In Jonah Raskin’s Dark Land, Dark Mirror, we meet a group of characters right out of a Raymond Chandler novel or a Quentin Tarantino movie. The protagonist, Tioga Vignetta, is a female private eye. Hunker down with a glass of wine and start reading this page-turner.”

Dark Land, Dark Mirror: Tioga Vignetta Noir (Volume 1)

Raskin, Jonah

Literature & Fiction

McCaa Books

Heed the Apocalypse pushes the boundaries of reality to tell a gripping story of murder, committed and thwarted, as it marches with the 1963 protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, toward a startling conclusion. You will not put Heed the Apocalypse down. When you finish you will be shaken. You will reflect on the courage and faith of the men, women, and children who risked everything for justice, and the refusal of those in power to surrender their privileges. And you will not forget Joe and Sam, the private detectives who play key roles in this fictional and gripping version of the major events in Birmingham.

Heed the Apocalypse: A Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker Detective Novel

Taylor Jr., Waights

United States

Three eighteen-year-old southerners start the day of March 25, 1931, not knowing that the events soon to occur in Scottsboro, Alabama will lead them and the South on an inexorable journey of change: Clarence Norris, black, is boarding a freight train as a hobo in Chattanooga; Waights Taylor, white, is a student at the University of Alabama; Rosa McCauley Parks, black, is a resident of Pine Level, Alabama. The three become involved in the Scottsboro events in different ways with profound implications to the region and their lives. Three cities—Scottsboro, Montgomery, and Birmingham—are the critical points for the events about to unfold: Clarence Norris becomes one of the Scottsboro Boys; Waights Taylor is from an upper middle class Birmingham family; Rosa Parks will spark the start of the civil rights movement in Montgomery. Each city bears the scars of its segregated past leading to the second emancipation of African Americans from the yokes of slavery and segregation. Our Southern Home—Scottsboro to Montgomery to Birmingham: The Transformation of the South in the Twentieth Century is a narrative history and is based on four broad themes: (1) The inevitability of change for better or worse; (2) The Scottsboro period in the 1930s represents the nadir in Alabama's segregated history; (3) The importance the accident of birth places on most individuals, and the resulting extreme disparities between being born white or black in the South; (4) Southerners, black and white alike, are inexplicably connected, both figuratively and literally, in ways the region has yet to fully recognize and accept. The life stories of Clarence Norris, Waights Taylor, and Rosa Parks are the book's consistent thread through the twentieth century, the tragedy of the Scottsboro Boys and their trials, and other important civil rights moments in Montgomery, Selma, and Birmingham.

Our Southern Home: Scottsboro to Montgomery to Birmingham--The Transformation of the South in the Twentieth Century

Biographies & Memoirs

Taylor Jr. Jr, Waights

Community & Culture

The Healdsburg Literary Guild is delighted to publish this new book, Healdsburg Alive!—Eight Sonoma County Writers Pay Homage to a Great Northern California Town. It follows a number of previous Guild publications, including Present at the Creation and three books entitled A Day in the Life of Healdsburg, in addition to several poetry chapbooks. This new book provided writers in the Healdsburg area with a four-session workshop in which to hone their writing skills along with an opportunity to publish their pieces. Armando Garcia-Dávila, Healdsburg’s 2002–2003 Literary Laureate, led the workshop. The price of admission included marvelous meals prepared by Armando. The workshops met four times in 2010—once in each season. Armando opened sessions with a discussion of writing prompts, techniques, seeds, and subjects the participants might consider. Writers were then on their own for about three hours to wander Healdsburg and surrounding areas in Sonoma County, looking for inspiration for a story or a poem. Although the stated premise of the workshop was to write a piece that matched each season, writers followed whatever muse grabbed them and led their pens in preparation of a first draft. The group then reconvened and writers read their drafts. A lively discussion followed, offering each writer comments, ideas, and encouragement. Armando then selected and edited pieces for the book. And voila, we have Healdsburg Alive! We hope you enjoy it.

Healdsburg Alive!: Eight Sonoma County Writers Pay Homage to a Great Northern California

Beckman, David

Garcia-Dávila, Armando

Jeremiah, Simon

Mechling, David

Mechling, Mona

Peasley, Chris

van Veen, Margo

Literary

A big, bold book about the life and times of James McGrath, an extraordinary American Teacher, Mentor, Cultural Ambassador, and Pedagogical Pilgrim. McGrath began to teach in 1952; he is still teaching at age 84. He has taught in the United States, Europe, and Asia and he has taught sculpture, painting, weaving, the history of the arts, and he has also been an artist for his entire adult life. His students include John Haugse, Christine Taylor Patten, William Wiley, Robert Hudson, William Allan, Kevin Red Star, and Jeanette Katoney. As a teacher he has worked closely with Irene Oliver-Lewis, Betty Taira, and Tom and Joan Rudholm and many more. From 1962 until 1973 he was a teacher and an administrator at the Institute for American Indian Arts and influenced a generation of Native American artists. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he still teaches and makes art.

James McGrath -- In a Class By Himself

RASKIN, JONAH with a Preface By Bill Ayers

1947 Birmingham, Alabama, cloaks many mysteries under its segregated shroud: glittering social soirées, secret sexual parties, a Machiavellian civic leader, and multiple murders of black prostitutes in dark alleys. Racist police chief, Big Bob Watson, reluctantly assigns Homicide Detective Joe McGrath to the case. The black community stonewalls the investigation. Joe teams up with Sam Rucker, the city’s only black private eye. Working across the racial boundaries of the day, they take us step-by-step to the city’s heart of darkness in search of an elusive vicious killer.

Kiss of Salvation (Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker Detective Novels)

Sharon and David Beckman yearned to know Paris close up and at a lingering pace. This trip they decided not to be tourists. They’d go local. Writing vignettes was an afterthought. One day they just started writing. This book contains eleven vignettes, plus a poem. Their sojourn in Paris deepened their relationship with each other and enhanced their love affair with the city. To embrace the timeworn label City of Light is to revel in its profound beauty, but doesn’t capture the hurly-burly, shoulder bumping, and traffic. Fortunately, their years in New York had conditioned them for this. Evenings sometimes brought the most memorable moments, when, after a salad, paté, baguette and glass of wine, they ventured out yet again, this time down rue Sainte-Geneviève and across the Place Maubert for an aesthetic, even spiritual, nightcap: moonlight touching Notre Dame’s spire and sending the Seine sparkling, as if for the first time, westward under its bridges.They hope they’ve captured impressions and sentiments worthy of Paris in these vignettes.

to walk in Paris: Vignettes from two months in the City of Light

Beckman, Sharon

Essays & Correspondence

In the Mouth of the Wolf has a layered set of characters, each with his or her own personal questions, who confront their past as it bears on their present behavior if they are to survive. Three men in the novel have varying degrees of war trauma. Their wives display different ways of absorbing the war experience upon the men’s arrival home. The book principally encompasses the impact on marital relationships and other human connections when soldiers return from war. The story has its roots in the Vietnam War, but unlike the old stories that have all ready been told about Vietnam, this tale embraces homecoming for the main character, Memo Muir. A few scenes in Vietnam demonstrate the brutality that the war has on Memo’s mind. Two of Memo’s wartime buddies deal with their homecoming in different ways. Jack, a trauma surgeon in the war, was severely affected by his experience, though shows a significant amount of resilience. However, Chet completely shuts down and expresses his concerns and emotions by self-medicating with sundry drugs; thus, further slanting his perceptions that have been misshapen by his war experience, leading to dire consequences. In the Mouth of the Wolf comes from a Spanish saying, which means, “you don’t have a chance,” an apt metaphor for the characters’ struggles. Memo and his wife separate because of Memo’s war trauma, despite the deep love that imbues their souls. By the end of the book there are transformative experiences that bring about a surprise rapprochement between them.

In the Mouth of the Wolf

McCausland, Bill

Genre Fiction

"The body was bruised in several places. Dry blood and saliva were evident over parts of his face and near the mouth. Joe knelt down and read the piece of paper: mcgrath this here you last warnin. you and that black basterd rucker git outta town or you gonna be next." In Touch of Redemption, the second book in the Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker Detective Novels, the two men embark on a difficult journey—an attempt to find the murderers of Joe’s father twenty-five years ago. It is 1948 in segregated Alabama, and Joe, a white man, and Sam, a black man, face numerous obstacles, the least of which is the racism and bigotry of the time, while struggling with the challenges of solving a murder case a quarter century old. The men face corrupt judges and law enforcement officials, and a secret fraternity of men determined to maintain the Southern way of life and ‘the operation,’ their illegal liquor business. All this occurs against a backdrop of a seemingly bucolic small Southern town, Montevallo, home to a college for women.

Touch of Redemption: A Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker Detective Novel

Collection of poetry based on the life and mental meanderings of a mid-life gay poet with a minister for a mother, an ex-FBI agent for a grandfather, and a penchant for irony.

The Gift of Bad Timing

Sussman, KP

Poetry

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