Bøger udgivet af Santa Fe Writer's Project

The stories in Muscle Cars explore the unique and sometimes flawed relationships between men, their families, and their friends. Featuring a diverse cast of inarticulate misfitsincluding a compulsive body builder obsessed by the death of his brother, a former boxer forced to sell his prized 1946 New York Yankeesautographed baseball, and two boyhood friends who plan to steal Ted Williams' scientifically frozen headthis stand-out debut from Pushcart-nominated Eoannou is a powerful journey through the humor, darkness, and neuroses of the modern American everyman.

Back in print for the first time in a decade, this is the hilarious autobiography of a pioneer of the 1990s zine movement. A young woman named Pagan, having just graduated from a writing program at a very prestigious university, is left with a single burning question: Now what? She then takes an unusual step by deciding to invent her new self--the one the public will know--by starting her own magazine, one that will be written, created, and star none other than herself.

The very best short stories and novellas from National Public Radio's Alan Cheuse are brought together in a quintessential collection. Countless listeners depend on the book reviews from Cheuse, America's "e;voice of books,"e; and many of those listeners also follow his own critically acclaimed fiction and nonfiction. The title story--a flash fiction piece that acts as both prologue and an intriguing look at a writer's inspiration--takes us through a child's eyes into a fantastic land, one that informs, shapes, and travels along with the other stories in this stunning collection. These stories deal with life, death, love, family, work, and a deep exploration of the soul.

A unique look at the Jehovah Witnesses in the rural western United States and the logging industry in Northern California during the 1970s, By Way of Water addresses the devastating effects of poverty on rural families. Struggling to feed their children in an unforgiving California forest when there are no logging jobs to be found, Jake and Dale Colby make personal vows that only make matters worse. Jake will not accept help from the government or his neighbors, and Dale won't allow him to hunt, believing her faith will sustain them. But one other member of the family makes a promise to herself. Seven-year-old Justy believes that she alone can hold the family together, even when her father's violence resurfaces. With a clear insight and the deepest empathy, Justy isolates the stark realities around her, even as she dreams with her mother of a safe world that only God can promise.

The 14 stories in this collection display the often quiet, inconspicuous way in which terrible truths and experiences are intimated: the death of a sailboarder makes a widower see deeper into love and loss; a young poet visits his former teacher only to discover he is literally not the person he used to be; a middle-aged man glimpses the terrible humdrum of his third marriage as his son embarks on a new chapter in his life. Conveyed without grandeur or pathos, the revelations in these minimalist stories demonstrate clearly and effectively Fruelund's gift of subtlety and nuance; like scenes from life, characters' dramas are played out in brief but brilliant flashes. Ranging across the wide arc of human experience, from the comic to the tragic, each piece explores the complex emotions of the human heart.

A largely untold story of an extraordinary historical figure, this biography sheds light on the life of William Sheppard, a 19th-century African American who, for more than 20 years, defied segregation and operated a missionary run by black Americans in the Belgian Congo. This work shows how Sheppard returned to the United States periodically, and traveled the country telling tales of his adventures to packed auditoriums. An anthropologist, photographer, big-game hunter, and art collector, the man billed as the "e;Black Livingstone"e; helped expose the atrocities that occurred under the reign of King Leopold, and this stirring work tells how he eventually helped to break Belgium's hold on the Congo.

The lives of the working class in West Virginia--a train engineer, an epileptic, coal miners and outlaws, the fragile and dispossessed--are explored in this powerful yet tender collection of six short stories and a novella. They depict an isolated world of hardship, human endurance, and hard-won dignity and are a lyrical rendering of times and places now largely gone--but the stirring clarity of people and landscape can persist in the reader's imagination.

Spanning four seasons, 10 countries, and three teaching jobs, this memoir chronicles McCahill's solo journey from Guatemala to Argentina. In her struggles with language, romance, culture, service, and homesickness, she personifies a growing culture of women for whom travel is not a path to love but a route to meaningful work, rare inspiration, and profound self-discovery.

Old ways have been broken in the blood and smoke of the Battle of Thornhurst by Allystaire Stillbright and followers of the Goddess. Now the Paladin must recover from his ordeal, carve out a hopeful future for the shattered Baronies, and prepare for the next attack upon the Goddess's new and fragile following. But the corrupt deity, Braech, the Sea-Dragon, will not easily let go of the power that has long been his. Braech's minions, led by the calculating Archpriest Symod, march on the now-weakened Baronies. The final battle, a crusade against the Mother and all of her followers, is near, and Allystaire, the Arm of the Mother, is left to rally the survivors--including some of his oldest enemies--to face a foe that will not rest until all the Mother's faithful are broken and each Barony submits to the Sea Dragon once more.

The best-selling indie hit returns! This revised, expanded edition of Modern Manners for Your Inner Demons brings the darker side of social behavior back to the shelves. Tara Laskowski's demonically clever stories break the rules of a "decent" society, providing a definitive guide on the etiquette of obesity, dementia, infertility, homicide, arson, and more. Blending humor with a sharp social commentary, Laskowski introduces us to cynical yet sympathetic characters as each story unfolds. Snarky but optimistic, these characters are the folks you want sitting next to you at your next dinner party...or in your prison cell.

Finely-honed portraits of hope and change, these two novellas are linked so skillfully that they achieve the intensity of a single novel in which some characters succeed and others fail on separate but equally compelling quests. In "The Fires," Gina Morgan makes a pilgrimage to Uzbekistan to carry out her husband's final wish--to be cremated--only to find herself entirely at sea in the strange new reality of the former Soviet republic, while in "The Exorcism," Tom Swanson begins to make sense of his life when he retrieves his angry daughter from her exclusive New England college after her expulsion for setting fire to a grand piano.