Seven Stories above LA

Seven Stories above LA

Author: John Benjamin Franklin III

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2014-05

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 1491730188

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Cain, a quixotic anti-hero, navigates the foreign and hostile world of construction as he builds the Twin Towers prison in LA. The novel follows Cain through the seven stories, nine counting the foundation and roof, of this brooding building culminating with the violent LA riots. Whop, Cain's personal Virgil, guides Cain through the hell of work-site accidents, deaths, graft, greed, incompetence, and disillusionment. Unlike in Dante's Inferno, Whop does not guide Cain to redemption. Instead, Cain's foreman, Nickels, applies pressure to Cain's mental state as the steel assaults his body and soul. While Cain sinks deeper into the construction site his hold on reality blurs by the surreal bombardment to his senses. He absorbs the maddening orchestra of noises and sights; the Native American iron worker, Coyote Eye, killing himself for his beloved; the rodbuster who robbed banks to escape the job; the sex addiction of Big Daddy and his crew of looneys; and the merciless steel trying to murder Cain one piercing shard at a time. The rest of the crew: Iron Horse, Tiny, Willie the Elevator Operator, Righteous Eddy Edmond, and the Funky Red Headed Dread Lock Dude notice Cain's odd behavior, but they do not recognize his mental instability. As the Rodney King riot takes to the streets nine months later, LA burns in the night sky while Cain, Nickels and the cold steel collide.


Everything Inside

Everything Inside

Author: Edwidge Danticat

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2019-08-27

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0525521283

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NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • "Unforgettable tales of families and lovers—from Haiti to Miami, Brooklyn, and beyond—often struggling with grief, loss, and missed connections.” —Vanity Fair • A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick! A romance unexpectedly sparks between two wounded friends. A marriage ends for what seem like noble reasons, but with irreparable consequences. A young woman holds on to an impossible dream even as she fights for her survival. Two lovers reunite after unimaginable tragedy, both for their country and in their lives. A baby’s christening brings three generations of a family to a precarious dance between old and new. A man falls to his death in slow motion, reliving the defining moments of the life he is about to lose. Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean and beyond, here are eight emotionally absorbing stories, rich with hard-won wisdom and humanity. At once wide in scope and intimate, Everything Inside explores with quiet power and elegance the forces that pull us together or drive us apart, sometimes in the same searing instant.


Bellwether Messages

Bellwether Messages

Author: Daniel S. Janik

Publisher: Savant Books & Publications

Published: 2013-05-12

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 0988664046

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Thirty-two selected poems by fourteen outstanding poets including Tender Bastard, Shawn P. Canon, Natascha Hoover, IKO, Daniel S. Janik, Vivekanand Jha, Thomas Koron, Doc Krinberg, Cathal Patrick Little, Peter Mallett, Emma Myles, Ken Rasti, Uhene' and Ashley Vaughan.


T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.

T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.

Author: Sanyika Shakur

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2009-08-18

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1555848753

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A street lit novel that’s “a visceral and strikingly real portrayal of gang life in Los Angeles” from the author of the bestselling memoir Monster (Publishers Weekly). T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. is a vicious, heart-wrenching and true-to-life novel about an LA gang member that masterfully captures the violence and depravity of gang life. Shakur’s protagonist is Lapeace, the leader of the Eight Tray Crips gang in South Central Los Angeles. In a deadly gunfight with Anyhow, a Blood and Lapeace’s rival since childhood, eight innocent civilians are killed. Anyhow is captured. Lapeace becomes a fugitive and he must hide out in the home of his girlfriend, Tashima, a hip-hop mogul as a pair of crooked LA detectives, John Sweeney and Jesse Mendoza, attempt to track him down. This novel was written from the confines of Shakur’s jail cell, and the authenticity of its street scenes—the relentlessness of violence, the do-or-die attitude of each side of the gang war, the sheer joy in the killing—is a testament to the hell that has been a majority of Shakur’s life. With T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E., Shakur delivers a powerful and gripping story about the terror of gang life and one man’s attempt to free himself. “Shakur is better than anyone else in the street lit game at making his characters feel like real people . . . This gang life novel is the real deal.”—Publishers Weekly “This fascinating novel reflects the raw violence and moral ambiguities of street gangs and the cops who police them.”—Booklist “T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. deftly weaves together the extensive and complex histories of its characters with their present struggles.”—Chicago Defender


The Absolute

The Absolute

Author: Daniel Guebel

Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Published: 2022-05-17

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1644211610

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Winner.... Premio Municipal de la Novela 2021 Premio Nacional de Literatura Argentina 2018 Premio Literario de la Academia Argentina de Letras 2017 Best Novel Award by La Nación 2016 A provocative multigenerational exploration of creative genius, madness, and family relationships. With the ambition and density of style of Vladimir Nabokov or Olga Tokarczuk, this is a story both profound and handled with a light touch. The Absolute is a sprawling historical novel about the Deliuskin-Scriabin family, made up of six generations of geniuses and madmen. Beginning in the mid-18th century in Russia, across Europe and ending in late 20th-century Argentina, the characters’ lives play out in different branches of art, politics and science in such radical ways that they transform the world and its reality. The narrator’s ancestor, Frantisek Deliuskin, invents a new form of music in the 18th century; his son, Andrei Deliuskin, makes some marginal annotations to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola that are later interpreted by Lenin as an instruction manual to carry out the Russian Revolution of 1917; Esau Deliuskin, following the course of his father, creates a socialist utopian society; and down through the generations to the narrator, whose creation takes him back in time and space to the moment of the Big Bang. The Absolute is a monumental work about the creation of art and about family, about spiritual traditions and about throwing oneself into the world not to capture life but to create it, in and through words. “This is a masterpiece at a time when masterpieces seem impossible and at the same time challenges the very idea of a masterpiece. … It’s the novel one should read if they want to know what an artist is.” —La Nación