Beowulf for Cretins: A Love Story was awarded the 2019 Lambda Literary Award in the Lesbian Romance category. English professor and aspiring novelist, Grace Warner spends her days teaching four sections of "Beowulf for Cretins" to bored and disinterested students at one of New England's “hidden ivy” colleges. Not long after she is dumped by her longtime girlfriend, Grace meets the engaging and mysterious Abbie on a cross-country flight. Sparks fly on and off the plane as the two strangers give in to one night of reckless passion with no strings attached, and no contact information exchanged. Back home at St. Albans, the college rocks Grace's world when it announces the appointment of a new president, the first woman in its 165-year history. Cue Abbie—and cue Grace's collision course with a neurotic dog named Grendel, a fractious rival for tenure, and a woman called Ochre, in what very well might be Grace's last real shot at happiness. This full-length novel reimagines and expands on the short story, “Falling From Grace,” which was originally published in the award-winning story collection, Sidecar by Ann McMan.
A fast, funny, and wholly satisfying compilation of short stories filled with the same rich detail, witty humor, jagged verbal jousting, and joyous intellectual tête-à-tête that are Ann McMan's calling cards. This award winning collection features the novella, "Bottle Rocket", along with the short stories, "V1: A Valentine's Day Odyssey", "Falling From Grace", and "Nevermore!"
Two-time Lambda Literary Award-winning author Ann McMan takes readers inside the inner workings of the funeral home business as only she can in this remarkable and wholly unforgettable dark romantic comedy that proves life is for the living. Everything about Lilah Stohler is dark: her clothes, mood, and outlook on life and death. That last part is important because Lilah’s father has just retired and left her in charge of the family funeral home. But Abel Stohler knows his daughter’s comfort level rests “downstairs,” so he hires one Sparkle Lee Sink, to help Lilah manage the living part of the business of death. Sparkle is everything that Lilah isn’t—an empathetic marketing whiz who is a true people person. Lilah isn’t happy about this new arrangement. Still, when business starts booming because of Sparkle’s bright personality, delicious baked goods, and knack for funereal commerce, Lilah thinks things might work out. But joy is fleeting in the funeral home business, and Lilah’s world is turned upside down when an unwitting Instagram post featuring one of her moods goes viral—and now, sightings of “The Black Bird of Chernobyl” have become an obsession across the Instaverse. Lilah knows that Sparkle needs to go, but before she can give her the send-off she deserves, Lilah must first find a way to deal with the inconvenient attraction she’s developed for the nemesis whose unconventional methods are single-handedly transforming the death trade—and quite possibly the Black Bird, herself.
Independent Publishers Awards (IPPY) Bronze Medalist in Mid-Atlantic Best Regional Fiction Covenant continues the beloved saga of the residents of Jericho, a sleepy town in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where life and love have as many twists and turns as a winding mountain road. Six weeks have passed since the fateful unfolding of events at the town's Fourth of July celebration. Questions swirl about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the town nemesis, Gerald Watson. Was it an accident, or was Watson murdered? As the scorching summer gives way to an early fall, suspects in the potential homicide abound, and everyone seems to be keeping secrets. Throughout it all, bonds of love and fealty are stretched and tested as the endearing and quirky residents of this once-idyllic community weigh the covenants they keep against the secrets that threaten to tear them apart. Join Syd, Maddie, David, Michael, Henry, Celine, and the irrepressible Roma Jean Freemantle as they band together to navigate the minefields of their ever-changing world in this newest Jericho novel.
Galileo was awarded the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in the Lesbian Mystery category. Tim Donovan is a Catholic priest with a guilty conscience—though not in the way you’d guess. And Katherine Donne is a Parisian socialite who long ago kicked her self-respect to the curb—for good and for ill. And much closer, we have a group of men whose fortunes, graying temples and positions in life are distinguished and enviable. But their morals? Anything but. And that’s where Evan Reed comes in. Evan (short for Evangeline) is a highly principled political operative with an imperfect past, tasked with uncovering compromising material on a rotten judge up for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court before he can be rushed through confirmation. Evan knows it won't be simple to find damaging information against the judge because he's been vetted many times before. When Evan pulls the string after an interview with a cryptic madman, she finds herself struggling to solve a puzzle that gets more complex by the hour. And where crime, money, conscience, and greed come together, danger is sure to lurk. In this sequel to Dust, Ann McMan takes the reader on an intense journey into a world that lies just beneath the thin veneer of civilization—a world teeming with power struggles and warped desires, and a subculture of promises made, kept, and broken. As Evan pushes further into peril, her personal life sparks into flame with the increasing presence of the ravishing Julia Donne, a book publisher with a progressive bent and troubling questions about her late father. McMan’s specialty of intertwining a hot romance into heart-pounding suspense just keeps getting better and better.
Welcome to the National Recovery Bureau, where your assets are as sacred as God’s holy word. Vera “Nick” Nicholson is an overtaxed and underpaid attorney wasting away on the bottom rung of the gilded ladder at Turner, Witherspoon, Anders, and Tyler in Winston-Salem, NC. When a high-priced luxury car belonging to one of the firm’s top clients goes missing, Nick gets saddled with the unenviable job of recovering the vehicle―and its mysterious contents―without involving the cops. Enter Fast Eddie and his quirky band of misfits at The National Recovery Bureau, a repo agency located in a sleepy town called K-Vegas. When Nick is unceremoniously furloughed from TWAT, she throws caution to the wind and signs on to become the newest agent of the NRB, teaming up with moonlighting third-grade schoolteacher, Frances “Frankie” Stohler. Frankie’s mortician father and beautician mother are stalwarts of the Winston-Salem community―so it’s no surprise that everyone across three counties has some connection to her family. What is surprising, however, is the Slim Jim Frankie carries in her purse and her preternatural talent for jacking cars. Nick and Frankie’s stumbling entrée into the surreal world of asset recovery takes them on a hilarious, fast-paced, and mind-bending journey across the back roads and byways of the Tar Heel state, setting into motion a chain of misadventures that lead them both toward financial independence, cataclysmic legal jeopardy, and the discovery that true love can sometimes lurk in the most unlikely places. "Repo romance might not be a genre, but two-time Lambda Literary Award-winner McMan makes a case that it should be with this delicious and hilarious fever-dream of a novel." —Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
Two-time Lambda Literary Award-winning author Ann McMan introduces readers to a spinster postal investigator for the Winston-Salem Dead Letter Office who finds herself entangled in the mystery of solving who is sending undeliverable love letters to the town’s 18th-century hortus medicus. The year is 1960, and Gunsmoke is the most popular show on TV. Elvis Presley tops the Billboard charts, and a charismatic young senator named John F. Kennedy is running for president. And, in North Carolina, four young Black men sit down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and demand service. Enter Esther Jane (EJ) Cloud, a forty-something spinster who manages the Dead Letter Office at the Winston-Salem post office. EJ leads a quiet life in her Old Salem ancestral home and spends her free time volunteering in the town’s 18th-century medicinal garden. One sunny Spring morning, EJ’s world is turned upside down when she is handed a stack of handwritten letters that have all been addressed to a nonexistent person at the garden. This simple act sets in motion a chain of events that will lead EJ on a life-altering quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious letter writer—and into a surprising, head-on confrontation with the harsh realities of the racial injustice that is as deeply rooted in the life of her community as the ancient herbs cultivated in the Moravian garden. When EJ is forced to read the letters for clues about the anonymous sender, she discovers lyrical tales of a forbidden passion that threatens to unravel the simple contours of her unexamined life. EJ’s official quest soon morphs into a journey of self-discovery. Her surprising accomplice on this quest becomes a savvy, street-smart ten-year-old wielding an eye patch and a limitless supply of aphorisms. Together, the unlikely duo makes pilgrimages to a tiny town called Paradise to try and crack the case—while ultimately learning better ways to navigate the changing world around them. Short-listed for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Mystery. Included in Shelf Unbound's 100 Top Notable Indie Titles of 2022. Included in Autostraddle's list of 92 of the Best Queer Books of 2022. Included in Out in Print's Favorite Books of 2022.
Salem West and Christel Cogneau have assembled a powerhouse lineup of Bywater Books and Amble Press authors to explore, subvert, and reinvigorate the bountiful feast of All Hallows phantasmagoria in this stunning collection. To the living, “soul food” has a specific meaning, history, and flavor. But what does “soul food” mean to the demon, ghost, fiend, witch, spirit, or vampire? How does their ingenuity and wit rise and fall in the taking, baking, erasing, embracing, and defacing of sustenance? West and Cogneau have challenged their authors to explore these and other questions in surprising and fascinating ways. Sometimes sweet and other times terrifying, sometimes warm or otherwise demented, these stories set the table for an otherworldly feast of delight and intrigue. Let the banquet begin . . . Soul Food Stories is packed with literary confections by award-winning authors, Anna Burke, Jenn Alexander, Jacob Budenz, Virginia Black, Cathy Pegau, and Ann McMan. Featured stories include: “The Five Year Revenge Agency” by Anna Burke “Tilly’s Tarts” by Jenn Alexander “Of the Air and Land” by Jacob Budenz “Ravenous” by Virginia Black “In Speary Wood” by Cathy Pegau “Perhaps You Missed My Signs” by Anna Burke “Ghost Writer” by Ann McMan
CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN POETRY BOOKS OF 2022 LONGLISTED FOR THE RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD hwæt, another Beowulf translation? Not exactly... Welcome to Denmark’s Heorot Hall, where King Hrothgar invites to his banquet table everyone but Grendel, Saxon’s cradle-made monster. Dissing this ur-outsider initiates a predictable and monstrous backlash, a Mediæval fracas that only the eponymous Beowulf can quash. Sailing across the whaleroads, he arrives to “quell and queltch and quatch the Grendel beast.” Beowulf, that still-recognizable hero, embodies a “blank” function, a motive-driven yet motiveless megastar. He’s the young, fit, male, self-sacrificing protagonist-interloper who will fight any monster to protect his people. Or to defend strangers. Or to gain a reputation. Or because he just really wants to... In her rendering of Beowulf, Nicole Markotić offers a rollicking cover song of fantastical text. These pages will surprise readers as they introduce new ways to embrace, challenge, or click with Anglo-Saxon heroics. Writing original poems, Markotić de-stories the story of one man, who mostly does not play well with others, who fights monsters (and defeats their mothers, too), and who practically invents the poetic tradition of entitled bravery Upending the tale with her fresh and enchanting style, Markotić gives a nod to previous translations, winks at canonical critics, bares historical biases, all while gifting transmogrifying pages that will whet your whimsy! "Nicole Markotić takes the original English-language epic and reprocesses it. That is, she rereads, rewrites, reimagines, rethinks, and retells it, all at the same time. The result is the story re-understood. The phrasing and incantation is Markotić’s own (and our era’s own), deployed with deliciously textured and diverse registers of language. Blake saw infinity in the palm of his hand. Markotić puts a millennium in yours." —Wayde Compton, author of The Outer Harbour "Beowulf, with its unfathomable monsters and monster-slaying hero, its bro world of mead, boasting, weapons, and booty, remains a stubbornly relevant template for much of our contemporary scene. Nicole Markotić’s After Beowulf handles all this with dazzling sprezzatura. It is a pleasure to follow the narrating, condensing, commenting voice as it sashays through a range of verbal registers from high Olsonic to comic book pratfall, snark to scholarship. After Beowulf provides an up-to-date reading of Beowulf through the eyes of a feminist poet. And it continually suggests what things might be like after Beowulf." —Bob Perelman, author of Jack and Jill in Troy "The collision of ancient and colloquial language creates bursts of humour as my dude Beowulf makes his way into the banquet hall and beyond. Linger here to experience the aesthetics of poetry in action: vibrant and intensely moving, we feel the wrenching pain of Grendel’s mother. Markotić’s language is thick with meaning and light with humour: a creation of the most projective of verses." —Jacqueline Turner, author of Flourish
Jill Fryman (Friday to her friends) is a Line Supervisor at a truck manufacturing plant in a small southern Indiana town—and life on the assembly line is almost as predictable as her love life. When it comes to matters of the heart, Friday always seems to be making the wrong choices. Things go from bad to worse when El, a sultry labor organizer from the UAW, sweeps into town to unionize the plant right after it’s been bought out by a Japanese firm. Sparks fly on and off the line as Jill and El fight their growing attraction for each other against a backdrop of monster trucks, fried catfish dinners, Pork Day USA, and a bar called Hoosier Daddy.
