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Busted Flat by Michael Loyd Gray

A gritty novel of contemporary America in which an Afghan war veteran picks up a homeless, orphaned teenaged boy for a road trip that carries them across the U.S.  The vet cares for the boy in his own way but is plagued with PTSD and the boy is torn as he watches the vet descend farther into madness.

Gray has seven published novels. His style here is flash fiction chapters, spare and pithy prose, and memorable characters. A noir coming of age novel and a sober cautionary tale readers will long remember. How the Other Half Lives in novella format.

ISBN: 978-1-958728-29-1 (paper)

ISBN: 978-1-958728-30-7 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024942126

$17.99 paperback/$7.99 ebook

 

Busted Flat won a Literary Titan Gold Award

The Literary Titan Book Award honors books that exhibit exceptional storytelling and creativity. This award celebrates novelists who craft compelling narratives, create memorable characters, and weave stories that captivate readers. The recipients are writers who excel in their ability to blend imagination with literary skill, creating worlds that enchant and narratives that linger long after the final page is turned.

 

 

The Love Book, an anthology

June 1, 2024. Authors from the U.S. and Canada share their writing about the many forms love takes. From adolescent crushes to a tired marriage revived by nearly losing the loved one, from a sick child’s love for her dog to a mountain climber’s determination to climb the highest peaks with his son, from lesbian couple widowed after decades of making an international love affair work to newly weds irritated by their differences, from a husband losing his wife to COVID to a journalist home from Gaza desperate for someone to understand the suffering she has witnessed, from a person’s love for his land to a person watching beloved parents decline, from a woman still loving the man who has moved on to a woman who cannot sleep until a kind man upends her life, from a man delighting in the sensuous pleasure of sharing a shower to a woman seeing another woman’s photo beside her husband’s bed, from a couple who remeet after decades and invent their own love language to a grandmother’s love for her child’s special place, and more — love of all sorts is celebrated in this book of poems, short stories, and memoir pieces. Entries included were selected by independent judges.

ISBN: 978-1-958728-26-0  (paperback) $20 and ISBN: 978-1-958728-27-7 (epub) 

Contributors:

Mary Allen   Shannan Ballam   Julia Bindler   Marion Joseph Bollig    Barbara Bourne    Leslie Cagan   Brian Daldorph   Gretchen Cassel Eick

Doug Emory   James Fly   Cammie Funston   Tom Gannon Hamilton    Scott Hurd     Kelly Johnston   Donna Langevin   Bitman Roy   Tara Ryan   Sheila Sharpe   Amy Stonestrom   Sally Timmel   Adalyn Waeltermann   Barbara Waterman-Peters   Kathy Whitham

 

The Death Project: an anthology for the living

A collection of poetry, short stories, and memoir pieces that tell of how people of various ethnicities, religions,countries, and races respond to deaths from various causes: old age, dementia, cancer, murder, suicide, pandemic, war, road accidents. This collection comes from professional writers and ordinary people, from “death professional” who deal with strangers’ deaths (police, morticians, clergy), and from those surprised by the death of a beloved person. As the writers reflect on their grief and anger and try to find a way forward, their experiences enlarge readers’ capacity for coping with this inevitable experience that happens within life to us all. Inspirational and practical both, this new edition of The Death Project includes new pieces and “nuts and bolts” information on how Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Ba’hais commemorate deaths. An important resource for congregations, mortuaries, individuals and families.

ISBN: 978-1-958728-22-2 (paperback)   $19.99      ISBN: 978-1-958728-23-9 (epub) $7.99

 

 

Warren Ashworth and Susan Kander

Kirkus Review of We, the House

Ashworth and Kander’s novel begins at the end of the Civil War and follows a family of Kansas immigrants through the Twentieth Century in Newton, Kansas, where they build the Italianate home pictured on the cover and weather the changes U.S. history brings. The narrator is the house which can see only outside and an 1830s portrait of a  Latin teacher widowed young who can only see what goes on inside the space she inhabits. Fascinating, fresh, and unlike anything else you will read! American history come alive through the family, a fictionalized version of Ashworth’s own. The house still stands and the streets around it are named for family members. A tour de force.

“An offbeat novel that surveys American history from the 19th to 21st centuries through the unique perspective of an Italianate manor house and a garrulous portrait painting.

In this debut, architect Ashworth and composer Kander turn their artistic sensibilities to a narrative that explores ideas of progress, art, and the connections between humans and the places they live. Ambleside, a magnificent house built on a hill in Newton, Kansas, can see its surroundings but is unable to understand human language. A portrait of a woman named Mrs. Peale, hung within the house, can understand humans and communicate with the house but is only able to see things from its vantage point on the wall. The pair strike up a Socratic dialogue of sorts, combining their senses to piece together the story of the Hart family that inhabits Ambleside during its early years and to understand the sociocultural forces in the world around them. In this centurieslong conversation, Mrs. Peale acts as interlocutor for the endlessly curious house, taking up consideration of topics that range from household gossip to the substance of the soul. Readers also come to know Henry and Emmaline Hart, their three rambunctious daughters, and various other household staff members, friends, and descendants of the Hart family. The house and the painting share a charming fascination with etymology and classical antiquity, born out of the real Mrs. Peale’s time as an instructor of Greek and Latin at the Hartford Female Seminary, as well as a deep affection for the Harts that grows over decades. Throughout the narrative, the authors employ a light touch but also address weighty historical trends and events, including racial prejudice in the Jim Crow–era South, the women’s suffrage movement, the dire poverty of the Dust Bowl period, and two world wars. The detached perspective of the nonhuman protagonists offers a nuanced understanding of human nature, although the main characters’ moments of self-reflection are relatively few and fleeting, crowded out by quotidian meditations.”

“An often pleasant, time-skipping read that will engross fans of U.S. history, art, and architecture.”

– Kirkus Reviews, December 2021

kirkusreviews.com

Roy Beckemeyer

Roy Beckemeyer is a retired engineer, a scientific journal editor, and an authority on the Paleozoic insect fossils of Alabama, Kansas, and Oklahoma. He has named more than twenty new species of fossil insects. He and his wife have traveled widely visiting every continent and live in Wichita, Kansas.

This is his fourth book of poems. His book Stage Whispers won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and Music I Could Once Dance To was selected as a Kansas Notable Book.

ISBN: 9780996097093 (paperback)

 

Aida Dziho-Sator

“Without casting any judgment or looking for the culprit, Aida Džiho-Šator delivers verses with a strong poetic voice that depicts the social anomalies of the war-time and post-war Bosnian society. Death is present, but there is no fear of it. The author builds a poetic discourse
on the little, everyday things that we are usually not aware of [and don’t recognize] how important they are in our lives. A great, strong and fresh poetic voice.
~Adnan Žetica, award-winning author of six poetry collections among them ”A Draft for a Fairytale.”

“The poetry reader who knows anything about the four yearlong Balkans War will learn more about it from this beautiful poetry book than from history books where a single person is just a simple number. The reader of this touching diary about the drama of war and of peace, will discover in the poetry a new drama about the invisible scars that remain in those of us who survived. Just read it!”
~Goran Simic, author of the poetry collections “Sprinting from the Graveyard” (Oxford University Press, UK) and “Immigrant Blues” (Brick Books, Canada)

First edition March 2024
ISBN: 978-1-958728-20-8 (paper)  $20
ISBN: 978-1-958728-21-5 (eBook)  $7.99
Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN): 2024930887

Gretchen Eick

When Syrian journalist Ana Amara disappears from her London home where she has worked as an advocate for asylum seekers, her partner seeks help from the immigrant community and from four intrepid Members of Parliament disturbed by their rightist government’s hostility to refugees. Searching for Ana they stumble upon secret programs in unregulated, privately run refugee camps and illegal operations that involve foreign autocrats, but where is Ana? And what lengths will some endangered immigrants go to in order to challenge the government’s mistreatment of them? An international thriller. 

ISBN:  978-1-958728-18-5 (paperback) $20 and ISBN:  978-1-958728-19-2 (ebook) $13.99

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024930300

Gretchen Eick is a historian and biographer who brings her love of American history to this, the second in her CROSSINGS series novels. When a biracial family living outside of Chicago lose a family member to murder in 2019, their journey of grief and recovery leads to the discovery of a whole other family whose lives are now bound to theirs, a Jamaican family who have also been shaped by a murder. That murder occurred in 1985 in Philadelphia, PA and was part of a little known real event, the police attack on MOVE that destroyed lives and a large swath of homes in West Phillie.

ISBN: 9781958728017 (paperback) $20.00

ISBN:  9781958728000 (ebook)

aybe Crossings is the first novel in the series. Book 3 is expected in 2024. Eick wrote two award-winning histories published by University of Illinois Press and University of Nevada Press.

Maybe Crossings is the first novel in Eick’s Crossings series. The children of Black and white families separately experience their children’s growing involvement in the Civil Rights Movement’s sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and Freedom Summer 1964. Thirty-some years later those families are connected through a series of coincidents. The novel focuses on those born during the 1960s  and what happens to them. A family saga of memorable characters whose heartbreak and capacity for loving ties them to the Movement that nourished their parents. Includes a Discussion Guide for Book Groups.

ISBN: 9781958728024 (paperback)  $18.00

 

 

 

The Set Up: 1984: Britain’s Biggest Drug Bust

is a novel based on a true story told to the author in Scotland by a man who went to prison for participating in bringing cannabis resin into Britain in 1984 from off the coast of Lebanon. He provided his records of the case but the British government has classified and re-classified all materialk about this case until 2064! Eick researched the foreign policy behind the UK government’s secrecy about this case and, using the actual records from her source, constructed a tale of down and out Brits (and a Greek Cypriot) enlisted to bring in the enormous cargo and met on their arrival by hordes of police. The story is told from the perspectives of the participants, Their personal catastrophe plays out against the Reagan-Thatcher joint interest in Lebanon and the secret Reagan Administration arms sales to Iran in order to secure weapons for its guerrilla army (The Contras) fighting to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua.

An appendix includes government and other documents from the time and the book includes a study guide.

ISBN: 9781734227284 (paperback)     ISBN: 9781734227253 (ebook)

 

Review of The Set Up: 1984 from William South:

I just finished The Set Up and it is an absolute STONKER! WOW! It’s a ripping, gripping yarn for starters, love the breathless tone of the writing as the ill fated Robert Gordon goes on it’s mission and appreciated the more compassionate tone as the unfortunate crew people get incarcerated….the sad, too slow journey through court is very well told too….moving and not a little tragic. In particular the more gung ho style of the first third of the book was very addictive….I could almost smell those early 80s characters, all kipper ties and nylon tweed jackets (well in my imagination anyway)….like watching The Sweeney or The Professionals! The political history lesson was extremely interesting…..very complicated (esp the internecine spats in the Middle East) but you made it as transparent as possible! Lots of headlines I’d half paid attention to over the years came back to me and it was great joining the dots….those last extra sections were very illuminating…. I’ve read a lot of James Ellroy including his more ‘political’ works and I love his energy but he’s clearly a dilettante in terms of actual political history…..you had a strong whiff of his energy and revelatory vibe, which was great, but felt WAAAY more factual and researched!

 

Review of The Set Up: 1984 from Brian Daldorph:

It’s hard to fault the ambition of Eick’s novel, telling this story of “Britain’s Biggest Drug Bust” that brings into play not only the dangerous maze of Middle Eastern politics, but also the foreign policies of the U.S., U.K. and Israel, involving the CIA, the British secret service (MI5), arms dealers, the list goes on and on. Eick deftly weaves all these threads together.
The basic plot, taken from actual events occurring in the mid-1980s, focuses on the crew of the yacht The Robert Gordon, sailing on a precarious mission off the coast of Lebanon to pick up a huge load of cannabis resin likely grown in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, and ferrying it back through the Mediterranean to the UK where it was delivered to drug runners. Turned out it was all a set-up: police and Customs officers were ready to spring their trap.
Eick focuses on the five-member crew of the yacht, led by Keith Brown, the owner of a car-hire business, keen to make a bunch of money by bringing drugs into the UK. He assembles a crew of naifs and sails off to make the pick-up. At every point in the novel, you get the sense that this crew is way out of its depth in these waters, never more so than when they make the pick up off the coast of Lebanon from a group of black-masked, armed men, who just might be a Palestinian faction operating in Lebanon. They don’t really know. From the title of the book, and from plenty of suggestions throughout, we soon get the sense that the crew have been set up by the powers-that-be, pawns in a game that they have small chance of understanding.
The book’s a treasury of inside information about the tangled politics of the time, in particular, the CIA plot, led by William Casey, director of the CIA in the Reagan Administration, to illicitly fund the Nicaraguan Contras fighting a bloody civil war against the left-wing Sandanista government. Eick’s research is impressive (sources listed in the back of the novel) as is her confidence in keeping track of all the tentacles of the beast. The historical context of the novel gives everything a kind of gravity and depth that adds to the import of each scene.
Though Eick’s very good at painting the big picture, she’s best at showing us the plight of the smaller players in this global drama, the crew of the Robert Gordon yacht carrying tons of cannabis into the UK. They don’t understand the politics of it all: they’re all in it for a bit of adventure and a chance to make quick money. Two of the five crew don’t even know about the cargo, yet they still have to face imprisonment, trial and their lives irreparably damaged even after release.
The novel ends with (Eick assures us) an actual exchange between crew member David Bennie and arms dealer and billionaire Adnan Khashoggi (who just might be the mastermind behind all the events here), when Bennie is trying to get his life back together after the trial. Bennie has been working on a yacht in Monaco but has faced police harassment because of his connection with the Robert Gordon case. He realizes that he won’t be able to work on yachts anymore, because of police harassment.
Khashoggi’s limo approaches him on the dock and the man himself speaks to Bennie, sympathizing with him for his trouble. David’s response emphasizes the way that he was just one of the little fish caught in the net of the whole affair: “My mates were just ordinary dudes, not enough smarts altogether to organize a major drug heist.” Khashoggi tells him that he won’t be having any problems in the future, and you get the sense that with all the cards that Khashoggi holds as an international arms dealer, he’ll be good for his word.
Eick’s so good at holding together the central narrative of this story while locations change quickly and characters come and go. We’re taken on a wild ride through the Mediterranean, to Brixton prison, to Cyprus, to Rhodes, to a ranch in Costa Rica used as a staging ground for shipping arms to Nicaragua.
I always got the sense that I was in good hands, that the novelist would bring us, a little breathless, to that last scene in Monaco with Khashoggi saying so much without saying much at all.

 

Kara Farney

Kara Farney wrote this book when she was a child and revisited it in her late twenties during the COVID pandemic, updating it to reflect her own children’s lives and ‘wonderings’ as they thought about school and what their teacher might do outside the classroom. The child’s imagining is funny and creative and illustrated in brightly colored pages that will attract young readers and delight the adults reading to them. Kara Farney is of Filippino, Korean, and Caucasian ancestry and grew up in Virginia and Kansas. She is a military wife now living on Fort Pendleton with  her husband and two children.

ISBN: 9781736911204 (paperback) $10.00

 

George Franklin

George Franklin’s poetry collections include Noise of the World, Traveling for No Good Reason, and Among the Ruins/Entre las ruinas. He is co-translator of Ximena Gomez’s Ultimo dia/Last Day. He lives in Miami, Florida.

 

 

 

 

 

Ed Harkness

The essential poet of the Pacific Northwest, Harkness’s fourth book explores an assortment of topics: childhood memories, race, society, family, environment, place. His unique  voice has won him acclaim as the essential poet of his region but also relevant and meaningful to people in other regions. His poems vary in form, lyrical and classical equally powerfully mastered. Poems to savor and treasure and pass along to others. Excellent reviews from well known writers greeted this book.

ISBN: 9781958728154 $20.00 (paperback)

 

 

 

 

Kelly Johnston

Kelly Johnston has published two books of poems with Blue Cedar Press, Kalaska, his first and Tumbleweed. His poems reflect his love of the land, especially the Prairie of the Great Plains, and the ways in which nature helps him make sense of a world that sometimes seems to have gone mad. Johnson is a lawyer by trade and a man of the earth by calling. His poems are evocative and nourishing.

ISBN: 9781736911235 (paperback) $5.00 Tumbleweed

 

 

Reginald D. Jarrell

Reggie Jarrell’s 31 Days (Nights) Memoir of Living Black in America, published in 2022, has won him numerous interviews and opportunities to give readings from his book of essays that give insight into what it has been like for him as a lawyer, clergyperson, television journalist, etc. with multiple graduate degrees living in Midwestern and Southern cities. His brief episodes are effectively  written, understated, honest, and self-aware.

This is a great book for groups to read and discuss, both youth and adults.

ISBN: 9781736911273 (paperbacl)  ISBN: 9781736911280 (ebook)

 

 

Jarrell’s second book, Finding Myron: An Adopted Son’s Search for his Birth Father, is his memoir of his yearning to know who his birth father is and his on-and-off  search for him. Born to teen parents, Jarrell was raised by a childless couple in his mother’s family who loved him dearly. He writes with vulnerability and moving honesty about his ambivalence, his persistence, and the joy that resulted from finally finding Myron.  Recommended for people involved in adoption from any perspective and for congregations, youth groups, and schools as well as general adult readers.(Feb. 1, 2024).

ISBN: 9781958728161 (paperback)   $20.00      ISBN: 9781958728178 (ebook)

Paul Lamb

Paul Lamb has had 50-some short stories published in assorted magazines and journals. This book tells the gentle story of three generations of a working class family as they enlarge their understanding of what it means to love each other, including in the 21st Century as sexual orientation expands. Readers will love these characters. Watch for the sequel Parent Imperfect in June 2024.

ISBN: 9781958728048 (paperback) $20.00

ISBN: 0781958728031 (ebook)

Interview with author of One-Match Fire

  

Lynn spent 25 years as director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and more years with the ACLU and the United Church of Christ working to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans, including those who refused to fight in Vietnam, producers of and actors in pornography, smaller religious groups, LGBTQ+ people, and women seeking to keep decisions about their bodies away from government. His 2023 trilogy is full of stories that will amuse and horrify readers as he entered the hallowed halls of the Religious Right at considerable personal cost to use his skills as a lawyer practicing before the US Supreme Court and as a clergyperson committed to equal rights for all. Watch author interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK3DMjhPVlw

ISBN: PEACE  9781958728086 (paperback) $20.00   ISBN: 9781958728093 (ebook)

ISBN: PORN   9781958728109 (paperback)  $20.00    ISBN: 9781958728123 (ebook)

ISBN: PRAYER 9781958728116 (paperback) $20.00   ISBN: 9781958728130 (ebook)

Mark McCormick

Mark E. McCormick is deputy director of the ACLU of Kansas but before that was an award-winning journalist. Today you can see him on the Barry Sanders movie that is causing a buzz on Netflicks. (Barry and he were close friends from childhood and he co-wrote Barry’s autobiography with Sanders). This book is a collection of brilliant short essays that range from people you should know but probably don’t with Kansas ties to famous people like Sanders and Mohammed Ali seen “up close and personal.” McCormick’s book went into a second edition when it was chosen as the campus read for Wichita State University. You may have seen him in the Netflix biopic Bye, Bye, Barry.

ISBN: 9781734227208 (paperback with study guide) $18.00

ISBN: 9781734227222 (ebook)

 

Michael Poage

Michael Poage is a U.S. poet with 15 published books that showcase his work and travels. A sheep rancher in Montana, who taught in a one-room school, pastored churches in Kansas for 25 years, and teaches English to students from other countries, notably Bosnia and Herzegovina and Thailand. Poet in the Schools in Montana, Poage is known for his lyrical poetry and his passion for the people of the world. He is also owner of Blue Cedar Press.

 

 

 

 

 

David Romanda

David Romanda is a Canadian poet whose pithy lyrical poems make readers alternately laugh out loud and stifle a sob. He has been recognized in a book on new Canadian poets and has published individual poems in many journals. Romanda has lived in Japan for seventeen years where he teaches English and writes. His work is brilliant.

ISBN: 9781958728062 (paperback) $10

ISBN: 9781958728079 (ebook)

 

 

 

Julie Sellers

         

Julie visiting Green Gables                      Lover’s Lane

Anne’s Room

Statue if L. M. Montgomery

Diane Wahto

Diane Wahto was a beloved Kansas poet who died in 2020, leaving many Kansas writers mourning the passing of this woman whose words enlarged our worlds. This was her first full length book of poems. She was a teacher, professor of English and creative writing, and the president of the Kansas Authors Club. Her poems here revisit aspects of her life that include traumas and joyous moments, domestic events, and a celebrated capacity for loving the world and expressing that love beautifully.