Author Alley 2023
a pet, or even two. But every time I brought one home,
my sister went Ah-Choo! When hunting for his new best friend, a boy goes through an alphabetical menagerie of animals. From an antelope, to bobolink birds, to wolves and zebras--and of course, a cat and dog, too--he brings them all home. But each creature just makes his sister go AH-CHOO! Will he ever be able to have the perfect pet?
A classic bedtime story of a mother describing her love to her son. As Ekpen's Mama put him to be, he asked her "How much do you love me mama?" Mama takes Ekpen on an adventure describing the extent of her love for him using Ekpen's favorite items.
Step into Bella's magical world with her very special umbrella!
Have you ever loved something so much that other people thought was just ordinary? Bella LOVES her umbrella and shows us just how one girl's colorful imagination can turn an ordinary umbrella into much, much more! Join Bella on her journey as her umbrella takes her through the highs and lows of life and see why her love for her special umbrella will never go away!
"Ben Gwin writes like F. Scott Fitzgerald high on meth and Clean Time is The Great Gatsbyfor a generation that thinks fame is the answer to every question."
-LORI JAKIELA, Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker
"A vivid portrait of life in the druggy demimonde of petty scams, aimless loafing erupting in sudden violence, and epic pharmaceutical hangovers." -PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
Framed as the drug-addled memoir of addict-turned-reality TV star Ronald Reagan Middleton (annotated and published by floundering doctoral candidate Harold Swanger), Clean Time is a darkly comic satire set in a near-future America ravaged by addiction. In this sprawling and ambitious debut novel, Ben Gwin masterfully balances farce and irony with a genuine compassion for the large cast of characters that fumble through a nightmarish and all-too-familiar version of America.
FEATURING BRAND-NEW STORIES FROM: Paula McLain, Jill Bialosky, Thrity Umrigar, Michael Ruhlman, Daniel Stashower, D.M. Pulley, J.D. Belcher, Alex DiFrancesco, Miesha Wilson Headen, Abby L. Vandiver, Sam Conrad, Angela Crook, Susan Petrone, Dana McSwain, and Mary Grimm.
FROM THE EDITORS' INTRODUCTION:
"Cleveland is a working-class town, though its great institutions were founded by twentieth-century robber barons and magnates . . . It's this mix of the wealthy and the working class that makes this city--an urban center of brick and girders surrounded by verdant suburbs--a perfect backdrop for lawlessness. Cleveland has certainly seen its share of high-profile crime. Eliot Ness, Cleveland's director of public safety in the 1930s, hunted unsuccessfully for the 'torso murderer' who killed and dismembered twelve people in Kingsbury Run, the area now known as the Flats, then populated by bars, brothels, flophouses, and gambling dens. The famous disappearance of Beverly Potts in the early 1950s on Cleveland's west side made national headlines. The sensational murder of Marilyn Sheppard in Bay Village and the imprisonment and eventual acquittal of her husband, the surgeon Sam Sheppard, became the basis for a popular television drama The Fugitive . . .
"The noir stories in this volume hit all these same notes, and their geographies reflect the history of the city and its politics, its laws, poverty, alienation, racism, crime, and violence."
