We invite you to scroll through ArtsMart — if you are looking for the perfect book to take you through the summer. Or on a trip. When it rains. Or when it shines. Whether you're choosing something for yourself or for someone special in your life, you’ll find an array of enticing possibilities. And, as Sue Grafton wrote in Y is for Yesterday: “a book has no unwanted calories, and you don’t have to worry about sizes.” Happy hunting!

Learn more at laurarodley.com.

Laura Rodley’s remarkable poems transport you to the North Atlantic in the early 1700s. Novelistic in scope, Counter Point uses scene, dialogue, and action-driven narrative. And like any good novel, this book introduces an unforgettable character, Marie, an ordinary girl (“A laundress wears no jewelry on her / hands, only the roses of chapped skin”) who navigates the world with extraordinary fortitude. Artful language and sensual detail–whether evoking love’s first desires (“and here we splice open our shirts / like oysters after plucking / and just as lush”) or describing the malodors of a pirate ship (“even the smell of their feet / had a noise called squelching”)—bring to life a briny world, both intimate and writ large. It’s not often a poetry book is described as a page-turner, but Counter Point is that book: a heroine’s adventure lyrically told.

To order online, click here or also available on Amazon.

When newly engaged Sally Buffington is introduced to Craigville, she meets an expansive Cape Cod cottage that is virtually a family member itself. She quickly finds herself competing for airtime among the talkative, assured band of brothers—and her new mother-in-law, the cottage’s lively and confounding matriarch.

Sally, a Cape Cod local, soon wonders how she’ll ever maintain her independence, let alone her sense of self when the day’s agenda and every detail is already set in stone. But she navigates her new life with quiet persistence and a boundless curiosity that guides her to explore life through the creative lens of her camera and her pen.

Sally writes with a whimsical candor that is both honest and humorous. Through poetic prose and heartfelt reflection, A Place Like This reveals the beauty of Cape Cod and shows us that sometimes the simplest of moments brings us the most lasting joy.

Sally Buffington is a writer and photographer, also a classically trained musician. From her home in southern California, she migrates back to native ground in Massachusetts, especially her spiritual homeland of Cape Cod. Writing lyrically and imaginatively, ever aware of sensory experience and memory, Buffington takes the reader into her thoughts wherever she finds herself.

Buffington can “see things other people don’t see” in everyday scenes and find them beautiful. But her prose is where that ability most shines through. This memoir paints a vivid and lasting memory of a home with as much personality as the family who lived there.

“Punctuated by sensory delights, the author’s prose can prove particularly mouthwatering” …. “An elegantly observant account that transports readers to a beloved place.”

To learn more, and order the book, go to www.sallybuffington.com

In her prose chapbook, Border/Between: A Symphony in Essays, Carol D. Marsh writes about death, addictions, and war while also exploring how written form and expression have a counterpart in music. Structured upon the 4-movement symphony and incorporating other forms such as the rock song and the Requiem, Border/Between seeks and finds its place in what lies between the sharp and unforgiving edges of ideology and judgment. In refusing to allow borders to govern her, Marsh is able to bring compassion and hope to what seems irredeemable.

Learn more about this and her many other publications HERE.

And sign up HERE for her newsletter, Fighting for Democracy. Twice-monthly. Nonpartisan. Informative.

A rare collection of diverse creators, The Lemon Tree is a kaleidoscopic work that contains some of the most creative women of our time. Nitza Agam, a Bay Area author, teacher, and poet, has compiled a work that reveals the truth behind what drives women writers and artists to express their creativity. Inspired by her late friend who hid much of her art in her attic, this work sheds light on women artists and writers, now for the first time, who convey what they have always known, some from an early age, their unwavering need to create using words or images or both. The essays reveal the struggles, the obstacles, the triumphs, and the joys of the creative process. Many of the authors and artists are Bay Area based, but also reside in Montana, Israel, and England.

Marlene Shikegawa has produced a short documentary about the project, and has generously agreed to share it with Persimmon Tree:

Available on Amazon.

A collection of poems from MoonPath Press

“Reading these poems is like viewing paintings in a gallery. The images are rich and detailed, the reader feels present in her settings. The individual poems are the observations of a seasoned poet, from perspectives that have been honed over a lifetime. The collection as a whole is a study in serenity.”
Stephen Parrish, author of The First 100 Words
(5 star Amazon Review)

A poem from Ordinary Splendor

Directions Back to Childhood

Turn left at the first sign of progress
and follow the old highway
along the Stillwater River.
When you hear the whistle of the train,
take a right and cross the covered bridge
that leads to the rodeo grounds
where the silver-maned bronc
caused so much havoc the summer you were ten
and the ghost of your grandfather’s Jeep
rests behind the bleached-out grandstand
choked with blackberries.
As you round the corner into town,
there’s a white picket fence
laced with lilacs. Walk through the gate.
You’ll see a blue and white Western Flyer
lying on its side in the middle of the sidewalk.
It will take you the rest of the way.

Judith Waller Carroll is an Oregon poet whose poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. This is her second full-length collection.

For order information click here.

For a signed book, contact the author at judithwcarroll@gmail.com

Growing up in Greenwich Village in the 1940s – the shy and introverted only child of a glamorous, eccentric divorcée – was a challenge that proved to be lifelong – and ironically the catalyst that propelled the author to go on the professional stage.

Available on Amazon.

A National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist 2021

The stories in Julia MacDonnell’s first collection, The Topography of Hidden Stories create a shining tapestry of women’s lives in the late 20th and the early 21st centuries. Her characters, among them women trapped in a pious patriarchy that has yet to loosen its control of women’s lives, grapple with doubt and disquiet in their search for love and connection. However difficult their situations, they confront experience with sharp eyes, ironic wit, and a sense of their own historical matrix.

Kirkus Reviews:
MacDonnell’s writing is frequently elegant, full of vivid metaphors…and descriptive language. The plots are both familiar and unpredictable, drawing readers in while challenging their preconceptions…. A strong collection of stories connected by deep Irish American roots.

Midwest Book Review, D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer:
The Topography of Hidden Stories holds many hidden gems…Dissimilar, evocative, and compelling, these snapshots freeze pivotal moments in time. They will captivate readers looking for literary examples of women trapped by circumstance and fate, their choices, their commitments to family, and their illusions and realities about the world and their place in it.

Readers seeking stories of growth and change and women’s evolving lives will find The Topography of Hidden Stories hard-hitting and thought-provokingly unexpected in its diversity and impact.

Indie Reader, Stephani Hren:
Julia MacDonnell …can cut to the quick of a character with a single sentence, or …stretch her exploration through an entire story…There’s an element of yearning to MacDonnell’s writing that makes her stories utterly entrancing and the characters, conflicts, and relationships that she’s crafted are deeply insightful.

To order, CLICK HERE.

I hope this little book will help in offering comfort to all who are grieving the ones they love.

Available at your favorite indie bookshop through Bookshop.org https://bit.ly/3i9Laqs

Amazon https://amzn.to/2S7OxDJ

Barnes & Noble https://bit.ly/34Hv7bC

Jeanine Stevens’ unique chapbook, Ornate Persona, features poetry influenced by dance, film, art, and literature, and starring Nijinsky, Apollinaire, Siddhartha, Chagall and others.

Stevens distills her gifts as a lyric anthropologist in this, her most introspective collection thus far. We sense that she’s investigating her own psyche, even while handling such themes as a Nijinsky ballet. Her associative dance leads us fluidly from poem to poem, as she empathizes with the gifted, ill-fated Tanaquil Le Clercq, celebrated dancer and muse to George Balanchine. And we become one body with Nijinsky himself, admiring our own sinew.

Stevens’ power to captivate guides us from a Joseph Cornell box to familiar 20th-century masterworks like the film Black Orpheus, then to the mysterious series of mandalas created by Carl Jung’s patient, Miss X. Stevens’ poetry keeps us reading, thinking, and feeling.

“Ornate Persona is like having front row seats to your favorite live performance. Your jaw will remain dropped in awe at the rich drama, movement and color of her poetry.”
 

Available from https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/featured-authors/jeanine-stevens/.

Imagine calling yourself a writer. Now it’s time to make it real. Let Scribbly help you become the writer you’ve always wanted to be…without the pressure.

My name is Kim Duke and I’m a full-time writer, Amazon best-selling author and my work has been featured on NBC News, the Globe and Mail and other international media.

My mission is simple. To get more women writing with intention, fun and freedom!

My gentle writing program is mailed to your home every 30 days. Each Scribbly is loaded with quirky writing tips, prompts and examples. My team and I devote over 100 hours into each issue. Gorgeous illustrations, research, art, science and writing that reach out from the pages to inspire you. I can’t wait for you to see your Scribbly!

Scribbly is a gentle writing program that encourages your creativity and gets you writing in five minutes. If you want to explore creative nonfiction writing (without pressure) – you’ll love Scribbly! The best part? When you’re a Scribbly member, you get a chance to submit your writing for publication in Scribbly.

Hooray for snail mail! www.kimdukewrites.com/Scribbly

Reclaiming the Sacred Source: The Ancient Power and Wisdom of Women’s Sexuality

Arguing for the return of celebrating the life-force with orgasm, Reclaiming the Sacred Source explores the sexual imbalance that disturbs the lives of millions. Some have been abused. Some believe it their right to take sexual gratification. Most have forgotten the purpose of sexuality: to celebrate life. Five thousand years ago the invading and over-powering Indo-Europeans disrupted sexuality as a sacrament in the celebration of the ancient Goddess. Modern religions perpetuate the false story of sexuality as evil. This book provides insight into this historical occurrence and offers suggestions for healing that can restore memory and practice of high-level orgasm as a celebration of life and all that is sacred in the highest vibratory peak of our pleasure.

Available on-line everywhere www.lynncreighton.com

The Understudy is a charming, evocative, and authentic novel about the life of a Broadway actress in the 1970s, written by someone who has been there. Part theatrical love letter and part romance novel, The Understudy shows that while true love is never completely perfect, it can come pretty close if all parties involved are willing to work at it.

Available on Amazon.

A gritty, matter-of-fact account of tragedy and how to make it a beginning and not an end.

Bold, brave, honest! A beautifully told mother-daughter love story.

Heartbreaking and hilarious.

This beautiful uplifting little book resonates with love, regret, grief, and much more, showing us that perfection is unnecessary: love still can win out in the end.

The Lady with the Crown: A Story of Resilience explores how unforeseen trauma can, in the blink of an eye, transform a normal happy family into a uniquely wounded one. It charts not only their resilience and courage but also Canrinus’s indomitable pursuit and reinvention of joy.

Available on Amazon.

The author is available for book club meetings on Zoom or, in the San Francisco Bay Area, in person. Contact her via facebook.com/theladywiththecrown.

The As You Write It series is a great gift to our community: a page-turning read, a window into our local past, and a platform for brilliant storytellers, all in one. In turns reflective, touching, and funny, this anthology is a reminder of the worlds that can open up when we take the time to listen to the voices already among us.

With its seventh gift to our community, the As You Write It group once again reminds and encourages us: Everyone should write! And when talent is fostered, it blossoms. Lucky 7‘s eleven writers pull a deep spectrum of living color through the prism of the short memoir, leaving something new and different shining on every page: poetry and portals into our local history, childhood sense-memories returning, reveries and touching reflections. Place this little volume on your bedside table. You’ll be grateful.

To place an order, send a check
for $16 plus $3 shipping and handling to
Laura Rodley
P.O. Box 63
Shelburne Falls MA 01370

Underscore is one poet’s attempt to explore the currents that swirl underneath the surface of everyday life. When do our voices breathe in unison, when do they diverge into counterpoint?

How do the events of our lives chorus into through-composed pieces without reprise or return to familiar themes?

When do we finally sing along with the unmistakable music of the spheres? In her first full-length collection, Roberta Schultz begins by looking “in instead of up” at the cadences we underline and define as our own.

You can buy Underscore from Dos Madres press at https:// www.dosmadres.com/shop/underscore-by-roberta-schultz/

Or from the author at robertaschultz.com

Contain, Cynthia Hogue’s new book of poems, began in the first few months of the pandemic lockdown as a daily meditation on artist Morgan O’Hara’s mandala-like visual sequence, “Nineteen Forms of Containment.” Each day Hogue focused on different social, cultural, or medical issues, retracing O’Hara’s process as a starting place for her own meditations on matter and form in a time of catastrophe. She often felt as if she were channeling both words and insights as she wrote, an inward-outward communion inspired by O’Hara’s series and the enormity of the tragedy unfolding.

In her New Pages review, poet Jami Macarty praises Hogue for the particular attention she pays to the “social justice-related realities” that the pandemic highlights, as “a way / of putting word to something / for which there are no words.”

Published by Tram Editions

To purchase the paperback ($12) click here.

A disturbing encounter with a hermaphrodite at a county fair presages teenage Miami’s loss of innocence in 1970’s California. MIAMI IN VIRGO is a literary fiction coming-of-age novel narrated by precocious seventeen-year-old Miami.

She and her friends form a tight-knit circle practicing feminist Wiccan ritual, as her childhood fundamentalism casts a long shadow.

Conflicts with her friends over boys threaten their newfound feminist solidarity. An anticipated trip to a women’s demonstration devolves into a nightmarish questioning of her sexuality, further fracturing her friendships. An ill-fated romance at a Halloween party becomes thoroughly spooked when Miami winds up exiled in her new family after her mother’s remarriage.

Her peccadilloes take on a spiritual dimension and she goes through a soul-searing scrutiny which eventually leads to the resolution of her conflicts through the deepening of her character. The twists and turns of her fast-paced story make a compelling read.
 

Order the book, on Amazon.

Learn more about the book and its author: https://miamiinvirgo.com/

When Katharine Wright, sister to the famous Wright Brothers, married for the first and only time at 52, her brother, Orville, refused to speak to her ever again. The Wright Sister is a historical novel made up of imagined letters from Katharine to Orville, as well as what she calls her Marriage Diary.

“The Wright Sister is a marvel—a perfect, very dear and brilliant novel whose characters are now stored in my heart like favorite, absent friends. Long live the remarkable Katharine Wright, her famous brothers, and author Patty Dann, who brought them back to life for this gobsmacked, grateful reader.”
 

“From the first sentence to the last Patty Dann captures the voice of Katharine Wright with uncanny verisimilitude. Poignant.”
 

“Dann does an amazing job of transporting readers in time by imagining Katharine’s joy, her devotion to Orville, and the pain she feels from their one-sided correspondence.”
 

To order, CLICK HERE.