Böcker utgivna av C&r Press

When their father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, the sisters cope with the loss in different ways. Recovering from divorce and the collapsing journalism industry, Shannon manages a bottom-feeder rag and considers having a child for her cousin and his lover, an Army veteran. After Paige is kicked out of her band, she becomes obsessed with a reclusive songwriter she wants to make famous against his will. Claire's family and career are threatened by her attraction to a new hire she supervises, an African American who ignites her passion for literature and the deeper questions it asks of her. But, when their family's uncovered secrets threaten all they've known, the sisters will have to choose between lives they've dreamed of and those they love.Inspired by Chekhov's Three Sisters with echoes of King Lear, While You Were Gone traces the journeys of three sisters growing up in and returning to a hometown that, like them, seems to reflect a new South. But beneath the surface changes are secrets that run as deep as the Tennessee River. While You Were Gone explores how three sisters living in the American South in the twenty-first century deal when their own dreams collide with their own misconceptions about family, race, gender, and the larger world.

Populated by a town full of quirky, yet recognizable citizens, and told through the voice of "the committee," Ivy vs Dogg: With a Cast of Thousands is a humorous and pointed account of a small town acting out both good and dubious intentions that hurdle the town to the point of breaking.Teenage Ivy Simmons has a longstanding rivalry with Jimmy, "Dogg," Doggins, high school tennis star, and hometown hero. Ivy lives in the "Pink Ghetto," a low income stucco apartment complex that has haunted her every effort to best Dogg. Their years of sparring comes to a head when the town of Mudlick's annual Jr. Mr. Mayor election is announced and Ivy becomes the first female ever to run. Mudlick's busybody leaders, known as "the committee," do not approve, especially when Ivy reveals an embarassing secret. "The committee," as it has since the town founding, inserts itself into all matters both personal and public, and they feel no compunction about ruining Ivy's candidacy on the grounds of the shame she's likely to bring to Mudlick. Despite a hesitancy on Dogg's part to compete against his childhood rival, the pair engage campaign events that escalate in absurdity. Between a gruesome topiary display set up by the town's most prominent (and reclusive) matriarch and the election, emotions run high, squeezing Ivy and Dogg from all sides and forcing them to make the most adult decision of their lives.

Martin Ott's first two poetry collections won the De Novo and Sandeen Prizes. In his third collection LESSONS IN CAMOUFLAGE, he continues to explore the theme of casting a light on hidden truths. The book spans his turmoil as a U.S. Army interrogator to conflicts personal in nature: divorce, death, and determination to uncover the mysteries of what makes life worth living.

Poetry. "Curtis Bauer is precise about birds, be they crows, chimney swifts, sparrows, swallows, starlings, cardinals, doves, or grackles. Like Robert Frost, he knows the phoebe doesn't weep, for--like him--he is deeply versed in country things. But Bauer is wide-ranging and doesn't make a moral distinction between Iowa and New York, any more than he does between America and Spain, where he lives part of the year. He is one of the most tender new poets I know, yet when the subject calls for it, he can be as harsh as necessary, for he is a keen observer, and he is sane, a sane realist with a vivid imagination."--Gerald Stern"Velocity, vigor, heartbreak and vibrancy: you'll find all that and more in THE REAL CAUSE FOR YOUR ABSENCE. This book is full of astounding surprises. Sometimes Curtis Bauer plays sentence against line to shake things up before he sets everything right. Sometimes, with just a word, he knocks you out."--Camille T. Dungy

Poetry. African & African American Studies. "What is and has always been needed is an honest, clear, loving voice. Earl Braggs' UGLY LOVE (NOTES FROM THE NEGRO SIDE OF THE MOON) offers that. Pull up your favorite chair and cover your cold feet with your grandmother's quilt and enjoy this wonderful read."--Nikki Giovanni

"A raunchy, gargantuan, irreverent dash through the fields of ripeness and desire, spiced by history with a lightly borne trail of cultural baggage. (Reads like fun)."George Szirtes, critic for The Times, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize"With The Pleasures of Queuing Erik Martiny joins Aidan Higgins, Julian Gough, Kevin Barry, on the more exuberant wing of the Irish comic novel. His is a frothy mix of cosmopolitanism and theologico-sexual intrigue, but echoing with an unmistakable steel behind the ribald laughs."David Wheatley, critic for The Guardian, winner of Rooney Prize for Irish Literature"Hilarious and heartfelt in equal measure, Erik Martiny's story of bohemia and bountiful creation has the verve and nerve and verbal inventiveness of early Philip Roth."Lee Jenkins, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry"The Pleasures of Queuing is an irresistible addition to the distinguished recent annals of the Irish comic novel. The breathless eloquence of Martiny's narrative sweep through the eccentricities of his version of Cork doesn't allow the reader a moment's pause."Bernard O'Donoghue, Oxford University, winner of the Whitbread Prize