Reading Local: Portland

In conjunction with yesterday’s profile of Kristopher Young, here is a spotlight on Click, as well as others titles available from Another Sky Press:

Click

Product Description:
Click’s hero is experiencing glitches in the universe. He may have tapped into a strange ability which gives him control over the world around him. Or, there’s the disturbing possibility that he’s a case study in paranoid schizophrenia. After all, they might be after him. He’s falling apart — and to make matters worse, his girlfriend may just be crazier than he is. Forced to face his fears and come to terms with his own flawed nature, he must discover what it means to truly evolve.

Reviews:
“…a rare and amazing literary feat… highly personal and gut-wrenchingly real, yet surreal, dream-like and convincingly fantastic. The novel is both intuitive and masterful in execution…”
-Jody Franklin, editor, Mungbeing magazine

“…a compelling genre-bending piece of fiction with a great hook. Click embodies the grit-lit of the streets…’”
-Susan Tomaselli, editor, Dogmatika litzine

“This is the most uplifting story ever told.”
-Andrew Johnstone, Florida

“Inspirational ideas…Click is a life changing adventure ride into the depths of mind, spit back out into the sunshine… thank you. I read a borrowed book… and just ordered my own to promote the legend.”
-Katie Miller, Washington

Ash Dogs by Justin Nicholes

Product Description:
Marcus Green has just been discharged after a tour of duty in Iraq. Wounded and disfigured, Marcus returns to a life he barely recognizes… and that barely recognizes him. Stricken by guilt and self-doubt, and spurred on by deep-rooted restlessness, Marcus decides he must embark on a journey to reclaim that part of himself which he has lost. As he explores his past he reconnects with a forgotten half-brother in Mexico and a former hometown love, but he must also come to grips with his accidental family–other wounded veterans and the Iraqis he was supposed to protect.

Reviews:
“Justin Nicholes’ impressive debut offers us a psychologically nuanced, spare and cinematic look at the way families and strangers cleave together in times of great crisis. The odd arrangement of family, as important a theme as ever here, is investigated alternately with great tenderness and a hundred-yard stare. The effect is often electric. This is compelling work by a young writer to watch.”
-Darren DeFrain, author of The Salt Palace (New Issues Press)

“Justin Nicholes has written a superb and passionate novel about men torn apart by the Iraq war, who struggle to understand and heal both themselves and their country. Ash Dogs is a book full of love and pain and, finally, hope–spare, poetic, moving. Marcus resembles no character I have met before in fiction, but his journey is mine and ours.
Nicholes should be welcomed as a truly significant new voice in American fiction.”
-Richard Spilman, recipient of the New American Press Award in poetry and author of the story collection Hot Fudge (Simon and Schuster)

The Golden Calf by Henry Baum

Product Description:
Ray Tompkins is the kind of person you never get to know. He’s the security guard, the factory worker, the man working the midnight shift. Nobody really understands Ray – not his coworkers, not his family, and certainly not the women in his life. There is a rage building inside Ray Tompkins and Los Angeles is the fuel – the sick obsession with celebrity mixed with the vacuousness of everyday life. Against this backdrop, Ray Tompkins finds a way to vent his anger. He, too, will be known…

Reviews:
“This pacy, tightly written novel is like ‘Taxi Driver’ meets Charles Bukowski’s Factotum.”
-Uncut

“An amusing, persuasive insight into obsession, stalking and the disintegration of sanity. Highly recommended to anyone with a bitter hatred of Tom Cruise and Hollywood stars in general.”
-Butterfly

“A marvel of pace and comic timing….Much of Baum’s narrative bears a similarity to Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground.”
-Daily Telegraph

“With a superb narrative control, Baum paints a portrait of male dysfunction set to explode.”
-The List

“Ray is nearly as good a portrait of post-collegiate angst as has been painted so far.”
-New York Press

“Explores the hazy junction where the teeth of the daily grind sink into the day-dreamt certainties of life’s true bell-head sounds.”
-Lee Ranaldo, member of Sonic Youth

The National Virginity Pledge: Short Stories and Other Lies by Barry Graham

Product Description:
With a voice that maintains a gritty strength balanced with poetic vision, Barry Graham pushes all his chips to the center of the table in this collection of from the gut short stories that are as sentimental as they are cynical. Set in America’s underbelly-from dead-end small towns with their futile Virginity Pledges to larger than life Las Vegas with it’s own brand of lust and deception-Graham populates his stories with a reoccurring cast of confused, helpless, hopeless, beautiful, dirty, optimistic, loveable down-and-outs trapped in lives and relationships they are unable to control.

Reviews:
“Barry Graham’s heroes want to love, yet bigger than their love for people and things is their capacity to destroy the objects of their affection. He doesn’t scorn them, though; he treats them with care and a loving tenderness. He turns grief, betrayal, and violence into something close to poetry, and finds beauty in places we should never wish to visit.”
–Stefan Kiesbye, Next Door Lived a Girl (Low Fidelity Press)

“…with its clipped, achingly real dialogue, and its effortless and vivid description, it achieves a relentless undercurrent of: “Look closer: there is more.””
–Mary Lynn Reed, 5 Star Literary Stories

“Barry Graham’s stories are little cries for help from way in the corners and deep in the cracks of contemporary fiction.”
–Jeff Parker, Ovenman (Tin House)

“Barry Graham’s writing hits hard because it is raw and honest. He will suck you in with equal parts everydayness and voyeurism.”
–Aaron Burch, Hobart: Another Literary Journal

“…it remains a funny, reckless, fast paced, and edgy voice from beginning to end.”
–Dan Wickett, Emerging Writers Network

Author: Gabe Barber

Founder and publisher of Reading Local. I am an avid reader, primarily of non-fiction, and am ever curious to discover how local literature fits into the increasingly volatile literary landscape.

Gabe Barber has written 1025 articles for us.