Stories in The Unforgotten, ranging from a novella to flash narratives of merely a paragraph, are populated by a variety of characters. Among them: Luisa, a beloved childhood servant in Peru, who disappears inexplicably. A child writes that her mom has a lover, a grownup word for boyfriend. Gertrude, whose lifelong collection of sophisticated words fades into dementia. Charles, a grandfather in a white nightgown and bobbing nightcap, chases a bull away from his wife’s beloved rose garden. A mother tells her child a story of a joyous snail with a will to live. Adrianna, now a grandmother, reminiscences about a college year in Paris with her best friend who later committed suicide. Henry, working in a research lab, befriends a rat he names Eloise.

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It is 1971. The fictional city of Bellport, Massachusetts, is in decline with an urban redevelopment project on the horizon expected to transform this dying factory town into a thriving economic center. This planned transformation has a profound effect on the residents who live in Bellport as their own personal transformations take place. Sydney Stallworth steps away from her fellowship and law studies at an elite university to support husband Malachi’s dream of opening a business in the heart of the black community of his hometown, Bellport.

For Omar Bassari, an immigrant from Senegal, Bellport is where he will establish his drumming career and the launching pad from which he will spread African culture across the world. Della Tolliver has built a fragile sanctuary in Bellport for herself, boyfriend Kwamé Rodriguez, and daughter Jasmine, a troubled child prone to nightmares and outbursts.

The Talking Drum explores intraracial, class, and cross-cultural tensions, along with the meaning of community and belonging. It examines the profound impact gentrification has on people in many neighborhoods and the way in which being uprooted affects the fabric of their families, friendships, and emotional well-being.

The Talking Drum, Lisa Braxton’s debut, is beautifully written (perhaps why it’s being released by a press more known for their poetry), and transports us to early 1970s Massachusetts, where a predominantly black neighborhood is about to fall victim to the twin forces of gentrification and institutional racism, with a strong dose of corruption on the side.

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For information about the author, CLICK HERE.

Picture Alaska—her braided rivers and Arctic tundra, her tidal shorelines and thrashing salmon. Imagine flying over the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta with an inexperienced pilot, charging into an ever-changing rodeo of sky, clouds so thick it’s like flying through milk. Imagine Yup’ik elders whose humble behavior and reverence for their homeland teaches you more about living with intention than formal education ever could. Imagine learning that to practice deep listening is to practice silence. Imagine spending 21 days on a 42-foot trawler boating the Inside Passage.

Monica Devine’s new collection, Water Mask, captures these experiences alongside stories of New Mexico deserts, Wyoming horses, and family, making accessible through lyrical essays this remarkable American landscape.

In Water Mask, Monica Devine maps out a life in Alaska that explores issues of the human heart: fear, spiritual longing, memory, perception, loss and wonder. She skis woodland trails with her baby on her back, navigates sea ice with Beaufort Sea whalers, negotiates the deaths of her parents and endures the near loss of her cabin on the shape-shifting Copper River. In these captivating stories, Monica reflects on family, the importance of place, her work in Alaska Native villages, and more…all told against the background of a cold northern landscape that both rejects and beguiles.

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From Berkeley to Bolivia, from New York to New Mexico, our social-change movements have textured the 1950s through the present. The history makers presented in this “generational memoir” transformed the political/spiritual landscape of the U.S. and beyond, laying the foundation for contemporary thinking about equality and democracy.

Through 43 biographical sketches and memories of her personal friendships with each of them, the author creates a collective portrait of some of the rebels, artists, radicals, and thinkers who raised many of the issues of justice, ecology, feminism, and imperialism we are now familiar with.

Chellis Glendinning has written a memoir evoking the lives of women and men she has known. From Susan Griffin to Daniel and Patricia Ellsberg, Suzan Harjo to John Ross, they are some the most creative and courageous geniuses of a generation…. In the Company of Rebels is one of the most profoundly moving books I’ve read in years.

Psychologist/writer Chellis Glendinning has penned eight nonfiction books exploring psychological interfaces with social issues, as well as hundreds of essays in newspapers and magazines, a poetry book, and a bilingual opera. Off the Map and Chiva both won the National Federation of Press Women Book Award in nonfiction. She lives now in Bolivia where she wrote her first novel, Objetos, and is working on a second about three women in the Chaco War (1932-35).

To order, CLICK HERE. (Orders received before the end of December receive 30% off with a HOLIDAY30 code.)

Through the Lens of Love: Facing Terminal Illness is an open-hearted, inspiring story of the two years Robin’s husband, Dr. Richard (Dick) Gross, was dying from glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive form of brain cancer. If you or your loved one has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, this book will guide you through the days and months to come. Robin will be your voice of reason, your shoulder to cry on, and your light at the end of the tunnel.

When Dick and his wife Robin receive news that he has GBM, the life they built together over forty years abruptly changed in one day. With the help of family, friends, and acquaintances, his last two years became an unexpected, extraordinary part of Dick’s life. Through the Lens of Love: Facing Terminal Illness is foremost a love story that brings you on an amazing journey which begins on a photography trip to Monet’s Garden in France and ends with an emotional reunion in Callaway Gardens, Georgia. 

Anyone who has been touched by glioblastoma will hear their own voice echoed somewhere in Robin’s book. With gentle yet exquisite and sometimes humorous style, she invites readers to explore her family, faith, & friendship. 

Why do we write books? In the hopes our story, experiences, lessons learned might help others. Kudos to Robin Gross for honoring her husband, family and community for their loving support through her dark night of the soul. You will be inspired and uplifted by the humanity demonstrated in this book – and will be motivated to reach out to those around you to re-establish what matters most in good times and bad – kindness, compassion and connection. Read it and reap.                             

 To order, CLICK HERE.

The Full Moon Herald By Phyllis Klein is a book of poetry in newspaper format filled with real news stories, and personal news stories. It travels the ground of trauma, grief, empathy, and hope.

From Minder-Binder Review of Books:
This exceptional first book of poems should be required reading for anyone who 1) appreciates poetry as a meaningful way to explore who we are in this beautiful and troubling world; 2) is willing to open themselves to the honesty and intimacy of our shared and connected lives; and/or 3) wishes to mine the deeper nature of the news without the noise and nonsense of talking heads. 


”Phyllis Klein’s remarkable poems make hidden wounds visible as she digs into the Breaking News. Entering this world, you breathe in the fresh air of honesty. You fume, you weep with her along the treacherous paths she travels, to finally understand we are ‘relatives in the fields of trees, beauty and devastation we call home.’ Such good news.”

“Phyllis Klein is a poet of great courage. She brings what Ezra Pound called poetry: ’the news that stays news.’ Her determination to see and name what we are afraid to face powers the headlines of this startling debut collection.”

Available for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Full-Moon-Herald-Phyllis-Klein/dp/1733556826/

To order, click here.

When Ida and her daughter Bessie flee a catastrophic pogrom in Ukraine for America in 1905, they believe their emigration will ensure that their children and grandchildren will be safe from harm. But choices and decisions made by one generation have ripple effects on those who come later—and in the decades that follow, family secrets, betrayals, and mistakes made in the name of love threaten the survival of the family: Bessie and Abe Weissman’s children struggle with the shattering effects of daughter Ruby’s mental illness, of Jenny’s love affair with her brother-in-law, of the disappearance of Ruby’s daughter as she flees her mother’s legacy, and of the accidental deaths of Irene’s husband and granddaughter. 

A sweeping saga that follows four generations from the tenements of Brooklyn through WWII, from Woodstock to India, and from Spain to Israel, How to Make a Life is the story of a family who must learn to accept each other’s differences—or risk cutting ties with the very people who anchor their place in the world.

2020 Best Book Awards Finalist in Fiction: Women’s Fiction

A moving novel of four generations of an immigrant family whose characters are so real I cannot forget them.


An engaging and heartfelt portrayal of intergenerational trauma and hope.


A wonderful gift for the holidays and great for book club discussions.  Author will Zoom at no cost with book club meetings. 

For ordering information, CLICK HERE.
 

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Emergingvoices.co.uk is a quarterly online webzine. Based in London, the webzine presents voices from around the globe reflecting the personal and the political through paintings, poetry, essays, photography and video.

Going into its third year, Emerging Voices features have included:

Paintings linking visual art and politics
Poetry and sculptural art
Photography about politics and religion
Artists addressing climate change
Readings on mothers and daughters
Essays from Armenia, Zimbabwe and South Africa
… and much more.

Rose Levinson, Ph.D., formerly of Berkeley, is Founder and Managing Editor of Emerging Voices. Her writings appear each quarter.

Join our free subscriber list to be updated on quarterly postings.

We welcome your responses, comments and short submissions to our Subscriber Salon.

A SUSPENSEFUL, INTELLIGENT ROMANCE

A feisty single mom clashes with an ex-military, macho corporate star in the wild Colorado mountains. Only one can win a huge prize, but when a massive flood imperils love and survival, they learn the meaning of true partnership.

Years ago, Ramona Soto faced harsh reality after a roving con man knocked her up. Now she’s concentrating on her career in a major telecommunications firm and funding college for her teenaged son. Enter Desmond Emmett—a fast talker and smooth operator. New to the office, the ex-serviceman is a guy Raye should avoid.

Thrown together at a corporate retreat in the wilderness, the reluctant duo struggle to complete extreme mental and physical tests for a huge reward. But only one can win, and Des needs to underwrite medical treatments for his adored sister.

See-sawing between attraction and antagonism, the mismatched couple face their biggest challenge, as a massive flash flood sweeps down the rocky canyon to threaten their love and survival. Can they put aside their difference to rescue their colleagues—and their future as a couple?

This is a new type of women’s fiction. Unafraid to debate contemporary concerns, it pulls no punches with a fresh look at age-old issues. This is your kind of writing if you think people are smarter than every phone, you’ll take a human over the most advanced app, and you can laugh at yourself as well as others.

Purchase at Amazon, other online sellers, and Totally Bound
https://www.totallybound.com/book/never-retreat-print

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.

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An ode to the Egyptian Land, to its inhabitants—humans or spirits—and most of all to its mothers, magicians and nurses.

A captivating tale that moves from street to street . . . from era to era . . . a world where Jews and Arabs lived together…

Set in Cairo’s old Jewish Quarter in the first half of the twentieth century, A Land Like You follows the lives of Jewish Zohar and Muslim Masreya, “milk-twins” bound by an earth-shaking love. Part fantastical fable, part realistic history, the novel draws on ethno-psychiatrist Tobie Nathan’s Jewish Egyptian heritage and deep knowledge of North African folk beliefs to create a bewitching tapestry where spirit possession and religious mysticism exist side by side with sober facts about the British occupation of Egypt and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Free Officers’ Movement.

From the dingy hovels of the city’s poorest residents to the glittering palaces of the wealthy international aristocracy, A Land Like You exists in visual and auditory splendor.

Tobie Nathan is professor emeritus of psychology at Université-Paris VIII and the author of a dozen novels and numerous psychoanalytic studies.

Joyce Zonana, writer and literary translator, is a regular contributor to the blog, Feminism and Religion, and the author of a memoir, Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile’s Journey.

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To order, click here.

To order visit: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Old-Ladies-Celebrating-Certain/dp/1631527975/

To order, CLICK HERE.

One autumn night the Hindu god Shiva slips into the bedroom of 32-year old Anjali Mehta, and triggers an erotic and dangerous dissembling of her marriage and her life. Set in New York City, My Blue Skin Lover is one woman’s headlong journey into personal transformation.

“This small, lovely book is unpredictable to the very end, centered around a topic rarely seen in contemporary literature—the disruption that a true spiritual awakening can cause in an everyday life. Monona Wali’s depiction of American East Indians is a special pleasure, and this fine debut novel’s treatment of the stresses of academic life and upwardly mobile marriage is spot on.”
 — Janet Fitch, bestselling author of White Oleander and Paint It Black

“A dangerous and wise book that I love.” — Jim Krusoe, author of The Sleep Garden and Parsifal

”

A universal collective story of desire.” — Andrew Tonkovich, host of KPFK’s Bibliocracy

Available from Independent booksellers and Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Skin-Lover-Monona-Wali/dp/0983119171/

More about Monona Wali: www.mononawali.com