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 Coffeetown’s newest release, Truth Be Veiled (242 pp, $16.95/paper, $24.95/cloth, ISBN: 978-1-60381-080-7), by Joel Cohen and Carla T. Main, is a fascinating examination of legal ethics as well as a compelling page-turner about a complex murder case.
A woman falls from her fifteenth-story window … was she pushed? Her husband, a high profile executive, stands accused of the murder. He is counting on renowned criminal lawyer Justin Steele to clear his name. But Justin suspects there is more to the story. What is the truth in this case, and how far does the law and personal conscience allow it to be concealed—or revealed—so Justin can win an acquittal? Truth Be Veiled is a riveting play-by-play of the process leading up to trial, told by a criminal lawyer and master storyteller.
“The original version of this novel was conceived to teach law students about ethics,” Cohen says. “However, folks, including students, were so enthusiastic, I decided to enlist Carla’s help and turn it into a bona fide murder mystery. It’s difficult for the layperson to imagine how easily the wheels of justice can get mired in technical issues and layers of truth and falsehood. Anyone who cares about justice and the law will hopefully be intrigued by an insider’s account.”
“Truth Be Veiled was a pleasure to work on,” says Main. “Joel and I have known each other since I was a summer associate at Stroock, some 25 years ago. So when he explained this project to me, I was thrilled to be a part of its development. The challenge was to create a plot that turns on how the characters confront and deal with the law in all their varied roles as advocate, defendant and investigator.”
Joel Cohen, a former prosecutor, practices white-collar criminal defense at New York’s Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, LLP. He teaches legal ethics at Fordham Law School, lectures widely and authors columns on law and legal ethics for the New York Law Journal and Law.com.
Carla T. Main is an award-winning legal journalist who writes about law and society. She is the author of Bulldozed (Encounter Books, 2007), an examination of the impact of eminent domain development on communities.
To obtain a discussion/teaching guide for this book, please contact info@coffeetownpress.com.
Truth Be Veiled is available in Kindle ($6.95) and print editions on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, and Amazon.fr. It can also be ordered through Coffeetownpress.com. Bookstores will soon be able to order hardcover and paperback editions through the Baker and Taylor catalog. In the meantime, please contact info@coffeetownpress.com.
Praise for Truth Be Veiled …
“Truth Be Veiled is a compelling journey of a criminal defense lawyer with a client accused of murder. Author Joel Cohen navigates this dangerous terrain of truth, morals and legal ethics brilliantly. We know, because he’s been there.”
—Nicholas Pileggi, author of many books and screenplays, including Goodfellas (Wiseguys) and Casino
“Truth Be Veiled takes legal ethics out of the textbooks and into the real world, illustrating the subtle conflicts between morals and ethics in criminal defense work. The reader is left to wonder, like the book’s hero, lawyer Justin Steele, whether the truth matters in our criminal justice system.”
—Barry Scheck, co-director of The Innocence Project at The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
“In the context of a highly readable legal thriller, Joel Cohen plumbs the depths of ethical issues that lie at the core of every criminal defense practice but are rarely discussed or debated.”
—Gerald L. Shargel, New York Criminal Defense Lawyer and Professor at Brooklyn Law School
“The fictional Justin Steele, created by criminal defense attorney and adjunct law professor Joel Cohen, uses the Socratic Method to deftly guide his young associate through the perilous intersections of law, morality and ethics. This fascinating murder mystery will have readers guessing all the way to the end.
“While a great read for anyone, it is a ‘must read’ for those starting a career in criminal justice, either as prosecutor or defense attorney.”
—Charles J. Hynes is the District Attorney of Kings County, New York, and author of the novel, Triple Homicide (St. Martin’s Press, 2007)
“Truth Be Veiled sheds light on what people in daily contact with our criminal justice system know: that it often fails in ways that cause individual suffering beyond belief, and sometimes even utterly wrongful convictions. Joel Cohen shines in the telling of the defense of George Robbins and his counselor, Justin Steele, and movingly portrays how a defendant feels when he is on trial for murder.”
—Martin H. Tankleff, now working as a paralegal in a New York law firm after serving more than 17 years in New York prisons after his wrongful conviction
Keep reading for an excerpt:
George heard a thud and a sickening cracking sound, as if someone far away had broken a very large egg. Adrianna lay in the alleyway below. All was quiet. She was dead.
George had stood by the window, transfixed. All around him the scene erupted into chaos. The police arrived, and an ambulance. Their neighbor, Ruth Munsell—the building busybody—had watched the tragedy unfold. Or at least she said so, since everyone knew that the view from her apartment into the Robbins’ was obstructed. Mrs. Munsell’s apartment was across the air shaft from theirs and one floor up. And thank Heaven for that, George had often thought, or she would have made watching Adrianna and him a full-time hobby.
Mrs. Munsell told the police: “George Robbins had his hands on his wife as she fell from the window.” … She told the detectives that she heard a man and a woman screaming from the direction of the Robbins’ apartment just before Adrianna fell. She wouldn’t budge from this statement.
The police found no outward sign that Adrianna was doing anything with the plant—no gardening tools, no dirt on her hands, nothing to back up George’s version of the events. They asked George if Adrianna suffered from vertigo. He answered them honestly: “No.” And then they asked him the oddest question. ‘How many flower pots did you keep on the ledge?’ Why would anyone care about such a thing at a time like that? he wondered.
No one else saw the fall or heard her crash to the ground.
Between the Two Rivers [342 pp, $19.95) is the real-life saga of Aida Kouyoumjian’s mother Mannig, who as a young girl was one of a small minority of Armenians who survived the massacre and deportation from the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I. Historians estimate that 1.5 to 2 million Armenians perished.
“It is the stuff of oral history,” Aida says. “My work is ‘creative nonfiction.’ Every scene in the book is a story she told us. Every single one has a line or paragraph that I remember word for word. At the beginning, she sing-songed the loss of her family members into lullabies at bedtime. As we grew up, she incorporated the details that haunted her throughout her life. I heard the stories so many times in so many different ways. All that remained was to make it flow—the smells, the sights, how it came about.”
Mannig and her sister Adrine endured the murders of their parents and siblings, a torturous journey through the desert, and life on the streets of famine-stricken Mosul, soon after the end of World War I. When the sisters were finally reunited in an orphanage, their new bond was challenged by Mannig’s love for a wealthy benefactor.
Aida Kouyoumjian was born in Felloujah and raised and educated in Baghdad, Iraq. In 1952 she came to Seattle to attend the University of Washington on a Fulbright Scholarship. Aida married an American and eventually settled in Mercer Island.
After her father died in 1965, Aida was finally able to bring her mother Mannig to this country. At the age of 69 Mannig was hired by the UW to tutor graduate students in Turkish, Armenian, and Arabic. She retired after seven years, dying at the age of 79. Just before her death in 1985, Mannig was one of 90 survivors who attended the 70th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in Washington, D.C.
An excerpt from Between the Two Rivers:
“Get under the quilt next to my feet,” the mistress ordered. “Scratch the bottoms of my feet. I want you to scratch my soles. Y’allah. Get going.”
Scratch the bottoms of feet? Mannig’s eyes widened, for the strangeness rather than ease of the chore. She remembered being stranded in the desert without shoes. What relief after Romella poked a needle to pull the thorns in my soles! The mistress needed similar respite, except she said ‘scratch.’ I’m so lucky to get food for merely scratching feet.
“I cannot sleep at nights unless someone scratches my soles,” the mistress moaned—resignation and pain resonating in her voice, but also with a hint of great expectations. “Lie down on the mattress by my feet and keep warm under the quilt. Then scratch the bottoms of my feet. Scratch, scratch, scratch! Until I fall asleep. Begin!”
Mannig crawled up on the mattress and timidly touched the woman’s foot with her fingers….
The sky in its distant endlessness appeared closer to her than any person within this palatial abode. She fell on her knees and prayed loudly in Armenian so God would hear above the storm engulfing her from within. “Haji-doo, my Haji-doo! You said God listens to children. Tell Him … tell God … that I am praying to Him. He is on my mind. He is in my heart. And His name is between my lips. Dear God, release me from this job.”
“Y’abnayya? Y’abnayya?” the maid called from the lower courtyard. Work beckoned. She dawdled on the stairs to delay the loathsome chore. What if her patron were deprived of her ritualistic nightly pleasure for a few more moments? I don’t care. But what’s the alternative?
When she opened the dividing curtains, the mistress, sprawled on her mattress, waited in her domain. Mannig crouched by her feet and proceeded with the “gentle but firm” scratching with “five fingers on each sole,” routine. She performed her job dutifully, consistently, repeatedly, over and over again, and again, and again until lulled by her own ministration.
She fell asleep.
Not for long.
Kick, kick, kick! Mannig was rudely awakened by the mistress’s thrust of feet. Kick, kick, kick—blows on her head, nose, and temples—non-stop. The insolence angered Mannig. Disgusted by the woman’s cruelty, the question, “What is wrong with this?” transformed into, “Nothing is right.” A strange household I am in, she thought. They call me Y’abnayya here and Hey Girl, there. They stripped me of the one and only heritage I claim—my Adapazar name—and they cast me at the bottoms of feet.
Her free spirit nudged. The need to be someone rather than to have things, finally answered the question. Everything was wrong at the Qasr.
The mistress promised to take an orphan under her wings, instead thrust her under her feet.
Mannig hurled the quilt off.
Coffeetown Press is proud to reissue the first four novels of Hazel Holt’s Mrs. Malory mysteries, a classic “cozy” series based in the fictional English town of Taviscomb featuring a forthright, middle-aged female detective who has a lot in common with the delightful Hazel Holt herself. Read an interview with the author. [To order, please click the images below.]
 Gone Away, or Mrs. Malory Investigates, (1989)  The Cruellest Month, (1991)  The Shortest Journey, or Mrs. Malory's Shortest Journey (1992)  Mrs. Malory and the Festival Murder, or An Uncertain Death (1993) An Excerpt from Gone Away:
“I got out of the car, went over to the front door and rang the bell. I stood for several minutes and then rang again, but there was no reply. So I went round the side of the house, as I had done with Lee, past the stables, and knocked on the kitchen door. Again there was silence. As I stood there, irresolute, there was a strange snuffling, scuffling sound and I swung round quickly. Just beyond the back hedge was the open moor, and a group of wild ponies, made bold by the winter cold, had gathered by the back gate and were pressing near, hoping that someone was bringing them hay or other food, as people did in the really hard weather.
“This little incident made me pull myself together and think what I should do. Boldly, I tried the back door, but it was locked, so I moved along and looked through the large, uncurtained kitchen window. For a moment I didn’t take in the reality of what I saw. Lying on the floor was a woman, face down, with a large kitchen knife sticking out of her back.”
….
I drove into the deserted picnic area at the top of Porlock Common and turned off the engine. Everything was quiet and still. The silence felt almost as tangible as the mist around me. The trees and brown grass were sodden with moisture, everything looked totally dead. Not far away I heard a faint sound. It was the thin note of a horn. The huntsman was blowing ‘Gone Away.’”
Thank you, Mr. Salinger
The death of J. D. Salinger left me feeling that I had lost a boyhood friend. Salinger himself was never a personal friend of mine, but his creation Holden Caulfield was. Holden was one of the very few who understood my young self, who shared my amusement in the sound of a loud fart in a quiet chapel, my sadness that young girls sometimes become hookers, my hatred of pomposity in all its smiling faces, my fear both of school and of leaving school, my desire to protect little children from falling off a cliff, my dream of someday escaping, like Thoreau, to the safety of a little cabin in the woods. In writing about Holden, Salinger was writing about me.
During the two years I worked on A Reader’s Companion to J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye I came to understand just how thoroughly Salinger and Caulfield are one and the same person. I never met J. D. Salinger in person, never made the pilgrimage to New Hampshire to knock on his door, never even sent him a fan letter. I respected his desire to be left alone. But I came to know him through his writing about me and my writing about him.
Salinger wrote one really fine book. The Catcher in the Rye sold enough copies for the next sixty years that he never really had to “work” again. He could afford to live and then die in his isolated cabin in the woods. He is gone, but we will always have Holden Caulfield, just as we will always have Huckleberry Finn. Thank you, Mr. Salinger. We’re beholden to you.
–Peter Beidler, Author of A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.
 The Turn of the Screw: Collier's Weekly version Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, is one of the most often read, often taught, and often criticized novels in the history of literature.
For the first time since 1898, readers can experience Henry James’s eerie The Turn of the Screw the way his original readers did, as a twelve-part weekly serial. The Coffeetown Press edition showcases the novel as it first appeared, complete with provocative illustrations by John La Farge and Eric Pape, in Collier’s Weekly.
This unique edition, with an analytical introduction by Peter G. Beidler, will of course be valuable to scholars. It will be particularly useful, however, for undergraduate classroom use.
It allows readers to experience first-hand the suspense generated by the week-by-week grouping of chapters.
It also lets them read the young governess’s story of her dangerous encounter with prowling spirits as it first appeared, before James made the 500-odd changes in wording he introduced later. After reading Beidler’s detailed appendix analyzing all of James’s revisions, readers will see that in many ways this earliest version of The Turn of the Screw was James’s best.
Peter G. Beidler spent most of his long teaching career as the Lucy G. Moses Distinguished Professor of English at Lehigh University. He has published widely on Henry James and especially on The Turn of the Screw. His Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw at the Turn of the Century came out in 1989. He co-edited (with Kimberly C. Reed) the Modern Language Association’s Approaches to Teaching Henry James’s Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (2005). In addition, he edited all three editions, with associated cultural and critical materials, of The Turn of the Screw for the popular Bedford Books series Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism (1992, 2004, 2010). For that Bedford series he presented James’s last (1908) version. For this Coffeetown Press edition he presents for the first time in more than a century James’s first (1898) version as it was serialized in Collier’s Weekly.
Beidler was named National Professor of the Year in 1983 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation. He was named Fulbright Professor at Sichuan University in Chengdu, mainland China, for 1987-88, and the Robert Foster Cherry Visiting Distinguished Teaching Professor at Baylor University, for 1995-96. He now lives with his wife Anne in Seattle, WA.
 Darkness Never Far, by Matthew Freeman Coffeetown Press is proud to release Darkness Never Far, the latest volume of poetry by Matthew Freeman.
Matthew Freeman has been a poet since he was a teenager in Dogtown, St. Louis. Since then he has fallen in love, travelled the country, and sung his songs. Diagnosed with Schizophrenia at the age of 24, he drifted in and out of hospitals before finally beginning his recovery. He now lives and writes in the Loop, in St. Louis. Darkness Never Far is his third collection of poems exploring the impact of mental illness on language and mythos.
I Guess You Call it Clarity–Buy it today for your Kindle!
My double would’ve left behind a kid,
he would’ve been some type of clear physicist
with clean fingers in front of a stupored class
and a red or black car with a brunette beautiful
from church authentic and into Washington Irving
and silver bracelets smart and creative—the pain—
he would’ve been calm and quiet in great tweed and musk
walking the clean university halls and
pretty clear concerning the minds of God
his wife would’ve
let her hair flow witty and wear
intelligent dresses and Flaubert and Christianity
somehow she had also been a Rams cheerleader
in her twenties what, supportive
with great friends and recipes and
poor verses in love with her, my double
would’ve perceived things a lot more clearly
and enjoyed life more and been proud
when his son walked and not beat him or break windows
his big red or black car and his wife would’ve
provoked titanic proportions of envy
but he would’ve remained figurative and calm
and would’ve had a couple
of drinks at a faculty party
and stole away with a rival’s wife
and had sex with her in his red or black car
and the mirrors would’ve fogged up
though he could still have sensed the quadrangle and awards
and he would’ve driven home afterwards
to the great professorial house with lots of dark wood
and lame-ass pseudo-literary books all around
but on the way home the
lights would’ve been completely clear
as he passed the dorms
full of English majors who wanted him
and he would’ve never done drugs or
been committed to an asylum or drunk tank
he would’ve been a completely sure Christian
somehow sensing easily right and wrong
and forgiveness in his head but lots of sex
his shoes would’ve been nice brogues
but clarity and sensations while on sundays
he ran around the track and had
two beers only and listened to Prairie Home Companion
replayed and maybe a football game
he would never have
driven too fast or talked too much
he would’ve been calm and detested cigarettes
but would he have died?
Well, I guess everyone dies.
But how did he die and what did he see?
He would’ve left behind some kids and money
a string of affairs and donations and a plaque or two
and so I wonder about all this clarity
and whether he submitted or I submitted and to what
and just who has what power and what continuity
and if everybody contains his opposite
and also, when you get down to it,
what some half-assed physicist ever accomplished,
I mean, even the greatest mathematician at
a state university doesn’t rank that high in the world,
probably never contributed anything eternal,
just taught some other half-assed scholars,
got laid a little,
saw things totally clearly,
wrote some clear formulas
on the chalk board for the janitor to erase.
From the introduction:
Darkness Never Far is an exploration into the thoughts and feelings of an individual who has visited the darkest places of the human heart. Fortunately, the author has now returned to teach the rest of us important lessons about human love and longing. Matthew Freeman was my patient many years ago—and I wondered then whether he would find the peace and happiness every person deserves. After reading Darkness Never Far, it is apparent that he is still seeking that peace. Matthew’s latest book of poems takes us on a journey through the streets of St. Louis, so that we can look through his eyes at women, men, authority, medicine, hopelessness, and hope.
–From the introduction by John G. Csernansky, M.D.
 Natural Thearapies for Parkinson's Disease, by Laurie Mischley Coffeetown Press is proud to announce the publication of Natural Therapies for Parkinson’s Disease, by Dr. Laurie Mischley.
Approximately 1.5 million Americans have Parkinson’s disease, and more than 60% of them use nutritional supplements and alternative therapies. Patients and health care providers alike now have an easy-to-use, reliable, comprehensive resource for commonly used nutritional, naturopathic, and orthomolecular therapies.
Conventional management of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is limited. The pharmaceutical and surgical options that are available have significant side effects and only correct symptoms for a limited period of time. Even with the best conventional treatment, the disease progresses and becomes severely disabling. No existing conventional therapies halts the progress of the disease; available medicines only treat symptoms temporarily. Conventional medicine views the course of the disease as “progressive” and “irreversible.”
Many patients, who are only partially satisfied with conventional medicine, seek alternative and complementary options in an attempt to slow, stop, or reverse the disease process.
This book has several functions:
- It is a science-based reference manual.
- It is inspiring and empowering to patients.
- It is educational for both patients and neurologists.
- It is entertaining.
- It fosters an understanding between conventional and complementary providers.
 Laurie K. Mischley, ND, runs her clinical practice, Seattle Integrative Medicine, in Seattle, WA. Her research at Bastyr University was on Glutathione in Parkinson’s disease.
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 Entry-Level, by Bobby Casella Coffeetown Press is pleased to announce the release of Entry-Level, a novel by Bobby Casella. A “deranged young professional” is hell-bent on making a million bucks because he thinks life without money is not worth living. Entry-Level is an outrageous and ultimately heart-warming adventure comedy about a young man’s battle with cynicism. Here’s how the novel begins:
I was pinned face-down in a pool of my own blood—in a bank vault. My cell phone lay just a few feet from my mouth, so she could still hear me if I projected my voice. “I just want some peace,” I agonized.
“Can you see the bullet?”
“Yeah, it’s over there in the corner. My skin’s on it.”
“I want you to stand up, honey, and I want you to get the fuck out of that vault. Then I want you to get out of there before the cops come. Do you hear me?”
“I do, Dawn. I really do. But the money, Dawn: it’s sitting right here.”
“Honey, a bullet went through you. You have an exit wound, and you need a doctor.”
“There’s a piece of my skin sitting on the floor. It looks like a strawberry.”
“You’re not thinking, honey…Am I losing you?”
“No…I feel fine. I just want to sit here and look at my money. I want to sit here and look at it a little while longer.”
“Listen to me honey. You’ve got to get out of there. You’ll bleed to death before the cops find you!”
“But I’m fine!” I snapped. I was delirious. I labored over to my back and I sat up. “See, I can put the blood back in.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m scooping the blood back in. I’m putting it back in the hole so I can escape with it.” I was slipping hard. My blood wasn’t really going back in the hole. It was just smearing all over my sweaty PVC suit. Ironic, the PVC suit. I’d suffered through wearing the hot thing throughout this whole ordeal in an effort to avoid leaving behind DNA. But now look. My DNA was a big puddle on the vault floor.
I wanted to tell Dawn how ironic this was—Dawn, the nice sex chat operator. But my mouth just fluttered. It made no sound.
“You there? Hello? Honey? You still there?” On Dawn’s end of the line, there was a frighteningly long silence. I was drifting. But I somehow managed to speak, “I’m still here, Dawn.”
“Listen to me. You have to get it together.”
“I’ll be fine Dawn, I’m with my money.”
“Honey, everybody in the world would want that money, but most of us are too scared to go after it. But not you: you went after it. I just met you, but I can already see that you have real courage. So all you need to do is pick yourself up and walk out of that vault, ALIVE, and a free man!”
 My Dear Charlotte, by Hazel Holt Coffeetown Press is proud to announce the release of My Dear Charlotte, by Hazel Holt. My Dear Charlotte is a British myrder mystery that takes place in the Regency period. Unlike other popular Regency mysteries and romances, My Dear Charlotte is based on the letters of Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra. While the story is new, the details having to do with balls, dinners, and other social events are given in the words of Jane Austen herself, making this a historical mystery novel of extraordinary veracity.
This thrilling Regency murder mystery will appeal to all fans of mystery novels. It will also be welcomed by readers of Jane Austen because this unique novel is constructed using the actual language of Jane Austen’s letters. It’s great fun, and an important new work by the renowned author of the Mrs. Malory Mysteries. Here’s an excerpt:
Of course it cannot be denied that Mr Woodstock himself will lead a happier life without his formidable spouse, though I do not believe that he could have summoned up the courage to dispose of her!
Mr Rivers will be glad to be rid of one who would have put obstacles in the way of his plans for the Barbados estate, but I do not think that may be considered a sufficient reason for an honourable man to take a life.
Mrs West, however, seems to me to lack such scruples if they stood in the way of her daughter’s advancement. I do not at present see how she could have brought about Mrs Woodstock’s demise, but no doubt, if I give my mind to it, I may presently think of something.
Poor John coachman also had reason to wish his mistress dead, since his whole happiness (and that of Sarah) depended upon keeping his position at Holcombe and if he had been turned away without a character his case would have been miserable indeed.
So you see, there are a number of people who will be happy at Mrs Woodstock’s death. Perhaps I should add myself to the list for the sake of those hours of tedium and the many irritations she has subjected me to!
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