April 15, 2012
A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist’s Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl, by Van Wallach
A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist’s Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl tracks the progress of the author’s jolting changes in belief as he enters the world of dating pre- and post-Internet. Van Wallach is the product of a small-town Texas upbringing, a Princeton education and years of New York City and posh Connecticut living. The stories of his pursuit of romance—from Brooklyn to Brazil and beyond—provide a wry, revealing, and distinctly male perspective on Jewish online dating.
Raised a Southern Baptist, Wallach found himself drawn to his family’s Jewish heritage and the women who embodied it. To meet the special challenges of online dating, he took a marketer’s approach to packaging his unique background into a memorable screen name and profile. His book explores the highs and heartbreaks of dating the “smart, vulnerable and shtetl-lovely” Jewish women he met and adored after he left Texas. As he follows his muse far afield, he analyzes Jewish body image (his and hers), calculates ROEI (Return on Emotional Investment), identifies the sexiest Jewish movies (hint: his three favorites all have subtitles), engages in edgy encounters with “the competition” in the quest for a fair maidele’s hand, and contemplates the role of Jewish faith in times of difficulties. Part memoir, part how-to, and partly just off-the-wall, A Kosher Dating Odyssey will appeal to anyone who is interested in journeys of both the spirit and the flesh.
May 1, 2012
Valley Boy, by Jack Remick
Trapped in a soul-eating church and buried in small town Centerville, California, Ricky Edwards rebels against God’s word and gets a job debeaking turkeys. He debeaks turkeys because he needs a car. He needs a car because he wants to join the Lifters Car Club and get laid. But girls don’t go out with guys who wear Frisco jeans and shoes with heel and toe taps. Horny as hell and raising hell, Ricky has a run-in with the law. It looks like he’s on the San Quentin fast track until his mentor, Mr W, teaches Ricky how to crack the Class War secret code and ships him off to Berkeley with high hopes he’ll last at least a year. In Berkeley, Ricky meets a very cool female guitarist in a rock band just back from a year in Italy and hankering for some Okie boy love. Ricky’s got more love than a bootlegger’s got moonshine and, thanks to bookstore owner Sophie-Anne and her brocade sofa, he knows The Rules.
Valley Boy is Book 2 of Remick’s California Quartet series.
May 15, 2012
The Gathering Place: Collected Stories from the Armenian Club in Old Shanghai, by E.G. Sergoyan
A hundred years ago, the small country of Armenia within the Ottoman Empire became the site of continuous border conflict, political intrigue and sporadic wars between the Turks, the Persians and the Tsarist Russians. Early in the twentieth century, these regional conflicts erupted into bitter political and ethnic “cleansing” that decimated the country and nearly destroyed the population living there. The causes and magnitude of the ethnic killing that took place during and after World War I are still debated and disputed in Turkey and Armenia today.
In times of calamity or economic distress, there is a small percentage of people (about two percent) who are willing to leave family, home, and their country of origin to set up businesses in exotic or foreign lands. The two-percenters and undocumented immigrants whose stories appear in The Gathering Place made the arduous trek across Asia to gather in the exotic city of Old Shanghai, where they joined a social club in the city’s Old International Settlement. Their travels coincide with war, economic depression, revolution, banditry and military occupation during the most turbulent period in modern history—a period that covers what some call the ‘Modern Dark Age’—the first half of the twentieth century.
The personal histories in The Gathering Place offer a fresh take on the immigrant experience during a time of momentous change in Asia—from the end of World War I to the exodus of Europeans from China.
July 1, 2012
The Turtle-Girl from East Pukapuka, by Cole Alpaugh
The island of East Pukapuka lies in the path of a tsunami that will kill everyone but Butter, a little girl more worried about the lives of the injured animals she cares for than her own. Butter is rescued by a Loggerhead Sea Turtle who carries her away on his back. As she and her exhausted savior begin to sink, the girl is plucked out of the sea by Jesus Dobby, the boozy owner of a salvage boat who is thrilled, at first, to have found a genuine “turtle-girl” hybrid.
Downhill racer Dante Wheeler “dies” in a terrible skiing accident and revives in a twilight state, having lost all memories of his former life. When he heals enough to leave the rehab facility, Dante heads to Polynesia, where he has found a home in his dreams. There he encounters Ophelia, a beautiful blond policewoman who reluctantly agrees to transport him to East Pukapuka.
Jope and Ratu, a pair of bumbling pirates, steal a vessel laden with cocaine. They are hotly pursued by the drug-runners’ hit man Albino Paul, the descendent of cannibals, whose goal is to reclaim his heritage.
As in Alpaugh’s beloved first novel, THE BEAR IN A MUDDY TUTU, fate pokes its fickle finger in the lives of these hapless souls with about as much clear intention as a three-year-old in a sandbox. Even the gods are incompetent. Alpaugh’s world offers no lessons in morality. His characters are fatally flawed, hilarious, and heartbreakingly human.
ALSO COMING IN 2012
Being Fruitful Without Multiplying: Reflections from Around the World
by Patricia Yvette, Renee Ann, and Janice Lynn
Being Fruitful without Multiplying started as one woman’s quest to come to terms with her decision not to procreate. In conversation with two close relatives from different generations, she found that they shared another, unexpected bond: each had decided at an early age not to bear children. All three were weary of being told their decision was selfish, immature, and unnatural. As they discussed their reasoning, they began to reach out to others. The result is this rich and nonjudgmental anthology, which includes voices from many different countries, cultures and income groups.