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Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories and images
Janet M. Ruth

Here, there, and everywhere we each experience a connection with Nature. In Feathered Dreams, Janet Ruth—ornithologist, poet, artist, and international birder—shares her love of birds through poem, story, and image.  She relies beautifully on her scientist’s eye and artist’s heart to recreate the magic we can encounter when we stop to watch and listen. Dedicated to 2018—The Year of the Bird—the collection introduces us to birds familiar and exotic, from grasshopper sparrows (her beloved research subjects), ravens, and owls, to resplendent quetzals and red-capped manakins. The poet's voice envelops the reader in humor and awe, sadness and joy. With scenes drawn from a Pennsylvania childhood, a New Mexico neighborhood, or a tropical rainforest, the poet explores themes of loss, dreams, and stories both intimate and far-reaching about the birds with whom we share the landscape. This collection of avian treasures is a “wingèd paean of gratitude for the wonders, the messengers that are birds.” Feathered dreams drift on the wind of poems and memories in this love song to birds, to life.

Living with the Doors Wide Open
Rebecca King Leet

As one poem in this debut collection notes: “words exhale what has been inhaled”. Rebecca Leet’s poetry demonstrates that she inhales both the common and the extraordinary in life – and exhales each with exquisite phrasing and uncommon insight. In a style distinct yet accessible, she brings out the elegance in everyday language. Living with the Doors Wide Open reveals a life lived lyrically – sometimes painful, sometimes playful, often mystical, always passionate and authentic. One poem finds profundity in the sad eyes of a woman running for President while another sees it in the timid tremor of a baby sparrow. Poetic lament of love and loss is sung in a forgiving voice. Throughout the collection runs a theme of the unity of all life and our opportunities for routine reverence; she posits as wordless prayer the “sigh to see the moon full round … pause to seek the rainbow source.” Living with the Doors Wide Open creates places where you find yourself – and feel better because you have.

Via Trento No. 4
Mark S. Ennen

Vivid recollections from Italy to the Smithsonian mall to a basecamp in Viet Nam. There are good and sad adventures, failing loves, and rants from both sides of the glass. 
 
There is a list of places and jobs, but only one person is named. To name more would require another book. The list dredges a complex life bordered by smiles, regrets, and impassioned phrases. 
 
Poems that evoke quizzical times in graphic detail. There is a walk-back to capture personal events in staccato relief. Maybe even horses on a merry-go-round.

My Life So Far: Breathing Lessons
by Sally L. Fulton

This first book of published poetry, My Life So Far: Breathing Lessons, by Sally L. Fulton invites you to enter intimately into her life and shows the reader, with clear and lyrical imagery, how she finds meaning in each moment.  Her life is a microcosm of the suffering and transformation that everyone faces. That transformation, for this writer, is found in nature, and in the Buddhist principal which Thich Nhat Hanh calls “interbeing”, the knowledge based on both spiritual and physical understanding that we are all a part of something greater that unifies us. 

Included in this artistic volume are several images of her paintings, each as rich and diverse as her poems. These paintings reflect the beauty of what the painter sees with her eyes as well as what she encounters in the unexpected nature of the spontaneous.  It is through both language as well as through painting that she has come to find potent avenues toward an expression of her own truth.

Reflections: Soundings from the Deep
Mark Fleisher

In Reflections: Soundings from the Deep Mark Fleisher explores the depths of the human condition, employing his poetic voice and journalistic skills honed across five decades, often sprinkling his findings with wry humor.

His skillfully crafted narratives weave no-nonsense poetic and prose tales; yet Fleisher will throw readers stream-of-consciousness curveballs whose interpretations reach across a wide expanse of thought.

Set in southwestern Virginia, "the heart of Appalachia," The Sourwood Tree tells the poignant story of Anna May Osborne, a young girl trapped by her stepfather's lust and violence, who eventually finds freedom and the love and fulfillment she yearns for.  Told in Anna May's voice, the narrative is lyrical, full of the music of Appalachian speech and Appalachian hymns. Prize-winning poet Jeanne Shannon brings to this story of hard times and hard-won emancipation her love of language and seasoned craft.

Spanning almost a century from the early 1900s to today, author Dan Wade’s treasure trove of family stories will capture your imagination, take you to a simpler life and time, and make you guffaw out loud.  You will travel from the deep South in Mississippi to the high desert of New Mexico and onward to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.  Along the way you will meet up with rattlesnakes, runaway pigs, untamed horses, a crazed and crazy cow, antelopes—and we haven’t even gotten to the antics of the people yet! These are the stories of a family rich in heritage, solid core values, deep faith, and great respect for one another.  In the author’s words, “This is what I see: I see life, love, and laughter, a home place…”

A Tried Heart by Raymond C. Mock

A Tried Heart is a collection of best poems and prose that presents Raymond Mock’s range of heartfelt experience over the decades. Heart is his key, and experience has provided him doors to poetry. His test for poetry: If it moves the heart, write it. An observer, he is astute to granted and overlooked matters of heart—the simple things can be the most revealing.

We are all tried hearts. There is likely something for every reader in this book. Find yourself in it. Experience life again, anew.

The Hazing of a Lumberjack by Daniel E. Pedrick

This captivating coming of age novel is set in mountainous ponderosa- pine treed Flagstaff, Arizona. The year is 1966. A sheltered young man named Derek Payne is dropped off by his stoical father at the college in Flagstaff to begin life away from home. He has very little experience regarding women, alcohol, drugs and relationships. His arrogant boastful classmates try to mold him to fit their image. He is transformed from a naive, self-centered novice to a man with depth and compassion. Humor, misfortune and tragedy sculpt his metamorphosis.  Derek’s musical background leads him to a job as lead singer of one of Flagstaff’s up and coming bands.  He is exposed to alcohol, drugs  and fleeting sexual experiences that leave  him unfulfilled.

Early on Derek encounters Dan Denipah, a Navajo dormitory resident who jolts Derek’s cloistered suburban background with irreverent cross- cultural humor and insight. Dan Denipah is sent to Viet Nam and they continue to correspond. The “hawk” and “dove” points of view on the war are argued between friends. Their relationship is central to the novel.

This is a trip down memory lane laden with the music, jargon and experiences of the times.

My Culinary Compulsion by Alona Abbady Martinez

…Food. A kaleidoscope of memories:  the fine dance between burnt and fire-roasted eggplants, the brightness a squeeze of fresh lime juice gives garlic-infused hummus, the sweet cloud of rum slowly heating in my mother’s custard wrapping itself around my face, a lustful temptress.  With such daily seductions, it was inevitable that food would be my destiny.  —AAM

Daughter of an Israeli father and an American mother, Alona Abbady Martinez was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela in a home that obsessed over food.

My Culinary Compulsion presents a life deeply and deliciously lived, amid global, and gloriously homey cuisine, in all its sticky, luscious reality. Like the Slow-Cooked Brisket whose thick, rich sauce demands to be scooped up by a crusty baguette or the moist perfection of Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, these simple, time-tested recipes will beckon you kitchenwards, as these tales of life’s everyday trials and jubilations will keep you turning the pages.

Migrating Through Mortality
Jeremy Taylor

In this collection of poetry and photography, Jeremy Taylor shows us how the fear of death can be confronted directly both by the joy of living and by the realization death is only part of a greater journey.  He explores the unity of life and death, and the challenges that each of these provide.  We live in a culture that sees death as the final enemy.  Instead, these poems and images suggest, death is only part of a much larger and more mysterious process in which we all take part.  We can transfigure death and deprive it of its dread by an appreciation of the life we live, in a world that far different from what we usually suppose.  From fear, we can move to hope and full acceptance of a peaceful transition.  The poems and images in Migrating Through Mortality all convey that in the midst of death, the spirit not only survives—it goes home.

A High-Spirited Woman
Carol Meredith

In A High-Spirited Woman the author reaches into the personal, highly complex, and life-defining moments that shine inwardly toward many of life’s naked truths.  Her poems reflect lifelong involvement with what are often confounding emotional responses to observing life’s realities.  For her those realities have always included not only the physical world but the parallel reality of the heart, mind, and soul with its own unique imprint.

My Mother and I, We Talk Cat
Elise Stuart

My Mother and I, We Talk Cat is an unusual memoir. The author describes the complex relationship between mother and daughter in riveting poetry and lyric prose. The journey they travel is strewn with books, words, empty bottles, and a mother's struggle to care for herself and her daughter. During her research, Stuart uncovers secrets within her mother's life that she had not known before. In understanding her mother's troubled life, she begins to understand her own.

Once, a Walking Shadow
Dan Pedrick

This unique novel has Australia, Minnesota and Arizona as some of its locales.  It is the story of Griffin Siler, a bright, inquisitive and compassionate boy who is shaped by his early bout with Polio, his older abusive brother, and his work as a juvenile correctional officer.  He attends law school and becomes a mental health judge in Tucson.  It is hard hearing sad cases daily, but then a different type of psych patient appears before him.

Rocky Mountain Recipes for Murder:
Historical and Personal Tales from Pueblo, Colorado
by Susan Paquet

The Workplace Zoo
by Karin Stangl

The Workplace Zoo is a collection of poems about fictitious, relatable characters that everyone has encountered in the workplace. 

This book is descriptive, sometimes sarcastic, always sharply attuned to traits these fictitious characters possess.  Keen observations address the zoo subjects—whether they be bosses, employees, or co-workers.

It is enjoyable to see how many characters you recognize in your own work environment. 

A Journey from love to Love
by Azima Lila Forest

A Journey from love to Love by Azima Lila Forest is a collection of poems that takes the reader on a heartful journey that begins as the poet falls in love with someone who does not return her feelings, and ends three years later as she finds herself a lover of the Divine. Each poem is a step along the way, filled with deep feeling, often in a rhythm of two steps forward, one step back.  This collection is rich with echoes of the imagery and sound of the long and beautiful tradition of Sufi love poetry. 

be... psalms of a contemplative heart
by maggi a. petton

In this, her second volume of meditative poetry, Maggi A. Petton invites us to move with her from “psalms of the broken hearted” to “psalms of a contemplative heart,” ensouling the journey from opening to deepening through devotion to Love.

The Color Book
by Annell Livingston

The Color Book is based on the idea of color, and how it plays in the visual arts and in poetry. Color does not exist in nature by itself, but always surrounded by other colors. It is color that we respond to emotionally, we might say, “Oh, I love that color!” or “That color makes me sad.” Using color can expand the meaning of the written word. The book is illustrated with images of paintings by Annell, from the series, Fragments Geometry and Change. Annell insists she does not experience life as a whole, but in bits and fragments. Her compositions are based on geometry and the color is inspired by nature. She keeps in mind the universal meaning given to colors, to set the mood in a painting, and uses the names of colors to set the mood in her poetry. Words bring to mind mental images. Change is also important in her work. Change is constant, nothing stays the same, everything is always changing. The weather changes, seasons change, the light of the day changes, night into day. The sun moves across the sky, the shadows on the wall are always changing.

Thea Speaks: Before I Leave You
by Colleen Walsh Brezny

Thea, rounding the final bend of her life, is once again, (as in Scripted) is faced with a darker evil, than that which Charleston brought upon the forest.  This time around it is none other than the Son of Charleston, who knew not his father.

This journey, spectacular and dangerous as the first, but threaded throughout with a more wizened Thea.  Her steady guidance and wisdom roll lovingly as a piece of symphony from her lips.  Everyone is invited to the play.

Secrets of the Blue Door
by Pierre L. Nichols

Death of a child brings to light the hidden sexual abuse perpetrated by a priest at a boy’s ranch in New Mexico. One volunteer worker secretly fights against church and state to resolve the abuse, while struggling with his own faith and personal tragedies. It all culminates in lawsuits and an emotional conclusion 40 years later. A heart wrenching memoir that speaks of courage as well as sends a message that everyone should read.

TRUST TRUTH: A Spiritual and Erotic Pilgrimage with My Gay Spouse
by Trudie Schuyler Barreras

This memoir by Trudie S. Barreras is specifically focused on the author’s efforts to find a meaningful basis in the context of Christianity to maintain an ongoing relationship with her husband after he acknowledged his homosexuality. Although there are many “coming out” stories now available, and a few narratives of the way in which a heterosexual spouse of a gay individual may have made a realistic adjustment to co-parenting of children after separation, the option to remain married seems to be fairly unique.

Besides describing the actual events in the lives of this couple and their extended family, the narrative discusses aspects of the development of Metropolitan Community Church, outreach experiences in the Dominican Republic, and the interplay of other factors such as retreats and meditation. The author discusses here reasons for rejecting the extremely rigid definitions of sexual ethics promulgated by major Christian denominations in favor of a more honest interpretation of Love as taught by Jesus.
 

Another Door Calls
Elise Stuart

In Elise Stuart’s first poetry collection, Another Door Calls, the reader is invited to step into the stark beauty of the desert as she explores this wilderness in a far corner of southwest New Mexico. Rivers and mountains become her teachers on the journey as she begins to know this wild terrain more intimately. The land becomes a mirror revealing itself to her, revealing her own inner landscape in startling silence and the language of poetry.

Rabbit Sun, Lotus Moon
Andrea Millenson Penner

The poems in Rabbit Sun, Lotus Moon present those uncommon moments when we recognize our world not only as a landscape or backdrop for our individual and collective experiences, but also as soulful nourishment (if we pay attention. The poet shares with the reader a journey of awakening “to what is important in this one precarious life between earth and sky.” Each poem arrives unexpectedly and deliciously like a handwritten letter or postcard from a relative, close friend, or even from your former (or perhaps future) self.

The Presence of Starlings
Jean Bower

The Presence of Starlings is a collection of poems which essentially describes the search for identity. In its small way, it is a search for the identity and nature of mankind as well as an investigation into the identity of the individual.

Orchid of the Night
J. S. Bodin

This dark psychological thriller, inspired by true events, delves into the world of shadows, secrets, and lies, of the two protagonists whose lives intertwine as the Yaqui detective, Andy Gomez, becomes obsessed with solving the death of Kyle O'Sullivan.  Murders, assumed identities, a Yaqui medicine man a gay commune in the desert, eerie dreams, a gold bracelet, and Dracula vampira orchids await the reader of this novel.

Love and Fun: Being Joyfully Authentic, or How to Survive Hard Times (Kindle)
Marilyn O'Leary

Life gets hard at some point for each of us. The problem can be personal, but sometimes it is something society is experiencing that we don’t know how to deal with. Dip into this small book of short writings for some ideas of what to do when things feel bad or life seems out of kilter. These writings can also provide a starting point for conversations with friends. Has life thrown us a curve ball, something unexpected? Or is it a life transition that we all must face-- aging, illness, or death? This upbeat book can help us figure out how to think about it and how to do more than just survive, but to thrive in hard times.

Hair on Fire by Pamela Williams is a collection of her poems springing from a deep emotional well fueled by grief, delight, or just the mysteries of both visible and invisible worlds. The power of word is her gift to take us out of the busyness of life, to remind us of that safe quiet place within, and to celebrate what is uncovered there. It’s an opportunity to slow down and examine who we are in these shifting times and to look at that in the larger societal mirror. Offered by example in Williams’ embrace of her own vulnerability is a springboard for us to greet our own - the archetypal hero's journey!  The collection is invitingly introduced by Tarot artist, teacher, and historian, Arnell Ando.

A Journey into the Heart of the Black Madonna
Cindy M. Medina

In A Journey into the Heart of the Black Madonna: Self-Discovery, Spiritualism, and Activism, Ms. Medina eagerly invites the reader into her relationship with the Black Madonna and its transformative nature. We travel through her dreams, intuition, and relationships; we reach spiritual peaks, then descend into verdant valleys of change. Her exquisite descriptions of Nature serve as an awakening to the harsh contrast of environmental degradation, and the clarity of her writing shines light on important social issues.
Men and women who are yearning to connect to their deep intuitive and spiritual roots and who long to make a difference in the world will find both tools for change and inspiration in Ms. Medina’s journey with the vibrant, loving Black Madonna.
 

Beobuck: The Story of a Bear and Those Who Loved Him
Robert Julyan

The two wandering orphan sisters, Megan and Robyn, have been seized by the Slave Traders, and it is up to the third member of their odd little family, Gumbel, to save them. But as he journeys to Slyrrh, the vile town where the girls await being sold, Gumbel saves another victim of the Slave Traders, the giant bear, Beobuck.

The funny little man and the largest, most ferocious bear anyone has ever seen, become unlikely friends, especially when joined by an even more unlikely companion, the mouse, Moon Bug. After escaping from Slyrrh, they undertake a dangerous journey, but one that often is silly and fun, to understand and confront the dark changes happening in their world.

Way of the Sage: 4 Paths to Manage Stress and Build Resilience
by Mary Jorgensen

This beautiful volume of teachings, poetry and sculpture conveys ancient and modern truths about living deeply satisfying lives.

The four SAGE paths enable you to choose which approach is most needed in the moment: paths of spirituality, authenticity, gratitude and enjoyment.  Each path leads to transformational awareness of ways to enhance the strength of your own holistic nature. 

Original poetry by the author enhances the prose, with artful interpretations of each pathway through bronze sculptures designed by the author’s husband and collaborator, Hans Peter Jorgensen.

 The task of holistic healing is a practice that leads to a wide and deep commitment to live fully in light of wisdom and compassion.  The author offers her work as a blessing of her own journey and also to those who walk the path with her.

Daring to Live: Loss as a Way of Awakening
by Michelle M. Anderson

Loss changes us. It can change us for the better, or the worse, but we cannot remain the way we were in the moments before the phone call or the knock on the door that announced the new shape of our world. Michelle Anderson has written a beautiful testament to how the experience of loss and grieving that loss contribute to that change. We develop different priorities. We gain a new awareness, sensitivity, empathy. Eventually, we are able to recognize those changes and reach back to help others just beginning their own grief journey. Michelle’s experience will reflect yours in some ways, and yet yours will be entirely unique.

Intersections: Poems from the Crossroads
by Mark Fleisher

Intersections brings together the people, places, events and even occasional dream that informed Mark Fleisher’s second publication of poetry. Fleisher is at heart a narrative poet, leaning on his journalistic background to impart clear and powerful messages as he hammers home the futility, frustration, and hopelessness of war, especially the conflict in Vietnam where he served as an Air Force combat news reporter. Readers will also enjoy the lyrical, image-filled style in the tender and sometimes wistful poems dealing with family and relationships. And although the poems in Intersections deal mostly with serious subjects, Fleisher keeps us off guard by successfully intertwining a handful of humorous works in a pleasing wry and whimsical style.

Under the Open Sky: A Story of Magic, God, and Girlhood
by Rachel Waterhouse

Abigail Moore is your typical preacher’s daughter—active in the church, swift to volunteer, and curious: is God really there? As she stumbles through the West Texas landscape of magic, coyotes, aliens, and boys, Abigail finds herself in a huge scandal. And it’s just what she needs to open her mind and seek the truth.

In the style of Carson McCullers, author Rachel Waterhouse, plods through a strange and southern coming-of-age world, giving the reader an inside-look on growing up. The novel draws from her own story as a preacher’s daughter living in Texas. Other than a religious background, Waterhouse credits the mystery of the natural world, “Because the only thing you could do in a small town was look up.” Under the Open Sky is her first YA novel.

Cranberry Beads: poems
by Karin Stangl

Cranberry Beads is a collection of poems that describes the author’s journey through early life.

This book is her voice – bright, perceptive, vivid, and sometimes bittersweet.  Striking imagery and keen observations address subjects that include departure of family and friends, survival paths, and destinations.

Many of life’s lessons described are still worn as a talisman, “strung together like cranberry beads, fastened with a silver clasp.”

Muse with Blue Apples
Anthology of the New Mexico Poetry Alliance

Muse with Blue Apples contains selected works from members of the New Mexico Poetry Alliance, a group in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which has been going strong since 1995.  Members share a love of writing, reading and listening to poetry while striving to maintain a positive, supportive atmosphere to enhance their respective growth as poets.  Writing styles and subject matter vary from landscapes of New Mexico, journeys of the soul, character sketches, to poems about muses, the color blue, and apples.  Some poems are humorous.  Others address personal or spiritual quests.  All were inspired by the muse with blue apples, who sings and  spins words into poems that thread through the diverse tapestry of the Land of Enchantment.

Summoning
by Jeanne Shannon

A collection of poems and hybrid works that hover at the boundary between poetry and prose, and that range from the abstract and experimental to the concrete and accessible. Employing imagery that is vivid and frequently surprising, the author addresses subjects that include the natural world (especially the plant kingdom), art and music, the dreamlike regions of memory, and the mysterious—the “dissolving forms” that tell us the world is stranger than we might suppose. In the title poem and others, she summons recollections of her early life in 1940's southwestern Virginia, “the heart of Appalachia.”

On the Cusp of Memory
by Randy Prus

Randy Prus is Professor of English and Humanities at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. The poems in this collection are all fourteen lines, and they examine the landscape of southern Oklahoma and the terrain of literature and the humanities as the poet finds them to be. Illustrations are by the poet’s son, Ethan, an artist and graphic designer. As John Roche has written: “Herein you'll discover a re-mapping of love's terrain, of history's accidents, of an American Republic unfounded, but not undreamt.”

Northern Compass
by Isobel Cunningham

In Northern Compass, a debut collection of poetry by Isobel Cunningham, readers embark on a voyage. They visit Montreal, the Canadian island city poised in the mighty St. Lawrence River and San Miguel, the Mexican winter retreat of the author. Shining observations of everyday wonders and acute examinations of the mysteries of the human heart allow the reader to navigate the inner world of ecstasy, pain and gentle insight. These poems, lyrical or narrative, escort us to new destinations.

Socorro: The Heart of New Mexico
by Barbara R. DuBois

Socorro: The Heart of New Mexico is a collection of concise and keen observations of Socorro, New Mexico that are both factual and personal.  Barbara R. DuBois, once again, doesn't pull any punches as she looks with unflinching but compassionate eyes at the city and rural area she has called home for more than 30 years.  Accompanied by 30 photographs, her brief descriptions of infrastructure, history and organizations explored through personal anecdote provide an honest and kindhearted assessment for both visitor and resident alike.

Scota's Harp
by Michele Buchanan

According to oral Celtic legend, a warrior princess named Scota came from Egypt and claimed Ireland for her son Ir. From Ireland, her descendants called the "Scotti," invaded more land and named it Scotland. Though this story is not widely accepted, the truth is found in their names, their language, and their courageous fight to keep their culture alive, and will be revealed the day the Stone of Scone breaks its silence.

Writing the Routes: Bus Poems and Stories from Albuquerque
Dante M. Berry

C- in Conduct, Poems from a Semi-Wayward Life, is a collection chosen from decades of the poet’s life. The poems are both lyrical and accessible and address common feelings with a slightly skewed perspective.

In topics ranging from trout to travel, snow to stoneflies, acorns to wax lips, Beth Spencer transforms the ordinary view with fresh, and sometimes, startling imagery. Enjoy a bedtime treat!

In Our Father's House
Porter G. Shreve Jr.

This collection is about all levels of fatherhood – among fathers and sons and fathers and daughters; it is about the fatherhood and brotherhood of man; it speaks to the Father within us which is the transcendent Spirit, the source of redemptive love; it is about being stewards for the community and the environment.  I have selected the theme of “Fathering” because as a father, as a family therapist and as a concerned citizen, I can speak passionately about a matter fundamental to the survival and renewal of the American culture.

Images of Our Time
Toni Gilbert, MA

This book, a pictorial and written record of life in rural Oregon during the late 1800s and early 1900s, includes a brief history of immigration to the United States and the Oregon territories. In these pages, author, Toni Gilbert, crafts a living, breathing picture of her pioneering grandparents. While some official papers remain intact, much of Gilbert’s information was passed down orally. Current descendants of the Curtis-Wilson family had several old picture books containing photographs by Lilly Wilson Curtis, Gilbert’s grandmother, who was a trained photographer. These, along with Wilson Curtis’s saved newspaper articles, lend beauty and credence to the stories. Taken together, Gilbert’s sources reveal the urban cultural trends, personality traits, and family patterns that formed the life paths of her ancestors.

In No One To Wake, Marilyn O’Leary shares “a bouquet of mourning” the death of her husband of fifty years. This book of poetry is beyond beautiful. And one needn’t have been married for fifty years, or married at all, to feel softly wrapped in the understanding of how it feels to lose someone you love deeply. Both pain and transcendence are painted in her poems, plus the naturalness and magic of death itself “…you took your leave breathing like a fish, swimming out into an ocean of darkness and love.” She also addresses the guilty urge to look back and question whether she did enough, whether she was enough “The recipe for my life had ingredients you didn’t like,” and then acknowledges that “Our relationship was whole.”
 
And then there’s the need to go on. She recognizes the “freedom” that comes from loss; “sadness an opening… (to) find yourself unwrapped. I could do anything, be anything, go anywhere,” she writes, but “What if it wasn’t you who kept me tethered?” In this small book, O’Leary takes us from the dark folds of anguish where we’re sometimes drawn towards death ourselves, to the realization that “The answer to all is Life.”

—Gail Feldman PhD, Psychologist and Author, Midlife Crash Course: The Journey From Crisis to Full Creative Power
 

Susan tells the story of two sisters, their uniquely intimate relationship, their enthusiasm and delights in living and their mutual coming to terms with a fatal diagnosis. It is a tale of a talented and supercharged older sister who fearlessly tackles the challenges that life has to offer. Shelley recreates her journey of her sister’s illness and the health care system through her inner life—memory, a deep love, and finally acceptance. The book beckons the reader from the streets of Manhattan, the freeways of Los Angeles, the hills of Provence, the fall foliage of Upstate, New York and the sparkling island of North Haven, Maine. It also takes us down the bleak corridors of hospitals and into nameless waiting rooms. Shelley’s memoir speaks to the devotion and evolution of the admiring younger sister in a time of fatal crisis.

Apricots and Tortillas
An Anthology about Growing Up in Albuquerque in the Postwar Years

In this nostalgic rendition of postwar Albuquerque in the Fifties and Sixties, seven authors bring their unique perspectives as they share memories of growing up in what could be described as a "Norman Rockwell" time in our country's history. This anthology features seven voices from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds who tell their stories of childhood. No two stories are the same. One takes you to the candy counter at Fedway Department Store. Another talks about the debilitating disease of polio. Some stories hint at discrimination and cruelty, a reality during that time in history. One story deals with the devastation of the Bataan Death March from a child's point of view. One deals with the Fourth of July, not as a patriotic holiday, but as an adventure into the vast world of fireworks. These stories will move you to laughter and to tears. More importantly, you will share the optimism of our writers and the nostalgia of the times as you are reminded of the taste of fresh apricot empanadas, the aroma of warm buttered tortillas, the sweet honey combined with puffy sopapillas, and the magic that was once childhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Crossing the Bridge: a memoir
Bea Epstein

Crossing the Bridge weaves together 26 stories of growing up in Brooklyn during the 1940's and 50's and the author’s powerful drive to leave that “ghettoed world.” With each chapter, each character sketch, and each pivotal experience, Bea Epstein, guided by her work as a psychotherapist, expands the reader’s understanding of the emotional meaning of her life’s events and their place in the complex web of family relationships. From the recollection of her parents’ journey to America as children, to the story of their painful marriage; from descriptions of the immigrant neighborhood in which she grew up, to the tragic end of her parents’ lives, we travel with the author on her journey to cross the bridge out of Brooklyn. Regardless of age or cultural heritage, readers will recognize universal human themes… the conflicts in family life, the struggle for identity, and the limits of parental love.

The Midnight Gardener Chronicles
Ann Rayburn

In this debut book Ann Rayburn leads us on her journey as she looks for clues to understand her life. In poems and brief prose sketches she explores the people, the losses, the places, the events that have helped shape her life. From eccentric aunts to rock-climbing companions, from secrets found in a sister’s youthful journals to reflections on the character of the moon, she has found her way to reconciliation.

Always anchored in the world of growing things, challenged and renewed by the garden she has tended for many years, Ann Rayburn shares with the reader, as she does with those personally close to her, a thoughtful exploration of what life demands of all of us: courage and patience.

I Begin: poetry and prayers of a woman's journey through loss and grief
Ginny Gaskill

I Begin: poetry and prayers of a woman's journey through loss and grief is a meditation on life, love, loss, and incredible perseverance.  In this, Ginny Gaskill’s first poetry collection, she chronicles a journey of devastating loss that ultimately leads not only to a deeper faith in herself and in life, but increased wellbeing and sense of belonging in a community of artists.  Ginny recounts her experience as a “rebuilding of soul,” a need and a quest that should interest any reader truly engaged in the sorrows and joys of a life well lived.  It is through speaking her truth that Ginny Gaskill has survived—and thrived.  She invites us to begin, and begin again, as we enter into that shared experience where life takes on new meaning through opening to all that love holds.

Coyote Points the Way
Kathy Park

Coyote Points the Way: Borderland Stories and Plays is a compilation of fiction, nonfiction and ten-minute plays that explore the borderlands, both literal and figurative, where individual resourcefulness, creativity, intuitive knowing and courage make all the difference. Many of the stories are set in Colorado’s vast San Luis Valley, the largest alpine valley in the lower 48 states; two of the plays are derived from the author’s experience teaching holistic health in a federal women’s prison; and all of the pieces are inspired by the people, animals, times and places that continue to shape the author’s life.

 
Moments of Time
Mark Fleisher

If using musical terms, Moments of Time by Mark Fleisher ranges through several octaves and timbres, and up and down the scale to define his inspirations and poetic voice. His observations range from uncomplicated subjects to romantic love to thoughts both personal and universal about war and conflict. Along the continuum are poems reflecting his sense of humor, often frivolous and whimsical. Moments of Time contacts the senses and stokes the emotions, but also entertains, encourages laughter, and revives nostalgic memories.

Writing in an approachable and accessible manner, Fleisher remembers his youth in the 1950s and 1960s of New York City, the horrific inhumanity of Vietnam and a major personal loss to finally find new life in an unfamiliar place across the continent.

 
Limitlessness: a collection of poems
Matthew P. Crowley

Limitlessness, a collection of poems by Matthew Crowley, explores self, nature and cosmos.  Fearless, microscopically honest and authentic, Crowley invites us to journey with him into the boyhood magic of muddy puddles, through the dark night of personal searching, the terrors and joys of love, and the awe of grand landscapes, both inner and outer.

Selected from 18 years of inspired writing, Limitlessness delves into spiritual cosmology and relationship, both personal and ultimate, and demonstrates the poetic process of writing through revealed snapshots of the authors life experiences.  The central thread that runs the length of these poems is the will and courage to love above all else.

No Sins of Omission: poems
Myra Binns Bridgforth

No Sins of Omission is Myra Binns Bridgforth’s debut collection. In it she tells and shows us what it is to be stuck, not able to move forward or backward. In the next moment, unstuck shows itself as redemption and putting one foot in front of the other and breathing. From her thoughts and ruminations of loss and longing and playful celebration of ordinary moments in time, we are transformed by the human spirit that keeps on. These poems are funny and heartbreaking at the same time, displaying the mystical and everyday, the bodily experience and fully engaged brain attesting to our need to make things mean something.

The poems are complimented by Bridgforth’s art pieces; photographs, altered book pages and mail art cards that mirror and interpret the words.

Troth & Rapture: 400 Sonnets
Stanley Paul Thompson

For his second book entitled Troth & Rapture: 400 Sonnets, Stanley Paul Thompson has selected 400 delectable treats of love and adventure to let his readers feel that fervor. Written almost exclusively in the format of Shakespeare, many are read as if one in the sixteenth or seventeenth century had sat and penned sonnets of the Renaissance Period; thus, a feeling of that period may be felt.

Being blessed in knowing fabulous women throughout his life, Mr. Thompson has crafted these sonnets so that the reader can experience the deep love and admiration he has felt for these women. Immerse yourself in these sonnets and feel the passion of romance and thrill of adventure.

Recovered Memories
Barbara R. DuBois

Recovered Memories, the “lost files,” is Barbara DuBois’ second installment of poetic memoir, which is an addendum to From Chapstick to Lipstick.

Reaching for Air
Gayle Lauradunn

Reaching for Air, Gayle Lauradunn's debut poetry collection, tells the story of a childhood spent in a landscape full of beauty, hardship, and violence. In their restless yearning and relentless motion, these poems feel completely American. Interspersed with the voice of the child is that of the adult woman, as both an extension of the child and as a counterpoint to the child's experience. Each poem stands alone, yet is a piece of the whole. This is poetic storytelling at its finest.

Autism: A Dad's Journey
Luis M. Bayardo

Autism: A Dad’s Journey is for all those struggling with the special needs diagnoses of their child. Luis takes the reader on an honest and insightful journey as he slowly comes to terms with his two sons diagnoses of Autism. He gives fathers a voice. Their lives cannot be summed up in one conversation over a drink or just driving down the road. Most fathers are he-men, private, tough, stoic, unwavering, and the rock of the family until....one day they are not. Come and join Luis on his sometimes humorous, certainly adventurous, and continuing journey as he discovers how to become the father that his autistic boys and family need him to be.

EarthTribe Gather: Outline for a New Mythology
John Ashbaugh

The Earth as a Planetary Life Support System is now on the cusp of intensive realignment of elementary forces.  The times of change will be quite challenging to the centers of human population growth around the world, regardless of religious affiliation, political organization, or ethnic identity.  Those factors will come into play as the forces of chaos and control intersect and intertwine.

EarthTribe Gather is for all of us who care, who choose to live and work together to create a caring humanity, and who know that the darkness ahead is for us to walk through, together, into the Light of Dawn.

Plague No More: A Modern Odyssey of Courage and Recovery
Michael J. Ferguson

Few people know that at least three million of us die each year from infectious diseases. One particular killer is caused by a bacillus called Yersinia Pestis. Over the course of several centuries it has taken over 250 million human lives, and is still doing so today, about a thousand a year. Unlike other diseases, there is no inoculation for it, and it is mutating to the point where conventional antibiotics may not successfully stop the next pandemic. In the United States it sometimes goes undiagnosed, most untreated patients dying of pneumonia. In the Middle Ages its occurrence changed history, bringing about the fall of an empire, rise of a powerful theocracy, and changes in medical interventions. Although research abounds on the history, course and treatment of this disease, there are hardly any accounts from survivors. This is one.

A Mother's Story: Angie Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Maggie C. Romero

A Mother’s Story is a searing and intimate portrait of addiction and how it has been passed down in Maggie Romero’s family from generation to generation. Maggie is herself an addict, and when Angie’s drug addiction, at age twenty-two, became apparent to her, she jumped into a recovery program to cope with her daughter’s illness. The subsequent twelve years have proven to be a powerful and poignant redemption journey, as she has gradually come to claim recovery for herself even as she’s watched her beautiful daughter continue to struggle. This is a story of hope and recovery that will resonate with many people, as epidemic as addiction is in our society.  Many will benefit from her experience and the lessons passed on.

A Mother’s Story (on Kindle)

From Lipstick to Chapstick
Barbara R. DuBois

This newest collection of musings, From Lipstick to Chapstick, by Barbara R. DuBois is the honest, humorous and straightforward accounts of a woman who records life with curiosity and fairness. As a series of compassionate but unsentimental anecdotes, this memoir unfolds before us into a tapestry of a long life well-lived.

Critical Mass: Fostering Explosive Growth in YSA Groups
Chuck Brown

A Must Read for anyone who works with young single adults, ages 18-30. 

Starting with a membership of  thirty five,  a congregation of LDS young singles in Albuquerque, New Mexico, grew to 220, was divided, and then grew again to more than 180 in just over four years.  During that time 83 couples met each other, dated, and married.  Chuck Brown and his two assistants, David Hardy and Jay Cobb, together with their wives directed this incredible process.   If you've ever wondered how to communicate more effectively with young singles, motivate them to participate in your group and influence them to change their lives in positive ways, this book is for you.   The key to their success was coming to know and embrace a principal called Critical Mass!
 

psalms of the broken hearted
maggi a. petton

When our hearts break, our pain spills from us. We all grieve, and often feel lost and alone. At times we try to help others maneuver the messiness of living. Spills, after all, are messy.

Sometimes our breakings just require acknowledgment that we are not alone in our pain and that the agony will pass. Here, in Maggi A. Petton's remarkably raw and moving Psalms of the Broken Hearted, we find ourselves not only acknowledged but comforted and companioned in our brokenness.

Regardless of your faith tradition, these poems are loving prayers of connection and perhaps even healing.

Notes to My Mortician
Bruce Noll

These poems surprise. Behind the warmth and seeming simplicity Noll has a way to make us rethink the commonplace of our lives. Through his gentle prodding we come to new insight into human relationships as well as our interactions with nature. In Notes to My Mortician, Bruce Noll uses warmth and sardonic wit to help us experience our world.

Klokking Twelve: Snapshots of a Life
Elaine Mingus

In Klokking Twelve: Snapshots of a Life, Elaine Mingus takes the reader on a remarkable journey through various aspects of place, class and culture in 20th Century America—all through the keen eyes of a woman determined to find love and meaning within, and beyond, the world as it unfolded before her. In this uniquely structured memoir Mingus creates twelve snapshots for each of its four sections. Each snapshot is accompanied by a back-story or supporting information that provides further relevance and vitality concerning places and events, many now lost in the bustle and remake of history. In the first snapshot she is six years old; in the last snapshot she is well into her eighties.  Astute though kind in her assessments, Mingus makes good use of a long life of sharp observation.Open about flaws in her life, and humble about successes, Mingus searches her heart as well as her mind in the telling of these stories, digging deep for their meaning.  She tells how important love has been in her life, and with the wisdom of her years she shows tolerance for every person, family and otherwise, who has crossed her path.People in all walks of life will find something to appreciate in this honest story of a girl from a background of poverty and without a college education, who raised a family, put out three newsletters, was sought after as a spiritual adviser, wrote poetry for the sake of art, and became a James Joyce scholar.  Elaine Mingus has two previous books: Toccatootletoo: Papers on James Joyce; and Leally and Tululy: Free Verse.

Hush Hush and Other Veneers: a memoir
Alexandra Dell'Amore

Hush Hush and Other Veneers by Alexandra Dell’Amore is the true story of girl who endured abuse to protect her family and eventually shot the man who her parents called “doctor.” Although she protected her family from an evil man, she nevertheless became an outcast. The story shows how greed and lies kept her from being believed. Her lonely journey charts her self-effacing life from the 1940’s to the present. By fearlessly exploring her past, Dell’Amore realized the shame and guilt she had embraced were never hers. Hush Hush and Other Veneers is a journey of resilience and courage in the face of self interest and denial from a society that looked the other way—it is a story of hard-won freedom.

Dorothea and Preston: a story of love
David Bachelor

Once again, in Dorothea and Preston, a story of love, David Bachelor has captured humanity at its awkward but noble best, striving as always against unforeseen odds. In 1940 while hate and destruction in Europe were building to a second world war, Dorothea Dolan runs her quiet boarding house on the shores of Lake Michigan. Here she loves and cares for the elderly who have been broken by the Great Depression. Dorothea’s commitment to her charges is absolute and her tacit motto is “no one will suffer” as she attempts to rescue them from slow and painful declines. 

Into this setting Michigan State Police Detective Preston Duhamel strides in search of thieves and incorrigibles—who he finds, and sometimes who find him. Preston, however, is fleeing his own afflictions.  With redemption just around the corner, Dorothea tries to help her lover and herself, as they are both challenged by elemental powers beyond their control.

Ruminations: Reflections on a Long Life
Barbara R. DuBois

In Ruminations: Reflections on a Long Life, Barbara DuBois delights the reader with stories and poems depicting her busy, happy life with her family.  Eight sections tell about her farm, her parents and children, her past, and her present.

Tzimtzum: 5 contemporary poets lend us their hearts
Abeyta, Arness, Broderick, Hill and Seluja

From San Miguel de Allende, Mexico to St. Paul, Minnesota and from the American Southwest, both rural and urban, each author has contributed a score of poems and included their own introduction, giving the reader an opportunity to befriend the poet and settle into their craft and high art. Included here are the works of aaron a. abeyta, Tani Arness, Richard Broderick, Judyth Hill and Katherine DiBella Seluja. These writers speak unabashedly of love and of death, and in so doing make invitation to experience our tragedies, deceits and glories as veils, stations and gifts along a journey of miraculous unfoldment. They do the work of poets—they reflect the mysterious wonder and unbelievable fortune of being in a body, on a planet, all together—and knowing it.

Health: Motivational Coloring Book
Dr. Nancy North

This motivational exercise was created to positively activate both the creative and rational aspects of the brain through intuitive illustrations and effective affirmations. Feel free to color outside the lines and doodle to your heart's content as you take note of all your current realizations. Take a look inside for further instructions.

Arranging the Constellations
Robb Thomson

Arranging the Constellations is the record of a man who straddles the worlds of science and myth and is faithful to both. A physicist who writes poems and yearns to keep the ancient fires of inspiration lit and burning, Robb Thomson can both fondly recall his father’s Model T and recognize all too well the first consequences of global warming. There is a hard-won courage in these poems: they accept the passage of time that teaches us how to live with loss after loss and, at the same time, they celebrate the pleasures of the here and now. Behind them, there is a deep-rooted belief in Beauty—in the elegant equations of physics and mathematics; or the magic of language that speaks, at moments, with a power beyond what we know. These poems trace a lifetime spent learning to grasp the right questions to ask; to live artfully, with the hope of adding one man’s “marginalia” to the sacred text of the here and now and what lies beyond, “more real than real.”
—Robert Cording holds the Chair of Creative Writing at the College of the Holy Cross, and is the author of several collections of poetry, including Life-list, Heavy Grace, and Walking with Ruskin.
 

Ditchbank Dairies: Haibuñera from the Land of Enchantment
Shirley Balance Blackwell

Once you start down [Blackwell's] ditchbank path, you will find it difficult to stop or step aside. The book is a real landmark that will prove that acequias, the bordos (footpaths along the waterways), and the "collective imaginary" they inspire are true world treasures.

—From the Foreword by Prof. José Rivera, specialist in irrigation communities worldwide and author of Acequia Culture—Water, Land, and Community in the Southwest (UNM Press, 1998, in English; Universitat de Valencia [Spain], 2009, in Spanish).
 

The Ruby Moon
Ruby Jebbour

The Ruby Moon by writer and performance poet Ruby Jebbour is a narrative poem—an autobiography in poetry. It is a dense and beautiful journey through time—a conglomerate fusion of verse touching life, nature, spirituality, religion, and history. The Ruby Moon is where Jewish thought, history, and mysticism meet the Red Road of the Native Americans—their teachings and traditions, and as well the beauty and wisdom of the Islamic world. By virtue of her quest to comprehend her own life and tragedy, the poet’s eye is able to perceive far beyond the scope of her own experience, unearthing the deeply spiritual and philosophical aspects of existence from the Garden of Eden to the modern day.

Living by Ear: Memoir of a Wayward Teacher
Sharon Rhutasel-Jones

In her humorous and poignant memoir, Living by Ear, Sharon Rhutasel puts readers into a classroom with the kinds of adolescents everyone knows. She brings to life real kids sharing a part of their lives with a wayward teacher, as she calls herself, who is guided more by her heart than by her lesson plans. Among her students, we meet a bored overachiever who just wanted to be pointed in an interesting direction and told to explore, an insecure boy who overcame stuttering to become a published writer, and a poet who hated high school then became a teacher....  (More info on Amazon. Click link above.)

Homeward: poems
Elizabeth Keough McDonald

In Homeward, Elizabeth Keough McDonald relies on her poems to speak for themselves. Whether it is about family, place, love lost and found, friendship or the experience of military service and its aftermath, Elizabeth lets the hands of her poems go and reach towards yours. Hold tight or shake loose!

Lithic Scatter and Other Poems
Karla Linn Merrifield

At once sweeping, visceral, earthy, gritty, ethereal, and primordial, Karla Linn Merrifield’s Lithic Scatter and Other Poems unfolds a kaleidoscopic odyssey of the American West at its all-natural wildest.  Here is the frontier seen — and felt — through the eyes of a visionary poet who explores the region’s vast terrains as anthropologist and archeologist, historian and ethnographer, shaman and seeker-after-self.  From the whimsical to the emotionally searing, these 59 poems evoke vast landscapes rich in myth and mysticism, loss and hope. Merrifield captures the West’s majesty and brings it home for all to discover.

Success: Motivational Coloring Education
Dr. Nancy North

“Success” is one in a series of motivational coloring books from Dr. Nancy North, a chiropractic doctor treating professional, Olympic, and college athletes for over 25 years. Coupled with fun and intuitive drawings by illustrator Tantan Araya, the affirmations in this book have been created to bring your mind to a better place. Using the written word, color therapy and visualization, anyone interested in adopting healthier attitudes and manifesting well-being and increased happiness will surely benefit from this inspirational jumpstart. Become your own personal life coach and feel free to color outside the lines.

When East Was North
Andrea Millenson Penner

This collection of very personal but accessible poems explores the substance of recent and distant memory against the flow of ever-rapid change that we all have experienced since the mid-20th century. In several poems, Andrea Penner explores contrasting relationships: the brief fragility of some, the enduring power of others. Readers will be drawn into familiar, intimate scenes evoked by the poet’s delicate balance of words and emotions: a revisiting of childhood memories and neighborhoods, a parent’s terminal illness, a woman’s disintegrating marriage, and a lover’s passions. When East Was North also introduces the reader to a wider world and cast of characters: a San Quentin prisoner, a gold miner in South Africa, and women victims of war. In a voice that ranges from humor to pathos, the poet puts word and meaning to those personal and universal vicissitudes of life that make our existence so challenging and exciting.

Leally and Tululy: Free Verse (print and Kindle)
Elaine Mingus

Here a common person speaks to you in simple language, believing that there is meaning to be found without frequent help from Webster.  This collection is largely autobiographical.  However, you may notice the influence of mythology, folk tales, and children’s lore.  The verses also reflect love of children and love of family.  Included are Christmas verses.

Toward the end of the collection there is a poem entitled “An Aside.”  This asks “What does one really need to share?”  Although this poet tends not to get into dark places much, there is also the honesty to peek into them now and then.  Hopefully the balance is there. This collection is meant to be enjoyed.

Jubilation: selected poems
Barbara R. DuBois

Jubilation, by Barbara R. DuBois, is a selection of her poems, favorites chosen by herself and her family, rejoicing in love and life.

A Black Odyssey: collected poems
SETH

This diverse, vibrant book is modeled, like Joyce's Ulysses, on Homer's ancient epic, using it as an allegorical scaffolding for the poet’s own experience as a Black man in contemporary America. The author’s language runs the gamut from the vernacular to the Elizabethan; everything from pattern poems, free verse, prose poems, sonnets to parodies of Mother Goose. Remarkable in scope, every poem stands on its own while arranged in chapters that lead the reader through an epic journey of human trials—poverty, desire, injustice, racism—and ultimately to a transcendent awareness of beauty, joy, love and personal triumph.

Naked Underneath
Valerie Haugen

Poetry saves lives! That is at the heart of Valerie Haugen's belief system. That is precisely what poetry has done for her every day. The poems included in this collection are about family, friends, history, and how we move through this world. The poems and prayers included here emerged through the daily practice of writing poetry.

Ms. Haugen is also an actress who has had the opportunity to perform her poems. Seeing, feeling and hearing how her poems affected others, gave her the strength to put these words to print, baring her soul in the hopes that the power of words, the power of feeling, and the power of poetry, will be meaningful to others—anyone for whom poetry can be a salvation.

Sun in an Empty Room
Maryhelen Snyder

This volume of new and selected poems is Maryhelen Snyder’s celebration of the curiosities, ecstasies and griefs of a life lived fully. Having early experienced the gift of poetry summoning her, she has remained faithful to its call. These poems are without exception an expression of her gratitude.

 

Sweet By and By
David Bachelor

The heart of this good story is about an old man finding meaning and love in his last days. As the author writes: life and love is like a puzzle.

But so is Bachelor’s story about life like a good puzzle. The author takes us through quotidian days of lovely folk living hard and complicated, but good, lives. Then the author takes us through days that are disrupted by bad and violent folks crashing into each other’s lives. Lives are lost in this exciting story. But life and hope are also promised in the Sweet By and By.
    —Luisa Duran, Ph. D.

Living Well Is The Best Revenge
Barbara R. DuBois

In the rich poems in Living Well Is the Best Revenge, Barbara R. DuBois humorously shows us the way to live well, surrounded by the beautiful and exciting colors, animals, and land of her beloved Southwest. Thoughtful new poems take us to other fascinating foreign as well as domestic sites. The praise she treasures is that her poems are “accessible.” You will surely agree.

I Wished for a Serpent
poems by Nate Maxson

This is Nate Maxson’s 3rd book of wild, free verse poetry after last year’s Vaudeville Jihad and one other book that wasn’t published because it made the editor go crazy.  I Wished For a Serpent pushes what the author calls “the theory of total poetic annihilation” even farther yet.

HolyFunk
Kim Nuzzo

Part twilight language, part Jungian koan, overlapping symbols and poetic fragments, full of a topsy-turvy logic, HolyFunk is an artbook, toward the quirky end of the spectrum. HolyFunk is affectual brain play, the heart of art, full of paradox and contradiction. The book is comprised of manipulated, painted Polaroid photographs in combination with poetic lines meant to encourage the reader toward the spiritual wisdom of unknowing, with intent, bafflement and wonder.

Sonnets of Life Well Spent
Stanley Paul Thompson

Rather than make a career of poetry, Stanley Thompson has engaged a number of careers from which he has drawn the details and essence of personal experience and which he brings forth in Sonnets of Life Well Spent. Motivated by the death of his beloved wife Patricia in 2011, the stories of his journey have come into sharper focus with an enhanced meaning that has allowed him to present this collection of 126 poems in the style of memoir. The reader will not only experience sonnets in the format, and even in the tone, of William Shakespeare, but will come to appreciate the life of the author, a life, indeed, well spent.

Love of Language:
I’ve Got It Badly and That Ain’t Well
Barbara R. DuBois

Barbara DuBois is a self-avowed lover of language, but don't think that makes her blind to its imperfections. What some might call the absurdities of language fascinate her and prompt the wry, witty pokes she takes at the mongrel dogma we call English usage.

I can imagine DuBois holding her own on a verbal seesaw with Ogden Nash, who must have been a kindred spirit. I'd romp through their wacky word-play-ground any day. Luckily, Love of Language shows us where to find the entrance.

—Shirley Balance Blackwell
President, New Mexico State Poetry Society

Upside Down Rainbow: Trauma Recovery of Mind, Body & Spirit
Alice Hurst

When Alice Hurst was run over by a car she was faced with a new reality. She clearly wasn’t going to die, so how was she going to help her broken body heal? Through journal entries, Alice documents her incredible journey as she navigates through a year of hospital stays and physical therapy. Upside Down Rainbow shines a light on the path to healing for others to follow.

Scripted:
Thea's Tale of Love, War and Wisdom
Colleen Walsh Brezny

The scripted mission Thea must undertake is daunting. The guidance unfathomable. The experience dangerous and magnificent. The love unexpected, essential and of the highest nature one can conceive. A journey that is out of this world. One you have been invited to take.

Light as Air: the rose rescued from exile
Joseph Bottone

For Joseph Bottone everything is relationship, and his poems point ultimately to one relationship, our relationship with the divine and the silence in which we discover it.  Whether set in the desert mountains of New Mexico, the coast of Big Sur, cabin or cityscape, his hand-sized poems are always arriving from silence. 

Teasing out the Divine
Ellen Marie Metrick

Some poems are meant to be heard, and some to be soaked up by the eye. This book carries both, to be shared in voice with community or passed quietly from one hand to another around a small campfire along a desert river, or between lovers on a summer night when it’s too hot to sleep. These poems delve into dreams, mountains, ravens and rattlesnake medicine, relationship and the mythic life of the human spirit, and remind us that what we seek is in our hearts all along.

Fixed and Free: poetry anthology 2011

Celebrating a group of New Mexico poets from differing generations, ethnicities and cultural settings, the Fixed and Free Poetry Anthology 2011 includes a variety of forms from the sonnet and villanelle to open verse and slam. Rather than rely on a regional, academic or ideological theme, this collection includes the best poems from a grassroots community that meets monthly in Albuquerque, New Mexico to perform, discuss and appreciate the written and spoken word.

Blessed
a photographic perspective of the Carmel area
Bruna Rita Odello—presented by Carla Celeste Odello

Blessed is a collection of seventy six photographs of the Carmel area captured by Bruna Odello who shares her knowledge of the region and her appreciation of the sublime in these stunning images. Ms Odello is a member of one of the original settling families with intimate connections to both the rural coast and the long established religious institutions that serve its residents. Her intensive camera work over a period of nearly forty years celebrates a perspective that brims with gratitude.

Images of the Carmel Mission and Carmelite Monastery are juxtaposed with those of wetlands and grand sunsets to give travelers a kaleidoscopic yet focused view of the area, and provide those who are already familiar with the Carmel coast a deeper appreciation of their beloved religious landmarks and magnificent coastline.

Seeing Into Stone
A Sculptors Journey
Kathy Park

Set in a ghost town in California's Mojave Desert, Seeing Into Stone: A Sculptor's Journey is a memoir about the author's struggle with flaws in her vision, her carvings and her new marriage as she searches for her identity as an artist. Through her fifteen-year apprenticeship with Gordon Newell, a wise and patient stone sculptor, she learns that carving stone and wood can be understood as a metaphor for life: go with the grain and not against it; trust that the form inside will emerge in its own good time; and realize that understanding comes slowly, chip by chip.

Already There: poems
Shirley Balance Blackwell

To find a hidden thing already there, one must first pay attention.  A childhood spent in the grand but unforgiving landscapes of the desert southwest and a career as a national security analyst reinforced that insight for Shirley Blackwell.   Already There is an eclectic harvest of poems found by combining rigorous intellectual investigation with a personal longing to understand both the workings of the cosmos and of the human heart.   

Whether the topic is caring for a mother-in-law with dementia, finding one's own path, or lessons in courage for a 4–year-old terrorized by a neighbor's vicious turkey, the poet speaks in a voice of unflinching candor.  The natural world suffuses this book both as metaphor and for its own, but don't expect a sentimental treatment of the birds and beasties in these poems.  They all occupy a niche in the food chain.  What you can expect is poetry imbued with depth and whimsy, scientific fact and mythical  fantasy, gentleness and raw honesty–all couched in precise, musical language.  These perceptive poems celebrate the strength of the human spirit as well as its place in a wondrous universe.

In A Rose Wood Wandering
Jeanne Shannon

In a Rose Wood Wandering is a collection of poems, stories, meditations, and reveries that explore facets of the word and the idea of Rose. It roams through gardens, orchards, and forests burgeoning with large and small members of the family Rosaceae, visits women named Rose, and even looks at rose-patterned china teacups and silver spoons with roses on their handles..

The book reflects the author's intense interest in the world of plants.  As a friend of hers once said, "She has a love affair with trees."  Not only trees, but shrubs and flowers, as well as lowly wildflowers that some dismiss as weeds. She has a special fondness for the family of roses.

Piggybacked: poems
Joanne S. Bodin

Piggybacked, is a collection of poems that evokes universal experiences of beauty, pain, suffering, longing, joy, mirth, dreams, nightmares, and transcends them into the unorthodox world view of the poet. With thought-provoking imagery, these poems allow us to delve into the paradoxes of our own human existence.

The inspiration for this book came from the author’s relationship with her grandfather, also a poet, and their personal quests for freedom. The title of the book is an expression of ancestral ties that bind us through the generations.

In Silence I Speak: My Journey Through Madness
Mary Elizabeth Van Pelt

In Silence I Speak takes the reader on a journey of transformation. First into the depth of psychiatric illness that is often misunderstood, then through systems that intend to give good care but fall short, and finally to health restored and a life of recovery found beyond the identity and label of a psychiatric disability.

Richard is Missing: A True Account of a Kidnap/Murder on the Mexican Border
Dennis W. Harlan

After more than a quarter century Dennis Harlan finally tells the true story of brutal murder, intensive investigation and speedy resolution that crisscrossed the U.S./Mexican border for 10 days and involved Mexican Federales, the Del Rio Police Department, Val Verde DA's Office, Texas Rangers, U.S. Customs and the F.B.I. Harlan’s blow by blow accounts taken directly from the case history that was his responsibility to write, reveal the professionalism with which he managed the case while dealing with his underlying feelings of loss about his fellow officer and compadre.

Richard is Missing is a great read for law enforcement officers, both veterans and those new to the territory, and for anyone with an inquiring mind and a keen eye for well documented accounts of true crime in a volatile locale that’s close to home—very close to home.

After the Murder: My Affair With a Felon
Mary Elizabeth Van Pelt

After seeing an inmate interviewed on a television program Mary began writing to inmates in state prisons. A few years later in a prison visiting room she met Mark.

Mark was twenty-five and serving twenty-to-life for a liquor store robbery that went bad and ended in murder. Mary, a college student, became enamored by the long and beautiful letters he wrote. She didn’t know that this murder, the death of someone she never knew, would become a transforming power in her life more than thirty years later.

Meaning of Mountains: poems
K. K. Cherry

Composed with a voice of authenticity, this collection sings with a celebration of nature. These poems, crafted by visual artist and poet K. K. Cherry, illuminate a path for the reader through some of the more sublime landscapes of the Rocky Mountains, the small and hidden places so often overlooked. Cherry’s stylistic use of punctuation and enjambment, and her love of alliteration, create a lyric and meditative tone that resonates in the places where we come to befriend ourselves.

Consistent in candor with her nature poems, her personal  anecdotal pieces from childhood paint poignant scenes from a rural America that is not so much hidden as it has vanished.

Ceremony at Dawn: Hot Air Balloon Adventure
Carol Shelton March
with Bill Pearson

From the minute Carol set out at the crack of dawn for the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta, the colorful excitement and the surprises of the event won her heart and soul. Carol March’s story begins with the uncanny sight of the Dawn Patrol, three balloons lit from the inside out and floating in the blackness above a sleeping city about to waken to giant orbs rising in the clear New Mexican sky. We experience the careful planning and anticipatory excitement of spectators, chase crews and safety directors called “Zebras,” as they prepare for launch. And we watch as Carol, a reluctant bystander who is determined to never step aboard a basket about to be lofted into the air, is confronted with an invitation—and a challenge no one expected.

Accompanying Carol’s narrative of high adventure are the photographs of Bill Pearson, a videographer and skydiver with over 900 jumps. His keen eye for spatial context cause these full color images of the fiesta to lift the reader right off the page. Ceremony at Dawn is your escort through the wondrous ritual of hot air ballooning, and may well serve as your invitation.

A Walk Along the River:
A Literary Anthology From the Upper Rio Grande

Eloquent, genuine, evocative of place and community—such are the voices in this collection. Open the cover and you push from the bank, moving with the river's shifting current of poetry, essays, stories, ripples of Spanish overlapping English. Listen for Coyote, pass below polished volcanic cliff rock, and smell the spiced wind off the mesas. Let the songs here sing to you of life lived in appreciation of the unique place that is the Upper Rio Grande.

—Chris Ransick, Denver Poet Laureate, 2008-2012, and author of Lost Songs and Last Chances