~THE FRIENDS~
Barry Casselman
Andrew Ward
Alison McGhee
Jim Thornton
Sunshine Glenstone
Julie Schumacher
Larry Jacobs
Richard Broderick
Lawrence Sutin
Charles Potts
Robert Kearney
Kraken Press' latest title 
Porch
of Judgment,
poems by my friend
Sunshine GlenstoneSunshine
Glenstone is a marvelous poet whom I have known for many years. This is her
first book of poems. Her voice gives off whiffs of Carson McCullers and Dorothy
Parker, and her stories veer from the hilarious to the disturbing. (Kraken
Press, 2002)
Free -- just click on the title to download. Uses Microsoft Reader).
Barry Casselman's
AMONG DREAMS
"Haunting stories ..."
"Great power and vividness... "
"The stories unfold in unexpected ways."
$5.95 paper
ISBN 0-936623-00-4
Call 651-644-4540 to order
A Postcard Memoir
by my friend Lawrence Sutin
Drawing upon his collection of quirky antique postcards, Lawrence Sutin has penned a series of brief but intense reminiscences of his ordinary life. In the process, he creates an unrepentant, wholly unique account about learning to live with a consciousness all his own. Ranging from remembered events to inner states to full-blown fantasies, Sutin is at turns playful and somber, rhapsodic and mundane, funny and full of pathos. Here youll find tales about science teachers and other horrors of adolescence, life in a comedy troupe, stepfatheringeach illustrated with the postcard that triggered Sutins museand presented in a mix so enticingly wayward as to prove that at least some of it really happened.
Read Mike's review of
A Postcard Memoir.
What they're saying:
"Like Kafka in a good mood." -- Judith Katz
"This is a delightful little book, as full of shifts and surprises as the kind of transparent kaleidoscope that reorders what it looks at. I sincerely like the man whos constructed himself out of these vignettes, his candor and vulnerability balanced by a critical intelligence and wit. Best of all, he seems wise to himself without cynicism, to the curiosity and moodiness of his younger self and the more secure commitments of his maturity. A Postcard Memoir is the kind of book Id secretly like to slip into my friends back pockets, marked READ ME." -- Rosellen Brown
About the Author
Lawrence Sutin is an award-winning memoirist and biographer. His books include Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, and Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley. Sutin teaches in the M.F.A. program at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota.
 Jack and Rochelle : A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance
by
Lawrence Sutin
Larry Sutin is one of the smartest guys I have ever met, but he also writes with tremendous heart about his parents experiences fighting Nazis behind enemy lines in Poland during WWII. You will be riveted by their
story.
ISBN: 1555972438
The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick
Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings
Nature Lovers
by
Charlie Potts
Read
Mike's review of Nature Lovers.
How the South Finally
Won the Civil War
And Contols the Political Future of the United States
Now Available from Partners/West 1-800-563-2385
Views the South as a malignant force that has taken
over America. Peter Applebome, Atlanta bureau chief for the
New York
Times, in his Times Book, Dixie Rising, How the South Is Shaping
American Values, Politics, and Culture
Nothing but the truth, rare as that is. Edward Dorn U of Colorado, Boulder
I've never seen it all put together this way...the
historical analysis is really fascinating stuff. Bob Quigley, WATR-AM.
Waterbury, Connecticut
A book no public library's history collection
should be without. Mike Finley, Techno-Crazed,
Minneapolis, Minnessota, as posted in rec.arts.book.reviews
This book will give you insight into our political future at
the mercy of the sons of John Calhoun, "The Marx of the Master Class." This book
will change the way you read American history.
How
to Order This Book
The Health of Nations : Public Opinion and the Making of American and British Health Policy,
by my friend Lawrence Jacobs, PhD
Larry Jacobs is a good friend and poker-playing compatriate -- and one hell of a poli sci professor. [For more work by the prolific
Dr. Jacobs.]
Uses extensive primary research on the formulation of the American Medicare Act of 1965 and the British National Health Service Act of 1946 to explain the sources of contemporary health policy in each country. The study represents an alternative way of understanding policy making in liberal democracy, i.e. investigation into the sources for the differences in legislation produced by two broadly similar countries. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Chore Wars: How Households Can Share the Work & Keep the Peace
by my friend James Thornton
Paperback, 208 pages
Jim Thornton is one of the funniest men in America, and in this charming book he has provided potential divorce couples with a lifeline to six more months together. All the man has to do is a little vacuuming and, if he's really sincere, make pancakes. Truly fun and useful!
ISBN: 1573240540
 Hole in the Water
by my friend Robert Kearney
Bob is a copywriter like me. We met at a party at David Mura's apartment about 15 years ago, then met up again last year at Camp du Nord in Ely. This is a suspense novel with little whiffs of Hitchcock and
Anatomy of a Murder. It kept me up all night last summer, while the loons outside a-hoo-ha'ed. Good stuff!
ISBN: 0385484305
Also by Robert Kearney:
The Warrior Worker, a study of the Korean economy
Creating a Financial Plan : A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians
(How-To-Do-It Manuals for Libraries, No. 22)
by Betty J. Turock and my friend (and agent!) Andrea Pedolsky
Paperback / Published 1992
Andrea is Harvey's and my agent, and an author in her own write. A better mind for publishing I haven't met.
(Special Order)
Read more about this title...
In-House Training and Development Programs
by Andrea Pedolsky (Editor)
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Books by Mike's Friends
This is a page featuring books by my friends. Are they good books?
Oh, I should say so. I'm not friends with writers of bad books.
Seriously, I have many friends, but I feel special kinship with my writer friends
because I know how hard they work, making time to write, and giving up so many
things, and I know all about the desire and torment hiding in the work. I commend these fine books to you to read,
for both your edification and amusement. -- Mike
|
Support
your writer friend's writer friends! |
 WOMAN LAKE
poems by my friend
Richard Broderick
Brand new collection -- check it put!
Read Mike's review of Rich's book.
Night Sale
by
Richard Broderick
Published by New Rivers Press
Nominated for numerous prestigious awards, this collection of stories was one of the best of 1982. Written by my friend Rich Broderick.
(If Amazon runs out of copies, Rich has two boxes of them in his basement.)
 SHADOW BABY
by my friend Alison McGhee
Clara first spies him through the crack in the stained-glass window of her church, lighting a string of handmade lanterns in the Adirondack woods. A lone old man, Georg Kominsky moves stealthily among the shadow world of his hanging, glittering creations.
In Alison McGhee's stunning novel Shadow Baby, eleven-year-old Clara is struggling to find the truth about her missing father and grandfather and her
twin sister, dead at birth, but her mother steadfastly refuses to talk about these people who are lost to her daughter. When Clara begins interviewing Georg Kominsky for a school biography assignment, she finds that he is equally reticent about his own concealed history. Precocious and imaginative, the girl invents version upon version of Mr. Kominsky's past, just as she invents lives for the people missing from her own shadowy past.
The journey of discovery that these two oddly matched people embark upon is at the heart of this beautiful story about friendship and communion, about discovering what matters most in life, and about the search to find the missing pieces of ourselves. McGhee's prose glistens with shrewd truth and wild imaginings, creating a fine novel that will reverberate in the hearts and minds of readers long after the book is finished.
"Portraying a Mensa-grade child as anything but a cartoon is a tricky proposition, yet McGhee has made Clara a credible if exasperating heroine." -- The New York Times Book Review
"McGhee's young, curious protagonist Clara winter (she prefers a lowercase w) is imaginative, bright, and persistent. Clara writes book reports for class assignments of books that are her own creation and seems to appreciate life more than the adults around her, except for the old man Georg Kominsky (some people call him George). Clara interviews him for an oral history project, and the two instantly understand each other. Clara is the only child of a single mother who refuses to talk about the past, and Georg is in his seventies, without family and alone. Clara sees herself as an apprentice to Georg; he talks about metalworking and helps her to understand her mother. Clara is at the prepubescent "awkward" stage and yearns for her twin sister, who died at birth. Her mother, Tamar, seems cold; and her unwillingness to address painful memories leads Clara to create stories of her family. McGhee's work, full of contrasts and transformations, is a strong, solid novel with quiet feminist undertones. Virginia Woolf would be proud." -- Michelle Kaske
 Rainlight
by Alison McGhee
Alison McGhee teaches writing at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, and is a writer with a wonderful way of telling -- funny and keen and emotionally very true. I heard her read from this novel this spring at The Hungry Mind and she was incredible. Loss is a topic every writer tackles, and few writers can do justice to. Alison is one of the few. I found myself nodding throughout her reading -- that's how right it felt.
ISBN: 1576010066
The Body Is Water
by
my friend Julie Schumacher
Julie is one of my younger old friends. We're both writers, but I don't think twelve words aboput writing have escaped us over the course of our friendship. Which is nice. Julie writes with a terrific economy and discipline and restraint about events so real you feel you are watching them through a picture window. This would even be a great winter read.
ISBN: 0380728400
Also by Julie Schumacher:
An Explanation for Chaos
short stories
"A careful, subtle writer, Ms. Schumacher draws full characters with just a few lines, gently defining the fluid zone in which innocence gives way to understanding."
-- New York Times
Dark Midnight When I Rise:
The Story of the Jubilee Singers Who Introduced the World to the Music of Black America
by my friend Andrew Ward
"A bittersweet and movingly told story of the African-American singers who introduced Negro spirituals to audiences in the US and Europe to raise money for their alma mater, experiencing great triumphs and humiliating prejudice in the process. Ward (Our Bones are Scattered, not reviewed) begins the story in Nashville, Tennessee, as the Civil War ends and hundreds of freed slaves flock to the city. While rival church groups worked to establish schools, Ward concentrates on the institute founded by the America Missionary Association. Named after General Fisk, the head of the local Freedmen's Bureau, it eventually became known as Fisk University. By 1871, with Fisk deeply in debt and facing possible closure, George White, a devout abolitionist and music lover, decided that Fisk's only hope was for him to take a group of his nine best singers, men and women, on the road to raise money. Singing Negro spirituals, still unfamiliar to many in the North, they performed in halls and churches from Ohio to Massachusetts. Emboldened by their success but still needing money, White then took the group abroad. Ward vividly details their three lengthy tours that included visits to England (where they were guests of William Gladstone and sang for Queen Victoria) and Europe (where they performed for the Dutch and German royalty). They raised more that $150,000 (the equivalent of $2.5 million today), but it was at a cost: White was worn out, his successors over-programmed the singers, the singers quarreled (and some left), and in the US they had to endure abuse, stay in inferior lodgings, and travel in segregated trains. But their songs were embraced by a whole new audience, moved by the melodies and words of hope. Very readable history of a forgotten period and a group that saved their school and taught the world to sing their songs." -- Kirkus Reviews
Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857
by my friend Andrew Ward
Andy Ward and I wrote our first novels together in New Haven around 1980-1983. His book, The Demon Seed, was a big Kiplingesque adventure story surrounding the massacre of Cawnpore in 1859. This book, a nonfiction title, revisits the same terrain, but in deadly earnest. Highly recommended!
ISBN: 0805024379
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