Newsletter for July 2024

Featured Books

Three for the Money by William LeRoy

In the face of waning cheap pulp paper supply, not to mention waning attention spans of readers, Mossik Press presents three pruned products of William LeRoy penmanship in a single bargain-priced binding, to-wit:

 

ACADEMENTIA CONFIDENTIAL, in which Maximo Morgan gumshoes not dirty water used by progressive professors in ivory towers to brainwash America’s youth. Originally published in Harvard Alum Annals MCMLXII.

 

BABE IN THE WOODS, in which Max attempts to rescue a runaway maiden from a not-so-charming prince. Publication commissioned as a party favor for a Cancun Club Med retreat of ms.brokenheart.org members.

 

CLEAN-UP ON AISLE 3, a case report documenting Max’s entanglement in murrrderrrous office politics inside the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. Obtained for publication under the Freedom of Information Act.

 

Marvelous Days by Hayden Thompson

A widowed biologist, Kevin Brunner, an American expat in Germany, faces a life turn at the start of his retirement. The usual aspirations like romance, family, and career are seemingly past him now. He finds himself adrift after his adult son moves far away. Kevin seeks to travel and mostly takes trips to France as his preference. On the way, he experiences melancholy sometimes, especially after discovering his late wife’s unfaithfulness. But the constant voyages enable him to reflect on his past relations, connect with family and friends, and overcome his now-and-then moodiness. Appreciating this healthy habit, he relishes each moment of his expeditions. As he feels engaged in various places he passes, acknowledging their charms, even with dull or harsh weather, what means the most to him is meeting people at all stages of life and what he learns from them, not only as a meditative flâneur but also as a human fellow. Those unexpected encounters, events, and friendships make him change, and he realizes that something beyond those lone journeys is more meaningful to him.

 

In a first-person narrative voice, Marvelous Days depicts a man’s persistent striving in his solitary retirement years to achieve a stable mind through extensive travel as a remedy and a gateway to newness and joy.

 

Project Übermensch by Lonnie Busch

Modern-day messiah or military experiment gone awry—either way, Geoffrey Cannon, a young inspirational guru, has mad metaphysical skills… and big troubles.

 

In 1943, unsuspecting sailors on the USS Eldridge are subjects of a U.S. Navy experiment. Sailors die, others are maimed, including Third mate Peter Smithwick whose amputated legs are restored through advanced extraterrestrial technology. Leaving the Navy, and fleeing his hometown, he escapes his dubious rescuers to go on the lam under a new name.

 

2024, in the tranquil mountain town of Kleary Creek, religious handyman, and all-around nice-guy, Orvin Littney meets his new neighbor, the mysterious and charismatic Geoffrey Cannon. While walking together one morning, Orvin experiences a heart attack, and is in the throes of death when Geoffrey miraculously saves his life. Miracles such as these, Orvin soon learns, account for Geoffrey’s cult-like following in the mystical, self-help community.

 

But Geoffrey’s life as a spiritual healer takes a dark turn when devotees are inexplicably murdered under grisly circumstances—all young women he’d had brief affairs with. Hikers and residents turn up dead, while rumors of a monstrous creature in the woods around Kleary Creek circulate, whispers of Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti. With events growing ever more ominous, Orvin comes to believe his “savior” friend, Geoffrey, is somehow at the center of it all

 

The Joy Divisions by Scott Dimovitz

The year is 1993, and art-school dropout Ed Pullman has returned to his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania—the enigmatic nexus where goth kids, coffeeshop culture, and sultry drag queens collide with neo-Nazis, the dying textiles industry, and an unsettling commune led by an aspiring cult leader named Tod Griffon. As Ed and his loving cousin Ester struggle to find their place in a bleakly earnest landscape of guerrilla conceptual art, post-NAFTA labor battles, and burning factories, their hometown marches stoically toward a disaster of biblical proportions. With its vivid and original recreation of a place and time that is both utterly real and surprisingly magical, Scott Dimovitz’s grittily nostalgic debut novel is a sensitively imagined fable about an unsuspecting world on the cusp of massive change.

 

Pigs in Paradise:  A Fairy Story Most Absurd 

by Roger Maxson

When Blaise gives birth to Lizzy, the “red calf” on a farm in Israel, the masses flock to witness the miracle that will usher the return of the Messiah or his arrival, and with him, the end of the world. When the promise of the end comes to an end, the red calf blemished, and no longer worthy of blood-letting sacrifice, the faithful the world over are crestfallen. By this time, two evangelical ministers, as representatives of a megachurch in America, witness the events.

 

Meanwhile, Pope Benevolent absolves the Jews, sings karaoke with Rabbi Ratzinger, and the Berkshire boar and Messiah, Boris, is served at the last supper. Not to be outdone, the Protestant ministers hold a nativity pageant, and just before the animals embark aboard a ship for America, Mel the mule becomes Pope Magnificent, with white linen cassock, pectoral cross, and papal red leather slippers.

 

Once in America, the animals are transported across the country to Wichita, Kansas in time for a Passion-Play parade. When they arrive at their final destination, a barn on a Christian farm, seven television monitors, tuned to 24/7 church sermons, are juxtaposed with scenes from a barn, a real circus. After a while, and no longer able to take anymore, they chase Mel from the barn, and Stanley, Manly Stanley, the black Belgian stallion of legend (wink, wink), kicks out the TV monitors for a moment of silence, giving peace a chance if only for a moment.

 

Book Giveaways for July

Win a copy of All This and More by Peng Shepherd.  All you have to do is click on the book cover below.  It will take you to the main page.   Look for the giveaway on the left.  Follow the instructions listed.

Win a copy of Confessions of the Dead by James Patterson and J.D. Parker.   All you have to do is click on the book cover below.  It will take you to the main page.  Look for the giveaway on the right.  Follow the instructions listed.

Book Giveaway Winners for June

 

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