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In addition to three excellent Wisconsin-themed titles for your customers to enjoy this month(scroll down for full details), Midwest Connections is adding something extra to help readers in our region celebrate National Poetry Month. We've asked publishers of all stripes to help us compile a list of books published by Midwestern poets or books of poetry about the Midwest, and the result is this front-and-back downloadable pdf for you to share with your readers. We've included 10 free copies of this helpful sheet in your monthly MC packet, but we encourage you to print out more as needed. You can also download the list as an excel spreadsheet, updated annually, with full ordering information.
Download our full-color one-sheet with information about this month's picks.
Download our full-color one-sheet with information about this month's picks.
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A Reunion of Ghosts
A Novel by Judith Claire Mitchell.
March 24, 2015. Hardcover, $26.99. Harper. ISBN: 9780062355881 A compulsively readable literary masterpiece, A Reunion of Ghosts is the shared confessional of three sisters who have decided to kill themselves at the end of the 20th century, honoring the dark legacy that has haunted their extraordinary family for decades. How do three sisters write a single suicide note? |
“I enjoyed this story from the start. I found Mitchell’s sisters and their family attractive, humorous, sympathetic, and dynamic. But then the story continued to get stronger, the events more interesting, more deeply drawn, and the more I read, the more I identified, the more I cared, the more I enjoyed.” — Allen Murphey, Joseph-Beth Booksellers
“A rich portrait of a complicated family, at turns violent and hilarious, shot through with love and death and the scars that reappear generation after generation, through decades and across continents. – Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers
In the waning days of 1999, the Alter sisters—Lady, Vee, and Delph—finalize their plans to end their lives. Their reasons are not theirs alone; they are the last in a long line of Alters who have killed themselves, beginning with their great-grandmother, the wife of a Jewish Nobel Prize-winning chemist who developed the first poison gas used in World War I and the lethal agent used in Third Reich gas chambers. The chemist himself, their son Richard, and Richard’s children all followed suit.
The childless sisters also define themselves by their own bad luck. Lady, the oldest, never really resumed living after her divorce. Vee is facing cancer’s return. And Delph, the youngest, is resigned to a spinster’s life of stifled dreams. But despite their pain they love each other fiercely, and share a darkly brilliant sense of humor.
As they gather in the ancestral Upper West Side apartment to close the circle of the Alter curse, an epic story about four generations of one family—inspired in part by the troubled life of German-Jewish Fritz Haber, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of chlorine gas—unfolds. A Reunion of Ghosts is a magnificent tale of fate and blood, sin and absolution; partly a memoir of sisters unified by a singular burden, partly an unflinching eulogy of those who have gone before, and above all a profound commentary on the events of the 20th century.
The childless sisters also define themselves by their own bad luck. Lady, the oldest, never really resumed living after her divorce. Vee is facing cancer’s return. And Delph, the youngest, is resigned to a spinster’s life of stifled dreams. But despite their pain they love each other fiercely, and share a darkly brilliant sense of humor.
As they gather in the ancestral Upper West Side apartment to close the circle of the Alter curse, an epic story about four generations of one family—inspired in part by the troubled life of German-Jewish Fritz Haber, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of chlorine gas—unfolds. A Reunion of Ghosts is a magnificent tale of fate and blood, sin and absolution; partly a memoir of sisters unified by a singular burden, partly an unflinching eulogy of those who have gone before, and above all a profound commentary on the events of the 20th century.
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Judith Claire Mitchell, the author of The Last Day of the War, is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, she currently lives in Madison with her husband, the artist Don Friedlich.
Read more about this title on Edelweiss |
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Listen and Other Stories
Short Stories by Liam Callanan.
April 7, 2015. Paperback, $17.95. Four Way Books. ISBN: 9781935536543 The new collection by acclaimed author of novels The Cloud Atlas and All Saints demands that readers do just what its title asks them: to Listen, as the book crosses the country—and decades—to uncover secrets characters never thought they’d share. “Listen to these lovely stories, indeed; each one is memorable, and each one different from the last.”—Alix Ohlin |
"The protagonists in these disparate, nuanced stories are connected by the universal need to be heard. That moment might be precipitated by an event, life-changing or not... Callanan [lets] events unfold without resorting to pathos. Listen carefully." -- Milwaukee Magazine
“…a wonderfully readable and hugely pleasurable collection.”—Margot Livesey
“Here is what makes these stories necessary and timeless: Liam Callanan’s incisive ability to render not just our desires and the choices we make to fulfill or thwart those desires, but the mystery behind those choices….”—Michael Parker
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The characters in Listen aren’t the type of people who often get listened to—even though they should. These characters’ trials, missed connections, and sundry challenges are full of surprises—some good, some bad, some funny, some wise, and some all this at once. Perhaps most surprising of all, there’s tenderness here and a lot of heart—which often gets the collection’s characters into a lot of trouble.
Liam Callanan is the author of the novels The Cloud Atlas, a finalist for an Edgar Award, and All Saints, a Target Bookmarked Breakout book. A frequent public radio essayist, Liam has taught at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Born in Washington, DC, and raised in Los Angeles, he now calls Wisconsin home. He’s on the web at liamcallanan.com.
Read more about this title on Edelweiss |
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In Mary's Garden
A Children’s Picture Book by Tina Kugler and Carson Kugler.
March 17, 2015. Hardcover, $16.99. HMH Books for Young Readers. ISBN: 9780544272200 Milwaukee Natives Tina and Carson Kugler present an inviting picture book biography of Wisconsin artist Mary Nohl. “This quiet, engaging offering celebrates the artist’s vision and her idiosyncratic work.” — Booklist |
We meet the artist as a young girl, just discovering her talent, and watch as her front yard sculpture garden comes to life. While the rest of her classmates were making pastries in cooking classes, Mary Nohl was making art-anything she fancied out of anything she could find. Inspiration struck Mary even when she wasn’t looking for it. Mary used common objects to make uncommon art. And one day, her garden was a gallery.
Mary Nohl passed away in 2001 at the age of eighty-seven. Her famous garden gallery is located in the front yard of her Fox Point, Wisconsin, home to this day.
Mary Nohl passed away in 2001 at the age of eighty-seven. Her famous garden gallery is located in the front yard of her Fox Point, Wisconsin, home to this day.
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Tina Kugler spent ten years drawing storyboards in the animation industry for studios such as Walt Disney, Nickelodeon, and Warner Bros., and is also known for her iconic Sputnik Girl posters for Manitowoc, Wisconsin’s annual Sputnikfest. She also owned a children’s bookshop and worked in the youth department of a public library (where her singing made small children weep with terror). Carson Kugler has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and received his teaching certification from Silver Lake College, Manitowoc, WI. They currently live in Los Angeles with their three boys and an enormous hairy dog named Harryhausen.
Read more about this title on Edelweiss |
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