Contemporary Fiction

New for Spring 2023: Coyote Weather by Amanda Cockrell

“Amanda Cockrell is a master magician.”—George Garrett, author of Death of the Fox, The Succession, Entered from the Sun

“Coyote Weather is a spectacular re-creation of a lost but essential time in our history—California, the ‘60s, Viet Nam—nobody has ever captured it more accurately or written it with more understanding—from several different perspectives. A must read. Bravo!” – Lee Smith, author of Guests on Earth

Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season in California, when everything is drought-stricken and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967 and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcing its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war. Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he believes that, in the shadow of Vietnam, the Cold War and atomic bomb drills, there won’t be one. Ellen’s determined to have a plan, because nothing else can keep the world from tilting. And the Ghost just wants to go home to a place that won’t let him in: the small California town where they all grew up.

Amanda Cockrell directed the MFA program in children’s and adolescent literature at Hollins University. Her novels include The Wall at the Edge of the World (2020) and The Border Wolves (Spring 2021), as well as the young adult What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay; Pomegranate Seed; and The Deer Dancers and The Horse Catchers. Webpage and blog: http://www.amandacockrell.com.

Official pub date April 4. Trade paperback $19.95 US. Ebook $8.99 US. Available now from all major sales venues!

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AMERICAN BOURBON by Jennifer Jenkins

“Jennifer Jenkins’s AMERICAN BOURBON is a compelling and potent family saga filled with evocative characters as strong and flinty as the Appalachia hills from whence they come, set against a smooth plot that goes down with an easy, supple, clean finish.” –Tony Ray Morris, author of DEEP RIVER BLUES When an illegal moonshine still explodes deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the McKinsey family’s world-famous (and legal) whiskey, Bourbon Sweet Tea, is threatened. Government agents swarm the area, eager to implicate Sweet Tea founder Caleb McKinsey, who was a notorious bootlegger before going legit. Finding out he is dying, McKinsey’s ready to hand on his legacy. But none of his children are on speaking terms. His daughter Brigit is determined to remake the company against her father’s will, while his sons want nothing to do with their abusive father. When Caleb dangles a lucrative inheritance if all his children return, Brigit and her older brother Mack grudgingly call a truce to find missing brother Kieran. They journey to New York City, where Kieran fled after his girlfriend disappeared. As crimes from Caleb’s past promise to destroy Bourbon Sweet Tea, the only way to save their company is for Brigit to convince her brothers to embrace the family legends, and live as outlaws once again. Trade Paper Edition, $17.95 US. Ebook edition, $5.99 US. Order here: Barnes & Noble Amazon Kobo/Walmart Indiebound Target

DEEP RIVER BLUES by Tony Ray Morris

“With the perception of a poet and the knack of a novelist, Tony Ray Morris joins the ranks of some of the finest crime fiction writers. In turn, part James Lee Burke, Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner, Deep River Blues will pull you under and have you gasping for breath.” — Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries, basis for the Netflix drama Longmire When the body of a young girl washes up on the shores of the French Broad River, Cord McRae, newly elected sheriff of Acre County, Tennessee, suspects her death might be connected to the Glad Earth Farm, a commune just outside the small town of Falston. Guru/leader Levon Gladson and a group of a hundred and twenty-five followers have moved into an old farm that butts up to the Smokies, and Cord suspects they may be growing something more profitable than sorghum cane up in the hills. The mystery’s complicated by Cord’s investigation into a second recent murder, of an Afghan vet; the growing power of a local “hillbilly” mafia operated by the wily Thorn Reevers; and Cord’s own marriage, which is teetering on the edge of divorce over past violence and his on-again, off-again love affair with liquor. With echoes of WINTER’S BONE and the novels of James Lee Burke, DEEP RIVER BLUES will be a worthwhile addition to the regional crime thriller genre. Available in bookstores and online.

Hardcover Edition, $27.95 US:

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Ebook edition, $7.99 US:

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Autobiography of the Lower East Side

by Rashidah Ismaili

“This well established poet makes a brilliant debut in fiction with these complex, poetically detailed, interrelated stories of Blacks from Africa, the Caribbean and the USA who converge and form an artistic community in the early 1960s in the most easterly regions of Alphabet City .” — David Henderson, author of ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky

Inhale the exotic spices from tenement hallways, smell the sweat and garbage in the streets, feel the swelter of summer in the City. Taste the African dishes: rice and pepper sauce, stewed fruits, tagine, okra soup, bread and fish. Walk the alphabet streets in the daytime, weaving among pushcarts, or at night in the biting winds of winter, footsteps too close at your back. Sway to the cool jazz. Groove to the lilt of African voices reciting poetry, intoning prayers. Follow a junkie riding out a Jones, an anarchist handing out pamphlets, a pacifist leading a draft resister on the Underground route to Canada. Ismaili is an internationally-renowned poet, and her mastery of language shows! Her richly-evoked setting in this collection of linked short stories presents characters learning to survive in the jazz scene, the theater, and the arts while dealing with interracial relationships, abuse, addiction, and the toll of the Vietnam draft.

Available in bookstores and online.

Ebook Edition, $5.99 U.S. Trade Paper Edition, $17.95 U.S.

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Nesting Dolls

by Salena Fehnel

“Suspenseful and moving … This author has a talent for telling a story and telling it well.” — Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Seventeen-year-old Valentine barely gets by, spending her time, energy, and money caring for her younger brother, Jonathon. Her mother lives recklessly and selfishly, occasionally sobering just enough to see her children through glassy eyes. After yet another violent episode involving her mother’s boyfriend, Valentine decides to run away, taking Jonathon with her. Searching for a better life, she gets halfway across the country only to receive shocking news from home.

In a flashback to twenty years before, Valentine’s mother Theresa, privileged daughter of a small-town police chief and a strict, repressive mother, finds herself devoid of options when she lands in Los Angeles, 13 years old, pregnant, and without a clue. Life on the street is ten times meaner than she ever imagined, and as she struggles to get through each day, she holds on to the hope of finally getting back to upper-class suburban bliss … if she can only make it out of LA in one piece.

And in yet another flashback, Theresa’s own mother, Caroline, plays the part of doting wife like a pro. But behind the designer skirts and lipstick smiles lies a married life of severe physical and emotional abuse. After having two children, Caroline settles into the idea of living in home with a man who terrifies her … only to have the love of her life show up on her doorstep, asking her to make a choice that will forever change her path and those of the women who will come after her.