Kevin Watson's collection of eight short stories all take place in Morgan Grove, a small Ozark town built from bits and pieces of the many towns the author visited while fishing and canoeing the rivers and streams of the Missouri Ozarks. The people, too, are fictitious, but their problems are real. So is the spirit that moves them to visit an introvert's monument, to protect a secret pond, to serve a bad breakfast, and to try and write a kind obituary for the town grouch. A visit to Morgan Grove is like visiting the heart of America.

You Can't Meet Jesus Wearing Sneakers

Literature & Fiction

Watson, Kevin

Contemporary

Press 53

This second edition of Doug Frelke's first collection of stories includes a new story, "Sad Country Songs." These stories walk the fine-line of love, from a 15 year-old punk rocker learning to deal with her father's illness, to a sailor coming to terms with his own father's death while delivering death notices for the Navy. Writer Jo-Ann Graziano sums up Whiskey Nipple, saying, "Frelke's stories take us to unfamiliar microcosms that expose the raw heart of human need. We experience the complex tug of life in these stories and yearn for their author to tell us one more."

Whiskey Nipple

Frelke, Douglas C.

Epic Cures brings together twenty-two short stories by award-winning master storyteller Tom Sheehan. Alan Lupo, of the Boston Globe, says, "Tom Sheehan dissects the life of everyman, for in peace and war and all the trauma and joy in between, he has known everyman. He masters the details of memory, in sight, sound, smell and feel, so that memory becomes memorable. Sheehan has the soul of John Dos Passos, of Carl Sandburg." Sheehan offers the cure for those readers who believe that only the novel can deliver the epic tale.

Epic Cures

Sheehan, Tom

This collection of eighteen previously published short stories by Al Sim includes "Get the Can," winner of the 2001 Glimmer Train Short Story Contest. Bill Roorbach, author of "Big Bend," "The Smallest Color" and "Temple Stream," says, "Stories in the Old Style harkens back to the days of Cannery Row, of Jack London, to the splendid era of American realists. Al Sim's people are the people Johnny Cash sings about, whether the setting is the great Southwest or Soho in New York City. And these are the people who make America such a complex and bedeviled place. So turn off the electric lights, unplug the phone, shoot your TV, and sit down in the easiest easy chair you've got: it's time to enjoy Stories in the Old Style."

Stories in the Old Style

Sim, Al

Eleven short stories by national award-winning author Doug Frelke. According to one reviewer, "Frelke's characters, like his stories, are skillfully crafted and unforgettable. His voice as storyteller alternately stuns, sooths and shocks. Let this writer lead you into his surprising shadow world. And when your scalp tingles or you're stricken with a haunting sense of deja vu, don't be surprised."

Croatan

Frelke, Douglas

United States

This collection of poetry by award-winning poet Valerie Nieman is praised by National Book Award finalist Sarah Lindsay, who says, "Valerie Nieman writes poems with long tap roots, and poems with sharp beaks that strike swiftly. They cast off from the known, or fix the familiar with a clear gaze, and unmoor the reader either way. For a nameless hunger and restlessness, here are guide and supplies and hills to climb, all in one fine book." Fred Chappell, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina, offers the following: "Like the millwright in her poem, Valerie Nieman seems "with bare hands (to) embrace live steam." Wake Wake Wake is sinew and tendon, hard muscle and bruised bone; the volume sings with every inch of the body and every breath of the spirit. If she speaks of "hearing that we have all fallen short," she yet believes-she knows-"the way a path is best walked/not by looking down/but by looking out." Would you be stout of heart, steadfast of purpose? Read Valerie Nieman."

Wake Wake Wake

NIEMAN, VALERIE

Poetry

The subjects and settings of Joseph Mills' poems range from Laundromats, groceries, and coffee shops, to cemeteries, the stars over the Grand Canyon, and even Purgatory, which is seen as a combination "dry cleaner/car wash." These poems, which deal mainly with traveling and motion, explore the simple encounters that can suggest the complexity of human interactions. In everyday language, the narrator considers topics such as how difficult it can be to find a poem to read at a wedding, what happens when a person drives non-stop from Salt Lake to Chicago, and why it would be convenient if people wore labels like wine bottles, so "we would have a better idea/who might improve with age/and who we should enjoy now."

Somewhere During the Spin Cycle

Mills, Professor of Surgery Chief of Vascular Surgery Joseph

Harper Lee says, "John Ehle's meld of historical fact with ineluctable plot-weaving makes 'The Land Breakers' an exciting example of masterful storytelling. He is our foremost writer of historical fiction." Robert Morgan, author of Oprah pick 'Gap Creek,' says 'The Land Breakers' is a "complex, compelling story of settlement and discovery, it introduced readers to the Blue Ridge past, to explorers, families, the land. The land that is broken is itself a major, unforgettable character in this vivid, memorable story." Set in 1779, 'The Land Breakers' follows young Mooney and Imy Wright deep into the Appalachian wilderness where they become the first white pioneers to settle deep in the mountains of Western North Carolina. "What ensues during these six years is an often violent struggle: first merely to survive and then to create a viable settlement, some human community that might last. For in this stark mountain fastness, each of the important characters-male and female alike-is seeking two things: family and community." (from the Afterword, by Terry Roberts) First published in 1964 by Harper &amp; Row, 'The Land Breakers' returns to print as a Press 53 Classic. As Hal Borland wrote, in his 1964 New York Times review, "In a time of dreamless heroes, of long-winded whimpers that pass as novels, The Land Breakers has a rare degree of greatness."

The Land Breakers

EHLE, John

Harper Lee says, "John Ehle's meld of historical fact with ineluctable plot-weaving makes 'The Land Breakers' an exciting example of masterful storytelling. He is our foremost writer of historical fiction." Robert Morgan, author of Oprah pick 'Gap Creek,' says 'The Land Breakers' is a "complex, compelling story of settlement and discovery, it introduced readers to the Blue Ridge past, to explorers, families, the land. The land that is broken is itself a major, unforgettable character in this vivid, memorable story." Set in 1779, 'The Land Breakers' follows young Mooney and Imy Wright deep into the Appalachian wilderness where they become the first white pioneers to settle deep in the mountains of Western North Carolina. "What ensues during these six years is an often violent struggle: first merely to survive and then to create a viable settlement, some human community that might last. For in this stark mountain fastness, each of the important characters-male and female alike-is seeking two things: family and community." (from the Afterword, by Terry Roberts) First published in 1964 by Harper & Row, 'The Land Breakers' returns to print as a Press 53 Classic. As Hal Borland wrote, in his 1964 New York Times review, "In a time of dreamless heroes, of long-winded whimpers that pass as novels, The Land Breakers has a rare degree of greatness."

Literary

In December 2004, Joseph Anderson left his North Carolina home and law practice for an extended trip to India to study yoga with Yogiraj Bikram Choudhury. He promised his recently widowed mother he would keep a travel log of his journey and post it on his weblog so she could follow him as he traveled. The Light Within: A Travel Log of India is a moving, sometimes funny and sometimes shocking look at the streets of India-from Mother Teresa's orphanage to the high-tech skyline of Bangalore; from an illegal yoga session in the pristine Taj Mahal to the funeral pyres of the tsunami-ravaged southern coast; from plush five-star hotels to the slums of Calcutta, where, in the eyes and smiles of the people, he "glimpsed the inward fire of life, life on the thinnest edge of being, life against all odds." Upon his return, Joseph Anderson established the Calcutta Children's Permanent Fund, an endowment providing medical and nutritional support to the street children of Calcutta.

The Light Within: A Travel Log of India

Travel

Anderson, Joseph L.

Asia

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Books by Press 53

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You Can't Meet Jesus Wearing Sneakers

Whiskey Nipple

Epic Cures

Stories in the Old Style

Croatan

Wake Wake Wake

Somewhere During the Spin Cycle

The Land Breakers

The Land Breakers

The Light Within: A Travel Log of India