A collection of thirty short fictions by Ethel Rohan

Cut Through the Bone

Rohan, Ethel

Literature & Fiction

Dark Sky Books

<div>One woman's path to rediscovering herself through music, romance, and a little vigilantism Inside Half Moon Bay, a sparkling California coastal town, Ester Prynn is dulled and diminished by struggles with work, money, marriage, her senile father, a troubled teenage son, and old guilt she can't assuage. When a masked gunman robs the convenience store where Ester works, he upends her fraught life and propels her toward passions buried, like singing; desires discovered, like a same-sex infatuation; and wrongs righted, like bringing the violent assailant to justice. But as the armed robber commits new crimes and continues to evade capture, the trauma from the holdup climbs, threatening Ester's newfound delights and longings and forcing her to contend with her burning regrets and what-ifs. In the reckoning between Ester and these growing, molten upsets, she's faced with enormous choices and must determine what and who can bring her to her best life.</div>

Sing, I: A Novel

United States

TriQuarterly

A brave and extraordinary debut novel written with enormous verve and compassion. In The Weight of Him Billy Brennan undergoes an unforgettable journey in a startling attempt to resurrect his family, save the hopeless, and reignite hearts--including his own. At four hundred pounds, Billy Brennan can always count on food. From his earliest memories, he has loved food's colors, textures and tastes. The way flavors go off in his mouth. How food keeps his mind still and his bad feelings quiet. Food has always made everything better, until the day Billy's beloved son Michael takes his own life. Billy determines to make a difference in Michael's memory and undertakes a public weight-loss campaign, to raise money for suicide prevention―his first step in an ambitious plan to save others, and to save himself. However, Billy's dramatic crusade appalls his family, who want to simply try to go on, quietly, privately. Despite his crushing detractors, Billy gains welcome allies: his community-at-large; a co-worker who lost his father to suicide; a filmmaker with his own dubious agenda; and a secret, miniature kingdom that Billy populates with the sub-quality dolls and soldiers he saves from disposal at the toy factory where he works. But it is only if Billy can confront the truth of the suffering and brokenness within and around him that he and others will be able to realize the recovery they need. Told against the picturesque yet haunting backdrop of rural, contemporary Ireland, The Weight of Him is a big-hearted novel about loss and reliance that moves from tragedy to recrimination to what can be achieved when we take the stand of our lives.

The Weight of Him: A Novel

Literary

St.Martin's Press

The Weight of Him

ATLANTIC BOOKS *

Fiction. Ethel Rohan knows how to startle the dark. Her compassionate intensity illuminates the prose and the people of GOODNIGHT NOBODY—thirty short stories that are as sharp as they are earnest, luminous stories that reflect with sparse elegance our humanity and our often brokenness. As the moon circles the Earth, always separate but always drawn near, so too the cratered, alienated characters of GOODNIGHT NOBODY orbit others, striving to connect. By turns heartwarming and heartrending, this collection constellates ordinary lives gone wrong—the disgraced Dublin Reservist; the wife jealous of bees; the pyromaniacal mother craving warmth; the one-armed identical twin facing incompleteness; the photographer striving for the perfect image before losing her sight; and a host of others in trouble. Lives gone wrong, but always trying to get right.

Goodnight Nobody

Short Stories & Anthologies

Queen's Ferry Press

Selected and Most Anticipated Lists:BuzzFeed, The Millions, BITCH Magazine, The Rumpus, The Irish Times, BUSTLE, Entropy Magazine, BIG OTHER Magazine, Bay City News Foundation, 7x7 Magazine In the Event of Contact chronicles characters profoundly affected by physical connection, or its lack. Among them, a scrappy teen vies to be the next Sherlock Holmes; an immigrant daughter must defend her decision to remain childless; a guilt-ridden woman is haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend; a cantankerous crossing guard celebrates getting run over by a truck; an embattled priest with dementia determines to perform a heroic, redemptive act, if he can only remember how; and a young girl navigates crippling aversion to touch, even from her sisters. Amidst backgrounds of trespass and absence, the indelible characters of In the Event of Contact seek renewed belief in themselves, recovery, and humanity.

In the Event of Contact: Stories

Dzanc Books

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