Bøger udgivet af REGAL HOUSE PUB

Poems, like politics, can be local and global, personal and cultural. In Daniel Bourne's Talking Back to the Exterminator, we see this interplay at work in these ruminations on place-- our connections and disconnections to it-- from Bourne's upbringing in southern Illinois to his later homes in Ohio, Poland, or the American Southwest. This connection certainly involves a sense of celebration, but also of anxiety and tension in realizing the fragility and impermanence of both self and surroundings. Yet, despite the opportunity as well as the challenge of memory-- the way it is continually erased yet also continues to scribble in the brain-- these poems also bear witness to how we push back against all the " exterminations" in our lives.

"Before the Silk Road had a name, nomads roamed the Asian steppes and women fought side by side as equals with men. Like all women of the Sauromatae, Akmaral is bound for battle from birth, training as a girl in horsemanship, archery, spear, and blade. Her prowess ignites the jealousy of Erzhan, a gifted warrior who hates her as much as he desires her. When Scythian renegades attack, the two must unite to defeat them. Among their captives is Timor, the rebels' enigmatic leader who refuses to be broken, even as he is enslaved. He fascinates Akmaral. But as attraction grows to passion, she is blinded to the dangerous alliance forming between the men who bristle against the clan' s matriarchal rule. Faced with brutal betrayal, Akmaral must find the strength to defend her people and fulfill her destiny. Drawn from legends of Amazon women warriors from ancient Greece and recent archaeological discoveries in Central Asia, AKMARAL is a sweeping tale about a powerful woman who must make peace with making war."--

Ophelia, a professor of Dante, is stricken when she discovers that her husband Andy has been cheating on her with a winsome colleague. What follows is Ophelia's figurative descent into hell as she obsessively tracks her subjects, performs surveillance in her beat-up Volvo, and moves into the property next door to Amber' s, which has gone into foreclosure. She spies on the lovers, growing more and more estranged from reality. Andy's betrayal reawakens the earlier trauma of abandonment by her mother at the age of eight. When Andy and Amber become engaged, Ophelia snaps. The story is a jailhouse confessional, a dark comedy, an oeuvre of women's rage, a suspenseful revenge fantasy, and a moving portrait of one woman's psychological breakdown.

Janelle Wolf longs to be the woman she once was-- an adored wife, a loving mother, a career woman, a force in her community-- before a mysterious car accident stole her memories, ruined her reputation, and upended her life. These days, her troubled family needs that capable woman from the past, the one she calls " Janelle Before." Enter Lana, an alluring and magnetic psychic healer who meets secretly with Janelle. Lana coaxes Janelle to remember the circumstances of her accident in order to recover Janelle's " best self." Instead, Janelle uncovers the ugly truth behind that night. The revelations unravel Janelle's marriage, disrupt her family, and turn her small southern town upside down. Written with wry humor, this diabolically entertaining tale of deception, temptation, and love is filled with dark twists, exploring what happens when the transgressions of the past come back with a vengeance.

In 1926, during Prohibition, Vital Bow is abducted at gunpoint during dinner at the family cottage in Rye Beach, Ohio. His intrepid fourteen-year-old daughter, Norah Bow, discovers her father's involvement in a rum-running gang operating on Lake Erie and determines to sail north to rescue him. En route, Norah rescues Ruby Francoeur, an enigmatic woman of easy virtue who conceals secrets of her own. With Ruby as crew, Norah enters an island-and-city world of eccentric and monstrous characters who test her resolve, strength, and knowledge as both a young woman and a skipper. NORAH BOW is a coming-of-age story told by an elder Norah, a tale filled with characters steeped in betrayal, remorse, and a fierce desire for more lives. Norah Bow is a story about family secrets, self-reliance, and the complicated nature of memory itself.

" If you found us, you're likely lost, we like to tease strangers." When Birdie Barker Price finds an old ballot box on her front porch, she opens a Pandora's Box full of clues to Coweetsee County's corrupt elections, hidden crimes, and guilty passions. She enlists the help of her ex-husband, Roy Barker, currently campaigning for sheriff. Suspicions soon fall on Charlie Clyde Harmon, a felon who served time for a fatal arson at a Black church. He still insists he was framed by the disgraced former sheriff, but no one believes him. Filled with false charges, child brides, and murder ballads about the heartache of wronged women and the revenge they seek, Kings of Coweetsee introduces us to a people and place with a vanishing culture and an uncertain future.

As a catastrophic drought plagues the United States, Vicki Truax, a lonely Baltimorean, inherits land outside a remote Appalachian town. Amid the quirky townsfolk, she finds herself at home for the first time in her life. Vicki meets and befriends Alaric, an eccentric local who supplies townsfolk and moonshiners alike from his own meager water source. But danger lurks; a merciless businessman with a lucrative well attempts to seize her land, and water thieves roam her land at night, attempting to tap an aquifer. When Vicki discovers a small spring on her land, fears of a water war force her to keep the knowledge to herself. But Alaric's source runs dry, and a poorly planned raid ends in the collapse of Steen's well. Now Vicki's land is the only source of water, and she's left to decide who gets water and who dies.

Oliver Curtin grows up in a nocturnal world with a mother who is a sex worker and drug addict, and whose love is real yet increasingly unreliable. His narration alternates between that troubled childhood and the present of the novel, where he is serving the last months of a thirty-years-to-life sentence in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, for a crime he committed at age seventeen. His redemption is closely allied with his memories, seen with growing clarity and courage. If he can remember, then life in the larger world is possible for him.

In 2007, Beck Randall moves with his wife and teenage daughters into a long-abandoned cabin deep in the woods, built a century before by his grandparents. Once there, daughters Tina and Lucy discover that their predecessors have left an imprint of suffering and violence the girls refer to as " The Whistler," an eerie presence infused in the nature that surrounds them. As the 1907 and 2007 storylines braid together, characters and events intrude upon each other, blurring the boundaries between eras and illustrating that people and lives are not forgotten; instead, they are woven into the fabric of the land itself. With gritty, lyrical storytelling, Let Gravity Seize the Dead is an intergenerational literary horror story featuring a blend of suspense, beauty, and terror.

"With the Spanish flu pandemic on the rise, a former gold rush town-- once the largest city in the Pacific Northwest-- is threatened with extinction via eminent domain should their population fall below 125 citizens. To save their homes, former madam Maude Dollarhyde, her mixed-race grand-daughter, Bountiful, and their fellow council members agree to sell four abandoned mansions for a penny apiece if the buyers will stay in town long enough to be counted in the 1920 census. Soon, an eclectic cast of newcomers arrives, including a New York actor and his questionably-familial family; a lawyer with an agoraphobic wife, mute son, and austere nanny; six excommunicated Mormons; and the great-nephew of the town's hated former boss. As real estate developer and politician Gerald Dredd plots to foil the council's plan, the new families move in and knock over the first domino in a row that includes three romances, twelve sticks of dynamite, an unintentionally hilarious community theater production, an investigation by a Chicago insurance detective, and last of all, murder!"--

"The novel is a quiet but strong tour de force." Marly Swick, author of Evening News: A Novel1992. Tyler Manning-- high school teacher, part-time farmer, bachelor of 38--is planning his first day of summer vacation when a strange car approaches his Kansas farmhouse. By the time the battered Ford departs, Tyler is holding a three-week-old infant. The baby's father is his estranged brother. Woven throughout the narrative of May Manning's upbringing--assisted by long-time neighbors and school colleagues--is the parallel story of Tyler and his younger brother, the charming but deceitful Mickey Manning. The possibility of Mickey's return haunts Tyler throughout May's childhood. When Mickey does reappear, he brings unexpected danger into their lives. The Manning Girl reimagines George Eliot's 1860 fable, Silas Marner, and places it in a contemporary Midwestern frame, following the girl and her uncle/father from May's unexpected arrival to her 21st year. The Manning Girl explores, with tenderness and humor, the unique situation of a single father, supported by a surprising community.

"As neighborhoods have grown up around the subterranean home of the narrator of Man, Underground, the city has initiated a review of his dwelling. Intent on ignoring the review process, his life is interrupted by a seventeen-year-old punk-inspired, Honor's student. Every bit as eccentric as the narrator, Monika declares that she will be his accomplice in a battle against the city, fighting the righteous fight against "the Man" and the ostracization commonly weaponized against those seen as "the other." As Monika creates "diversionary tactics" to focus the neighbors on other community concerns, the man she once only knew as "Mr. Underground Man" reluctantly begins to join in her idyllic and irrational protest movement that ultimately settles on a "yard art relocation" project. As an unlikely friendship begins to form, the two must come to face their tragic pasts and determine if they are capable of learning to trust others again. A fast-paced dark comedy, Man, Undergroun d will leave readers contemplating both the disruptions and the potential transformative power found in random acts of kindness."--Goodreads.

"... Take the leap: fall in love with Jazz, with Serena, with Fletch, with Rocky - maybe even with a ball python or a dusky pygmy rattler." Laura McBride, author of We Are Called to Rise and In the Midnight RoomThe theft of Trina Leigh Dean's beloved snakes - including a rare Eastern indigo named Unicorn, Banana Splits the yellow ball python, and Bandit the banded king snake - coincides with the disappearance of a troubled young man named Gethin Jacobs. While his sister Serena searches for him, she gains an unlikely accomplice - Jazz, a homeless community college student. Meanwhile, Trina's friend Fletch, a burnt-out cop, scours St. Augustine, Florida, for the stolen snakes. His quest puts Fletch on a dangerous collision course with Gethin, raising questions about community, family, and the power of compassion.

Jazz-age Paris was the center of the artistic and literary world, and the center of the center was Gertrude Stein's salon, where the famous and aspiring creative talents gathered to gawk at Stein's Picassos and vie for status. Young Midwesterner Ida Caine arrives in Paris with her husband Teddy, a would-be Hemingway who thinks he can adventure first and write later. When Teddy falls in with the Stein set, he brings Ida to the salon, where she is shunted into a corner with the wives of famous men. She burns with resentment and wonders if she can ever develop into a real artist herself. A few days later, Gertrude Stein's partner Alice B. Toklas vanishes. Stein calls upon Teddy to investigate. Soon after, he vanishes. Forced to seek out her missing husband, Ida follows his trail through a milieu including strange Surrealist rituals, Tarot card readings, and the catacombs beneath the city. She falls in with a young American poet, T.S. Eliot. An unlikely passion grows while they seek answers to the shocking disappearances.

"Ott's prose crackles and sizzles. There's never a dull moment, right to the riveting end. It's the kind of novel Hemingway might have written had he been alive today." Erik Martiny, author of Night of the Long Goodbyes West is a man looking to flee the past, barely old enough to drink and looking to rediscover himself after several tours in Afghanistan as a POW prison guard. After going AWOL, West looks to reunite with Solomon, his childhood best friend, who exists in the dark underworld of a Los Angeles gentleman's club, Club Paradise. West soon finds himself caught in the web of an Iranian family and its patriarch, Big Z Pourali, a former wrestler with a dark side and side businesses that put his dancers, employees, and family in peril. West stays in LA to look after Solomon but soon falls for the club owner's daughter Nikki. West must come to terms with the raw underside of a Los Angeles crime family and his own past, all the while hoping to maintain his sanity in the process.

"An engaging novel and a beautiful coming-of-age story." Rebecca Makkai, author of Pulitzer-finalist The Great Believers The year is 1963 in small-town Virginia. Willa McCoy is a strong-minded teenager who longs to follow in the footsteps of her father, an important member of the KKK. Willa believes the Klan is daring and brave--like the father she idolizes. She wants only to rise in his esteem; he wants only to keep everyone in their place. When Willa is sent to babysit for the new minister's wife, Ruth Swanson, she finds herself at Ruth's kitchen table with Langston Jones, a smart young Black man. At first they despise each other, but they have one thing in common: they both love Ruth. When Langston reveals a secret he's discovered--that Willa's father is having an affair--the once-loyal daughter plots to destroy her father's reputation, unwittingly setting into motion a series of events that leads to her family's demise.

Told in alternating points of view, The Proprietor's Song follows Innkeeper Stanley Uribe, tucked high up in California's Sierras, as he tries to unravel the mysterious death of his sister Lorna, and Grace and Elwood Fisher, a comfortable, middle-aged couple from the Bay Area, who return every year to Death Valley where their son Jared disappeared over spring break. At its core, The Proprietor's Song is a novel about devastating grief and renewed hope, all set among some of California's most remote and haunting landscapes.

"The Sound of Rabbits tells the story of Ruby, a bright woman with a love of music who thought that leaving the small town where she grew up would ensure her happiness. But her life in Chicago is not going the way she'd planned. At 41, she's drifted away from music, and a long-term relationship with a boyfriend has ended badly. Everything changes with one phone call from her sister, Val, who cares for their mother, Barbara, in the hardscrabble Midwestern town where Ruby grew up. Ruby returns to confront some harsh truths about her family and herself as she tries to find meaning in her mother's battle with Parkinson's disease. Written as an homage to the classic archetype of the Hero's Journey, The Sound of Rabbits relies on different points of view to explore themes of change and death, and considers the role that the past--and acceptance of that past--can play in one's current and future happiness."--

"It's 1952 in the small western Kentucky town of Paducah and Mrs. Minerva Place would prefer everyone mind his own business, follow the rules, and if dead, stay dead. Nosy neighbors and irritating church members are bad enough but when residents of the local cemetery start showing up, the quirky widow wonders if she's going crazy. Just as distressing, a new boy in the neighborhood seems intent on disrupting her life. Minerva, aggravated by the precocious six-year-old, holds him and his father at arm's length. Nevertheless, with charming perseverance they find a way into her closed-off life and an unlikely friendship begins. But just when Minerva starts to let her guard down, a tragic accident shatters her emerging reconnection with life. Now more than her sanity is at stake. With the help of the living and the dead, Minerva discovers the power of forgiveness and why it's worth it to let others into your life, even when it hurts."--Provided by publisher.

This is a bravura performance." --Robin Lippincott, author of Blue Territory: A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan MitchellThe War Ends at Four explores the quest of a perpetual outsider looking for a true home while coming to terms with the Italy she left behind and the America she found. Renata, an Italian acupuncturist in Minneapolis, falls madly in love with a charismatic actor. Once married, she discovers his passion is not focused on her alone. With her marriage and her small acupuncture clinic in crisis, she is called to her father's deathbed in Milan. There Renata again faces the slights she suffered in childhood as the daughter of an immigrant from Naples. Gripped by grief and anxiety over her future, she discovers that her father, a survivor of WWII, believed until the end in risk-taking as a life-affirming necessity. With newfound courage, Renata stumbles into the lure of an old love and the magic of a new one.

"...grab yourself a drink, a stiff one, make it a double, settle into your easy chair, open The Boys, and begin. You're home for the evening. And I promise you this, Lucas and Lowell will haunt your dreams." --John Dufresne, author of I Don't Like Where This Is GoingDarling Jean Bramlett has been accepted into the college of her dreams. In the first thrilling days of her freshman year, she works hard in her classes and dreams of becoming a famous poet and a scholar. Then she meets two upperclassmen, Lucas and Lowell. Brilliant, handsome, confident, they seem to be everything she wants to be. They pull her into their orbit, and with them she embarks on a series of increasingly bizarre and violent adventures, ultimately resulting in murder.

"In the rural South, a retired colonel in an upscale retirement community grieves the sudden death of his wife on the tennis court. On the other side of the highway, an elderly Black woman grieves the murder of her niece by a white man. Between them lies an abandoned field where three centuries of crimes are hidden, and only she knows the explosive secrets buried there. When the colonel runs into her car, causing a surprising amount of damage, it sparks a feud that sets loose the spirits in the Field, both benevolent and vengeful."--Publisher marketing.

In this poetry collection, Sunu P. Chandy includes stories about her experiences as a woman, civil rights attorney, parent, partner, daughter of South Asian immigrants, and member of the LGBTQ community. These poems cover themes ranging from immigration, social justice activism, friendship loss, fertility challenges, adoption, caregiving, and life during a pandemic. Sunu's poems provide some resolve, some peace, some community, amidst the competing notions of how we are expected to be in the world, especially when facing a range of barriers. Sunu's poems provide company for many who may be experiencing isolation through any one of these experiences and remind us that we are not, in fact, going it alone. Whether the experience is being disregarded as a woman of color attorney, being rejected for being queer, losing a most treasured friendship, doubting one's romantic partner or any other form of heartbreak, Sunu's poems highlight the human requirement of continually starting anew. These poems remind us that we can, and we will, rebuild.

"What exquisite stories these are, each of them immaculately composed, each of them powerfully transporting... This book deserves prizes." --Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They CarriedEach of the ten stories in Have Mercy on Us is an illuminating window into a human life. In the way of all the best fiction, these stories enlarge our understanding of what it means to be alive and to love, with characters who leap off the page. In this award-winning collection, the people are varied in age, race, and origin. An old man travels to a village in Kenya in an attempt to bring his estranged son home; against her mother's wishes, a young woman attends the funeral of the father she never met, hoping to forge a relationship with her eight siblings; a woman long married to a renowned artist whose infidelity is nearly blatant, takes things into her own hands in a brilliantly realized moment of independence; in an imagined, loving portrait, the writer Zora Neale Hurston is shown near the end of her life in 1948, working as a maid in a motel in Ft. Pierce, Florida. These stories are spare and romantic without being sentimental.

"Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T. Cullowee, the Kudzu King, arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina in 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu--claiming that it will improve the soil, feed cattle at almost no cost, even cure headaches--Mattie is ready. Mr ee is determined to sell the entire county on the future of kudzu, and organizes a kudzu festival, complete with a beauty pageant. Mattie is determined to be crowned Kudzu Queen and caputre the attentions of the Kudzu King. As she learns more about Cullowee, however, she discovers that he, like the kudzu he promotes, has a dark and predatory side. When she finds that she is not the only one threatened, she devises a plan to bring him down."--Provided by publisher.

After failing at a prestigious music Académie, nineteen-year-old Marie-Thérèse is finally meeting with success at a Brussels nursing school. But in August 1914, just as her third and final year begins, German armies invade Belgium, swiftly overcome the Allies, and press on toward France, leaving behind an occupying force. This upends everything in Brussels and in Marie-Thérèse's world. There are reports of ongoing brutalities which fuel burgeoning resentment on the part of the citizenry. Although the occupiers must be treated with respect, nothing prevents citizens from venting their anger on fellow citizens of German descent, including Marie-Thérèse's family. At the clinic and nursing school, a newly installed director orders students and staff to spy on one another. In this perilous environment, the matron of the school--a character based on the historical Edith Cavell--makes a fateful decision. Soon, so does Marie-Thérèse. Both have far-reaching consequences. In the Fall They Leave is a wartime story of moral courage, resilience, and endurance.

"Sixteen-year-old Lava lives peacefully enough with her imperfect mother, Lila, and their boarder, Cody, an Iraqi war vet suffering from PTSD. Lava's ex-addict father, Jesse, is released from prison, and Lava's life in Detroit is upended when Jesse pressures Lava for her urine so he can pass his mandatory drug tests. After an altercation, Lava is sent to live with her mother's cousin Lola in Seville. Lola is a larger-than-life flamenco dancer who teaches Lava the language of flamenco dance; Lava's life opens outward as she becomes fluent in flamenco's structure, giving her new modes of expression as she experiences first love, friendship, and betrayal, and uncovers family secrets. Rich with lyrical, sensual prose, Duende is a coming-of-age novella about mothers and daughters, about legacy, about self-expression, about defining a way to live."--Provided by publisher.