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A hundred years ago, the small country [...]]]>

The Gathering Place: Stories from the Armenian Social Club in Old Shanghai ($13.95, 216 pages, ISBN: 978-1-60381-123-1), is a collection of stories compiled from interviews with Armenians who immigrated to Asia during the first half of the twentieth century.

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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.

Says Sergoyan, “I was inspired to write The Gathering Place by two photographs given to me by my mother. The first was a family portrait taken circa 1920. I did not recognize any of the five people. My mother was not surprised and explained that it was the only group photo of my father’s family that survived. I realized then that my father had not spoken of his family or how they had migrated across all of Asia and settled in the Orient. There was a deep tragedy associated with their experience that he did not want to share. I became determined then to interview him and get as much information as possible. That led me to interview others as well. I noticed that many of the stories revolved around the Armenian Social Club in Shanghai—the subject of the second photograph. My hope is that these stories will also help others to personalize the immigrant experience in the Orient between the two World Wars, a subject that has had little attention.”

E.G. Sergoyan holds degrees in aeronautical and mechanical engineering and has been involved in the aerospace industry for over forty years. This book is his first non-technical publication. Mr. Sergoyan and his wife live in Mukilteo, Washington, with family nearby. For more information, please visit his blog.

The Gathering Place is available in 6×9 trade paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com, the European Amazons, and Amazon Japan. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com and Ingram. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Services.

Read on for an Excerpt, the chapter titled, “Nadia”:

Nadia

In 1940, at the Armenian Social Club in Shanghai, George saw Nadia for the first time. He later commented that he first noticed a slender girl wearing a silly hat, but his friends were sure it wasn’t the “hat” that caught his attention.

She was twenty-two years old, with jet black hair and beautiful dark eyes, slim of figure and quick to smile. She was accompanied by her nineteen-year-old brother, Aram, who kept a watchful eye and introduced her to his friends in the club.

Nadia asked a family friend about the “Jewish fellow” who was staring at her from across the room.

“Oh, he’s not Jewish, he is Armenian,” the friend explained. “He kind of looks Jewish because of that big nose. I think some hoodlums broke his nose in a fight years ago when he was hanging around in one of the casinos.”

“Probably there was a girl involved,” Nadia commented.

George walked over and had a mutual friend make introductions; then he asked the brother if he could escort Nadia and show her around the club. That was how they met. George was involved with the theater group that produced ethnic plays for the Armenians who frequented the international district. Occasionally George would direct and even perform. He kept trying to persuade Nadia to become an actor in the group. But she was too shy and self conscious. Besides, his real motive for recruiting her into the group was to see her more often.

A courtship followed that led to an engagement. Nadia delighted in telling her daughter years later that during that time, because she was unsure of her feelings for George in the beginning of their courtship, George had to work extra hard to convince her to give him a chance. He would write her “love letters,” and she would tear them up and “sprinkle the pieces on him from the top of the stairs in her home when he came to call. But he was persistent and finally won her heart.

The engagement went on for seventeen months. During those months, George became well acquainted with the Oganjanovs and was particularly interested in the stories of the father, Haig.

In his youth Haig had been a soldier and prospector. He had studied to be an engineer but eventually joined the family business and became a successful business man. But now the family had fallen on hard times; the Japanese occupation in Harbin was interfering with their business. Haig moved the family to Shanghai because it was still a free port and the Japanese were more liberal. Everyone knew about World War II in Europe, but no one believed that the Japanese would attack America.

Nadia enjoyed telling stories about her family adventures. She told George how they had traveled from Kars, Armenia, to Irkutsk, Siberia. During the Russian Civil War in Siberia they had all escaped to Manzhouli, Manchuria, and then moved to Harbin in Northern China. Nadia and George knew many of the same people but didn’t meet until that day at the Armenian Club.

It had taken Nadia’s family more than twenty years to cross Asia. Now that they were in Shanghai, they were hoping to find a way to get to America. But World War II was on the horizon—yet another obstacle blocking their path.

As George sat in the social club and listened to the stories of his fiancée’s family adventures, he realized that Haig the father and his family had followed the same path as so many Harbinites who had escaped Armenia to avoid the massacres and the ethnic wars—the same path George had followed before ending up in Shanghai. It was the story of a family struggling together in the midst of civil war, occupation, banditry and revolution. Like so many, they were searching for a place where they could finally be free from nationalistic fanatics, war, and subjugation.

At its most basic level, this was a story of a merchant who was never comfortable working for others. The struggle to save the family began with Haig’s father Mkrtich in Kars, Armenia, when the first ethnic cleansing of the twentieth century forced the family into Asia. To tell their story, one had to go back to World War I and 1915 once more.

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“Valley Boy is the story of every kid who wandered out of [...]]]>

Valley Boy ($13.95, 254 pp, 6×9 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60381-145-3), by Jack Remick, covers a year in the life of a third-generation Okie teenager who is struggling with the stigma of his heritage.

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“Valley Boy is the story of every kid who wandered out of the Valley into Baghdad by the Bay with dreams, imagination, curiosity and a mind that admitted stuff besides cars and girls. I’m tempted to say this is Remick’s best work …. The story is witty, tense and true. The protagonist is Ricky, but this is Linard’s story too—which makes this novel a more fulfilling coming of age journey than that of the self-absorbed, self-righteous icon of the Eastern Experience—Holden Caulfield …. Remick might be accused of writing a happy ending but I, for one, am happy to see an ol’ Okie boy find his place in the shade and out of those god damned vineyards and peach orchards. Good for Ricky. Good for Remick. It takes guts to write a novel such as this.”

—Frank Araujo, Anthropologist, Linguist, and Author of The Q Quest, A Perfect Orange, Nekane, The Lamiña and the Bear

“Valley Boy is a teeming amalgam of allegory, pathos, and stark language, all wrapped in a blend of dark humor and strangely relatable characters. What is Valley Boy about? Turkey debeaker Ricky Edwards heads to college, falls in love with a rock guitarist, and faces coming of age challenges—such as learning how to order coffee and the importance of following The Rules—revealed in a storyline reminiscent of an Allen Ginsberg poem. Remick writes with a fresh voice in prose as raw as the open wounds his subjects are apt to suffer. An unrelenting literary experiment that is also a terrific read. Best enjoyed with a caffe latte … or maybe a macchiato?”

—Cole Alpaugh, author of The Bear in a Muddy Tutu and The Turtle Girl from East Pukapuka

“A lost Valley Boy is dying to belong so he takes a job debeaking turkeys—hot, sweaty, mindless work that still demands precision—to make the money to buy a hot car—the pricey ticket required for acceptance into the Lifters (all male hot rod club), but forces beyond his control—blind teenage lust, blue collar legacy, his inherited talent for the piano, love from an older woman, his jaundiced view of the church, and an exorbitant price for the blue Mercury Cougar—these forces pull the Valley Boy to the brink of his big decisions: Does he stay in the Valley? Does he marry the girl next door? Valley Boy is Remick at full power. Valley Boy is a non-stop read.”

—Robert J. Ray, author of Murdock Cracks Ice, and The Weekend Novelist Series.

Ricky Edwards lives, works, and plays in Centerville, a small California town in the middle of the Valley. Ricky has a gift for music but he’d rather fight, drink beer, chase girls, and debeak turkeys. He debeaks turkeys because he wants a Lifters Car Club jacket with red lettering on the back. He fights because his long time pal, Linard Polk, teaches him about violence, fast cars, and guns—which drives Teresa, Ricky’s hyper-religious mother, nuts. She wants Ricky to escape the legacy of his daddy, an Okie skirt chaser who abandoned the family for a honky-tonk preacher’s daughter gone bad. If Ricky can just get out of Centerville, maybe he can make his mark.

Says Remick: “When you grow up in the Central Valley you meet people who never stray much beyond their home town unless it’s to go next door to a football game. If you’re not the right caste, you learn to work with your hands and you work hard. You wonder if you can ever get out. I wrote Valley Boy in part to remind readers about the Diaspora, the Westward migration, that started in the Dust Bowl. Most people think the Migration ended with World War II, but it didn’t. In Valley Boy, the main characters are third-generation Okies who didn’t make it to the Pacific, got stuck in the dust, and were left behind in the orchards and vineyards doing the gut-busting labor that turns young boys into old men way too soon. I wanted to write about those Okie boys, like Ricky and Linard, who work and live with the bad taste of lost dreams in their mouths.

Jack Remick is a poet, short story writer, and novelist. Valley Boy is Book Two of a series, The California Quartet. More volumes will be released by Coffeetown Press in 2012: The Book of Changes and Trio of Lost Souls. The first book of the series, The Deification, was released in December of 2011. Blood, A Novel was published by Camel Press in 2011. Also coming from Coffeetown in 2012: Gabriela and the Widow. Click here to find Jack online.

Valley Boy is available in Kindle and 5×8 trade paperback editions on Amazon.com, the European Amazons and Amazon Japan. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com or Ingram. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources and Midwest Library Service.

Read on for an excerpt:

On Monday, in detention, Chela was sitting on a chair with her legs crossed and bouncing her foot in those white sandals. Her hair was up high. She was chewing gum and right off Ricky needed to get close to her. He dragged a chair over and sat down facing her. He said,

You want to go out with me?

She looked at her fingernails for a long time before she looked at him. And she stared him in the face and he wanted to crawl back behind the words, but she said,

You wanna go out with a Mexican?

I wanna go out with you.

What’s your mama gonna say?

My mama don’t tell me what to do, Ricky said.

What’s Linard gonna say?

What’s Linard got to say about what I do?

I can’t go out with you.

Why not?

My dad will kill me if I date an Anglo.

I’m an Okie, Ricky said. I’m not Anglo.

Chela laughed and, curling her fingers in her hair, she smiled.

Come on, Ricky said. I’ll take you to a movie.

A Mexican movie? At the Centerville Theater?

If that’s what you want.

I wanna go to Fresno to the Cinerama.

You tell me where and we’ll go there.

You really wanna go out with me?

I really do.

Well, no one can know, she said. Not even Linard Polk.

Why not?

’Cause of his pinchi brother, Kevin, you know?

Yeah, I know Kevin. He’s in the Marines.

Well, he knocked up Tony’s cousin and she hadda go to TJ for an abortion and she almost died.

Tony’s cousin? Ricky said. Who’s Tony?

Tony Avila, Chela said. My best friend, puto. Open your eyes and look around, man, ’cause you don’t know anybody in this pinchi school.

Okay, Ricky said, I won’t say nothin’ to nobody.

You better not ’cause if you do and my dad finds out he’ll beat the pinchi mierda outa you and he’ll kill me. You know what mierda is?

I think so, Ricky said.

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“The perfect mixture of self-deprecating humor and [...]]]>

A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist’s Quest for a Naughty & Nice Jewish Girl ($12.95, 204 pages, ISBN: 978-1-60381-132-3), a humorous memoir about the special challenges of dating when you’re an ex-Baptist Jewish intellectual single guy.

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“The perfect mixture of self-deprecating humor and introspection.”

—Hilary Daninhirsch, ForeWord Digital Reviews

“A humorous exploration of cross-faith dating, A Kosher Dating Odyssey is a strong pick for any humor, memoir or relationship collection.”

—Midwest Book Review/Small Press Bookwatch

“Van Wallach’s candid memoir, A Kosher Dating Odyssey: One Former Texas Baptist’s Quest for a Naughty and Nice Jewish Girl is at once a sentimental education and a search for an intimate, fulfilling spirituality that will resonate with readers. His often amusing story is also uniquely American, shaped by the competing yet complementary forces of a multicultural journey from South Texas by way of France to the East Coast.”

—Cora Monroe, Associate Professor of French, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez

“A big fat schmear of self-awareness on wry … Wallach’s ‘date or die’ persistence to find his b’shert deserves kudos. Between the Cuban yarmulkes, the Brazilian caiprinhas, and the West Village heartaches, this globe-trotting, found-again, smart but short Jew manages to put the ‘sch’ back into ‘Men.’

“A rich book bigger than dating. A heart-felt search for roots, faith, soul and connection …

“Through an online Odyssean-style search to find his Jewish match, Wallach somehow manages to carve deep self-esteem out of multiple rejection. How refreshing! How revealing! But thank God he finally found her. Otherwise, he’d still be a menace online!!

“A heart-felt book that makes a gal reconsider her worst brush-off lines.”

—Pamela Bloom, author of Brazil Up Close and The Power of Compassion: Stories that Open the Heart, Heal the Soul and Change the World

“As you might expect from a guy who has evolved from a Southern Baptist to a New England Jew, Van Wallach delivers a witty and unique tale of spiritual and romantic searching. But there’s nothing more universal than love, and just about everyone will identify with his clever yarns spanning everything from the down-home to the erudite. With his ever-present and self-effacing sense of humor, Van ‘looks for love in all the wrong places’—and some of the right ones.”

—Stephen Hughes, Voice Artist and Writer

“In its own charming, awkward, and unwittingly honest way, A Kosher Dating Odyssey explores the complicated overlapping layers of finding Jewish identity, surviving decades of dating with an intact sense of humor, and whether the Internet helps or hurts our chances of finding true love on the flat screen. You would hardly think these topics would come together as seamlessly as they do. This is the brilliance of Van Wallach. Without adding even a sprinkle of gut-wrenching drama, overwrought navel-gazing or excessive self-pity—all of which would be perfectly justifiable—Wallach wins over the heart of his reader the same way he eventually gets the girl. By getting up to the plate over and over, and swinging the bat, figuring a home run is inevitable. You just can’t help but root for the underdog, and secretly, see some part of yourself in every line.”

—Monica Day, Founder, The Sensual Life; Host, “Essensuality: An Evening of Erotic Expression,” and Creator, “The Essensual Experience: A Journey of Authentic Sensual Expression”

A Kosher Dating Odyssey 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 parents’ 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.

Says Wallach, “My oddball background—from Texas to Princeton to New York, Baptist to Jewish—gives me an original perspective on both the dating scene and spirituality. I’m from both the Southwest and the Northeast. As a journalist/essayist, I’ve already written several articles and posts about my journeys and experiences, so I thought, why not pull existing and fresh material into a book? You don’t have to be Jewish or even single to appreciate my stories, which aim to amuse, but also to tap into something universal about the search for faith and love.”

Van Wallach is a writer in Connecticut. A native of Mission, Texas, he holds an economics degree from Princeton University. His work as a journalist has appeared in Advertising Age, the New York Post, The Journal of Commerce, Newsday, Video Store, The Hollywood Reporter, and the Forward. Van has been a regular contributor to the Princeton Alumni Weekly since 1993. He contributed a chapter on home-video economics to the second edition of The Movie Business Book. A language buff, Van has studied Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, although he can’t speak any of them. His travels have included Australia, New Zealand, the USSR, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, Brazil, Israel and the usual parts of Europe. Click here to visit Van’s blog.

A Kosher Dating Odyssey is available in 5×8 paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon Japan.  Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com and Ingram. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Services.

Keep reading for an excerpt:

Glorified and Sanctified

Recently I heard about the death of a woman I once knew named Adina. She had been one of the very first women I dated after moving to New York in 1980. I found a paid death notice in a newspaper from several years back, saying she succumbed to diabetes and breast cancer. She was fifty-one—younger than I am now.

Adina and I had a tumultuous relationship, thanks to our wildly different social backgrounds and degrees of sophistication: suburban Long Island versus small-town Texas, intense Jewish education versus no Jewish education. Still, we had a connection: we were writers and Jewish and on the prowl. Adina played an influential role in my life at the time.

Shlomo Carlebach at BJ, 1982

Our shared practice of Judaism provided many of my favorite memories of our times together. We joined her friends to hear Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach sing during Purim at B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side, a favored hunting ground for singles. I attended a seder with her family on Long Island on the snowy Passover of April 1982. With Adina’s encouragement, I visited Israel in May 1982 and wrote about the experience for the Forward newspaper.

The little markers of memory accumulated over the months. I have photos of Adina at B’nai Jeshurun and with her friends Rena, Rochel and Marilyn. She sent me postcards from her trips to Israel and Peru. We called each other “Y.D.,” short for “Yiddish dumpling.”

For what turned out to be our last date, I stunned Adina with tickets to what I called “Bereshit,” the Hebrew name for the book of Genesis—we saw her favorite music group, Phil Collins and Genesis, perform at Forest Hills Stadium in August 1982. That was the end. She called it quits after that.

Other relationships would follow (By year’s end I was dating Calypso, whose story you will find if you keep reading), but as time passed I thought fondly of Adina. We parted in frustration, not anger. Four years later, on a rainy evening on the Upper West Side, we ran into each other again. We immediately had a long catch-up coffee klatch in a diner. Adina had left journalism to study social work, while I was several years into a stint as a globe-trotting freelance writer. Freed from the anxieties of stillborn romance, we shared a warmth and were happy to see each other.

“Don’t be a stranger,” she said in her distinctive, cigarette-raspy voice.

We never saw each other again. The next year I met the woman I would marry. The new flame burned bright and I fed it all the oxygen I had. Old flames flickered and went out.

Long after my divorce in the new millennium, I became curious about Adina and uncovered the death notice. I mentally overlaid my life on top of her last years and wondered what type of friendship, if any, would have resulted from contact. Maybe nothing, but I like to think we would have stayed connected this time as friends with common interests in Judaism, journalism, travels to Latin America and, well, life. I had changed since we dated—becoming more at ease with myself, more Jewishly literate, comfortable in groups. In any case, I found myself aching and sorry that we had had no contact for those last twenty years. I never had a chance to say goodbye to Adina.

That’s one missed farewell in a digital world that logs birth and death regularly. I would never have known about Adina’s passing without the Internet. Online, the once-hidden and unfindable becomes common, jolting knowledge. Through Facebook, I read daily about the illnesses of friends’ families, with prayer requests and mentions of deaths of parents, siblings and, most grievously, children. On Facebook, I learned that the son of one friend from Mission, for example, was killed in Afghanistan, bringing the war to me in a terribly personal way. We’re in our fifties and older; passings happen and the pace quickens with age.

I learned about Adina’s passing at the exact same time I was experiencing something entirely new in my Jewish life—a shiva call to a house of mourning. I had attended Jewish weddings and funerals, but had never visited a family sitting shiva, or mourning of a death.

“Not even your grandparents?” somebody asked after I mentioned this anomaly.

“No, not even my grandparents,” I said.

But a death occurred in a family close to me, an uncle of my girlfriend, and I wanted to pay my respects. I had no idea what to expect, although I knew of the traditional rituals of covering mirrors and tearing clothes.

So I visited some people I knew, the relatives of the elderly man who had died. I gave them my condolences. Some wore small black ribbons. I recognized the rabbi who conducted the service, which consisted of prayers I had heard many times before and could read and mostly say in Hebrew. This included the Mourner’s Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. This prayer does not mention death but rather magnifies and sanctifies the Name of God. It begins,

“Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world which He has created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon; and say, Amen.”

As I looked around the room, I thought about how ancient tradition and ritual created such emotional support at a time of ultimate loss. People are not left to flail on their own in the darkness; they—we—have a way to mourn that links them to generations past and future.

The moment seemed right and as we prayed I said the Kaddish for my late friend. I had finally found a way to say goodbye to Adina, Y.D.

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While [...]]]>

Death of a Dean ($12.95, 202 pages, ISBN: 978-1-60381-142-2) is the seventh of Hazel Holt’s Mrs. Malory Mysteries. It was first published in 1996 and has been out of print for several years.

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While in Stratford, widow Sheila Malory always stays with her old friend, actor David Beaumont. On this visit she finds him in dire straits: his career is on the skids and his finances are in ruins. Unless he can convince his penny-pinching brother Francis to sell their jointly owned family home in the seaside village of Taviscombe, the bank will repossess his cottage.

Francis, Dean of the Culminster Cathedral, does not believe that charity begins at home. He refuses to put the house on the market or provide a loan. Mrs. Malory offers David a place to stay in her own home in Taviscombe so that the two brothers might meet in person to find a solution. Even if Francis can be persuaded to sell, one impediment remains: their ancient and addled nanny has been told that she can stay in the home until she dies.

Even after Nana’s sudden death, Francis insists that they hold on to the property. When he dies from consuming high tea laced with poison, the police conclude that both deaths were murder. Unfortunately David is their prime suspect. Determined to clear her friend’s name, Mrs. Malory applies her considerable skills as an amateur sleuth to identify the real culprit.

She has seen her share of evil, but even Mrs. Malory is shocked by what her investigation turns up.

Keep reading for an excerpt:

“Now then …”

One of the two telephones on his desk rang, the sudden, shrilling noise seeming strange and unsuitable, somehow, in such a place.

“Excuse me.” Francis picked up the instrument. “Yes, yes, I quite understand, Archdeacon. I will see you later …. Yes. Good-bye. I’m sorry.”

He replaced the receiver and spoke to David. “Cathedral business. I may conceivably have to go down to sort something out with the archdeacon later on, and then, as I told you, I must see the precentor—but I should be able to deal with them both quite quickly. We have plenty of time, since Evensong is, as you are aware, not until five-fifteen. Now then,” he turned to me, “here are the lists I mentioned of gifts promised, valuations where available—perhaps you could fill in the gaps there by consulting suitable authorities…” He broke off again as there was a tap at the door. “Yes, come in! What is it?”

Monica Woodward put her head around the door and said apologetically, “I’m so sorry to bother you, Dean, but the man from the printer is here about that new brochure—you said you wanted to have a word with him about those mistakes you found.”

Francis made an exclamation of annoyance. “How tiresome, but, yes, I will see him now—if I don’t I really hate to think what sort of muddle they will make. Excuse me.”

He bustled out of the room. I made a face at David and said, “Goodness, how pompous! I suppose the world might conceivably stop turning on its axis if he wasn’t in charge …”

I got up and went to the desk to look at the papers Francis had got out for me. Some of them were mixed up with the computer printout and I had to sort them out. The roll of computer stuff seemed to be lists of shares, which I took to be part of Francis’s restoration campaign until I saw that one sheet was headed “Francis E. Beaumont: Main Portfolio,” so I supposed these were his own shares. I don’t understand stocks and shares at all—they seem to have very peculiar names, some of them—and I haven’t the faintest idea which are valuable and which are not or why they go up and down and cause such grief and anxiety to people like my friend Rosemary’s husband, Jack. Still, judging from the list, Francis seemed to have a great many of them and it made me really furious to think that he had all these assets and had refused to lend a relatively small amount to his own brother when he knew that it was practically a matter of life and death.

Francis came back into the room and seemed rather irritated that I had picked up the lists from his desk.

“I hope you haven’t disarranged any of the papers there,” he said sternly. “I do like to keep absolute order in all things—one thing out of place and the whole system is in jeopardy!”

I was aware of David stifling a giggle and I quickly apologized.

We went through the lists and I received my instructions.

“Yes, that’s fine,” I said, “I’ll see to that tomorrow.”

“Very well, then, Sheila.” He looked at his watch. “Joan will be waiting for you.”

Having unmistakably received my dismissal, I gathered up all the papers and put them into a shopping bag I had brought with me. I could see that Francis considered it an unworthy receptacle, but I’m really not the sort of person who feels comfortable carrying a briefcase.

“Now then,” Francis said, “will you both be staying for Evensong?”

I looked inquiringly at David, who hesitated for a moment and then said, “Yes, I’d like to, if that’s all right with you, Sheila?”

“Yes, that’ll be fine. Will you come over to the deanery and collect me about five? Good-bye, Francis. I may see you later, then.”

“Splendid, splendid,” Francis said. “Now, David, if you would be kind enough to switch on that electric kettle on the desk beside you, we will have our tea.”

I closed the door carefully behind me, encouraged by the almost benevolent tone in which Francis addressed his brother.

“Wasn’t that David Beaumont?” Monica Woodward demanded. “The actor who used to be in that thing with the detective, on the television.”

“Yes,” I replied. “David’s the dean’s brother.”

“Really! I never knew that! An actor! It seems unsuitable, somehow.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “The church and the stage have much in common, and, after all, the theater had its origins in religious ritual.”

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The sleepy seaside town of Taviscombe has more than its share of gossips [...]]]>

Superfluous Death (ISBN: 978-1-60381-140-8, 194 pp., $12.95), originally published in 1995, is Hazel Holt’s sixth mystery featuring amateur sleuth Mrs. Sheila Malory.

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The sleepy seaside town of Taviscombe has more than its share of gossips and schemers. It also has Mrs. Sheila Malory, a widow whose gift for judging character and unmasking murderers is as impressive as her knowledge of nineteenth-century literature. Mrs. Malory’s sleuthing talents are tested once again when she comes upon the body of one of her friends, a sweet elderly lady. Miss Graham’s death by poison is quite convenient for a local doctor of dubious reputation; the dead woman’s refusal to move thwarted Dr. Cowley’s plans to build a nursing home. But Mrs. Malory knows that nothing is as simple as it seems, especially when it is revealed that Miss Graham left a considerable fortune. Another suspicious death during a fireworks display further complicates matters. These two very different murders—one furtive, the other violent—can’t possibly be related. Or can they?

Hazel Holt was born in Birmingham, England, where she attended King Edward VI High School for Girls. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, and went on to work at the International African Institute in London, where she became acquainted with the novelist Barbara Pym, whose biography she later wrote. She also finished one of Pym’s novels after Pym died. Holt has also recently published My Dear Charlotte, a story that uses the actual language of Jane Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra to construct a Regency murder mystery. Holt wrote her first novel in her sixties, and is a leading crime novelist. She is best known for her Mrs. Malory series. Her son is novelist Tom Holt.

Bookstores and libraries can purchase Superfluous Death wholesale through Ingram and Baker & Taylor.

Read on for an excerpt:

‘Miss Graham!’ I called. ‘Are you there? It’s me, Sheila.’

The silence in the flat seemed a very positive thing, oppressive and unnerving, and I had to make a real effort to move forward and open the sitting room door. After the cold wind outside it was pleasantly warm and the flames of the gas fire flickered cosily. Miss Graham was sitting in her usual chair by the fire. Her eyes were shut and she seemed to be sleeping. I went over to her and said, ‘Miss Graham, it’s Sheila. Are you all right?’ But somehow I knew she wouldn’t reply; there was a feeling of emptiness, as if I was the only person in the room, talking to myself.

I moved towards her and, remembering my Red Cross classes, felt for the pulse in her neck, but there was no movement. I took out my handbag mirror and, kneeling down beside her chair, held it to her lips, but the glass was not even faintly misted. As I touched her face, the skin felt slightly chill and clammy and I knew that she was dead.

As I got stiffly to my feet my knees felt wet, but there was nothing to be seen on the carpet, which was fawn, patterned with large dark brown spirals. I bent down and touched the carpet beside the chair and it was wet, though with what I couldn’t tell. The shock suddenly got to me and I sat down quite abruptly on the sofa facing the fire. I was shaking and I suppose it must have taken me a good ten minutes before I got hold of myself and thought about what I had to do.

I went into the hall and found Miss Graham’s address book by the telephone, looked up Dr Cowley’s number and rang the surgery. His receptionist, a nice middle-aged woman whom I knew slightly from the WI, answered.

‘Oh, hello, Miss Watson, it’s Sheila Malory here. I wonder if Dr Cowley could come round to Miss Graham’s, you know, at Kimberley Lodge. I’m afraid she’s—she’s died.’

‘Oh dear.’ The voice at the other end of the line sounded distressed. ‘Dr Cowley will be upset. But I’m afraid Monday’s his day for the Dulverton surgery and he isn’t usually back until quite late. Dr Barton always covers for Dr Cowley on his Dulverton days and he’s actually here in the surgery now so perhaps I’d better ask him to go round to Kimberley Lodge. Are you there yourself? Can you let him in?’

‘Oh, yes please, that would be best.’ I was relieved that I would not have to face Dr Cowley in these circumstances. ‘And yes, I’m in Miss Graham’s flat. Actually I found her. It was quite a shock.’

‘Oh, that must have been most unpleasant for you! Don’t you worry, Mrs Malory, I’ll send him round right away.’

While I was by the telephone it occurred to me that I should ring Miss Graham’s nephew Ronnie. As her only close relative he ought to be told at once. I found the number of the shop and after a while a girl’s voice answered.

‘Can I speak to Mr Graham, please?’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, he’s not in today,’ she said. ‘Can I take a message?’

‘It’s really very urgent,’ I persisted. ‘Do you know where I can get in touch with him?’

‘Well, actually,’ the girl’s interest was aroused and she sounded more animated, ‘he’s got this flu thing that’s going about and he’s at home. You should be able to get him there.’ She gave me the number and then I suddenly thought of something.

‘Perhaps I could speak to Mrs Graham,’ I said, ‘to save bothering him when he’s not well.’

‘Oh, she’s gone to Taunton to see one of our suppliers. She won’t be back this afternoon.’

I thanked the girl and dialled Ronnie’s home number. The phone rang but there was no reply. Presumably he was in bed and it seemed rather unkind to make him get up when he was feeling rotten just to hear upsetting news. I decided to wait until later when Carol would be home, and put down the receiver.

The silence closed round me again and I began to walk about the flat simply to create some kind of movement. Consciously I avoided the sitting room; I didn’t feel I could face the still figure by the fire. I opened the door of the bedroom and looked inside. Everything was immaculately tidy. Even in her eighties and hampered by ill health, Miss Graham kept up the standard of housekeeping that she had evidently learned from her rather formidable mother. The bed was covered with a fine patchwork quilt (I remembered Miss Graham working on it over the years). The dressing table, with its embroidered mats, was innocent of any cosmetics and held only a silver-backed brush and mirror, a photograph of old Mrs Graham, a bottle of Yardley’s lavender water and an old-fashioned ring-tree. There was a kettle and a tea-tray by the bed, a book (Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier) and a bottle of tablets. I wandered out into the kitchen. Here too everything was spick and span. The work surfaces were clear except for matching storage containers and a wooden bread bin, so unlike my own clutter of jars, half-empty packets and old cat and dog dishes! The sink was spotless, the dishcloth wrung out and carefully spread over the taps and a washed cup, saucer and plate upended to dry on the draining board. A sudden humming noise made me jump, but it was just the motor of the refrigerator starting up. While I was still in this nervous state the front doorbell rang and I greeted Dr Barton rather incoherently. He stared at me curiously as I haltingly explained how I had let myself into the flat and had found Miss Graham dead.

I’ve known Dr Barton for years. He was one of Peter’s clients, but neither of us liked him very much, since he is an austere, humourless man, with a precise manner. He’s as well known in the town for his finicky obsession with detail, with a meticulous adherence to the last letter of the law, as he is for his meanness and love of money. It was presumably the latter that had brought him in to cover for Dr Cowley, a man whom he personally disliked and whose methods he had been known to criticize. Glad though I was not to have had to face the oleaginous Dr Cowley in this distressing situation, I felt chilled and repelled by the sight of Dr Barton’s gaunt figure and severe manner.

He cut short my disjointed remarks with a terse, ‘Yes, yes,’ and going towards the sitting room said, ‘She’s in here, is she?’

I followed him in reluctantly.

‘Has that fire been on for long?’ he asked me sharply. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘It was on when I got here and the room was quite warm then.’

He moved across and felt for the pulse as I had, and laid his hand on her forehead.

‘Difficult to tell how long she’s been dead, since the room is so warm.’ He looked at me accusingly, as if it was somehow my fault.

‘She was alive this morning,’ I said. ‘She telephoned to ask if I’d come and see her.’

‘Yes. Right.’ Dr Barton began examining the body so I went out into the kitchen again and wandered aimlessly about, peering into the refrigerator (almost empty), opening and shutting drawers (splendidly tidy), turning a dripping tap off more tightly, and generally fidgeting about until Dr Barton called to me from the sitting room.

‘Mrs Malory,’ he said as I went into the room, ‘do you know if Miss Graham had seen Dr Cowley in the last few days?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘I shouldn’t think so. I mean, she hadn’t been ill or anything. She sounded perfectly all right this morning. I suppose it was a heart attack?’

‘That I am not in a position to say,’ he replied reprovingly. ‘But if she didn’t see her general practitioner within the last forty-eight hours then there will have to be a post-mortem.’

He spoke with a certain grim satisfaction, as if he was delighted that Dr Cowley would be inconvenienced by the bureaucratic process.

‘There is no need for you to remain,’ he continued. ‘No doubt you have things you wish to attend to. I will do all that is necessary here.’

‘Oh, well, thank you, that would be kind. I’ve got the dogs outside and they’ll be getting a bit restless, you know how it is …’ My voice trailed away in the face of his barely concealed contempt for people who kept animals and I picked up my handbag and shopping bag, in the bottom of which the now unneeded pot of jam rolled about forlornly, and prepared to leave.

‘Just one more thing,’ Dr Barton said. ‘Are there any relatives?’

‘Just a nephew,’ I replied. ‘I tried to ring him while I was waiting for you, but he’s got flu. I’ll try again this evening when his wife’s in.’

‘He should be informed. Thank you, Mrs Malory.’

Thus dismissed, I made my way slowly out of the flat. The air struck cold but I welcomed the boisterousness of the wind as something positive and alive. I was shaken and upset, finding poor Miss Graham like that, and chilled by Dr Barton’s bleakness and lack of warmth and human sympathy. As I approached the car the two dogs started to bark and when I opened the door they greeted me with a frenzied excitement that suddenly brought tears to my eyes. I drove down to the sea front and we all three ran like mad things as fast as we could along the beach.

Murder on Campus (ISBN: 978-1-60381-138-5, $12.95, 288 pp.), originally published in 1994, is the fifth of Hazel Holt’s Mrs. Malory mysteries.

Click here to see the redesigned editions of the first four Mrs. Malory mysteries.  All five books (and the two to come: Superfluous Death and Death of a [...]]]>

Murder on Campus, or Detective in Residence

Murder on Campus (ISBN: 978-1-60381-138-5, $12.95, 288 pp.), originally published in 1994, is the fifth of Hazel Holt’s Mrs. Malory mysteries.

Click here to see the redesigned editions of the first four Mrs. Malory mysteries.  All five books (and the two to come: Superfluous Death and Death of a Dean) are available at the standard discount/returnable through Ingram and Baker & Taylor. Bookstores in the UK can now also order from Ingram at the standard discount.

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Also available  in Kindle and in other eBook editions on Smashwords.

Superfluous Death will be available in January and Death of a Dean in February, 2012.

A small university in Pennsylvania has engaged Mrs. Sheila Malory to teach a course on Nineteenth-Century Women writers, and so, with some reluctance, the widow leaves her home in the charming seaside village of Taviscombe to experience academic life in America. The semester will prove even more challenging than she thought, for no sooner does she arrive than a colleague is found with a bullet in his head. The victim is particularly nasty, a man many would like to see dead. Lieutenant Landis, the lead investigator, just happens to be divorced, available, and eager to discuss Shakespeare. When he asks Mrs. Malory for help, he puts her in a difficult position. Should she assist him in his investigation, even if her efforts encourage his romantic interest? Sheila, who can’t resist a good murder mystery, forges ahead. What she discovers will make her regret that she ever left Taviscombe.

Hazel Holt was born in Birmingham, England, where she attended King Edward VI High School for Girls. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, and went on to work at the International African Institute in London, where she became acquainted with the novelist Barbara Pym, whose biography she later wrote. She also finished one of Pym’s novels after Pym died. Holt has also recently published My Dear Charlotte, a story that uses the actual language of Jane Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra to construct a Regency murder mystery. Holt wrote her first novel in her sixties, and is a leading crime novelist. She is best known for her Mrs. Malory series. Her son is novelist Tom Holt.

Keep reading for an excerpt:

‘Would you like to see upstairs? It’s a fine house in its own right. Not old by British standards, of course, but very typical of the large mansions being built by the great industrialists of the day.’

I love looking over houses, large or small, and this was a really remarkable one. Upstairs, most of the twenty or so bedrooms were now divided up into offices and study rooms for the Research Center, but Theo Portman’s office still had its original splendour.

‘It was Mrs Whittier’s boudoir,’ he said, ‘and a bit feminine—though not quite as frilly and fussy as Mrs Theodore Roosevelt’s boudoir at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Have you seen that house yet? You really should. But I kept the Louis XV furniture and that Greuze and that particularly fine Nattier—oh and the Van Dyck, of course.’

Hanging behind his desk was a portrait of a seventeenth-century gentleman who bore an extraordinary resemblance to Theo Portman himself, small pointed beard and all.

Linda and I exclaimed delightedly and he smiled with pleasure.

‘My little joke,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t resist it.’

‘It must have needed an enormous staff,’ I said, ‘to keep all this up.’

‘Indeed. Practically the whole of the top floor was servants’ quarters. We keep the computers and so on up there. Would you like to have a look?’

We ascended a smaller and plainer staircase than the handsome, ornately carved one leading up from the great hall. The top floor was a warren of corridors, the labels on whose doors proclaimed them to be study and photocopying rooms or, more simply, ‘Administration’. Theo Portman opened a few doors to reveal an impressive array of electronic equipment, which had Linda asking eager questions. She’s a terrific computer enthusiast and actually seems to understand them and, I must admit, when I see her making an index, say, on her own machine I do see the point of them and feel very much that I’m living in the Stone Age with my own cards-in-a-shoe-box method!

‘Oh yes,’ Theo said, ‘there is something up here you might be interested to see.’

We went down yet another corridor and he opened a door into a large room which, in addition to the usual complement of computers, had walls lined with shelves, laden with files.

‘This,’ he said, ‘used to be the linen room. All those shelves used to hold linen. Smell the wood—it’s all cedar, anti-moth, you see. And this,’ he unwound a sort of roller affair, ‘was how they stored those enormous damask tablecloths, so that they didn’t crease.’

‘How gorgeous,’ I said, sniffing at the wood. ‘The cedar smell is still very strong. And what marvellous quality it all is and how beautifully made, everything just so and splendidly planned!’

‘Oh, yes,’ Theo said, ‘a lot of thought went into the smallest detail.’ He moved to the far comer of the room towards what seemed like a couple of enormous chests.

‘These were blanket chests, also lined with cedar, of course. You see, this looks like a drawer, but actually it swings outwards on a pivot just below waist level so you don’t have to stoop to put things in.’ He put his hand on one of the chests, pulled gently and the side section swung out revealing a deep box.

But the box wasn’t empty. Lying inside it was the body of a man.

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Also available in [...]]]>

The Deification ($16.95, 358 pp, 6×9 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60381-134-7) is a picaresque novel by Seattle author Jack Remick that pays homage to the legendary San Francisco beat poets. Some of Remick’s influences include Kerouac’s On the Road and The Dharma Bums and Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.

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Writes author Robert J. Ray, “The language, the timing, the humor, the strong verbs, the concrete nouns, the world beneath the world–all wrapped up in one novel … You gotta read this book!”

Remick’s novel, Blood (Camel Press, 2011), earned extravagant praise:

Wayne Gunn wrote on LambdaLiterary.org: “For an author to choose as his explicit models Camus, Genet, and de Sade … and to earn the right to be mentioned in their company is [a goal] that perhaps Jack Remick has indeed achieved.”

A critic for the San Francisco Book Review wrote that Blood is “one of the best books I’ve ever read.”

Author Priscilla Long calls Remick “the Jean Genet of the 21st Century.”

To be a writer in America, you have to bleed. Eddie Iturbi, a young car-thief obsessed with the dark magic of Beat culture in a mythic San Francisco, sets off on a spaced-out crusade to connect with the Beat gods. En route Eddie links up with living legend Leo Franchetti, the last of the Beat poets. Leo sends Eddie to the Buzzard Cult, where a mysterious mentor reveals the writer’s ritual of blood and words. Changed and invigorated and back in the City, Eddie falls in love with a snake dancer at the Feathered Serpent. She can’t save him from Scarred Wanda, jealous bad-girl of literature, whose goal is to destroy Eddie before Jack Kerouac relays all the magical secrets of the literary universe. Immortality is just a book away. Will Eddie live long enough to write it?

Jack Remick at Jack Kerouac's grave

Says Remick, “I grew up in California’s Central Valley. The Valley was huge but stifling. If you climbed the water tower one foggy night and the cops hauled you down, it made the local newspaper. Your one goal was a customized car with a flame job and flipper hubcaps. You wore Levis or Chinos and you cut your hair short. And then along came Jack Kerouac and On The Road. Right behind him came William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg …. On The Road and the Beatniks set me free. Get out of the Valley, they said. Go find your America. And some of us did. …. This novel, The Deification, pays homage to those wild men whose vision of the world opened up the social revolution of the 1960s. They changed everything.”

Jack Remick is a poet, short story writer, and novelist. The Deification is the first book of a series, The California Quartet. More volumes will be released by Coffeetown Press in 2012: Valley Boy, The Book of Changes, and Trio of Lost Souls. Blood, A Novel was published by Camel Press in 2011. Also coming from Coffeetown in 2012: Gabriela and the Widow. You can find Jack online at blood.camelpress.com.

The Deification is currently available on Amazon.com, the European Amazons and Amazon Japan. The Kindle edition retails for $5.95. Other eBook versions can be purchased on Smashwords and through most major eBook retailers. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com, Ingram, and Baker & Taylor. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Services.

Keep reading for an excerpt:

He looked at the shelf—Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rilke, Verlaine, Valéry, Plath, Shakespeare, Whitman, Schiller, Christine de Pisane, Sexton, Goethe, Aiken, Stevens, Gunn, Hughes. Eddie closed his eyes and rubbed at the fire in them.

They hurt. He rubbed them, still burning, and when he opened them he started because squatting in a half-circle in front of him were Rimbaud and Christine de Pisane, Marie de France and Goethe, Milton and Walt Whitman, each of them wearing a gold name plate on a gold chain. The loft door opened and Sexton and Plath entered wearing name plates and white skirts printed with florals and hair done up in beehives. They joined the circle.

You’re Eddie, Baudelaire said. Villon told us you hang out up here.

You know who I am, but are you who I think you are?

Who do you think I am?

I think you’re Baudelaire. Why do you have name plates?

We need name plates, Baudelaire said, to keep things straight. Some of us are famous but completely unread. There are some of us you all read and keep on reading, and there are the ones you all say you’ll read some day but you won’t, and there are those of us you all lie about having read. Joyce, for example. Proust. And Mann. Tasso. Pound. Eliot. Saint-John Perse.

Saint-John Perse? Eddie said.

You’ve read him, haven’t you?

Not yet, Eddie said. But I will. What do you want from me?

Gut check, Sexton said.

Gut check? Eddie asked.

To see if you’re keeping to the schedule, Goethe told him. We want to see how you’re working, to measure your progress.

Eddie got up, reached for his notebook and pen and laying his Baudelaire down on the bed roll, he said, Do you mind if I write all this down?

Schiller snatched the notebook away, ripped it to shreds, then, pointing at Eddie said,

You should know it all by heart. Take dictation ….

It’s too early, Christine de Pisane said, I can see that. Too early for him.

Eddie reached for his precious notebook, pages falling like snow, and he felt like his heart had stopped beating.

How does it feel, Eddie? Sexton said. To lose it all? Every word and there’s nothing you can do about it.

We’re getting a little bit harsh, Plath said. He’s only seventeen.

Merde, Verlaine muttered, Arthur quit writing when he was nineteen, and you were dead at thirty.

I know that, Plath said, but I didn’t mean to do it.

Rimbaud scoffed. Well, you’re the one who stuck her head in the oven and turned on the gas, chérie. No one else did that for you.

Enough, Goethe said. He rose from the circle and gathered the pages of Eddie’s notebook and spliced them together with god-glue and he read page after page after page in silence and without moving his lips until, scowling over the whitest teeth except for one large cavity in the second incisor buccal, he said, Not an allusion in the whole works. It’s like you’re inventing the wheel again and again.

You mean he hasn’t read us, the ten said as one.

Hey, Leo shouted from below, what the hell are you doing up there, Eddie?

I’m reading, Leo.

Sounds like you’re pounding your pud. Not in the classics section, all right?

Sorry, Leo.

Goethe, eyes on fire—You don’t yet know scheisse, boy. You want to be a poet but you haven’t learned to create myths and you know nothing about ritual. Why do you think all these writers are on the shelves? Tell me. Why?

I don’t know, Eddie said.

Because they all spilled blood.

Especially Sylvia, Rimbaud said.

Stop, Goethe shook a finger at him. Everybody makes mistakes.

She meant do to it, Verlaine said.

She didn’t mean to do it, Whitman said.

Then why did she stick her head in the oven and turn on the gas? Rimbaud asked.

She made a mistake, Goethe said. A mistake. This one, pointing at Eddie, has a spark but he doesn’t have the fire yet and he doesn’t have the hammer.

Good thing, Rimbaud said, ce petit sal con would probably bash his thumbs if he did.

Let’s stick to the business at hand, Goethe said. Ritual and myth. Ignore Arthur. He’s angry because he wrote only two pieces anyone remembers … but what pieces they are.

And with that you redeem yourself, Rimbaud said. I was worried you’d sold your soul to the devil.

Le Bateau ivre, Eddie blurted out.

What? Christine de Pisane said. Is there a glimmer of hope here?

Le Bateau ivre, Eddie said again, and Une Saison en enfer.

Well, listen to this little boy, Whitman said.

What about Une Saison en enfer? Goethe asked.

A foundation piece, Eddie said. Like Leaves.

You’ve read Leaves?

I’ve read Leaves. Without it there’s no Howl. Without le Bateau ivre there’s no Coney Island of the Mind. There’s no On the Road. Le Poète maudit, the outlaw poet, the modern poet.

Villon, Anne Sexton said, and Burroughs and Corso and Dugan.

You’re light, Goethe said, but you’re making progress. What’s the verdict?

He raised his hands. The poets nodded and shrugged.

Progress, he said. This boy’s spark might ignite. He might yet become a hoard-hammerer.

If the rats don’t eat his feet, Rimbaud said.

Eddie, Leo shouted.

Yes, boss?

How about a little help down here?

Eddie looked up. In his hand only his notebook and on the floor, beside the bed roll, his Fleurs du mal.

On the shelf above his head, the books—Schiller, Whitman, Sexton, Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Rexroth.

He closed his notebook, noticed spots of wet glue on the pages, spots reeking with the vague odor of sulfur.

He went downstairs.

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“Strongly worth [...]]]>

Risk Teaching: Reflections from Inside and Outside the Classroom (250 pp, $13.95, ISBN: 978-1-60381-106-4), by Peter G. Beidler, is a retrospective of an award-winning college professor’s teaching career.  Both students and teachers can learn from its valuable insights.

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“Strongly worth considering for any teacher who often finds themselves overwhelmed by their profession, Risk Teaching is a solid and choice pick, not to be overlooked.”

–The Midwest Book Review/Small Press Bookwatch

“Pete’s creative teaching, probing questions, and passionate stories about teaching have inspired me and Lilly conference-goers for over twenty years,” writes Milton D. Cox, director of the Lilly Conference on College Teaching and editor-in-chief of the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching. “Peter has changed my way of teaching and that of so many others.”

Must we always teach from the inside of a classroom? Do periodic exams encourage learning as well as daily quizzes do? Do you schedule individual conferences with each student at the start of the term? Is lecturing an effective way to teach? If a student falls in love with you—or vice versa—are you doing something right or something wrong? If you have a pedagogical idea that will probably fail, should you try it anyhow? How do we know when it is time to retire from a profession we love? Such questions may make readers uncomfortable, but they may also lead them to change the way they think about the profession. Teachers may reconsider their methods, causing students to reconsider their attitudes.

In choosing the title Risk Teaching, Peter G. Beidler hopes to convey multiple meanings of the word “risk.” “Risk” the verb, as in “take a chance on an amazing profession.” “Risk” the adjective, as in “risky”—teaching that diverges from the safe and traditional path. “Risk” the noun, as in “teach students to take risks” and learn outside their comfort zones. Beidler’s book, like his teaching, is saucy, innovative, and challenging.

“I wanted to challenge teachers to listen to their wild whispers,” Beidler says, “to encourage them to walk away from the safety of traditional pedagogies. I wanted to jolt them into fighting boredom—their own and their students’—by taking risks. Learning should be a barefoot trek in the jungle, not a cruise in the Caribbean.”

PETER G. BEIDLER recently retired from Lehigh University as the Lucy G. Moses Distinguished Professor of English. Widely published in both British and American literature, he has won a number of teaching awards. In 1981 he was named National Professor of the Year by the Council on Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation.

Risk Teaching is available in Kindle ($6.95) and 6×9 trade paperback editions on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr and Amazon Japan. Bookstores and libraries can order through info@coffeetownpress.com, Ingram, and Baker & Taylor. Other eBook editions can be purchased on Smashwords, Google Ebooks, BN.com and all major eBook retailers.

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Critics have high praise for Freeman’s poetry:

“Gritty and real, full of [...]]]>

The Boulevard of Broken Discourse ($11.95, 140 pp, ISBN: 978-1-60381-136-1), is a book of poems by St. Louis poet Matthew Freeman. Coffeetown published Freeman’s collection, Darkness Never Far, in 2010.

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Critics have high praise for Freeman’s poetry:

“Gritty and real, full of personality (and personalities), urban St. Louis scenery and experience”— J. Gordon, Nightimes.com

“Simultaneously hip, funny, and sad”—Dorothea Grossman, Poet

“A microscope into the world of an extraordinarily talented schizophrenic”—Suzanne Shenkman

Matthew Freeman’s poems explore the difficulty of navigating and making peace with an environment that is both mentally and physically confusing. For many years Matthew struggled with mental illness and his experiences have fed his unique perspective. Thanks to the newest treatments, he is able to give voice to subjects that in the past would have been consigned to silence. His home of St. Louis, Missouri provides the setting for many of his poems and is a constant source of inspiration.

Matthew Freeman discovered he was a poet in high school, at the outset of a tumultuous time that would eventually see him hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia. After he began his recovery, he went on to graduate from Saint Louis University, where he was twice awarded The Montesi Prize for his poems. The Boulevard of Broken Discourse is his fourth published collection. He is Poet in Residence at Adapt, Missouri.

The Boulevard of Broken Discourse is available in Kindle ($4.95) and print editions on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon Japan. Bookstores and libraries can purchase books wholesale through www.coffeetownpress.com or Ingram. Libraries may also contact Follett Library Resources and Midwest Library Services.

TYPICAL

We were riding toward the East Side

me and Hollander and Al—I was sitting

up front between them—Hollander was fuming

but Al was cool (which is another poem—

why Al is always so cool) and I felt that

hatred void coming from Hollander—hey

Hollander, I said, what is it, man, hey,

can you ever forgive me—I don’t think so,

he said, I don’t think I ever can—oh damn,

I was rollicking, what did I do wrong, Hollander—

he turns to me and explains—

you called me “avocado numb nuts!”

“Avocado numb nuts!” Oh, man, we were

just kids, Hollander, we were fucking with each other,

we were busting each other’s chops, and

plus I don’t even know what “avocado numb nuts” means!

Nonetheless, he posits, you called me it. So then

he went back silently fuming and all hope aside

I knew I would never get forgiven—I’d

crossed some symbolic chaotic line, I’d

accidentally given voice (when we were just kids)

to something that dove into the tight structure of reality and exploded—

Hollander would never speak to me again—Al was

cool and hadn’t said a thing—what would become of Al—

he’d go on to buy a mansion—

but this all arrested me terribly and I tell

you that night I was completely

unable to enjoy myself at the strip club.

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“In [this] fascinating exploration [...]]]>

Gas Drilling and the Fracking of a Marriage ($13.95, 230 pp., ISBN: 978-1-60381-114-9), by Stephanie C. Hamel, is a memoir about an environmental scientist who is tempted to betray her ideals by the promise of extravagant royalties.

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“In [this] fascinating exploration … Hamel is unflinching in presenting her own conflicted feelings and the difficulties that crop up from disagreeing with her husband. Much like gas companies do drilling and fracturing (‘fracking’) of shale below the earth’s surface, the contract and subsequent discussion between the Hamels taps into each person’s belief system and causes some toxic energy to be released.”

—Elizabeth Millard, ForeWord Digital Reviews

“An honest, straight-forward, thought-provoking and well-written account …. I admire the courage and thoughtfulness it took … to write this book. As she says in these pages, [Stephanie] wants to be the heroine of her own book. How could she write it if she was thinking about giving in and taking the money? But she did write it. By using diary entries and notes from phone calls, Stephanie was able to portray the push and pull she was going through both externally and internally at this time in her life. She told her story honestly and did not hold back in an effort to make herself look better in the end. That makes her a true heroine.”

—April Sullivan for Reader Views

After receiving an offer to lease the farmland of her idyllic childhood summers for natural gas exploration, Stephanie Hamel saw her hitherto strong convictions rattled by dreams of royalties and signing bonuses. With a PhD in environmental health sciences, she could not ignore the possible ill effects of gas drilling and fracturing (“fracking”) of the shale beneath the surface. Her decision was complicated further by Pennsylvania’s Law of Capture, which would allow energy companies to collect gas from her property via the neighbor’s well without paying her a dime.

Dr. Hamel’s search for answers turned into an in-depth examination of her responsibility to the earth, her spouse, her neighbors and her children. As she consulted friends, colleagues, officials, and online sources and recalled stories from childhood vacations, she faced hard truths about the inconsistencies of her beliefs. She also tested the patience of her husband, who had no qualms about signing the lease.

A poetic, heartfelt, honest yet light-hearted memoir, Gas Drilling and the Fracking of a Marriage will strike a vein for anyone who has played weekend farmer or agonized over their role as steward to the earth’s resources. How much sacrifice is required of us? What if our sacrifice means little in the general scheme of things? Dr. Hamel may not have the answers, but she poses the right questions.

“The book began as diary entries and e-mails,” says Dr. Hamel, “and as a way to learn the facts about gas drilling and untangle my feelings about the difficult ethical decision I was facing. I was offered a large sum of money that would be paid at the expense of the local environment and potentially by the health of the community, and while I initially refused to allow natural gas drilling on my land, I soon learned that my sacrifice might not protect either. As I researched the impacts and consulted other landowners, I discovered that they, too, had initially said no, but then ‘reconsidered, since all the neighbors were signing gas leases.’ It was a relief to learn that I was not alone in my dilemma.

“But also, I simply felt compelled to write this story, and quickly, too, because it could be lost in light of new information that is now becoming  available. In hindsight, with facts spreading on a lighted table, decisions are easy and blame falls on those who don’t foresee outcomes. It’s not so easy to make wise choices when one is grappling with them.”

Stephanie Hamel, PhD, grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania. After earning her BS in Chemistry from Grove City College and her MS in Chemistry from Lehigh University, she worked as an organic chemist in the pharmaceutical industry with The BOC Group and at Robert Wood Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute. She taught Chemistry part-time at community colleges, then returned to graduate school to study environmental health issues, earning a Joint PhD in Exposure Assessment from the UNDMJ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where she also performed post-doctoral research in the Department of Plant Sciences. She now resides in northeastern Pennsylvania with her husband, Tom, and their two sons. This is her first book. You can find Dr. Hamel on the Web at www.hamel.coffeetownpress.com.

Gas Drilling and the Fracking of a Marriage is available on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon Japan. The Kindle edition retails for $5.95. Other eBook versions can be purchased on Smashwords and through most major eBook retailers. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com and Ingram. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Services.

Keep reading for an excerpt:

During the first years of ownership, our visits featured repairs to the little house, with Mr. Penney hobbling over to offer advice and tools. Dad soon had water running into the little house; he upgraded the electricity to accommodate a hot water tank and salvaged an old oil burner.

My brother, Mark, pried rows of nails from the huge old timbers we discovered under the old wallboards and my mother wore rubber gloves as she scrubbed the massive beams with a bleach solution. The strange porch accoutrement of multi-colored shingles was discarded, and on a sunny Saturday afternoon we repainted the floor with fresh white paint. My siblings and I began to spend our summers learning to fix things: to shingle roofs, mix cement, and spackle sheetrock.

On weekends we climbed into the loft of our own barn, and scattered the grass seed found in the corncribs for our pretend chickens. Mr. Penney showed us the wild raspberry brambles and reported a recent sighting of “an ol’ black bar.” My sister and I were pleasantly frightened at the possibility of seeing one for ourselves.

We picked mint by the spring and caught tiny pollywogs in the neighbors’ pond; mud squished between our toes as we waded in the muck. On hot afternoons, Natalie and I used the dark, damp springhouse as a playhouse. On the upland, Mark and I hacked away the scratchy brambles clinging to an ancient, dilapidated pickup truck. Decaying amid the tall weeds, its rusty doors could be wrenched open enough to allow us to climb inside. We bounced on the cracked leather seat, imagining we were steering and shifting; however, the cab was protected from the wind, allowing volatilized oils in the grease to permeate everything, and their stomach-grabbing odors caused us to try—in vain—to crank the windows open. When the smell became unbearable, we would clamor over the wooden sides to the truck bed, or run down the hill to find something new to explore.

When I lay on the lawn, the wind made funny sounds in my ears and I watched fluffy clouds separate the blue sky into different shades. I picked the prettiest blue. The sky was bigger, the land was wilder, and my imagination traveled so much farther here than at home in the suburbs.

There is probably little need, then, to state that I have a sentimental attachment to the place. Those childhood memories are really why it is mine today. There could be no other logical reason, after my father’s illness and death, to purchase the property from my mother. The land—some wooded, some hayfield and the rest scrub—was not farmed, and the buildings were, by then, run-down and nearly worthless. Our farm’s value was that it held many of the happy memories of my lifetime, and that was enough.