January 23, 2013 The Oxford American’s new editor-in-chief, Roger D. Hodge, talks with Chapter 16 about his view of editing as a “conversational” process. The point of the conversation, he says, is to serve the stories themselves: “When everything comes together in just the right way, so that the stories are winking and glancing across the issue at one another, something magical happens. You have a self-contained whole, a world within the world.”
January 22, 2013 “We get what we’re given. Nothing more, nothing less,” writes Marjorie Celona in her debut novel, Y. This terse, stoic observation captures Celona’s ethos as a storyteller. Y limns the lives of Shannon, an infant abandoned on the steps of the YMCA, and Yula, the abused and traumatized teenage mother who leaves her there. Moving back and forth in time, the novel follows the events leading up to the birth and Shannon’s frequently harrowing journey through the foster-care system. Through it all, Shannon waits for the chance to find her birth parents and ask the titular question, “Why?” Celona will discuss and sign copies of Y at Parnassus Books on January 24 at 6:30 p.m.
January 10, 2013 In Alana White’s debut novel, The Sign of the Weeping Virgin, Guid’Antonio Vespucci and his nephew Amerigo return from a two-year diplomatic mission to Paris only to find their native Florence in disarray. A young woman has been kidnapped, supposedly by the infidel Turks, and a painting of the Virgin Mary is weeping in the Vespucci home church. In fifteenth-century Italy, these events are equally disturbing. Many in Florence believe the Virgin is weeping over Lorenzo Medici’s long argument with Pope Sixtus IV. Rebellion and mutiny are in the air.
Starner Jones
Texas Review Press
160 pages
$22.95
“Starner Jones’ impressive first novel, Purple Church, is a sharply written narrative of sin and redemption that carries the reader quickly and surely through a fast-paced plot with many unexpected turns and reversals. The surprise ending, which involves the antagonist and protagonist, who have been changed forever in the course of the action, reminds one of O. Henry.”
—George Core, editor, Sewanee Review
Abbott A. Brayton
Celtic Cat Publishing
282 pages
$18
“This is a very entertaining book about a part of WWII that is seldom reported and a beautiful area of the British Isles that is sadly neglected as a setting for stories. Brayton has brought them together in a confident, competent, and most entertaining manner.”
—John C. Rains, Major, USAF retired
Tracy Barrett
Graphia
320 pages
$8.99
“This retelling of the myth of the Minotaur is deft, dark, and enthralling.”
—School Library Journal
