The Executioner's Race

The Executioner's Race... A female calligrapher in Ottoman Istanbul is condemned to death and imprisoned for turning holy prayers into faces and animals, for "reassembling the word of God." Her only chance at life-a privilege rarely granted to a woman-is to win a race against a bostanci, one of the Sultan's guards and executioners. Seven years later, in 1841, a man named Andersen travels to Istanbul and learns of the calligrapher Zeynep from a Turkish florist. Andersen, who is to become a great name in nineteenth century literature, sets out to tell the tale of the calligrapher and uncover the outcome of her story. What happened to Zeynep, and is the florist telling him everything he knows? The Executioner's Race is a cleverly wrought and intriguing puzzle of a tale.

Bynom, Andrew

Literature & Fiction

Aqueous Books

The Executioner's Race... A female calligrapher in Ottoman Istanbul is condemned to death and imprisoned for turning holy prayers into faces and animals, for "reassembling the word of God." Her only chance at life--a privilege rarely granted to a woman--is to win a race against a bostanci, one of the Sultan's guards and executioners. Seven years later, in 1841, a man named Andersen travels to Istanbul and learns of the calligrapher Zeynep from a Turkish florist. Andersen, who is to become a great name in nineteenth century literature, sets out to tell the tale of the calligrapher and uncover the outcome of her story. What happened to Zeynep, and is the florist telling him everything he knows? The Executioner's Race is a cleverly wrought and intriguing puzzle of a tale.

Literary

Secrets of Men in a Lifeboat... Luke Morrow, a financially struggling young single parent to an 8-year-old boy, comes to believe that he has nothing, until by a magical twist of fate, his improbable internet technology start-up turns him into a Silicon Valley billionaire star. Secrets of Men in a Lifeboat begins with Luke’s harrowing romantic sojourn on the moneyed Westside of Los Angeles. Just when Luke can’t bear life’s pain anymore, he is remade—into a rich but brutal man. As Luke catapults through realms of fame and fortune, he is granted one last chance to seek redemption in a final showdown between honor and his own devastating power.

Secrets of Men in a Lifeboat

Baker, Todd R

The collection is thematically linked by both the characters-who are struggling to realize their Hollywood dreams and the setting-Santa Monica, California. A seemingly peaceful seaside city, Santa Monica is also a purgatory where the characters must face failure and loss-as well as their demons and ghosts. Family and ritual are consistent motifs throughout the collection, as are the themes of escape, addiction, redemption, reparation, religion, and death. Whether it is a young couple looking to buy their first home or a man returning to his hometown for a funeral or a baptism, readers will find the everyday rituals in these stories identifiable in many ways.

History of Santa Monica

Atwood, Michael J.

Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom is the whimsical, emotional, often reckless love story that we've all had or wish we've had. The tale follows David and Samantha, two virtual strangers from opposite coasts united for a week in autumn-cloaked Massachusetts, as they experience each other as only they know how. Sometimes shy, nervous strangers, other times merged as a single, physical being, the two dance for us as the clock winds down and their reality bends but never breaks, sometimes odd, sometimes beautiful things bursting from the creases.

Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom

Mel Bosworth

As soon as he hatches from the cocoon, Moth is a creature confronted with uncomfortable and pertinent questions about life and how to live it. Night on the Invisible Sun follows four people, each representing an aspect of life, who stand as guideposts for better or worse to Moth in his search for meaning. A wise old man provides directives for the suffering and misery the creature will encounter during his journey; a bitter man and a love-torn woman carry resentments beyond the scope of the old man s teachings... Moth must decide for himself how to handle the difficulties he encounters, even as he attempts to develop a mythos that both acknowledges the meaning that can be gleaned from misery and suffering, yet provides optimism for his journey. The further Moth distances himself from the old man, the more he comes to see that his only option may be to face the results of flying too deep and too far into existential desolation. Night on the Invisible Sun is a harrowing, existential allegory the tale of a creature who is a stand-in for anyone who has experienced suffering and attempted to come out of it on the other side.

Night on the Invisible Sun

Alec Bryan

In an explosion of love's metaphors, Fowler's debut collection of stories, SUSPENDED HEART, takes on American fabulism with a cast of unexpected heroines in the narratives of life and loss-women whose hearts fall out at public malls, women whose bodies bloom with changing seasons, women who sprout blades or have multiple eyes, sleep as snakes, or birth saints like lapis lazuli babies. Where there is struggle and sadness, there is also humor: Fowler's fictive voice has been compared to both Franz Kafka and Donald Barthelme. There's a fearlessness to this prose, a melody of life and magic and loss. Selected stories in this volume have been published online and in Australia. Partial author's proceeds to be donated to the San Diego Family Justice Center.

Suspended Heart

Fowler, Heather

The saints are dead, but nobody bothered to tell them. A collection of short fiction littered with bits of dark magical realism, The Saints Are Dead skirts the lines between genres, dodging the overdone tropes of horror, science fiction, and fantasy while echoing timeless themes. An enchanted catalog supplies Depression-era children a Halloween for the ages. A lonely man spawns a universe in his back yard and revels in his role as supreme deity. With the aid of sentient, clockwork rabbits, a hobo wages war on a selfish vegetable grower. These are tales of misfits and the misaligned, outsiders and the awkward, all of whom must navigate strange landscapes and make sense of worlds which have slipped a notch or two past normal. Several stories have previously appeared in such venues as Everyday Weirdness, A Fly in Amber, The Battered Suitcase, Rose & Thorn Journal, and others, and some are new to this collection. A few have received mention in Tangent Online¿s recommended reading list and the storySouth Million Writers Award notable list.

The Saints Are Dead

Aaron Polson

Genre Fiction

The Other Shore is set in Israel in the 1980s, between the Lebanese War and the outbreak of the first Intifada (1984-1989), a pivotal time which saw the final transition of Israel from a Zionist-socialist society to a Western-style consumer society. The novel follows the lives of representative characters across the entire breadth of Israeli society but focuses on two families - the Shachars, a kibbutz family, and the Goldsteins, representing the emerging Israeli middle class. The protagonists in effect vie to win the heart and soul of Israel itself, personified by the beautiful Ariela.

The Other Shore

Fred Skolnik

Notes toward the Story and Other Stories is a book of disparate parts, a sort of Frankenstein monster of a collection. And indeed there is a monster story, as well as a ghost story, an angel story, a mystical religious story, and a mystical secular story. Some of the work is experimental, some of it is outlandish, and some of it is as simple and comforting as a home-baked pie. It is the full range of the author s short fiction gifts on display. They are made of gypsum, bituminous coal, red bricks and whimsy. They are equal parts crassitude and chimera. The final story, Publisher, the book s longest, concerns a man working for a vanity press who discovers the real thing, a novel he is convinced will blast a hole in the complacency of modern literature. About Publisher, John Grisham said, It s not only funny and clever, it reminded me of the first 80 pages of Sophie s Choice. Great work. The stories have previously appeared in The Pinch, Orchid, Ghoti, Gargoyle and other fine periodicals.

Notes Toward the Story and Other Stories

Corey Mesler

Short Stories & Anthologies

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Books by Aqueous Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Aqueous Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Executioner's Race

The Executioner's Race

Secrets of Men in a Lifeboat

History of Santa Monica

Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom

Night on the Invisible Sun

Suspended Heart

The Saints Are Dead

The Other Shore

Notes Toward the Story and Other Stories