Fiction
 Murder in Los Lobos
A Mystery on California's Central Coast
by Sue McGinty
ISBN 978-156474-477-9
ISBN 1-56474-477-7
216 pages, paperback, $14.95
Everyone loves Connie Mercado, daughter of a prominent local family. Everyone, that is, except whoever pushed her off the cliff into the Pacific Ocean, ruining a perfect June morning and bringing turmoil to this small Central Coast community. Bella Kowalski, former nun, now an obituary writer for the local paper and an activist for nature conservancy, knows Connie’s murder had something to do with plans to build a profitable but ill-advised wastewater treatment plant on environmentally sensitive land. And Connie is only the first victim in what becomes a thorny scandal, involving powerful politicos, corrupt local government, greed, family secrets, and skullduggery.
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 The Silence of Parents
A Novel
Susan Simpson Geroe
ISBN 1-56474-462-0
400 pages, paperback, $16.95
Like Ilona Gabor, the heroine of her novel, Susan Geroe was born in Romania after the Second World War, the only child of Holocaust survivors. The Silence of Parents tells, more than any other novel published so far, about the special psychological effects the legacy of the Holocaust has had upon the children of survivors.
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 Flight Into Egypt
A Novel
Julian Stamper
ISBN 1-56474-456-6
128 pages, paperback, $12.00
Bolinas is a quirky, hard-to-reach haven for writers. Over the years it has been home to Richard Brautigan, Tom McGuane, Anne Lamott—and Julian Stamper, who perhaps gives us the clearest view of what Bolinas stands for. His world is populated by scruffy philosophers, bemused musicians, beautiful naked women, shrieking happy children, folks of the sand. The ocean is never more than a few feet from the page. Stamper's fiction, and especially this new novel, is full of weather and laughter, a celebration of the wild spirit of Northern California bohemians. Bolinas is a place where anything can happen and almost nothing does.
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Non Fiction
 Oozing the Moon
A Sky and Night Woods Guide to the Galaxy
Dennis Roth
ISBN 1-56474-460-4
176 pages, paperback, $12.95
This remarkable journal chronicles one man’s gazing at the sky, mostly at night, and largely upside down. The author has spent a great deal of time outdoors, appreciating the night sky (and the daytime sky too, but mostly the night sky). A lot of his observations have been from an unusual perspective: hanging upside down from a park picnic table, for example, for a new view of trees, of sky, of the stars and planets, and especially of the wonderous, many-faceted moon. The unconventional perspective is also tied to a great sense of fun with language. The wisdom gained from his nocturnal observations coalescs disciplines, philosophies and mythologies from throughout the world, from antiquity to modern times. The book is, in addition to being inspiration, scientifically hip. It’s greatest value, though is its enthusiasm and its appreciation of the galaxy we all call home.
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 Dreiser's 'Other Self'
The Life of Arthur Henry
Maggie Walker and Mark Walker
ISBN 1-56474-453-1
288 pages, paperback, $17.95
American writer Arthur Henry lived for 67 years, from the Civil War to the rise of Adolph Hitler. His career as a journalist, novelist, playwright, and memoirist might have been entirely forgotten, had he not also been a close friend and influential associate of Theodore Dreiser, the realist who had such an effect on American literature around the turn of the twentieth century. This groundbreaking biography of an obscure but important writer tells the story of his career, his marriages to three women, and his friendship with other writer—especially Theodore Dreiser, who called him his best friend and his 'other self.'
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 The Jews in Early America
A Chronicle of Good Taste and Good Deeds
Sandra Cumings Malamed
ISBN 1-56474-408-6
224 pages, cloth, $25.95
ISBN 1-56474-407-8
224 pages, paperback, $15.95
Twenty-one articles, illustrated with photos and other art, about the Jews in early America, from the first permanent Jewish settlement in 1654 to the eve of the Civil War. This book tells how the Jews lived, how they made their livings, how they formed a community based on shared faith and common values, and how they interacted with and contributed to the rest of early American society.
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Memoir
 Dear Frank
A Father Remembers...
by Harry Turner
ISBN 978- 1-56474-476-0
ISBN 1-56474-476-0
416 pages, paperback, $18.95
Harry Turner was a newsman for a long, lifetime career. In this personal, frank memoir, he recalls both the bright and the dark side of his life, a life of hard work, poverty, difficult marriages, alcoholism, current events, idealistic struggles, and (late in life) an absorbing and fulfilling single-parenthood. Turner grew up in the urban South during the Depression, began his newspaper career in Los Angeles after World War II, lived in San Francisco, Mexico, Tobgo, and Puerto Rico, where he became Managing Editor of the San Juan Star. Harry Turner’s writing style is professional, brutally honest, and fair. As a newspaperman, he knows how to tell a story; this memoir is anecdotal, occasionally funny, always entertaining. Most of all it is passionate and moving.
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 Ensnared By His Words
My Chaucer Obsession
by Dolores Cullen
ISBN 978-156474-472-2
ISBN 156474-472-8
160 pages, paperback, $12.95
This is the story of a woman’s life—her childhood, her education, her marriage and family. But mostly, this is the story of a woman who found her hero in her middle age, when she went back to college to complete her education. The hero was Geoffrey Chaucer. Dolores became entranced with the poet the storyteller. She fell in love with his words, his language, his Middle English. And she found in Chaucer’s works, primarily in The Canterbury Tales, meanings hidden and brillliant. However, when she took her discoveries to the established academic scholars, she was dismissed as an amateur and her ideas were scorned because they were original and did not fit the established model. She stuck to her guns, found support and encouragement from a few open-minded scholars, and went on to publish a trilogy of ground-breaking literary criticism about Chaucer’s greatest work. This is a memoir of devotion, joy, and persistence.
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Hot Widow
A Memoir
by Phyllis Gebauer
ISBN 978-156474-471-5
ISBN 156474-471-X
296 pages, paperback, $16.95
Hot Widow is a different kind of coming-of-age story. It’s about a woman who married right out of college and never had children, who—after forty-seven years of being treated like a princess by her adoring husband—suddenly finds herself on her own and must deal with the chores of modern life, the burdens of extreme loneliness, and to her surprise and delight, an intense sexuality she never knew she had. The story follows her first two years alone, during which she changes from sheltered (aging) child to grown-up independent woman. In the course of various sexual, therapeutic, and travel adventures she encounters major highs and crippling lows, but her courage and pluck pull her through, and by the end of the book she has finally become whole without her other half.
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 As Tom Goes By
A Tennis Memoir
Tom Brown,
with Lee Tyler
ISBN 978-1-56474-465-4
200 pages, paperback, $15.95
Tom Brown is a legend, one of the few serious tennis players left from the immediate post-World War II era. Now in his mid-eighties, he is blessed with a clear and detailed memory, as well as a droll storytelling style, as well as a collaborator, Lee Tyler, who is a professional sportswriter. The story starts in San Francisco, where young Tom learned the game of tennis on the Golden Gate Park courts. He went to University of California, Berkeley, where he was a college tennis star. Then, after a stint in the Army during World War II, he balanced a rapidly rising tennis career with law studies and law practice. He was a winner at Wimbledon at the age of 23, winning both Men's and Mixed Doubles Championships in 1946. He continued to compete as a young man, then returned to the game in the 1980s to become preeminent senior player of the USA in his age bracket, and for several years number one in the world as well. Full of tennis celebrity name-dropping, As Tom Goes By is an entertaining trip through the decades, telling the life of a remarkable tennis player and a charming man.
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 A Curious Kind of Widow
Loving a Man With Advanced Alzheimer's
Ann Davidson
ISBN 1-56474-454-X
432 pages, paperback, $16.95
In this memoir, Ann Davidson (author of Alzheimer's: A Love Story) relates her experience as caregiver for her husband, during the later stages of his dementia. Determined to stay in loving contact, she nevertheless must build a new life for herself. The book deals with the stages of advanced Alzheimer's and the plight of the caregiver: how much longer can she care for her husband alone? How effective (or how counterproductive) are his powerful medications? Can this man who sputters gibberish and rides a roller-coaster of moods and behavior patterns adjust to residential care? How can she visit him without feeling despair and depression? How do we deal with the inevitable future, the letting go?
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 Reflections from the Shining Brow
My Years with Frank Lloyd Wright
Kamal Amin
ISBN 978-1-56474-470-8
320 pages, paperback, $16.95
Kamal Amin, a young architect from Cairo, comes to America to serve as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright. When he arrives at Taliesin, Wright‘s headquarters, he discovers the pervasive presence of Oligivanna Lazovitch, Wright‘s third wife. Her spirit, as well as the spirit of her teacher, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, dominate the environment. Kamal remained at Taliesin, working with Wright until Mr. Wright died, then stayed on for ten more years. In his career and in his association with Taliesin, he met many celebrities, but no one so powerful as Olgivanna, a complex woman worshipped by some, vilified by others.
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 Frenchy
A Young Jewish-French Immigrant Discovers Love and Art in America—and War in Korea
Simon Jeruchim
ISBN 1-56474-449-3
256 pages, paperback, $14.95
Having survived the horrors of the Holocaust as a hidden child in Nazi-occupied France, the 19-year-old Simon Jeruchim immigrates to America with his two siblings to live with relatives in Brooklyn. There he has to adjust quickly to a new culture, a new language, a new family, and the search for a new job. He does find a good job in graphic design, and he does learn English. As the young Frenchman comes of age in his new land, he has his first love affair and then is drafted into the U.S. army to serve on the front lines of the Korean War. He survives the brutal war and returns to America, ready to embark on an adult life with a good career and a loving, committed marriage.
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Poetry
 Dancing Fire
Poems
by Marjorie Sparkman Jackson
ISBN 978-156474-475-2
ISBN 156474-475-3
80 pages, paperback, $14.00
These strong, clear, passionate poems invoke human lore from ancient classic myth up to the present psychological interpretations of the human heart. For the most part the book is about love. The poet celebrates love in all its joy and sensual pleasure, bu she is not afraid of the dark, and as the book progresses we get a deeper and deeper understanding of love’s pain, which is the pain of love lost, or worse, love abused.
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Silently You Taught Me
And Other Poems
by Stella Zamvil
ISBN 978-156474-474-6
ISBN 156474-474-4
80 pages, paperback, $15.00
These poems, collected and selected, represent over three decades of writing from the author of the acclaimed story collections In the Time of the Russias and My Father Hunts Zulus, My Mother Puts Up Pickles. Highly charged emotionally, Stella Zamvil’s poems show both the light and the dark side of marriage and motherhood. They deal with political and social issues, and they are strongly influenced by the writer’s Ashkenazic Jewish roots.
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 The Murmur of a Gentle Breeze
Poems
by Jack Moser
ISBN 978-156474-473-9
128 pages, paperback, $15.00
The poems in Jack Moser’s The Murmur of a Gentle Breeze tell the story of a kid raised in Brooklyn, a naval officer in Vietnam, a family man, and a psychologist and counselor, a spiritualist, a sentimental Irishman—all the same person, the same poet. Some of the memories are golden, of course, but the poet is not afraid of the dark side: the loss of a father, the loss of a son, the tragic irony of war. This is a book full of both passion and compassion.
 Breathing Rice
Poems
by Jean Lin
ISBN 978-1-56474-469-2
96 pages, paperback, $14.00
In a series of narrative and lyric poems, Jean Lin tells the story of her marriage to a Chinese man. They met as students in the early 1970s, and married at a time when cross-cultural marriages were far less common than they are today. They raised a biracial family, encountering joy and love along the way, along with the inevitable community bias and subtle (or not) racism. They built a life in the United States, but also traveled to China to meet extended family members and to celebrate their own ethnic diversity. These poems deal with all the obvious differences: physical characteristics, food, music, language, attitudes. But the poems also show how similar families can be, on either continent. And throughout there is love: for her husband and children, for her first family, and for her in-laws.
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 Aching for Tomorrow
Poems
by Frank Meyskens, Jr.
ISBN 978-156474-468-5
80 pages, paperback, $14.00
These poems by an oncologist deal with the emotional impact of disease, suffering, and death. Because of his close contact with cancer, Dr. Meyskens is able to bear first-hand witness to the suffering of family and friends who are losing their loved ones or watching them face death and saying goodbye. There are also poems of recovery, remission, and hope; but in the long run the poet-doctor must be honest about mortality, whether he’s speaking or writing to a patient or the patient’s caring circle (which would include friends and family, but also the physician himself.)
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 Calls From a Lighted House
Poems
by Jeanne Lohmann
ISBN 978-1-56474-466-1
96 pages, paperback, $14.00
Acclaimed poet Jeanne Lohmann continues to illuminate the landscape of her past, from the lives of her ancestors, through a long life with marriage and family, a life-long sibling rivalry, her travels, the poet’s duty to sort out the interplay between chaos and order, and finally her reflections on widowhood, aging, and death.
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 How Far Light Must Travel
Poems
by Judi K. Beach
ISBN 978-1-56474-467-8
128 pages, paperback, $14.00
These generous poems tell stories of personal history: childhood joys, childhood lessons, and childhood traumas; divorce and grief, family and escape from family; love in many senses; the process and reward of being a poet; the ongoing quest for improvement and serenity; survival and forgiveness; the passage of time and the process of changing; aging and the only way out. they deal with the dying of the present and the presence of the past. They traffic in the many senses of perception (smells of food, sounds of music, colors of light). They celebrate the parts of the body: hands, the skin, and mostly the heart, which is muscle, which is spirit, which is the poet’s synecdoche.
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