The Bookshelf
Breath and Shadow
Breath and Shadow is proud to celebrate the talents of its contributors by showcasing their other works in The Bookshelf. This dedicated space highlights the diverse accomplishments of our writers, offering readers a chance to explore more of their powerful voices beyond the pages of the magazine. By promoting these works, we aim to support our contributors’ creative journeys and connect our audience with stories, poetry, and art that inspire and resonate. The Bookshelf is not just a resource—it’s a testament to the vibrant, multifaceted community of creators that makes Breath and Shadow a unique and cherished publication.
If you are a prior contributor and would like to be featured, just contact us at breathandshadow.abme@gmail.com with the details!
“The Camera Obscure” and "Tourist to the Sun"
By Virginia Betts
The Camera Obscure - Supernatural secrets; psychopathy; disturbing dystopias; vanity and Victorian graveyards. Each story, evoking an atmosphere of gothic classics, will take you on a journey through past, present and possibilities, where the familiar becomes strange. The new tenant above a bookshop uncovers a terrifying truth; a man looks out of his window to discover he is completely alone; a young man’s vanity ends up ensnaring him. You will anxiously anticipate characters’ fates, whilst reflecting on your own lives and experiences. It may lead you to speculate that there are many ways to be haunted, and that the most frightening spectres walk within us and among us.
Tourist to the Sun - That relentless ticking of time is the prominant theme in Tourist to the Sun, an extremely thought provoking collection of considered, well crafted poetry by Virginia Betts. There is an acceptance that time is limited, that we are powerless to slow it down (Time's Terrain), that "time's indecent pace" (Missing Persons) has to be respected and grasped, else lost. Any subject can inspire this talented Suffolk poet; from space travel to parenthood and childhood.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2023
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Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “compassion fatigue” as the physical and mental exhaustion and emotional withdrawal experienced by those who care for sick or traumatized people over an extended period of time. Annette Gagliardi’s poetry offers compassion for the compassionate. Her poems are informed by the shift of comfort that occurs with caregivers, from the decision to provide care, to the fatigue and grace of caring for others, then to the grief and relief of saying goodbye. A Short Supply of Viability provides insight, thoughtful consideration of issues, glimpses of those being cared for, and relief from grief. It is a must read and a welcoming balm for anyone faced with becoming a caregiver, whether it be in a professional capacity or taking care of a loved one whose health is declining.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2023
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“March Of Madness: A Journey Into Depression”
By Jim Pennington
Taken from the pages of the author's personal journals, MARCH OF MADNESS: A Journey Into Depression reflects the dark and often tormented days he experienced while battling depression. The book transcribes the dark poetry and journal entries from those pages, with his own reflection of dealing with those emotions.
Throughout the book the many poems and intimate journal entries reveal the darkness, emptiness, confusion and sadness which he battled for so long. This is a deeply personal account of one man's battle with an all too familiar disease.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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"Lady Anarchist Café"
By Lorraine Schein
“Welcome to THE LADY ANARCHIST CAFÉ, where ‘the occult and the everyday intermingle.’ It’s a phantasmic feminist space, where you can spot Dorothy from THE WIZARD OF OZ, Emma Goldman, the Bronte sisters and a host of other luminaries. The poems and stories in this visionary collection are by turns satiric, playful, utopian, psychedelic and gritty.”
― Elaine Equi, poet
“There is no one like Lorraine Schein ― wondrous, elliptical, infused with delight. Only Lorraine would observe that on the Lower East Side the rabbis and the punks and everyone in between all wore black. Only Lorraine could resurrect the genius of Charles Fort simply by herding together flashes of mystery from THE BOOK OF THE DAMNED. Like Fort, she doesn’t so much destroy reality as liberate it, an anarchy of wonder infused with the pleasures of the strange.”
―Rachel Pollack, author of The Beatrix Gates
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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"Voices from the Inside"
By Denise Noe
The ebook feature correspondence with such infamous criminals as Charles Manson, Centennial Park Bomber Eric Rudolph, Lawrence "Pliers" Bittaker, David Berkowitz, and Moors Murderer Ian Brady. There are also letters from Pam Smart, currently in the news because her pleas for mercy were rejected by the New Hampshire executive council. There are letters from Betty Broderick, Nanette Packard Johnson, and Renee Nicely. Perhaps the most unusual case represented is that of William Hetherington, the first man ever sentenced of spousal rape.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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"Lost In Sight"
By Eve Rifkah
Lost in Sight is a compilation of poems written by Rifkah over the past twenty-five or so years. Many have been published in various journals such as Breath and Shadow.
The overall themes are of lost, art, historic events along with the totally fictional.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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"Leaf Memories: Poetry and Photos"
By Carol Farnsworth
I have always loved walking in the woods. I usually explore with my husband or daughter to act as a sighted guide. They find flora for me to touch. When I had some vision, they would point out fauna—a deer, or a bird taking flight. At those times, I was lucky to see the white of a retreating deer or hear the sound of wings in flight.
When I became totally blind, I developed my senses of touch, hearing, smell, and taste to see the world. I incorporated visual memories to complete the picture. I wrote this chapbook of poems after I lost my sight. I found there are many ways to enjoy nature, such as using your hands to explore, along with your other senses.
From Leonore Dvorkin, editor of Leaf Memories:
The poems are arranged according to the seasons of the year, starting with summer. They mainly tell of the author’s appreciation of the beauty of nature and her concern for the environment and wildlife.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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“Covid, Isolation and Hope: Artists Respond to the Pandemic!”
Edited by Rafael Alvarado, Consuelo G. Flores and Richard Modiano. Erika Jahneke, Contributor.
“A bulletin from the volatile waiting room that is 2020 to now, this anthology trembles with anxiety, anger, sorrow, and at times the most bitter pleasure. The writers / photographers assembled here jostle elbows and speak unmasked on pages that fold them into each other’s faces, homes, and grief. It’s a terrible grace that these artists cross such vast social distances to cut so close to the bone, that they set down to reckon with a time many can’t wait to forget.”
–Douglas Kearney
“From Wang Ping’s moving story of a doctor and a COVID patient in Wuhan, to Kim Dower’s plucky courage in the face of isolation, to the music of Amélie Frank’s pantoum, this anthology is full of candor, grace, insight, and good humor. But mostly it is full of poetry, “the only form of speech we have that meets this need to acknowledge that we are more than unemployment statistics and death tolls” (Victor Infante). What but poetry to help us come to terms with how extraordinary the ordinary things in our lives have become? What but poetry to remind us that though we “shelter in space/like the stars” (Luis CuahtémocBerriozabal), “the baby still needs to be fed” (Aqueila M. Lewis-Ross). Life, for the fortunate of us, has gone on, but this historical moment will be remembered always. I am delighted that this anthology of COVID poems will be there to make sure it is remembered in all its beautiful humanity.”
–Gail Wronsky
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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By Denise Noe
"Justice Gone Haywire" is a collection of true crime stories in which the system failed. Stories covered include that of Henry VIII's fifth wife Katherine Howard, the "Scottsboro Boys," Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, the murder of Mary Phagan and lynching of Leo Frank, Dr. Sam Sheppard, Alice Crimmins, and Gary Dotson. The author argues that Jean Harris was wrongly convicted and that Jonathan Pollard, while indisputably guilty of spying for Israel, was a victim of injustice due to the length of his sentence. Also included is a mistaken identity case in which a schizophrenic man was wrongly convicted as the "Bike Path Rapist."
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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Changing Ways is the story of a young woman lost in her mental illness who battles with her father for no other reason than rebellion. The father who is a judge in the Manhattan Mental Health Court is a saint who never loses faith on getting his daughter back. But she wants to grow beyond what his vision for her is.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2021
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"When The Body Is a Guardrail"
By Kara Dorris
When the Body is a Guardrail offers its readers such physical and concise language—and the voice captivates us on this journey. Dorris has perfected the art of the highway pastoral in this collection, and every single poem gives us something to think about—something to look deeper into. What I like about this collection is that the readers can see what Dorris paints for us—and yet the lyric of the writing isn’t lost in any way. Take, for example, this passage from the title poem: “We let our ditches / become washed-out bridges. / Our road-kill, trophy mirages. / Let gold meridians / & guardrails disintegrate / into breadcrumbs & suggestion.” While Dorris meditates on abstraction, we are still given ripe metaphors and imagery along the way. Essentially, When the Body is a Guardrail is a smart and engaging book of poetry. Period.
–Adam Crittenden
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2021
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After a marriage fraught with abuse and infidelity, Scarlett Kane's husband is suddenly killed in a motorcycle accident. Conflicted by feelings of love and hate, she struggles to build a new life, but a paranormal presence prevents her from moving on. Haunted by the past, all she wants is to have a happier future. When Scarlett discovers an incredible secret about her husband, it seems like the inconceivable burden of her past is finally gone. On a path woven with love and deception, can Scarlett find the strength to choose between the living and the dead?
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2020
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"At the End Of The Storm"
If Daria Demarest didn't have ice water in her veins, like her coalminer father taught her, life might look bleak. She's divorcing successful but unfaithful Ted. She's lost her glam
job as a network morning show host, and she's discovered that Ted's secret gambling habit drained their substantial savings. With no alimony, she's raising two teens in 1990's image-is-all Connecticut. Though she abandoned spiritual aspirations in the freewheeling sixties, when pregnant by an anti-war activist who chose causes over commitment, Daria creates Awakenings, a show for women seeking healing in everything from aromatherapy to mindfulness meditation.
She's back on top, until, during a winter storm, her teen daughter Lizzy announces she's pregnant. Walking through Lizzy's pregnancy, Daria faces her own mother's rejection
and unyielding judgments that led Daria to surrender her firstborn. If shame and fear hadn't ruled her as a pregnant teen, she wonders, would she have kept her first child? Could she have allowed T.J. Townsend, her steadfast college admirer, to love her? When Daria arranges to meet her first daughter, the reunion stirs up more than it resolves. Angela's an actress, who proves to be as us unforgiving as she is talented. Desperate after Angela's rejection, Daria struggles to find the same healing she's offered her TV audience.
Then T.J., now a noted alternative physician, appears on Daria's show, offering her opportunities she passed up years earlier. Is she ready for the man who loved her when she couldn't love herself? She's not sure. The only way to find out is to walk, no matter how haltingly, through whatever storms ensue, relying on her untested faith and newfound relationships with family and friends.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2020
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"The Truth About Our American Births"
“Can you emigrate without immigrating? What is a refuge for a refugee? Judith Skillman’s The Truth about Our American Births asks bold questions and makes vital distinctions about the stories of her German Jewish heritage—from first to second to ensuing generations. Her poems are like the panorama beyond the window as a train charges down its track, playing with time and memory, about what is told or assumed... The complex layers in her poems resound with surprising leaps and answers.”
–Sharon Hashimoto, Award Winning Poet & Fiction Writer
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2020
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Finishing Line Press recently published a new poetry collection entitled Neoteny: Poems by blind poet, musician and college writing instructor, Emily K. Michael. This chapbook is a collection of poems at play, poems that reclaim the sensuous depths of memory. These poems celebrate music, imagination and the wild world.
“Emily K. Michael’s work represents a new voice in disability writing, one that is addressed to friends and loved ones rather than to an anonymous and hostile public. This collection creates an intimate space in which insiders and outsiders alike can feel at home.”
--John Lee Clark, author of Where I Stand and editor of Deaf American Poetry
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2020
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"Words of Life: Poems and Essays"
This collection combines poems, essays, and flash fiction drawing upon life’s vicissitudes, including nature’s beauty and cruelty, the foibles of relationships, the love of family, and the unconditional regard and respect for the author’s guide dogs.
The book is also available in e-book format for $3.99 and in paperback for $9.95 from Amazon.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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"Cultural Disability Studies in Education: Interdisciplinary Navigations of the Normative Divide"
By David Bolt
Over the last few decades disability studies has emerged not only as a discipline in itself but also as a catalyst for cultural disability studies and Disability Studies in Education. In this book the three areas become united in a new field that recognizes education as a discourse between tutors and students who explore representations of disability on the levels of everything from academic disciplines and knowledge to language and theory; from received understandings and social attitudes to narrative and characterization.
Moving from late nineteenth to early twenty-first-century representations, this book combines disability studies with aesthetics, film studies, Holocaust studies, gender studies, happiness studies, popular music studies, humour studies, and media studies. In so doing it encourages discussion around representations of disability in drama, novels, films, autobiography, short stories, music videos, sitcoms, and advertising campaigns. Discussions are underpinned by the tripartite model of disability and so disrupt one-dimensional representations.
Cultural Disability Studies in Education encourages educators and students to engage with disability as an isolating, hurtful, and joyful experience that merits multiple levels of representation and offers true potential for a non-normative social aesthetic. It will be required reading for all scholars and students of disability studies, cultural disability studies, Disability Studies in Education, sociology, and cultural studies.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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"Potential"
By Isabelle Kenyon
Published as part of the much-loved Ghost City Press summer series, Isabelle Kenyon's micro chapbook is a brave and prickly collection which touches on new relationships, the-thing-between-her-legs, and sexual assault. Light in tone, it is an exploration of the wonderful and the horrible things which can occur alongside love.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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"Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers and Fins; Family Pets and God's Other Creatures"
By Glenda Council and Estelle Rice
This book is about animals and the people who love them. Read true stories about a horse that healed a heart patient, a rabbit that went to college, a poodle that climbed ladders, a hobo cat that found a home in the mountains, and fictional stories like the one about the cats with extra toes and the little boy who claimed them. The humans in the stories and their relationships with the animals will touch anyone who is an animal lover. The pain of fostering puppies. This book makes a great little gift for someone in the hospital, a birthday gift to your child's teacher, for someone who has recently lost a beloved pet. The authors grew up with pets, rescued pets, and cared about animals of all kinds. Their stories show that a child or an adult who loves animals will never forget them even when they have passed on. Readers will feel the author's fear when her Samoyed is stolen, when vets give up on Brandy, her beloved poodle, and when her husband recovering from heart surgery buys a horse.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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"Mister Nothingburger: A Fairy Tale"
by Susan M. Silver
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Mister Nothingburger, an enigmatic figure with a cape and a cane, has a secret problem: He has no image in the mirror. Join him on the “reflective” journey to regain his identity through beauty, friendship, and love. A latter-day fairy tale for anyone who believes in the boundless capacity of the human heart to heal.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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By Glenda Barrett
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In The Beauty of Silence, Glenda Barrett reveals the most authentic Appalachian voice to rise out of the southern mountains in years. “The Gist of the Matter,” invites us in, as she sits at a table with her kinfolks, peeling and eating an apple. The reader listens as this wise family elder recounts the then and now of her mountain heritage. In her poem, Sorting it Out, she affirms, “In hindsight, my best lessons were learned not in good times, but in deepest sorrow. I learned pain would not destroy me.” Her hope is to share specific truths. This nugget of wisdom emerges from, Serenity, “I’ve learned the comfort and peace found in solitude.” I chose, The Fork of the River, as my favorite. “My best lessons have been learned not in chaos, but in places of silence. Like the Cherokee before me, I seek direction in the quietness of the morning."
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2018
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"Plant A Garden Around Your Life"
How do you say “Telling a depressed person to cheer up is like telling a quadriplegic to stand” and still give hope for depression? As a poet, the author captures what is so hard to communicate: the harsh breadth and depth of how depression feels, so that the unafflicted can offer useful assistance. And the verses tell a story of recovery that sings hope and promise.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2018
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"Follow Your Dog: A Story of Love and Trust"
Nonfiction by Ann Chiappetta
Follow the author as she moves from an unhappy early life and her unstoppable loss of vision to happiness and fulfillment as a guide dog user, wife, and mother who works as a V.A. counselor. This touching, informative, and beautifully written book will surely resonate with many besides guide dog raisers, trainers, and handlers. Includes stories and photos of her most beloved dogs, past and present.
From the text:
While there is practical merit to the human–canine bond, which developed over a period of 70,000 years, it’s not akin to any other human-animal relationship. It is unique. The person and guide dog are interdependent, and the bond of mutual trust is what makes the partnership successful and fulfilling for both. With this book, I hope to take the reader on a journey of understanding: learning what it’s like to overcome the darker side of disability by walking the path of independence with a canine partner.
For cover photo, longer synopsis, free text preview, author bio, and buying links, see: http://www.dldbooks.com/annchiappetta
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2018
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"A Doctor's Confession: One Man's Memoir of Addiction, Loss, Recovery, and Hope"
by Michael Fredericks, MD, and Susan M. Silver
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Guilted by his Italian-Catholic upbringing and grieving the sudden death of his mother, Michael Fredericks easily slips into multiple addictions (vodka, Valium, cocaine, sex), even as he is preparing for a dazzling medical career.
With a sharp eye for detail and a natural sense of drama, Fredericks recounts in A Doctor's Confession the wretchedness of detox and rehab, the struggle to maintain sobriety, the serial trysts and boyfriends (some of them sociopaths), and the eventual rebuilding of his life.
His sincerity and the energy of his chi permeate every page of this beautifully crafted memoir about one gay man’s odyssey from success to surrealistic depths to recovery.
Anyone who has struggled with addictions or loss will find this book inspiring. Fredericks gives hope that all of us can overcome our darkest and most difficult obstacles.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2017
By Roger Barbee
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Barbee returns to his home street of early childhood to explore the forces that helped make him. He writes of his alcoholic father, loving mother, a caring uncle, and his grandmother. He also examines the lives of mill workers and how the textile industry took its toll on the uneducated and vulnerable workers of his 1950's hometown.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2023
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“As for Life: A Memoir in Poetry”
By Marilyn McVicker
Hickory, NC: “Even in illness, there is life and love; even with exquisite suffering there is exuberance and abundance,” writes Marilyn McVicker in her latest volume of poetry, As for Life,
Awarded an Honorable Mention in North Carolina’s 2020 Lena Shull Book Contest. This volume, published by Redhawk in 2022, is McVicker’s third book. Her most recently published poems have appeared in Kakalak, Kaleidoscope, The Healing Muse, Earth’s Daughters, Speckled Trout Review, Wordgathering, Breath & Shadow, Redheaded Stepchild, Front Porch Review, Red Clay Review, and other journals, magazines and periodicals.
McVicker, a retired music educator and therapist, enjoyed a career as a solo performing flautist in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. She began writing during her high school years and published her first poem in the 1980s while attending the Hopkins Writing Seminars, and actively participating in the Baltimore Poetry Society.
McVicker comments, “I wanted to write the book I wish I could have found. I wanted to give voice to my invisible illness; I wanted to give voice to what it feels like to live with chronic illness.” This manuscript is intensely personal and authentic. Anyone living with chronic illness, their family, friends and caregivers; medical professionals working with the chronically ill or aging; anyone living through the COVID-19 pandemic, who has experienced isolation, wearing a mask, and avoiding others because of the threat of contracting a virus, will be enlightened and touched by her words.
Come see for yourself. Immerse yourself. Be strengthened and inspired by her resilient life. All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Immune Deficiency Foundation.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2023
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“A Landscaped Garden For The Addict”
By Judith Skillman
In A Landscaped Garden for the Addict award-winning poet Judith Skillman explores themes of addiction, chronic pain, and disability. The book is divided into five sections, each interlaced with existential dilemmas encompassing war, mortality, invalidism, and trauma. While the subject matter is dark, there is no pathos. Instead, points of light recur as images of Dutch rabbits, horses, robins, clover, ivy, and stars.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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By Robin Dunn
Refugees from America is an evocative journey through blurred worlds of madness and therapy; this version of the air-conditioned nightmare manages to be satirical and harrowing and moving, all at the same time, a tour de force.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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"The Ruin of Eleanor Marx"
By Mark A. Murphy
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‘The Ruin of Eleanor Marx ‘is absolutely riveting. I doubt that if I were to read a standard biography of Eleanor Marx, I would experience the depth of emotional resonance that I have felt with this book. I also doubt I would come away from such a biography with the degree of understanding and empathy for the subject, as I have with this extraordinary collection.
Mark A. Murphy’s evocative, and compassionate telling of Eleanor Marx’s life and final 'ruin', has produced a poetry collection that is of historic, artistic, and philosophical significance. This book deserves to go viral. -- Paul Dononhoe
Mark A. Murphy has written, with deep empathy, a moving collection of poetry illuminating Eleanor Marx’s life. These daring poems could be the early women’s movement writ small—a trailblazer who defiantly announces: “I am a Jewess” in solidarity with striking factory workers, a published author, teacher, and well-known Socialist activist in her own right.
Karl Marx’s youngest daughter, “Tussy” emerges in poems that are pitch-perfect/ devastatingly told, wry, witty and tender. Yet, Eleanor Marx relentlessly subjugated her own needs, first to her ailing mother, then to her father, and finally to a caddish married lover. We race with her through the calamitous late 1800s; we see her in thrall and in disillusionment.
The Ruin of Eleanor Marx is a visionary work from one of the finest poets writing today.
--Trish Suanders
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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"My MS Journey: A Memoir"
By Judith Krum
In My MS Journey: Recalculating, Judith Krum presents a memoir that follows the many twists and turns of her living with Multiple Sclerosis, as well as the many other challenges she has faced. The reader will come to understand what it takes to be a disability rights advocate as well as a person who adapts to living a vulnerable life as a person with a disability. Throughout her life she has had a successful teaching career, a burgeoning writing career, many travel experiences, and a love of words, communication, and crafts of all sorts. Her memoir is filled with realistic descriptions, emotional commentary, historic context, as well as grief, loss, hope and humor. She began life as a TAB (temporarily able-bodied) person who finds herself now a person with a disability, a member of that club which anyone can join at any time.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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"Housewife Blues: Dispatches from the Garden of Broken Things" By Dina Stander
Dina Stander's latest book, 'Housewife Blues' (2021) is an assemblage of provocative, irreverent, and encouraging short reads. Her collection of poems, 'Old Bones & True Stories' was published in 2018. Dina is a writer, End-of-life Navigator, burial shroud maker (www.lastdanceshrouds.com), and founder of the Northeast Death Care Collaborative. A seasoned Word Festival emcee and practitioner of radical kinship, her ongoing projects include collaborative installations of the Phone of the Wind, and Dancing with the Bones, a workshop series on creativity & grieving. Dina is the poetry editor of Uniquely Quabbin magazine. Invite her to read for your group, in person or online, you'll be glad you did.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2022
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"The Last Time You Were Here and Other Stories"
Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, and novels. His short stories have been accepted more than 450 times by journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2021
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By Sarah Cavar
In eighteen subconscious segments The Dream Journals blends genre and form to stage scenes once hidden behind eyelids. The result is a micro-memoir of both speculation and recollection of the surreal and the all-too-embodied.
"Cavar creates a speculative whole from many shards. I can inhabit my own internal//dreams with this chapbook a prism of refracted selves in technicolor.”
– Jesse Rice-Evans, author of THE UNINHABITABLE
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2021
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“Swimming Not Drowning”
By Mari-Carmen Marín
Swimming, Not Drowning takes the reader on the poet’s journey through her struggles with an anxiety disorder that often leads to depression. The first part, “Deep Water,” explores the author’s childhood, family, personality, fears, disappointments, the generalized public unfamiliarity with mental illness, and other factors conducive to the onset of depression. The second part, “Drowning,” depicts what it feels like to be trapped in the disabling claws of the depression monster. The last part, “Swimming,” is a testament of hope, reassuring the reader that with patience, understanding, and support, everybody can learn how to “swim” the deep waters without drowning.
About her book, Marín said, “The poems in this book were born out of my need to give a specific shape to the chaos in my mind. Once on paper, my feelings and thoughts became palpable, and I could look at them with the perspective of an outsider.”
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2021
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"The Ballad of Hangman’s Elm: A Fairy Tale"
By Susan M. Silver
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“This book should be required reading for anyone wondering and hoping if this too shall pass.”
A legendary park-dwelling tree becomes an accidental witness to once-in-a-generation calamity within catastrophe – unrest in the midst of a pandemic. This is an unforgettable story of growth through crisis. A luminous tale that reads like a prose poem, a must-read for all ages.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2021
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By Sarah Cavar
A Hole Walked In is a thrilling piece of surrealist-gothic-body-horror short fiction featuring a protagonist whose face just won’t stop bleeding. Following writers like Carmen Maria Machado and Helen Oyeyemi A Hole Walked In traverses the feminist Weird and leaves a red trail in its wake.
"A blood rite of a bildungsroman. A Hole Walked In asks questions that can only be answered by the mirror. The sly-and-wry body horror envelopes the reader in a way that feels more real than fantastical and yet it is after something that is just out of reach. Cavar deftly writes a fable that is impossible to take even a breath away from and they do it drenched in the bloody irony of skill.”
— L Scully author of LIKE US (ELJ Editions).
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2021
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Rolling in the Third Eye is a carnivalesque collection of surrealistic language poems which describes a real nighttime world, which are received by a "shadow persona". The author's comment: "There's nothing fantastic about these poems. They are grimy jazz poems, or spooky garage sale poems."
John Thomas Allen is from New York. Recently he's been in Sulfur Surrealist Poetry, Synchronized Chaos, and experimental experimental-literature. More than that, as time goes on, he wonders if Section 8 housing is really the good life.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2021
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"Songs From The Back Row"
by Doug May
"Absolutely pure, honest, illuminating poems that reach the depths of experience and transcend the sky. Doug May conveys the quivering surprise of truth in sharply crafted language, sharing a narrative that morphs the mind and heart. These poems elevate the spirit to a profound empathy. I will learn from them forever." -Sheila E. Murphy, Poet
Doug May has been treated for ADD, behavioral issues and depression. As a child he received a great deal of academic tutoring geared to his abilities (including piano lessons), and eventually earned a GED and went on to college. He has worked many entry level and unskilled jobs—everything from proofreading children’s books and data bases to stocking shelves, driving a delivery truck, moving furniture, selling music, emptying bedpans and performing at NCO clubs in a rock and roll cover band. He is currently retired and working on a memoir about his experiences as a differently abled American.
Published by the Uncollected Press/Raw Art Review.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2020
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"Steel Bars, Sacred Waters: Celtic Paganism for Prisoners"
by Heather Awen
An "all-in-one" pan-Celtic polytheist resource of cosmology, deities, virtues, history, rituals, meditations, magic and the future of Celtic Paganism, rooted in scholarly research. One of only three full-size books for incarcerated Pagans, Steel Bars, Sacred Waters also fulfills the need for a Celtic Reconstructionist derived book on ALL the Celtic cultures across Europe and Turkey throughout thousands of years.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2020
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"A String of Stories: From the Heart to the Future"
A demon deer and a ghost cat. Sibling rivalry and sexual awakening. Self-image and self-confidence. The chance for an offworlder to breathe free at last on a new planet. Those are just some of the diverse themes of these remarkable stories. Some endings are happy, some are sad, and some are intriguingly open-ended. But once you step inside the author’s world, you cannot emerge unmoved.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2020
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"Caution: The Poetry of a Militant Abuelita"
By Venetia Sjogren
It became evident to Sjogren by the age of ten that adults eat their children. At that tender age, she learned to use poetry to escape her cannibalistic parents. The less fortunate survivors, used drugs, alcohol and other addictive, destructive behaviors to break free and mask their pain. Through her poetry she has learned to articulate her thoughts (although she thinks that if she made those thoughts apparent, she would be locked up for life). If her semi-autobiographical words of domestic violence, incest and white privilege makes you squirm - then do not purchase this book.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2020
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"Eating the Sun"
By Rachael Ikins
Her first mixed genre memoir, Eating the Sun is 100 pages of deliciousness, the garden and food grown from it through the seasons being the vehicle to tell the love story of the author and her husband. Each season/chapter includes poetry and recipes invented by the couple at the end of the chapter. Illustrations include pen and inks, collage and photography by Ikins, as well as some guest photographs.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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Premise of Light blends Ekphrastic work with explorations of mortality. These poems can be seen as “doorziens,” a Dutch word translated as “to see through.” The term refers to a painting with a view from one room into another. Here language illuminates transitions from childhood to maturity to aging. Rooms include the natural world, the father-daughter relationship, and the body itself.
"Sometimes surreal, always evocative, Skillman’s poems seem to well up from an inner hot spring. This collection is the latest in a lengthy and rich body of work. Not merely a keen observer, Skillman interprets for us the world around her, in a precise and emotional vocabulary, drawing from history—her own included—as well as the spheres of art and science to offer unique, often astonishing, associative connections."
--Sean Bentley
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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By Meriah Crawford and Robert Waters
It is 1636: five years after a West Virginia town from the year 2000 arrived in Germany in a flash of light and altered the course of history. Now, down-time master artist Daniel Block is troubled. No mention or proof of his name or life work, of which he has long been proud, made it through the Ring of Fire; it’s as if he never existed. What can a talented and proud artist like him do, to make sure this new world remembers him long after he’s gone?
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Daniel develops a plan to make himself one of the greatest artists the world has ever known, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to see his dreams fulfilled. Even if it means risking himself, his wife, and his children.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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"Zephyr’s Whisper: Poems and Parables of a Seasonal Pretense"
By Ken Allan Dronsfield
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With a blend of Wordsworthian poetry style and contemporary American poetic voice, Ken Allan Dronsfield wonderfully weaves human emotions, mysticism and Nature's beauty as well as its harshness in his poetry. Zephyr's Whisper will undoubtedly keep on maintaining the balance of soft soothing waltz and strong challenging winds like effects on the hearts and souls of avid poetry readers of all generations.
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First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2019
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"(Dis)Ability: A Short Story Anthology"
Edited by Emily Dorffer
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Available as a free download!
Emily Dorffer is a firm believer in the transformational power of fiction. During a class at Johns Hopkins she took in 2016 called Philosophy and Disability, she witnessed her
nondisabled classmates' well-meaning attempts to discuss disabilities. Dorffer, a recent graduate, decided to do something to help them better understand the challenges of being disabled. The result is a collection of stories, compiled and edited by Dorffer, by and about people with disabilities.
Dorffer's goal for the collection was twofold: to foster a sense of understanding of the disabled among nondisabled people and to urge disabled people to recognize, use, and embrace their distinct voices. She also hopes the stories will encourage better and more accurate portrayals of disabled people in literature.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2018
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"Metastable Systems"
By David Kopaska-Merkel
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Metastable Systems is the latest full-length collection from long-time poet of the weird, fantastic and futuristic, David C. Kopaska-Merkel. The prolific editor of the small-press poetry magazine, Dreams and Nightmares, has collected the best of his own recent work in Metastable Systems. The book’s title refers to the changeable condition of life, and really of the whole universe. This book covers nearly all of the speculative poetry genre. Here you’ll find science fiction, fantasy, and horror. You will even find some poems about science. That includes a poem about Anomalocaris, probably Earth’s deadliest killer (before half a billion years ago).
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2018
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By Barlow Adams
Marshall Merrick, called Book, is just another poor kid living on the unforgiving shores of the Kentucky River, born to a legacy of violence and raised to sacrifice his ambitions on the altar of his Appalachian pride. But his lust for knowledge and a dangerous love fuel his hope for something more, a life far from the river and its poison. It's this hope, slim as a shadow and unrelenting as the summer sun, that leads him into waters more treacherous than he has ever braved, and a choice that threatens to drown everything he loves.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2018
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"The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked: The Fiction of Disability: An Anthology"
Edited by Sheila Black, Michael Northen, and Annabelle Hayse
Welcome to the worlds of the disabled. The physically disabled. The mentally disabled. The emotionally disabled. What does that word "disabled" mean anyway? Is there a right way to be crippled? Editors Sheila Black and Michael Northen (co-editors of the highly praised anthology Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability) join newcomer Annabelle Hayse to present short stories by Dagoberto Gilb, Anne Finger, Stephen Kuusisto, Thom Jones, Lisa Gill, Floyd Skloot, and others. These authors—all who experience the "disability" they write about—crack open the cage of our culture's stereotypes. We look inside, and, through these people we thought broken, we uncover new ways of seeing and knowing.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2018
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"Wrestling the Dragon: How I Fought Diabetes and Won"
By AJ Cunder
A diabetes diagnosis will be life-altering. But it doesn't have to be life-shattering. This is my story. The story of how I learned to conquer the beast that lives inside of me despite the struggles and obstacles, the needles and finger-sticks, the desperation and disappointment. A story of how I (and my parents) managed my type I diabetes since I was diagnosed at the age of 17 months; how my father and mother first encountered the dragon--how it nearly killed me. It's a story of hope and encouragement: a tale of normalcy when "normal" might seem like a foreign word to a newly diagnosed diabetic or parents watching their child struggle to fit in while carrying the burden of the beast. And most of all, it's a story of persistence. The story of a simple boy who grew into a determined young man and never stopped chasing his dreams despite the dragon roaring inside him.
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2018
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"Tripping the Tale Fantastic: Weird Fiction By Deaf and Hard of Hearing Writers"
Edited by Christopher John Heuer
From haunted Civil War battlefields to a severed ear discovered on a nightly run; from lab-grown dinosaurs to forest creatures that steal away children under the cover of night; from deadly bio-engineered fleas to a burning teenage desire for cybernetic amputations: Deaf and hard of hearing authors from around the world bring you this fun, though oftentimes disturbing, collection of short fiction.
"So often the future we imagine is homogenous: everyone has the same baseline abilities and there is a presumption that all five senses are the norm. This collection has stories of people accessing new technologies, and people living in worlds where to hear is to be abnormal. There are stories that explore the imposition of language values on the Deaf community and the harm committed in the name of 'help.' And there are stories in which we get to experience how others communicate. A thought-provoking collection." --Farah Mendlesohn
First featured in New on the Bookshelf in 2017