New Release: Black Shroud with Rainbow Fringes, poems by Paul Nebenzahl

Silver Birch Press is pleased to announce the May 22, 2014 release of Black Shroud with Rainbow Fringes: Poems 2010-2013 by Paul Nebenzahl.

“In this impressive gathering of fifty poems, Nebenzahl discovers long-lost relatives that were displaced from World War II and the Holocaust. In this unearthing, Nebenzahl finds himself questioning his past and present to imagine a new future in elegiac dimensions. These expressions intertwine and mediate language as a process for divinity, humor, and truth. The poetry excavates with humanity the trauma of the unexplained and the mystery of creative response as an authentic gesture from the human hand and heart that is writing.” KAREN FINLEY

“Look for the rainbow fringes. At such bright speculative mind-trip edges in these poems, one finds polka dots and moonbeams, the summer of hate, dad’s whiskey spittle on the lapel of a National Guardsman, poems written on A&P bags, Mingus, ice and madness, Freaky Jerry, red diaperism, fly-or-die panic, and people miraculously wearing love like heaven. The whole book is a dreamarium. In a world of jingles written like lead bullets, Paul Nebenzahl’s poems stand generously to oppose them.” AL FILREIS, Kelly Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, author of Wallace Stevens & the Actual World.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paul Nebenzahl is a writer, musician, and painter who lives in Evanston, Illinois, and Sleepy Hollow, New York. As a performing multi-instrumentalist, and composer, Paul has created works for film and television, and has performed extensively in theater, stage, and club settings. In 2012, Paul’s poem “Gusen Station” was published in English, Italian and German by the International Committee for Mauthausen and Gusen. His poem “Charles Bukowski” appears in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology (2013) and “Here’s to the Singer of Songs” is featured in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology (2013).

Find Black Shroud with Rainbow Fringes: Poems 2010-2013 by Paul Nebenzahl at Amazon.com.

Cover art by Paul Nebenzahl

The Kept Girl, noir novel by Kim Cooper

L.A. historian/author Kim Cooper, renowned for her Esotouric bus tours into “the secret heart of Los Angeles,” recently completed her noir novel THE KEPT GIRL — and is offering readers a terrific opportunity to subscribe to the book’s first printing (details at thekeptgirl.com).

The subscription offer — available from 11/5-12/25/13 — features a variety of benefits, including the subscriber’s name prominently acknowledged in all copies of the book,  which will arrive enclosed in a limited-edition decorative slipcase. Book lovers, collectors, hardboiled fiction fans, don’t miss this chance to take part in a true publishing event. Considering all the benefits, this first-class publication is a tremendous bargain at just $65. A wonderful holiday gift for noir aficionados.

Before Raymond Chandler became LA’s crime laureate, he was an LA oil company executive. Inspired by this historic nugget, Kim Cooper, social historian and co-founder of Esotouric, spins Chandler’s early LA years, a sinister 1920s angel-worshipping cult, an LAPD cop and a heroine who is much more than a ‘kept girl’ into a deeply researched and compulsively readable crime novel.”

Denise Hamilton, author of DAMAGE CONTROL & editor of Edgar Award-winning anthology LOS ANGELES NOIR

ABOUT THIS PUBLISHING METHOD: The Subscription model of publishing flourished in England in the 17th Century. Instead of relying on a single regal (and often capricious) patron, authors and publishers cultivated a select group of literate, engaged readers and collectors whose support encouraged and enabled the publication of books that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive to produce. Through Subscription-sponsored publication, important atlases, geographies, and histories saw the light, along with great literature, including Milton’s Paradise Lost.

ABOUT THE BOOK: Kim Cooper‘s The Kept Girl is inspired by a sensational real-life Los Angeles cult murder spree which exploded into the public consciousness when fraud charges were filed against the cult’s leaders in 1929. The victim was the nephew of oil company president Joseph Dabney, Raymond Chandler‘s boss. In the novel, Chandler, still several years away from publishing his first short story, is one of three amateur detectives who uncover the ghastly truth about the Great Eleven cult over one frenetic week. Informed by the author’s extensive research into the literary, spiritual, criminal and architectural history of Southern California, The Kept Girl is a terrifying noir love story, set against the backdrop of a glittering pre-crash metropolis. To learn more about the book, visit the author’s blog. Sign up for the newsletter to receive occasional updates. Read a sample chapter here.

Kim Cooper is the perfect Virgil to 1929 Los Angeles, a city that was both a paradise and an inferno. Her knowledge of the city that was is unparalleled, her imagination unnerving. The real-life characters and crimes that would give birth to the pulp fiction of the 1930s and the film noir of the 1940s can all be found here. Aficionados of noir Los Angeles will read The Kept Girl with fascination and with growing horror as the terrible crime at its core is revealed.” 

John Buntin, author of L.A. NOIR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kim Cooper is the creator of 1947project, the crime-a-day time travel blog that spawned Esotouric’s popular crime bus tours, including Pasadena Confidential, the Real Black Dahlia and Weird West Adams. Her collaborative L.A. history blogs include On Bunker Hill and In SRO Land. With husband Richard Schave, Kim curates the Salons of LAVA–The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. When the third generation Angeleno isn’t combing old newspapers for forgotten scandals, she is a passionate advocate for historic preservation of signage,vernacular architecture and writer’s homes. Kim was for many years the editrix of Scram, a journal of unpopular culture. Her books include Fall in Love For Life, Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, Lost in the Grooves and an oral history of the cult band Neutral Milk Hotel. The Kept Girl is her first novel.

COVER ART: Paul Rogers.

Coffee House Confessions Reviewed at Examiner.com

Congratulations to Ellaraine Lockie, author of the Silver Birch Press poetry release COFFEE HOUSE CONFESSIONS, for her book’s review in the May 2, 2013 Examiner. We are including the stellar review in its entirety below.

A POET FINDS A MUSE
Examiner.com review
by Cheryl Wyneken

Ellaraine Lockie’s book of poetry, Coffee House Confessions (Silver Birch Press, 2013), piques my interest with its fresh ground coffee aroma that brings the promise of insights into life rising on each page. It introduces us to people of all sizes and shapes, cultures, ages, race and political or religious outlooks: a Teddy Bear man, raking pebbles in a Buddhist Zen sand garden out front, a Stockbroker in a Silicon Valley suit, an Italian coffee maker/at the Bar La Cisteria, the ghosts of Lord Byron, Hans Christian Andersen and Luis Vaz de Camoes. As the title suggests, the collection is a compilation of the insights Lockie has gained from watching people come and go in coffee shops around the world where she arrives daily with pen and pad in hand.

As a true poet she uses vibrant images: Starbucks, Santa Claus, stage four Jesus, Mountain Man, Mobile, pack of Camels, Salem cigarettes and Valium. Her delightful free style poems are also enhanced by her use of poetic compression and alliteration: bristle/brush and lettering/lizards.

Lockie opens the collection with “Java Genetics,” an analysis of the connection between storytelling around campfires of prehistory, to today’s coffee houses and poets, likening their relationship to a seed (coffee bean) that has been planted and evolved in our DNAs. She explains her use of the word confessions in “White Noise and Other Muses”: Little does she know I’m eating her alive. “The Privacy of Public” deals with how troubles in life can often be dealt with better under the restraint of strangers watching: Something horrible here that can be alluded to/…perhaps only in the privacy of public. In “The Young and The Restless,” she finds memories from her own life in one coffee house as she watches the antics of a lively dog: The woman ties her charge to the table legs/…He sniffs the air then yanks the table toward /leftovers in a garbage can.

The last entry, “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby,” brings us to a typical coffee shop occasion portrayed as a scene in Edwardian England where the poet has come to sell her chapbooks and a sale buys the day’s quota of caffeine.

I recommend this entertaining and well rendered collection of poems.

Coffee House Confessions is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon or ordered from bookstores.

Cover photo: Nick Warzin (nickwarzin.com)

New Release: Everything Is Epic, stories by Michael C. Keith

Silver Birch Press is pleased to announce the April 2013 release of EVERYTHING IS EPIC, a collection of 18 short stories by Michael C. Keith.

At Silver Birch Press, we love “eclectic,” and Keith’s stories offer a wide range of delights — spanning a broad spectrum of genres: sci-fi, fantasy, horror, humor, speculative, revisionist, and more. Keith knows how to find the arcane in the mundane — opening a window in our everyday lives to reveal the epic nature of everything.

In the collection, a wife discovers her spouse does not always cry wolf, a son finds his father’s seemingly odd behavior is anything but, a raging sea delivers a young woman’s fantasy lover, an inexplicable event disrupts life on the planet, a long-perished civil rights activist saves a young man from humiliation, and visitors from another world wreak havoc by curing all earthly ills.

“From the relentlessly restless imagination of Michael C. Keith comes his latest collection, EVERYTHING IS EPIC. With his usual outrageous characters, poignant storylines, and exceptional writing, Keith has once again earned his place as one of our very favorite writers.” 

Robin Statton, BOSTON LITERARY MAGAZINE

Find EVERYTHING IS EPIC, a 170-page collection of stories by Michael C. Keith at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael C. Keith is the author of over twenty books on electronic media, among them Talking Radio, Voices in the Purple Haze, Radio Cultures, Signals in the Air, and the classic textbook The Radio Station. The recipient of numerous awards in his academic field, he is also the author of dozens of journal articles and short stories and has served in a variety of editorial positions. In addition, he is the author of an acclaimed memoir (The Next Better Place, published by Algonquin Books), a young adult novel (Life is Falling Sideways), and four story anthologies––Of Night and Light, And Through the Trembling Air, Sad Boy, and Hoag’s Object. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Pen/O.Henry Award and was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award for short fiction anthology. He lives near Boston.

Now Available: Kindle Version of Debt, a Novel by Rachel Carey

Last week, Silver Birch Press released DEBT by Rachel Carey — one of the best novels we’ve read in many years. Read our original post here. 

We’re happy to report that a Kindle version of the book is now available at this link. The Amazon.com page also includes the “look inside” feature where you can enjoy a passage from this debut novel by Rachel Carey.

A review on the Amazon.com site captures much of what I love about this novel — characterizing the author as a 21st Century Jane Austen (here, here!) — so I’m including it below.

5.0 out of 5 stars Money is the root of all humor February 8, 2013

By katherine tomlinson

In Rachel Carey’s debut novel, Debt, money (or lack thereof) and class hold roughly the same importance they do in a 19th century novel of manners. She has taken the conventions of chic lit (all the fancy restaurants and mindless consumption you see in books like Bergdorf Blondes) and mixed them with a subtly snarky style that evokes a 21st century Jane Austen.

She is keenly observant, pricking her characters’ pretensions with subtle gibes that are so sharp you almost don’t notice them until they draw blood.

The characters–and there are a lot of them–are all fully realized. There’s the entitled Nadya–it’s her world, you just live in it–and the totally adorable Clyde. Our narrator is would-be novelist Lillian whose work in progress is so downbeat it even depresses her and who is beginning to regret the way her student debt is piling up without her having much to show for it. That would depress anyone.

But this is a comedy, a multi-layered farce that treats money the way Sex and the City treated sex. Carey has a good time tweaking pop culture–there’s a hilarious running gag involving a blog called “shopacovery”–and everything about Lillian’s pretentious writing teachers will resonate with anyone who’s ever taken a writing class.

This book is subversive and sly and extremely entertaining. If you loved books like Confessions of a Shopaholic and The Devil Wears Prada, you will love Debt.

Feb. 2013 Release: Debt, a novel by Rachel Carey

Silver Birch Press is pleased to announce the February 2013 release of DEBT, a debut novel by Rachel Carey. This book has everything we love in a great read — compelling premise, well-drawn characters, humor, wit, and outstanding writing. It’s a literary page turner (yes, there is such a thing!) that will make you eager for this gifted author’s next book.

Set in New York City, Debt — a satirical look at the 2008 financial meltdown — follows a range of characters who owe something to someone in a variety of ways. From main character Lillian Fitzgerald — a recent grad with an Master’s in Creative Writing in one hand and $100,000 bill for her student loans in the other — to Henry Bolt, the mysterious force who owns the bank that financed Lillian’s student loans, and an assortment of other people up and down the debt chain (bill collectors, stock market mavens, the wealthy, the foreclosed, the bankrupt, the desperate, the spoiled, the gamblers, the winners, and the losers), Debt covers a wide universe without leaving the five boroughs.

I see great things ahead for author Rachel Carey and feel honored that Silver Birch Press has published this gifted writer’s first novel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rachel Carey is a writer and filmmaker. She received an MFA in Film Directing from NYU, an M.Ed. from Harvard, and a BA in English from Yale. She currently lives with her family in New Jersey and teaches college film classes. Debt is her first novel.

Find Debt, a novel by Rachel Carey at Amazon.com.

Cover photo by Jeff McCrum

Feb. 2013 Release: Coffee House Confessions by Ellaraine Lockie

Silver Birch Press is pleased to announce the February 2013 publication of the poetry chapbook COFFEE HOUSE CONFESSIONS by Ellaraine Lockie — a collection of poems written in and about coffee houses throughout the world.

“I know no one else who manages to combine quantity of poems with quality the way Ellaraine Lockie does. She is a font of creative ideas and brings the ultimate in craft and experience to the realizing of those products of inspiration, observation, and research. I admire her work immensely.” GERALD LOCKLIN, Professor Emiritus of English at California State University, Long Beach

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded poet, nonfiction book author, and essayist. Coffee House Confessions is her tenth poetry chapbook. Her recent books have received the Best Individual Collection Award from Purple Patch magazine in England, the San Gabriel Poetry Festival Chapbook Prize, and The Aurorean‘s Chapbook Pick. She teaches poetry workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh. Ellaraine writes every morning in a coffee shop no matter where she is in the world.

Find Coffee House Confessions by Ellaraine Lockie at Amazon.com.

Cover photo by Nick Warzin. Find him at nickwarzin.com.