Billy Boy

Literature & Fiction

Hubschman, Thomas J.

Contemporary

Savvy Press

Look at Me Now

Computers & Technology

Programming Languages

The Jew's Wife & Other Stories

Short Stories & Anthologies

In this historical novel set in the early 1920s, the dream of a young Brooklyn Jewish woman named Ree is to live with the Indians of the Southwest, far from the sweatshop where she works. To reach that goal, she studies anthropology at Columbia University, where the professor she idolizes, Ruth Benedict, is having an affair with her fellow student, Margaret Mead. When her professors think Ree is a loose cannon and won’t send her to the Southwest for her field work, she defiantly goes to New Mexico on her own. But before she reaches Navajoland, Ree works at a lesbian dude ranch that really existed; works for Boston heiress Mary Cabot Wheelwright to study Navajo culture from Hosteen Klah, a transgender medicine man; finds romance on a starlit mesa top with an elusive Navajo youth; travels in a sheepherder’s cozy wagon; and tries to find her place at a trading post in a remote Navajo community. She’s Gone Santa Fe tells a unique story based on real people and places of New Mexico, lesbian, and anthropology history.

She's Gone Santa Fe

Tilchen, Maida

I’ve always thought that Matlacha (say Mat-la-SHAY), the funky Pine Island Florida fishing village cum art colony would be a perfect setting for a mystery, when along comes Jessie Murphy, the perfect gal to sort out the riff from the raff of it all. You’ve got to love this lady, a Goodwill fashion queen, who comes across as a ditzy airhead whose best buddy is a Gargoyle named Gar. Jessie’s taken time off from her job, thrilled to be rekindling the flame of romance with her treasure-hunting guy, Will Rolins, who adores her. Will has just made a wonderful archeological discovery, aka buried treasure. He’s offered to support Jessie in her painting career if only she’ll rejoin him in the sandy, salt-water and flip-flop lifestyle she adores. As she arrives in Matlacha, Jessie, to her horror, is met instead with the crime scene tape in place, bloodstains on the floor and pinholes where Will’s treasure maps should have been. The sheriff insists that Will’s death was a suicide but he refuses to release the police report and Jessie is bewildered. It is true that Will was often depressed and sometimes controlling. But why kill himself when he’s fulfilled his life’s dream? If he meant to kill himself why would he ask Jessie to join him? The facts don’t sit straight with Jessie. She is determined to sort out the case. Jessie’s a red-headed Irish Bostonian, whose art career has gone on the back burner as she struggles to earn a living. Meanwhile, certain investigative skills Jessie has acquired--a stint in a private investigator’s office, classes in theater and karate--all come into play as she trails suspects and sometimes overplays her hand, arousing the suspicions of whoever it is who makes crank calls to her in the middle of the night. Do not be fooled, there’s way more to Jessie than meets the eye, and do not, repeat, do not miss this true beach read with a pelican’s eye view of Florida’s magnificent barrier island landscapes. Sara Williams – author of Millie McCall’s Full Moon Poker Night

Through Pelican Eyes (Jessie Murphy Mystery Series)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

daniels, jd

Mystery

Who wouldn't want to go to a 300-year-old school of magic, wave a wand, and learn to fly? But this girl falls off her broom, gets her spells wrong, and isn't sure her cat really is a familiar. All because her ears don't work as well as everyone else's. But once Caitlin Leo finds her real community, everything changes.

A Handful of Spells: a novel

Children's Books

Shaw, Kimberley A.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Hold onto your kayak paddles as a one-sided friendship, conflicts of the heart, and madness bring Thrift Store Fashion Queen Jessie Murphy closer to her past than she ever wanted to be. When a Punta Gorda church youth leader is shot in a Matlacha bait shop, Jessie uses her artistic eye and trademark deductive reasoning to solve another crime in this edgy cozy mystery pulsating with turmoil and bedlam.

Mayhem in Matlacha: The Third Jessie Murphy Mystery (The Jessie Murphy Mystery Series)

Simon Hill was a slick entrepreneur and a sleazy ladies` man. Until someone killed him. Fearing her cousin will be arrested for the murder, an island restaurant owner hires the Thrift Store Fashion Queen, artist and part-time P.I. Jessie Murphy and her red Stetson wearing friend, Zen, to catch the true killer. A pathway eerily bubbling with deception and lies takes these two zany sleuths from the balmy mangrove islands of Matlacha, Fl to the snowy sidewalks of Boston, MA, and back again. This page-turning mystery written with a wink to Agatha Christie ends with a chilling twist-that even with her trademark deductive reasoning skills-Jessie never suspects.

A Gift of Oleander (A Jessie Murphy Mystery)

jd, daniels

If you attended the opera in the 18th century, you could buy a program booklet with side-by-side translations of the text and a list of the participants. Think of “The Murder of Figaro” as one such  souvenir booklet. Just add music—and imagination:It's 1786, and “The Marriage of Figaro,” a new comic opera by Amadé Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, has just begun its first onstage rehearsal when a corpse is discovered in the wings: it’s the universally-loathed Imperial Censor. Despite a verdict of suicide, Da Ponte is arrested, and singers accuse each other of murder. In a desperate scramble to save “Figaro,” Da Ponte, and their lives, Mozart and his clever wife Constanze set out to solve this deadly mystery. If they fail,  “Figaro” will never play in Vienna!Boston diva Susan Larson was a professional concert and operatic soprano for thirty years. She not only sang a string of Mozart's most iconic soprano roles (Cherubino, Donna Anna, Papagena, Fiordiligi, etc.), she has read his collected letters and researched the lives of his contemporaries to create this antic vision of what might have been: Mozart plays Sherlock Holmes“The Marriage of Figaro” started life as a scandalous stage play by Beaumarchais, and became a scandalous opera by Mozart and Da Ponte. The unusual opera libretto format is divided into the classical five acts. Monologues become arias, and dialogs become duets. Since operas of the time often started with multiple overtures, “The Murder of Figaro” has three. The plot follows that of the opera in an extremely loose fashion, with lots of coffee breaks and detours into Shakespeare, other Mozart operas, hot news and scandals of the day, and the American Revolution.Says Larson about her approach to the book: “The original singers in “Figaro” have always fascinated me. They are largely forgotten, but were hard-working international stars in their day. Did they love the music written for them by the brash young upstart Mozart? Did they squabble and throw prima-donna fits? I invented rather messy lives for them, based on the lives of the many opera singers I have known in my life; sometimes behaving nobly sometimes abominably.” Regarding Mozart himself, she adds: “I was a professional concert and operatic soprano for thirty years. Mozart was my hero and idol. We were teacher and pupil. I believe we were friends.”

The Murder of Figaro

Larson, Susan

Literary

Land Beyond Maps wonFinalist, 2010 Lambda Literary Foundation, Lesbian Debut FictionWinner, 2009 New Mexico Book Award, Gay/LesbianFinalist, 2009 New Mexico Book Award, Historical FictionWinner, 2010 Arizona Book Publishing Award, Gay/LesbianFinalist, 2010 Arizona Book Publishing Award, MulticulturalFinalist, 2010 Golden Crown Literary Society, Dramatic/General FictionWinner, 2000 Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Full-Length Lesbian/Gay Historical Fiction CompetitionMaida Tilchen won Honorable Mention, 2007 Astraea Foundation Lesbian Writers Award, Fiction."Crafts a mosaic of women's journeys to achieve their dreams as artists, naturalists, and entrepreneurs ... quickly moving... creates a vivid, realistic picture of life in Santa Fe and on the reservation." --New Mexico Magazine, April, 2009"Readers interested in American history, Southwest and Native American cultures, and women's history will find much to enjoy while reading Land beyond Maps." --Reading New Mexico, by Victoria Erhart, 02/09"Deserves to be a Finalist for the Debut Fiction Lammy...every person we meet is interesting...offers relief from the fears about money and survival that are not unlike those most of us feel today." --Lesbian News, Los Angeles, May, 2010Land Beyond Maps tells of midlife lesbians and their friends in Santa Fe and the Navajolands through the boom and bust of 1929, closely based on the true story of a landscape photographer Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), who is considered America's most distinguished woman landscape photographer. Ambitious archaeologists, zealous missionaries, quietly forceful Navajo women, and overeager tourists intensify this fast-paced story.Based on extensive research, Land Beyond Maps is a novel of women's history, travel, biography, and adventure, drawing the reader into the lives of women who find new adventures, new careers, and new passions later in life. It depicts a romantic era not previously portrayed in contemporary fiction, despite the current interest in books about the Southwest and women's history.As one reader described it, "Instead of frolicking about adobe mansions, we sleep in the straw of a stable loft and work in a modest photographer's studio. We see the tourist trade from behind the wheel of a tourbus, and we labor in the dirt in a low status vis-à-vis archaeologists from the Eastern Ivy schools."Ann Bannon, author of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, described Land Beyond Maps: "A time-the early 20th Century; and a place-the American Southwest-cast a net of enchantment around an intriguing cast. Here is fiercely shielded Navajo treasure, the interweaving of distant cultures, religious hellfire, and all the delicate and explosive power of forbidden love. Historical characters move through the rooms of story to mingle with the singular humans whom Maida Tilchen infuses with vivid life. Spellbinding people, enmeshed in the stark beauty of a Land Beyond Maps.""Maida Tilchen's wonderful debut novel reads like an exciting adventure story of the early twentieth century West, but has at its core a moving and vital reclamation of an all but forgotten feminist past that startles us with its emotional vibrancy and deeply felt commitment to historical truth. The women characters live and breathe on every page. This is the heart of Tilchen's vision: the uncovering and documentation of a forgotten woman's world of love and bonding that exists within and far beyond this historical moment." -- Michael Bronski, author of Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps"Land Beyond Maps joins a deep knowledge of New Mexico's landscape and history with the story of women who act against the cultural restraints of their time" -Summer Wood, author of "Arroyo""Knows and lovingly portrays the locales. With some homage to Willa Cather, this book takes its place in the literature of the Southwest." -- Miriam Sagan, author of "Map of the Lost"

Land Beyond Maps

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