Fairview Chronicles: A Wayward Proposition

Literature & Fiction

Paul, Johnathan

Genre Fiction

Madville Publishing

A Third Place exists in the extremes, pinpointing the details in nature which demand attention, and finding within those details our place in the bigger picture. Set in a series of observations and experiences, A Third Place on the one hand brings us all closer to nature through the eyes of the author yet makes us wonder if he has been following us around on our afternoon walks.

A Third Place: Notes in Nature

Kunzinger, Bob

Religion & Spirituality

If the taste of the eternal “is increasingly absent in our words,” then Jeff Hardin’s sixth collection, A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being, attempts to behold language anew, to listen in on its “preview of eternity.” Aware of ambiguities that plague our lives and given to swerves of logic and dislocations, to echoes and reverberations “too numerous to see in some totality,” his poems nonetheless speak openly to existence, to the mind’s “attempts/to console itself,” and to the “intoxication of incoherence” existence so often feels like. Here in a postmodern world, is it still possible to step boldly into certainty, into clarity, to find a sacred and shared space where “all moments blaze up with a speaking/voice”? Hardin listens intently, discovering more and more how “wanderingly vast” enchantment still might be. In the presence of so many options for understanding, he chooses to believe “a new/parable unfolding, still instructive,” pointing him toward a fellowship with others who likewise “lean toward thinking some healing is already/underway.”

A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being

Hardin, Jeff

Poetry

The candid poems in Gianna Russo’s One House Down are grounded in experiences of ambivalence and oneness, not unlike those we sometimes find in true love. Russo ruminates on the past and scrutinizes the present in her hometown of Tampa with honest affection, concern, anger and delight. She asks an essential question: How can we treasure a place whose history and values have sometimes supported injustice? And if those wrongs are still evident today—then what? With family roots in Tampa that go back over a century, Russo skillfully pursues an answer in these inventive, surprising poems.

One House Down

Russo, Gianna

Kate is a thirty-something-year-old adventurer and single mother who sells her stateside business to go to Kathmandu, Nepal with her young son, Jack. Her intention is to adopt an orphaned toddler named Devi, a little girl she knows only from a photograph. The expedition ends up completely redirecting Kate's moral compass and forcing her to find peace within chaos. Stand in the Traffic is the story of Kate's year long journey through culture shock, paperwork delays, and revolution. As the days drift by, Kate struggles to connect with the stoic little girl whose charcoal eyes and visible scars betray her elusive past. In Stand in the Traffic, Kate's fresh, engaging voice speaks to women's issues, parenting, politics, and adventure travel. Readers will be captivated by Kate and her family. Unlike other adoption retrospectives, this is not the dry, drawn out account of bureaucracy and childlessness, but rather a heart-pounding journey to the land of rickshaw wallahs and orange-clad saddhus, incense laden temples, and sly street dogs. As the months unfold, Kate finds herself contentedly immersed in Devi's vibrant culture, in spite of the revolution brewing just down the lane. Kate's story of immersion in a foreign culture leads readers into an enchanted dreamscape.

Stand in the Traffic: A Himalayan Adoption Story

Parenting & Relationships

Saunders, Kate

Adoption

Anyone in the mood to be enchanted by a collection of prose poems that celebrate the quotidian, the commonplace, the ordinary things of this world--those "dumb beautiful messengers," as Walt Whitman famously referred to them in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"? Then you best pick up a copy of Gerry LaFemina's book Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping.... LaFemina offers a] kind of precision with language--making a "place" into a "thing" and conveying its feel, look, and impression on the soul with such searing clarity.... his poems] enchant the senses and succeed in stopping time . . . so that we might examine the things of this world with love and intelligence, so that we might hear them speak to us again.--Janet Lowery, editor of By the Light of a Neon Moon

Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping: Prose Poems

LaFemina, Gerry

History & Criticism

Roseville to Kansas City, Jamaica Plains to Lubbock, the characters in Runaway find new lives. These exciting stories find transformation via spirit, heart, loss, hope and emptiness. Luanne Smith, Michael Gills, and Lee Zacharias have crafted a collection that is at once devastating and utterly magical. This is a collection to be read and re-read, shared in writing workshops and savored.-Karen Salyer McElmurray, Wanting Radiance

Runaway: An Anthology

United States

You might've just started out or reached the jumping off spot. Maybe you're the rainy-day saver who never left anyplace without charting a precise destination and itinerary first, or you're plumb astounded you got where you're at and couldn't tell me what happened last night much less what's in store six weeks from now. You might have a working man's callused hands, the callused soul that only the mistreated know or the callused heart that comes with having yours shattered too many times. Everybody needs to catch an occasional break, or they risk becoming Long Gone & Lost?

Long Gone & Lost: True Fictions and Other Lies

Horecka, Bobby

Family Relationships

Set in Cleveland, Ohio, from its earliest beginnings as a forested frontier to the urban blight of modern times, Mistakes by the Lake is a collection of ten thematically linked stories spanning the many faces of the city's history: A motorman navigates his 1920's back-and-forth trolley until he snaps; A stockyards knocker encounters the Virgin Mary during the 1954 World Series; A wannabe wrestles his unruly mind along the flammable 1960's Cuyahoga River; In a reinvention of Henry IV, a young man must either stick with his bumbling criminal crew or uncover legit ways to support his mother and transgender Gramps. The collection and its stories have garnered numerous accolades: Finalist: Nilsen Prize (Southeast Missouri State University); Winner: The Lake Prize in Fiction (Midwestern Gothic); Shortlisted: The Novella Award (Liverpool John Moores University); Shortlisted: Munster Literature Centre's Se&#65533;n &#65533; Faol&#65533;in Short Story Competition; Honorable Mention: Family Matters Contest (Glimmer Train). Praise for the novella, Mistakes by the Lake: "Full of action, movement, tension and shocks. T he world of the Cleveland stockyards and its denizens is brought to life with verve, skill and command" (Vulpes Libris).

Mistakes by the Lake

Petkash, Brian

Literary

Often it is said of contemporary music that it's the soundtrack of our lives. If so, Drumming Armageddon is a poetic rendering of that soundtrack: Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Folk, The Blues--they're the genres comprising it, and they all are present in this collection. The poems pay homage to the artists--Dylan, Clapton, Lennon, Crow, The Beatles, Elvis--and track the poet's personal musical biography: his experiences and memories the music both relates to and marks. The poems, like the music, have plenty of swagger. Finally, though, they remind us that, at their best, poetry is music, music poetry. THE WORD SWAGGER Swagger is a nice word most especially when there is a deficit of swagger. Swagger is what you crave, like the full tilt grit of Janis Joplin, or the guttural smolder of James Brown. ...

Drumming Armageddon

Drew, George

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