paris Press offers books by Bryher

Bryher (1894-1983) 

 born in England and spent most of her adult life in Territet, Switzerland and in London. Her novels and memoirs received high critical praise during her lifetime. However, nearly all of her work has been neglected during the past thirty years. Bryher was the partner of H.D., and she was the benefactor of many writers and thinkers, from Marianne Moore to Walter Benjamin. She was deeply involved in politics, film, and psychology, as well as literature. She was the publisher of Contact Publishing, Life and Letters To-day, and Close Up, and she helped to support the intellectual sanctum, Shakespeare and Company.

Come In and Cover Me by Gin Phillips

Thirty-nine-year old Ren is working on a dig in New Mexico, searching for Mimbres pottery that dates back to the 12th-century when she meets Silas, a fellow archaeologist whose methods are radically different that hers. While Silas dates objects by, say, counting the carbon in preserved prehistoric corn, Ren relies on a slightly less scientific method—visitations by tribal ghosts who show her how the bowls and jars were created. Novelist Phillips brings the culture and lives of these ancient people to life, as well as the fascinating details about the art of archaeology—from how a fallen bit of adobe can preserve a parrot feather to why coroners are required to examine bodies that date back 800 years. Interestingly, though, it's the personal details in this book that resonate. Ren's relationship with the past is more than professional: Her brother's death during her childhood has left her unable to connect to others, even Silas who, if things were different, she might be able love. It's this tension—between her belief that "The past was solid, weighable as cement...that it was done and over, and could be wrapped and stored without fear of it ever changing" and her awareness that she must re-examine what really happened 20 years ago in order create some kind of future for herself—that connect you to the book, both due to the subtle, evocative flashbacks and the relief at seeing for once, a woman character who is emotionally unavailable and a man who has to crack her tough shell, instead of the other way around.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/blogs/Book-of-The-Week-Come-In-And-Cover-Me#ixzz1l58WtvIT

Tell Them I'm Not Home - a memoir by Pete Byrne

'Tell Them I’m Not Home' is a lightly fictionalized memoir of growing up in the Olney section of North Philadelphia in the decade following World War II, a place not unlike Jean Shepherd’s Hammond, Indiana of a decade earlier. The close-quarters life in a blue-collar neighborhood of row-house streets provided the author with a cast of characters, many funny, some scary, as well as a near-endless litany of stories. 'Tell Them I’m Not Home' is a ticket back to the Olney & Philadelphia of the late 1940s and early 1950s, a place as singular, colorful and as lost to today as Hapsburg Vienna or tenement New York.

Pete Byrne is a retired corporate and advertising copywriter living in New Jersey. He’s a parent, grandparent, music enthusiast, a sometime painter and a snowboarder, not necessarily in that order.

Buy The Book: 
Paperback: 
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

E-Book: 
Amazon (Kindle)
Barnes & Noble (Nook)

Jack Kerouac's 'The Sea Is My Brother' And Other Lost Novels

The Marbled Swarm is Dennis Cooper’s most haunting work to date.

Book Description In secret passageways, hidden rooms, and the troubled mind of our narrator, a mystery perpetually takes shape—and the most compelling clue to its final nature is “the marbled swarm” itself, a complex amalgam of language passed down from father to son. Cooper ensnares the reader in a world of appearances, where the trappings of high art, old money, and haute cuisine obscure an unspeakable system of coercion and surrender. And as the narrator stalks an elusive truth, traveling from the French countryside to Paris and back again, the reader will be seduced by a voice only Dennis Cooper could create.

"Zone One"

Colson Whitehead is a literary novelist, but his latest book, “Zone One,” features zombies, which means horror fans and gore gourmands will soon have him on their radar. He has my sympathy. 

To read more of this article click here.

10 Best-Selling Books That Were Originally Rejected

A Mortal Affect by Vincent Standley

Calamari Press is pleased to announce the publication of A MORTAL AFFECT by Vincent Standley. To find out more about the book or to get a copy, go to: http://www.calamaripress.com/mortal_affect.htm 

Debut short fiction from John Chu, "Thirty Second From Now

The future is messy. Scott’s senses feed him all possible futures at once. He’s learned to wander only a few seconds ahead. That’s close, but it’s still not normal. This man, though, is a relief to his senses. He makes everything clean. Scott wonders for how long he can ogle the man and if he’ll ever walk by the room again. He untethers his senses, and the future rushes in. 

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 shortlist was announced.

The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats

The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats

Hesh Kestin

Release Date: January 3, 2010

ISBN: 978-0976717782

Price: $16.95

eBook Price: $7.99

"Hesh Kestin's book, The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats, is a wonderful read on a subject which has not been explored so thoroughly in some time, Jewish gangsters wreaking havoc a half century ago is a bas relief for the hero's poignant coming of age. Russel Newhouse is a witty, feisty and perceptive young man, grappling with his own identity through the strange polyglot world he inhabits. Kestin has written an unusual novel which reads like the wind." —Lucinda Franks, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of My Father's Secret War

Excerpt:

“[P]ulling a trigger, that’s a whole different dimension. that’s why I vote for Wystan Hugh Auden as head of the joint chiefs. Ginsberg, he’d make a great leader of the Corps. These are guys they don’t back down in the face of bad news. Although, let me tell you, Wystan is not the kind of guy who’ll let on what he thinks. Should be in the Mafia.”

“You can tell that from reading him? How do you know what he thinks other than what’s in his—” I stopped. “Wystan?”

“You want to meet him? Miserable son of a bitch, but like I say, he’d make a fine general…. A general and a poet are exactly the same in one thing. What they do they have to do with critical efficiency. Not a word or action wasted. And the action has to be more important than the man who creates it. You know Yeats?”

“You knew Yeats too?”

“Of course not. Yeats died fucking I don’t know forty years ago. I know Auden because he plays poker.”

Temporary People, a fable

Temporary People

Steven Gillis

Black Lawrence Press, 2008

ISBN-10: 0976899361

Hardcover: 203pp; $20.95

eBook Price: $7.99

“Balancing world-building, a thriller-worthy plot, and high-end political dialogue, Temporary People is the kind of book that forces the reader to fight between turning the pages faster to find out what happens and slowing down to consider its arguments and to savor its sentences.” —NewPages.com

Here's the book description:

"Revolution rocks and rolls. An ex-tv star seizes power and tries to turn daily life into an endless film. Temporary People is a political fable of the first order. Set on the island of Bamerita, a country whose “history is like the rim of a wheel made to turn round and round, our political cycles nothing if not redundant,” Gillis third novel, following Walter Falls and The Weight of Nothing, Temporary People explores the human condition in all its most vulnerable exposures. A brilliant send up of modern life turned inside out by the inescapable powers of history and fate, filled with pathos and humor, Gillis deftly explores the complexities of survival and choice in a world perpetually on the verge of going mad. Sharp and satirical, a breathtakingly paced romp, the end will leave you drop-jawed and wanting more. Temporary People is a book for the ages and once again Gillis delivers."

The Consequence of Skating by Steven Gillis

Published: Black Lawrence Press, 09/01/2010

Pages: 302

Language: English

Review:

In The Consequence Of Skating we meet the main character Mickey Greene, a cocaine fueled up and coming actor. To begin, he has a meltdown on stage and ends up in rehab, jobless and on probation. Trying to pull his life together, he works as a night security guard at a local amusement park, Birch Bow Adventure, but he has one true desire. Mickey wants to direct a theatrical version of Harold Pinter’s Moonlight. Unfortunately, this he is distracted by his love for Darcie, an actress and seducer, but she only loves herself and doesn’t want anything to do with him. In enters, Sarah, a big-boned beautiful woman, with a gorgeous voice that captivates Mick. He eventually falls in love with her and then his life seems to take a turn for the better.

Written in the first person, this story is layered with dozens of characters that skate in and out of Mickey's life. He meets a twelve-year-old boy named Cam and he competes with his friend Ted, a computer programmer famous for scripting a personalized sex software, but who has now turned his sights on global politics.

Although this story is fiction, Gillis explores some very human themes of love, heartache and hope. Overall, this is a fine fourth novel by Gillis and a must read for even the most pragmatic reader.

Excerpt:

The ceiling of my booth is tin. The metal traps the cold, floor open to the dirt beneath. My shift runs from 9:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. five nights a week. As an actor, there was talk of turning my time at the Bow into a documentary, or a reality show with scenes sketched out and other actors brought in. A contract was drawn up, but the court would not sign off, refused to let my punishment morph into a spectacle. I get it. That’s cool. There’s a definite protocol which needs to be followed, a lesson I’m supposed to learn. I appreciate this, want to prove that I’m repentant and accepting of all forms of retribution.

Mr. Baumbach’s new novel

Dreams of Molly

(Dzanc Books, 154 pages, $15.95)

Review:

Dreams of Molly is a sequel to Mr. Baumbach’s third novel, Reruns, which was originally published in 1974, but was reissued in 2005. This is truly a love story.

The story begins with a blocked writer, Jacob, who embarks on a series of adventures in order to rescue his ex-wife, Molly. He is not sure, but she may or may not have been kidnapped. Along the way, he keeps meeting people who remind him of her. Skeptical of who these people are, he finds himself caught between two worlds: fiction and reality. Then Jacob begins to unravel the idea that he may be a hired killer, but his memory begins to fail him and that's when the story really begins.

The book begins on the 35th night and ends on the 101st night. This format is similar to a diary, with chapters named by the night the dreams take place. I was personally drawn in from the opening lines: It was not the same. It was all the same. I was in Italy sitting at my desk in a luxuriant Villa writing the story of my invented life. I was in bed in Brooklyn dreaming I was in Italy at the Villa Mondare, which was a made-up place in any event, writing the first sentence of a fictional memoir. As readers, we are immediately pulled into the scattered mind of the protagonist and his dilemma.

Overall, each episode is a complicated philosophical adventure into the conflicted mind of the most unlikely hero. Dreams of Molly is an example Baumbach's avant-garde fiction at its finest.

Excerpt:

"You can turn around when I tell you to," she said. "Deal?"

I nodded my agreement, used the time standing with my back to her trying to remember what she looked like that fateful day fifteen years ago when she announced it was over between us. No image offered itself.

"What happens, Molly, if I turn around?" I asked, eager to see her even with the unattractive plastic bonnet over her hair.

I meant to keep my part of the bargain, but the extended silence intensified my curiosity. I sensed her shadow moving stealthily in the direction of the bed.

I turned my head warily, barely an inch, then turned back quickly, catching a glimpse of red dress as evanescent as a flash bulb explosion.

Perhaps I'd seen nothing, but my expectations, minimal in the best of seasons, glowed with promise.

—from Dreams of Molly by Jonathan Baumbach

Christina Stead (1902-1983)

Australian author of (among many other works) The Man Who Loved Children (1940), a novel based on the dysfunctional family in which she herself grew up. Although this work has repeatedly been named as one of the best fictions of the century (e.g., in TIME magazine, 2005) and in 2010 was described by the novelist Jonathan Franzen as a "masterpiece," it is not as widely known as it deserves to be.

precious little fictions in 500 words (or less)

"My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

I thought it was the worst thing in the world to be lying flat on my back with a sweating man on top of me.... He was inside me. He was grunting.... I was the mortar. He was the pestle.... He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all.... I was still breathing. I knew he was killing me.... I did not realize then that I was already an animal dying.... "Tell me you love me", he said. Gently, I did. The end came anyway.... (Excerpt from the novel)

Review:

Over the past few months I have been visiting my "to read" bookcase and plowing through the various titles that have been calling my name for two years now. This book was on the top of my list and I had high hopes, but it just fell flat. Sometimes when I hear all the hype about a book and wait a few years for the hype to die down I enjoy the book more, but that was not the case here. Thinking about it, I wish I would have read this book when it came out a few years back.

For starters, the pacing was very inconsistent, and I found myself bored and skimming whole pages. Whenever there was a glimpse of hope in the story line, it burnt out too quickly and I was let down hard. I noticed that I developed a strong sense of detachment from the characters and their situations and in the end, I just wanted the murderer to get caught. The sex scene at the end with Susie and Ray was not even relevant to the story line and felt it was unnecessary and dull. I hated the ending and felt like their wasn't really any closure with the underdeveloped characters. Overall, this book was not original and completely forgettable. This definitely wasn’t the read for me.

Author Biography: Alice Sebold was born in 1963 and grew up in the suburbs surrounding Philadelphia. In her essay "The Oddity of Suburbia," she confesses that she despised suburbia, but after living in both Manhattan and Southern California, she "realiz[ed] … that within the suburban world of [her] upbringing there were as many strange stories as there were in the more romanticized parts of the world." Her novel, The Lovely Bones (2002), reflects her realization that suburbia can and does contain "a bottomless well of narrative ideas." However, that realization did not occur until Sebold left Philadelphia. (Taken from Book Rags)

“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret”

“Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl.”

Click here to read the first chapter.

Review:
A few years ago I read Chris Cleave's debut novel Incendiary and was blown away by his honesty and the rawness of his main character. This haunting novel won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize, won the United States Book-of-the-Month Club’s First Fiction award 2005 and won the Prix Spécial du Jury at the French Prix des Lecteurs 2007. It later was turned into a movie starring Michelle Williams and Ewan McGregor.

For some time, his second novel titled Little Bee in Canada and the US, where it is a New York Times #1 bestseller, has been on my "to read" list. It is titled The Other Hand in the UK, where it is a Sunday Times bestseller and it was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards. This is the story of two women and how their lives collide one fateful day. One of them has to make a terrible choice that will change each of their lives forever.

Two years later, they meet again and we see the aftermath of that courageous decision unfold. The story quietly gives you a snapshot into the lives of the two women and as new characters are introduced you start to unravel the mystery behind the newly developed friendships. This book is one of the most engaging tales I've read and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a story that will keep them on their toes.