A story of recovery and redemption. "A voice filled with sincerity, salvation, and splendor. A voice as stark, unforgiving, and mesmerizing as blood backing into the needle." ~ J.A. Kazimer, The Ampersand Review 
From the cow fields of Connecticut to the streets of San Francisco, Joe Clifford’s Junkie Love traverses the lost highways of America, down the rocky roads of mental illness to the dead ends of addiction. Based on Clifford’s own harrowing experience with drugs as a rock ’n’ roll wannabe in the 1990s, the book draws on the best of Kerouac &amp; the Beats, injecting a heavy dose of pulp fiction as it threads a rollicking narrative through a doomed love triangle, lit up by the many strange characters he meets along the way. Part road story, part resurrection tale, Junkie Love finds a way to laugh in one’s darkest hour, while never abandoning its heart in search of a home. Junkie Love by Joe Clifford is an original ride through the down-and-dirty underside of the drug and music scene, inspired and propelled by Jack Kerouac’s youthful dreams of an American nirvana, translated to a later, darker generation. Clifford is its passionate spokesman. Buy now and get a free Kindle book with paperback via Kindle Matchbook! Praise for Junkie Love "Joe Clifford’s Junkie Love portrays high-heeled heroin amour, beautiful and vicious, full of front seat hot sex and brutal cop raids, secret rehab gropes and smack-fueled crime sprees. In prose that speeds like a stolen car, Clifford does for opiated romance what Michael Herr did for war and F.X. Toole for prize fights: brings mind-blowing news from hells beyond imagining." - Alan Kaufman, author of Jew Boy and The Outlaw Bible of American Literature "No one writes this good the first time out, do they? Joe Clifford’s Junkie Love is a literary achievement of the first order. Junkie Love is both harrowing and haunting, hypnotic and hilarious. Clifford can flat-out tell a story. He’s savvy, insightful, and fearless. Trust me, here’s a world that’s more vivid, unnerving, and compelling than the one you’re living in, written with the exhilaration and abandon of an improbable survivor." - John Dufresne, author of Requiem, Mass (a People magazine’s Book Pick of the Week) "Joe Clifford reminds us that even in the most punishing circumstances, the human heart doesn’t just struggle or abide, it points the way home. Junkie Love is a savage, funny, ravishing gift of a book, strangely gentle and beautifully strange. Like Jimmy Santiago Baca’s A Place to Stand, it reveals that man in extremis is the man in the mirror, and that our own humanity resides precisely in the willingness to see the irreparable fault lines in our own souls, to witness despite the impenetrable darkness: to love." - David Corbett, author of Blood of Paradise and Do They Know I’m Running?

Junkie Love

Biographies & Memoirs

Clifford, Joe

Arts & Literature

Battered Suitcase Press

"I found myself peering through watery eyes a number of times. Truthful books touch you that way." ~ Gordon Walmsley, Editor, The Copenhagen Review In Belle Place, Louisiana, where the sugarcane grows a mile high to the bright blue sky, Celeste struggles with her mentally ill mother, Tut, and works with her grandmother Maymay to hold the Creole Bastille family together. Celeste has bigger dreams for her life, and is falling for the handsome and wealthy Vashan. But, when Tut runs away to live with the man she met working in the sugarcane to escape her reputation as the town whore, Maymay fears that Celeste will end up like her mother. And just as things are finally looking up for Tut, her past returns with violent, tragic results. Will Celeste end up like her mother, or will she redeem her family from the hoodoo curse that haunts them? And will she find love with someone from a culture just as exotic as her own? Download a free Kindle version with paperback purchase with KindleMatchbook "Collins weaves a tale as intriguing as the folktale that is the basis for the book. Celeste earns her Celestial Blue Sky." ~ Lee Grue, Editor, The New Laurel Review

Celestial Blue Skies

Literature & Fiction

Collins, Maggie

Literary

"Ms. Annalisa Crawford does a good job of drawing you in and then revealing the darker side of the story." ~ The Online Book Club "The Boathouse collects misfits. Strange solitary creatures that yearn for contact with the outside world, but not too much. They sit, glass in hand, either staring at the table in front of them, or at some distant point on the horizon." ... so says the narrator of Our Beautiful Child. And he's been around long enough to know. People end up in this town almost by accident. Ella is running away from her nightmares, Sally is running away from the memories of previous boyfriends and Rona is running away from university. Each of them seeks sanctuary in the 18th century pub, The Boathouse; but in fact, that's where their troubles begin. Ella finds love, a moment too late; Rona discovers a beautiful ability which needs refining before she gets hurt; and Sally meets the captivating Murray, who threatens to ruin everything. Three women. Three stories. One pub. Our Beautiful Child explores the defining moments that turn emptiness into eternity in this spine-tingling collection of literary ghost fiction stories. The Boathouse collects spirits and wanderers who must all come to face with their loneliness in these woven stories, filled with twists and turns until its stunning denouement.

Our Beautiful Child

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Crawford, Annalisa

Fantasy

Mara Daniels is a physicist doing cutting-edge research into the nature of reality at the University of Chicago. She’s an astronomer. She’s an amateur student of Chinese philosophy. And she’s still recovering from last summer’s car crash that killed Benjamin Zhu, her fiancé.  It’s a slow process; she can walk without a cane now, but she still suffers from migraines, nightmares, and seeing Zhu’s ghost everywhere she goes.  The novella The Joy of Fishes follows Mara through the day these threads -- and Mara -- begin to unravel. E.H. Lupton’s magical realism take on the romantic ghost story is filled with wonder at the miracle of time, space, and ghosts. The Joy of Fishes tears down the veil as it explores what it means to live on after great loss and to fall in love with life once again.

The Joy of Fishes

Lupton, E. H.

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