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The Catalogue

~ Hammer & Anvil Books ~

is an electronic imprint specialising in imaginative fiction and international poetry.

 

Our authors write across the genre spectrum, from novels and one-act plays to flash fiction and short stories,

coming-of-age to murder mysteries, literary to horror, works in translation to debut collections.

 

Our poets represent a cornucopia of styles and forms, hailing from Australia, Bulgaria,

France, Ireland, New Zealand, Serbia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

 

All Hammer & Anvil titles are available exclusively on Amazon Kindle Books and priced $4.99 USD or less!

 

Order your H&A modern classic today!  

Dry Bones

​poetry from Australia

 

In DRY BONES, readers travel into the outback from page one, ready or not, into unknown territory where they can dance in the dirt and walk with horses. John Holland is a warm blooded writer with a true appreciation for the beauty of his country and the big expanse of nature. And, while he is sparse with his words and metaphors, his poems travel like song-lines over the land he loves, giving voice to the heartland of the tropical north. Here we see something different to what we have come to expect from current poets. The beat and rhythm of Australian poetry are there, but there is also a far deeper questioning of why and how we are here and our connection to an uncertain universe. DRY BONES will not leave you untouched.

Murder at the Forum

A Harry Krisman Mystery

Misery comes in short order, and murder is often a step behind. Too, murder is not particular - certainly not to the Campus de Fleurs-de-Lys, a secret society veiled for centuries deep within the French nation. Using a soldier stained with defeat at Dien Bien Phu as their pawn, the Campus re-emerges in Montreal, Quebec, during the 1960’s. Squaring off against them is Harry Krisman, whose private investigations draw him ever closer to this sinister penumbra. With Les Habitants and their screaming fans as the milieu, MURDER AT THE FORUM introduces mystery mavens and sports fans alike to a new hero from the distant past whose adventures will thrill the house.

Antiope

poetry from Ireland

According to Homer, Antiope slept with Zeus and from their encounter bore two sons, Amphion and Zethus, who are the subject of Euripides play Antiope, of which only fragments now remain. ANTIOPE is Peter O’ Neill’s first short collection of 28 poems, the first part of a greater work in 4 parts called The Dark Pool. Like the nineteenth century French Symbolists who have so clearly influenced him, O’Neill’s skill at blending both pagan and Christian mythological motifs gives this singular collection a most distinctive and decisively modern Irish voice that daringly disturbs old gender and stylistic models while making the mundane seem epic - and putting the sublime within our reach.

Hitchcock Hotel

poetry to be murdered by...

 

Hitchcock. The mere name, a touchstone of the macabre. Creator of countless memories and thrills, mysteries and chills. Yet, the indelible stories he told, the masterpieces he created, must stand astride the cannily crafted mythos of Hitchcock himself. In HITCHCOCK HOTEL, acclaimed poet Lyn Lifshin journeys into this vast penumbra of platinum women, psychosis, and frenzied brilliance to unmask the man hidden behind the torn curtain at the rear window of our imaginations...

Ghost Dreaming

poetry from Australia

 

Poetry today can often be too clever or gimmicky; GHOST DREAMING stands instead as an antidote for the trivial. Its roots are deep, its poems not beneath our notice. They speak to our common humanity. They do not die alone; instead, they blossom. GHOST DREAMING is earthy, original and beats with an Australian heart that's as white as ghost gum dreaming. Leanne Hanson's work is rooted deep in Australian bedrock. But she does not fear to use her words as rafts to move to other places and times, taking you on a beautiful journey to fresh new and original poetry with a distinctive voice.

Miles

A coming of age story every bit as intense and vivid as James Joyce's "Araby", MILES is filled with spot-on truths about the glory, force, and pain of adolescence. As the narrator tells his story we hear a voice that is both insecure and confident in waves of learning and knowing as he tells of family, friendships, new love, and blossoming sexuality. An eloquent and extremely perceptive young man, Miles discovers and uncovers truth after truth about himself and others and never falters in his path, even when it leads to sorrow. This tender, sweet tale nearly startles in the accuracy of its portrayal of the powerful emotions of young love, and the genuine fear of being alone. The opulent layers of detail and of place and time immerse the reader deeply in Miles' world, where you will share his journey right along with him. 
 

Carmine Carnival

Succumb to the irresistible mythologies built around the beauty of evil. Surrender to the temptations of the flesh, its vampiric shades, its mouth-watering energy. And submit to the epistolary colour Red: blood, wine, sex, desire, fire...in Walter Ruhlmann’s haunting yet sanguine collection of poetry, CARMINE CARNIVAL.

 

"Walter is both a young and experienced poet as regards to his commitment to contemporary poetry as he has been editing the journal mgversion2>datura since 1996. His natural independent mind drives him to look at the poetry from other parts of the world, mostly poetry in English, from these lands of islands and sun sometimes, a poetry he translates and renders to us as many proofs of his yearning for freedom." ~ Patrice Maltaverne, French                                                                                         publisher, reviewer and poet. 

Fragments of a Journal Salvaged from a Charred House in Germany, 1816

... and other stories

What are the consequences of an American tourist stealing a jawbone from a tomb in a Parisian cemetery? Or a husband and wife employing a house sitter as bait for the entity that has been terrorizing their home? Or a Bel Air housewife swallowing a worm-like import from Africa with the intention of losing weight? Enter the macabrely karmic world of FRAGMENTS...

"The genius of a David Massengill short story lies not simply in its taut narrative, its bizarre and disturbing elements, its cracking pace, or its dark humor - rather, it lies in an insistence that the protagonist is complicit in his own demise, even if only through a fleeting thought or a careless action. FRAGMENTS will keep you reading story after fascinating, riveting, blood-curdling story." ~ Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain, Raven Stole the Moon)

The Sun Chasers

poetry from Australia​

 

A restless curiosity about the natural world and a sharp almost clinically accurate attention to the workings of the human mind and heart pervade THE SUN CHASERS. Michelle Gaddes gives voice to the forces of nature– dark, potentially dangerous but often hiding possibilities for ways of redemption. In these poems, the poet is not an aloof observer but a subject invested in places, their people, histories and dynamics. Gaddes uses the lyric form and an enticing, musical register to create engaged expressions of her truths. THE SUN CHASERS will call you back time and time again, rewarding multiple readings by revealing layer upon layers of both imagery and meaning.

Vespers

Sparse and oracular, David Appelbaum’s lapidary verses alternate between precise imagery and linguistic inventiveness, illuminating the shared situation of poets and philosophers. His collection VESPERS reveals how humanness is both physical and metaphysical, finite and infinite. Straddling both the classical and contemporary worlds, each poem in VESPERS resonates on the cosmic scale while drawing strength from our own intimate, human experiences. We are taken on a journey along paths familiar yet seemingly fresh and untrammeled. These poems create a magic lantern of meaning that flashes around us and helps us find our way in the dark.

Diamond Eye

When a frightened young woman brings a black diamond with inexplicable powers to the door of private detective Jack Harriger, he begins a descent into an occult murder mystery that gets him framed for serial murder and leads him to Georgia’s barrier islands. Along the way he enlists the aid of Liz Mab, a local bartender and practicing witch, who helps Harriger chase clues and overcome his painful past. When Liz is kidnapped, Harriger must take to the sea to stage a daring rescue and crack the case of the mysterious relic known as the Diamond Eye and the murderous cult that covets it.

 

"Robert C.J. Graves is a superlative story teller who weaves his tail with the skill of an artisan. His breadth of knowledge not only shows the seriousness with which he approaches writing but colors the landscape of his work with a vibrancy that few display."

Richard, Zombie King

 

Richard Diemar is under a love spell cast by a beautiful witch who tricks him into murdering his father and brothers. After she refuses to marry him, he flees to a settlement of polygamists, steals the patriarch’s youngest wife, and takes her to New Orleans where a voodoo mambo turns them into zombies. Richard escapes living-death when a snake god shows him how to travel through inner-dimensions found in shadows. He reunites with the witch, whose spell still holds him, when he finds her reincarnated as a giant serpent, and together they set out to build a zombie kingdom. RICHARD, ZOMBIE KING is full of what readers crave: love, betrayal, myth, murder, mayhem, magic, the dead, and, of course, the undead. Laissez les terreurs commencer!

Caught and Mastered

 

In Justin Burnside's fraught verse-drama, CAUGHT AND MASTERED, the war between the sexes continues in its sempiternal cycle, centered as always on the figure of a girl whose vision does the heavy lifting for all who fear to open their eyes to the perfectly imperfect world around them. Here you will find a cast of characters who are fighting equally for Beauty and Truth, and you will find yourself holding your breath to see who wins. Shot through with whispers of literary influence from classical mythology to modernist poetry, the Yellow Wallpaper to the plays of Beckett, Burnside’s book is feverish, deadpan, and audaciously peculiar. This is a debut of exceptional wisdom and truly modern poetry.


Schisms

poetry from New Zealand

 

Vaughan Rapatahana’s SCHISMS makes significant patterns out of the randomness of life’s events and gives succinct and effective voice to the peculiarly modern condition of the global nomad at once home everywhere and home nowhere. Rapatahana is Māori (Te Ātiawa, Ngati Te Whiti) with a compelling world voice which he uses skillfully to tell us his stories and make his often pungent points. This is poetry with attitude...passionate, uncompromising and sardonic. There may even be a certain darkness here, but one with an abundance, a playfulness in language and thought, even laugh-out-loud funny. SCHISMS sustains a challenging approach to 21st Century international poetry. It is a word musical journey you will both savour and long remember.​

 

Hi's Cool

Adam Henry Carriére’s HI’S COOL leads readers into a 21st Century architecture of gay adolescence and noir eroticism while breaking open the dualities of lover and friend, living and dead, memory and oblivion. Along the way, characters that seem to be made of flesh and blood reach out to pull the reader deeper and deeper into the operatic landscape that is the world of Hiram “Hi” Eloi. With prose that is at once beautiful, imaginative, enriching, and gripping, readers will find it difficult to put this book down.

 

"This is a coming of age story that deconstructs the genre even as it excels within it. The characters are vivid, unpredictable, and convincing. Whether you're straight, gay, or bi, you'll find yourself identifying with the hero, Hiram Eloi as he proves to be brave, ruthless, enigmatic, and undeniably human."

Jugularity

 

JUGULARITY is absolutely gorgeous, a poetry lover's dream. Enter the coloratura world of poet Chris Crittenden. In hot lurches and hip-grinds, he sings his swollen song in a sort of sidewinder Sanskrit, each word conscientiously curated: bracing, clear-eyed, taut, and brave. You will shift readily into the realms of mystical naturalism, where symbolic imagery emerges from word storms bearing more than a few shards embed in yourreader's eye. Crittenden is unflinching and demands readers be the same. Nuclear kicks, numb girls, faux feng shui, airbrushed pandemonium—who can decipher this Rosetta of dull hells? JUGULARITY conspires to make us wiser, more prepared to survive.

A Prayer for Late October

poetry from New Zealand

 

A PRAYER FOR LATE OCTOBER is a collection of emotionally poignant poetry that relishes funereal lyricism with a spice of surrealism. A native New Zealander, Benjamin Blake brings an exhilarating freshness to verse, marking his as a voice to watch.

Death of a Lottery Foe

​A Harry Krisman Mystery

 

Introduced to readers in MURDER AT THE FORUM (“A story with elegance and grace” - Tricia Crisafuli, Faith-Hope-and Fiction) Harry Krisman, failed hockey pro turned detective, returns, hot on the trail of mismanaged lottery funds. In a colorful ocean of avarice and general incompetence, murder comes on the scene - as well as an array of silent enemies of freedom. Their shadowy machinations light a fire under both Harry and a lively corps of faithful citizens who call upon experience in their own wars to combat these villains. Midwest Book Review calls author Tom Sheehan “...the sort of writer who comes along once in a reader’s lifetime.” DEATH OF A LOTTERY FOE, the second Harry Krisman mystery, bears out this praise.

Into the Blue on New Year's Eve

​flash fiction from Russia

 

Valery V. Petrovskiy is an acclaimed author from the Chuvashia region of Russia. His work has appeared in journals from around the world, and he is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist to the 2012 Open Russia Literary Contest. From his remote village near the Volga River, Petrovskiy crafts a multihued album of short fictions in the grand traditions of Turgenev and Gogol. These stories exude the warmth of family, the wonder of youth, and the love of language. INTO THE BLUE ON NEW YEAR’S EVE will delight lovers of Russian fiction and fans of flash fiction alike.

Nightmares

​a collection of tales

 

NIGHTMARES is a compilation of short tales spanning a range of personal creative chaos. We live in a world of collective assaults on the psyche; here, a nightmarish gallery of colorful muggings takes a variety of story-telling shapes. From the apocalyptic to the tragic, the Biblical and existential, the experimental to the demonic, mirrors of belief are held up to the author’s many voices - and to the reader’s. Under the spells of Lovecraft and Aesop, author J. Eric Castro returns to the streets where he grew up and makes them yours. NIGHTMARES builds on the success of author Castro’s baseball drama, Rowdies (Outskirts Press, 2011) and marks his imagining as one to watch.

Father Dunne's School
for Wayward Boys

“If we are made in God's image, then why are we so often ugly and blind?” 

Somewhere in an idyllic Midwestern forest is a facility advertised as a Catholic correctional school for delinquents. But FATHER DUNNE’S SCHOOL FOR WAYWARD BOYS is anything but idyllic. Within the confines of its walls good and evil do battle, within the students and among the priests, innocent (and not so innocent) victims caught between the worlds of a distant God and a very nearby Satan. Author Kyle Hemmings (PHANTASIZER) crafts a mosaic of internal demons and zombies, exorcism and pagan myth, doppelgängers and reawakened ghosts, lost brothers and erotic longings for mystic bare-footed goddesses. With undertones of Vonnegut and Lovecraft, FATHER DUNNE’S SCHOOL FOR WAYWARD BOYS will lodge in every reader's imagination as a house of repressed and self-destructive desires haunting every room.

Kate Moss & Other Heroines

​fiction from the United Kingdom

 

British chef and author Samantha Memi takes lovers of short fiction on a tour de force of the kind of dark humour unique to Londoners. With titles such as Kate Moss Versus the Millipede, Lamborghinis Don’t Cry, Rebellious Shoes, The Lizard’s Don Giovanni, and (ahem) The Virtuous Qualities of a Used Tampax, readers know they are in for an E-Ticket wild ride across the indie lit landscape. Fasten your lap straps!

A Feather of Fujiyama

​poetry from Bulgaria

 

Bozhidar Pangelov has been present among contemporary Bulgarian poets for some time. a long time. He is a poet who manages to disorder the order of the usual in order to breach a material world for a more human world of ideas and feelings. Using dramatic tensions within the poetic and semantic, Pangelov’s spare yet verdant imagery evokes the sound of bamboo sticks and Zen Buddhist monks, poem after poem. Writer and poet Palmi Ranchev says, “Pangelov will enrich the palette of world poetry with new colors and nuances.” With a light melancholy of something desired but not known to the end, forgotten but endlessly close, no lover of international verse will go unmoved by Bozhidar Pangelov’s A FEATHER OF FUJIYAMA.

 

{All proceeds from the sale of this collection will go to the Bulgarian Integrated Education Foundation, working to improve the lives of children and youth with special health and educational needs (including mild Down syndrome, autism / autistic spectrum, cerebral palsy, language-speech disorders, and hyperactivity) and their families.}

Phantasizer

​Tales of Dread and the Fantastic

 

PHANTASIZER collection of stories ranges from Sci-fi to Horror to Alternate History to Fantasy to Bizzaro, with even a bit of humor thrown in. From a young runaway who finds she can telepathically communicate with wounded birds to an ill-fated desert expedition sent to search for a missing archaeologist, to an autistic man's unwitting attempts in foiling a terrorist's scheme, these pieces do not sacrifice character to plot or theme. Nor does the author shy away from shedding some light on the human condition. There is something for all and sundry in this eclectic mix, where everyone has at least one skeleton in his or her closet...and some bones scattered under the bed as well. PHANTASIZER is a must for lovers of the macabre, the dark, the mystical, the unknown, and the unpredictable. Lisa J. Cihlar, author of The Insomniac's House, remarks, “I was up late reading PHANTASIZER, and then afraid to go to bed. In the end, I dare you to look away.”

The Water-Lily Bloom

​A domestic tragedy in one act

 

A ghostly visit from a dead father harboring venomous resentments begins a searing rearrangement of personal identity for Angela Windom, the sophisticated, urban-professional heroine of THE WATER-LILY BLOOM, a young woman for whom the tragic Lady of Shalott is a lifelong alter ego. Visiting unannounced the mother she and her police-officer father abandoned two decades earlier, expecting to find solace over his shocking death, she is instead cast into a maelstrom of conflicting emotions and the slowly emerging reality surrounding this Janus-faced man suspiciously central to her life. This deeper truth, about herself, the mother she once harshly condemned, the man she only believed to be her father, and the small-town roué detestably her true father, thrusts Angela into an agony of spiritual confusion, challenging every foundation of a once-confident and assertive selfhood. In the naturalist tradition of August Strindberg, this tightly strung one-act play by an accomplished writer of fiction and drama is a fitting tour de force for Hammer & Anvil Books' first venture into drama.

Under the Dog Star

​poetry from Australia

 

In this new collection of poetry from the pen of Australian writer John Holland, we see a further development of the ideas and concepts explored in his first book, Dry Bones.

“UNDER THE DOG STAR is a powerful collection that takes us here and there, inside and out the mind of the poet, observing the struggle, pain and doubts no human escapes, watching the intelligence dancing in a circle of stones around an inner drain. This collection feels made in the nighttime where the poet has dared to face the demons for us, finding his way back via the Dog Star's bright beam with packages tucked under his arm of truths he discovered and gives to us to open in the comfort of daylight, after our peaceful sleep.” ~ Nia Simone, author.

Dry Bones, which was published first as an e-book by Hammer & Anvil Books in 2012, has been widely acclaimed, reaching #1 on the Poetry / Australia and Oceania best-seller list on Amazon Kindle. UNDER THE DOG STAR builds on this success while creating a new space within both Australian and world poetry.

Quicksand

 

Arlene Greene’s debut novel QUICKSAND is a jewel of resonant and memorable images: scenes that will echo for the reader forever. The characters are those found in the most ubiquitous encounters - beleaguered by economic pressure, and how that duress impacts love, loyalty, and, especially, family and its ties. Yet Greene never reaches for the easy palliatives of pathos or romance. Hers is a keen eye, but a determinedly compassionate one. Readers will easily identify with each family member’s struggle as they unfurl within their unique perspectives, providing a gripping foretaste into their own psyches as well as our own. QUICKSAND is a vivid and powerful unveiling that leaves readers with a no-holds-barred story that ultimately fills the heart.

Rāwāhi

poetry from Oceania

 

Rāwāhi features selected works by poets from Australia and New Zealand whose collections have been published by Hammer & Anvil Books. Each writer exemplifies both their storied native lands and their vivid contributions to the oceans of world poetry. Every lover of international prose will delight in Rāwāhi ~ Poetry from Oceania, which also features illustrations inspired by the Orient by Chicago artist Jeffrey Littleton.

Faschingslieder ~ Carnival Songs

 

FASCHINGSLIEDER {Carnival Songs} is a collection of 99 poems from Adam Henry Carrière, author of MILES and HI’S COOL and publisher of Danse Macabre An Online Literary Magazine 

(www.dansemacabreonline.com). This gathering traverses many poetic styles ranging from short lyric pieces to extended narrative works with an array of recurrent themes such as physical and spiritual geographies, the weight of ancestry, culture, and dream worlds, the nexus between sensuality and sexuality, and mosaics of identity - real or perceived, false or profound - within a materialistic society. And throughout, there is Music - literal music; verbal, linguistic, and stylistic music; the music of love, loss, and lust; metaphorical examinations of the music of Beethoven and Shostakovitch, jazz, blues, and American soul. The title FASCHINGSLIEDER itself references a very early work by Johann Strauss II, indicating the mesmeric effect exerted by bella musica Wien on this unique poetic voice and the capacious works collected herein.

mango-red leaves

 

MANGO-RED LEAVES is a fulsome collection of poems almost all in formal modes – ballades, sonnets, Chaucerian roundels, villanelles, chants royal – that are marked by reflection, introspection, and occasionally moments of humour, anger, and wit. It is driven by memory and history, the author Fragano Ledgister’s own and the shared histories of the communities to which he belongs and in which he has lived. Through it all, Ledgister seeks to maintain a consistent voice, one that questions rather than hectors, that is amused and not weary. Poetry is not journalism, to be sure, but it can document stories in the same manner. These are Legister’s little stories. They are there to fill the interstices of larger narratives, to refresh the places that prose cannot - or will not - reach.

Death Road

 

DEATH ROAD is both a thriller and a shocker for young and old. Depicted are the political scene on the U.S. side of the Mexican border and the lethal rivalry between the Latinos and the ‘Whites,’ the dirty tricks, the rumors, the fights, rapes, killings, and evilest of all, the indifference. DEATH ROAD is also a story of unusual friendship and love in which right and wrong interweave, oppose, fight, die - and keep the reader arrested if not shocked. Though so many may perish on so painful and apparently senseless a road, “Life burned on unconsumed.“ 

Raptus

fiction from Bulgaria

 

Overtaken by mass madness, Earth is ruled by RAPTUS, a global conspiracy by corporations, banks, stock exchanges, political movements, religions, criminal cartels, and media to poison and imprison the planet’s very consciousness. Despite this leviathan evil, a young scientist appointed by the Institute for International Strategic Investigations to identify what remaining Achilles' heel RAPTUS may yet possess breaks free of its Svengali-like controls and emerges to openly resist it. A Dystopian thriller for the global 21st Century, RAPTUS will arrest your imagination with prescient detail, well-honed historical veracity, and the kind of human drama that traverses the millennia.

Sam and the Fall of the Wall

 

November 1989. The Berlin Wall falls, sending shockwaves throughout the world. Not a shot was fired. “Sam” says otherwise. A tale of nonviolence, togetherness and courage in the tradition of le Carré, SAM AND THE FALL OF THE WALL chronicles an almost forgotten CIA remnant going rogue, back into the cold to protect a volcanic freedom movement from both East and West. Here, living history clashes with the winds of change, moving the reader from once upon a time to the Europe of today, and to the dashed hopes and false dreams of our own post-Cold War backyard. From Robert J. Gregg, author of DEATH ROAD (Hammer & Anvil Books, 2013)

 

The Middle-Relief Man

 

A young Afghan mujahideen arrives in France with a cache of Stinger missiles for sale. A cell of National Security Agency operatives in Paris are being systematically murdered. An American Serb obsessed with becoming a player in the Yugoslav civil war enters the fray, on a collision course with the untested emergency replacement sent to retrieve the secret US position in France. Treachery, cold war enmities, mesmeric nationalism, deeply-held faiths, and the ultimate weapon of sex all intertwine in THE MIDDLE-RELIEF MAN to create a mosaic of old school espionage stripped naked before the advent of history and the eternal rules of The Great Game.

Spaced

poetry from South Asia

 

SPACED speaks to a time that hasn’t yet forgotten, or forgiven. Each poem is an echo, a voice leveled in tonality, like a sounder that is used to measure the depth of water but in the process causes reverberating ripples all around its space. Author Sheikha A. navigates the philosophies of love and spirituality in search of the aura beating within both. Can adoration be alchemized into new forms of divinity, into images that transcend demarcations into lucidity? SPACED eschews reasoning for feeling, exploring avenues of balance within imagery and patience through the beauty of the precisely-selected word. There is no stillness of heart in this extensive and empathetic collection.

Death by Punishment

A Harry Krisman Mystery

 

Harry Krisman had only gotten to page 2 of the Boston Herald Sports section when the lead picture there struck him: A man in boxer’s trunks, knees on the canvas, astride a helpless foe flat on his back, whose bandaged hands were held up as if they were imploring for the ultimate mercy...which was evilly forthcoming. Soon after, Harry vengefully plunges into the shadows of post-Soviet Ukraine as well as the dank, lethal world of Ultimate Fighting, an ultra-violent, no-holds-barred ‘game’ that mixes martial arts, wrestling, and boxing - to the death. The third Harry Krisman Mystery from Hammer & Anvil Books, DEATH BY PUNISHMENT follows the successes of MURDER AT THE FORUM and DEATH OF A LOTTERY FOE in a new noir thriller that will captivate mystery and sports fans alike.

A House Made of Glass

poetry from Serbia

 

A HOUSE MADE OF GLASS is an intimate exploration of the senses and the sensual, wrought in the spare yet passionate verbal landscapes that have brought international acclaim to its author, Serbian poet Tatjana Debeljački. Each poem appears in its original Serbian form as well as in English translation: Poetry lovers in both languages will delight in this unique collection from Hammer & Anvil Books, “Les éditeurs électroniques de lettres outré” ...

The Olive Stain

and other stories

 

THE OLIVE STAIN and Other Stories is an illustrated chapbook of fiction from celebrated New Orleans photographer Kristin Fouquet. Each tale is not only a narrative snapshot in the finest traditions of short fiction but features a bespoke visual rendering in monochrome. These distinctive portraitures of the Gothic, the idiosyncratic, and the macabre will transport you to a captivating literary landscape set amid haunting visual panoramas only a denizen of New Orleans could create.

 

"This e-book is a lovely thing. It’s the kind of book that brings pleasure to the browsing of book stores, an unusual work that might easily go overlooked in a world where the senses are bombarded by the noises and images of the big hitters. It’s the type of thing I’d pick up and begin and then just want to carry on exploring, until eventually falling for it and buying so that I could take it home as my own."

Peep-O-Rama

 

On 7/31/2002 42nd Street, Times Square a.k.a. the "Deuce" heaved it’s final death rattle. As the New York Times reported: "The formal closing yesterday of the last peep palace on 42nd Street, Peep-O-Rama, was a coda in the rebirth of Times Square as a kinder, gentler place. The sex shops and naughty tape stores have been wiped clean from the famed street."

 

This is the starting point for Peter Marra's new poetry collection PEEP-O-RAMA where no one is innocent and we can only watch in disbelief. These poems expose the inner workings of the psyche, a dissection of the state of America past and present, an exploration of love, alienation and addiction. This is a poetry collection you will not soon forget..

 

The 50th title published by Hammer & Anvil Books.

The Enemy

Transversions from Baudelaire

poetry from Ireland

 

In his newest collection, THE ENEMY, Ireland's acclaimed poet Peter O'Neill follows up his 2013 H&A collection Antiope with what may be his most ambitious task to date - creating a body of work which falls somewhere between a translation-of and inspired-by some of Charles Baudelaire's most well-known works. O'Neill continues the tradition established in his earlier works of possessing a distinctive and decisively modern Irish voice and deploys this to develop a new poetic approach in concert with the French master.

From the Empire of Fragments

 

The sheer immensity of slaughter and dispossession has paralyzed the minds of us all. It has made amnesia a world necessity. How else could anyone have endured the loss of so much that we have loved? To find continuity, to preserve sanity, this has been the heroic struggle of our ignorant murderous age. FROM THE EMPIRE OF FRAGMENTS is a collection of four short stories and a novella recounting the lives of a Cambodian dancer, a West Indian indigent, an Indian sitar player, an Albanian professor, and an Amazonian native. Their stories deal with love, memory, fidelity and continuity in the face of profound loss. Lovers of short fiction will be entranced by the command of language and sheer human drama used to weave these unforgettable bittersweet tales.

 

"This newest release from Douglas Penick is beautifully written and presents a fascinating overall fabric of stories deftly bound together around significant human themes that reach well before the surface. I very much enjoyed the author's previous novel, and his background makes him very well-suited to fictionalize actual historical events with great depth and skill. Five stars!"

 

Les éditeurs électroniques de lettres outré

www.hammerandanvilbooks.com

 

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