Life is not a straight line, but a squiggle. Alex Dante is not quite living the dream as he tends a bar in Madrid, but he knows life could be worse. The right señorita would be perfect, he thinks, but then falls for the wrong one. Optimistic, or foolish, or both. Aided as well as hindered by his strange friend Nuria Hidalgo, Alex refuses to stop chasing dreams that doggedly elude his pursuit. There must be a way to reclaim them, and the endless roads of Spain provide a few pointers; like l...

The Fall 2021 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”The Fall 2021 Issue of Ploughshares, edited by Ladette Randolph, features nine longform pieces by Leslie Kirk Campbell, Afsh...

In A Blue Coast Mystery: Almost Solved, a London nurse narrates the story of a drifter she latches onto in a public hospital. Henri is in permanent recovery, not only from his heroin addiction but from the 1960s, a decade that invited the unwary to the biggest party in history, then discarded them. She is curious about his past life on the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur with a French countess, hanging out with the Rolling Stones in their exile. Henri dismisses that story; it\u2019s an old one. Inst...

“You couldn’t shoot people for sneering. You could, however, shoot them for burning down stores and bankrupting people. And in fact, if nobody else was going to do it for you, you had to.”Nick Sweeney’s stories haunt the web and print. His books include a lover’s jaunt around Poland in Laikonik Express (Unthank Books, 2011), an opportunist’s wander into the wrong part of Silesia in The Exploding Elephant (Bards and Sages, 2018), and a look at the genocide-surviving denizens of 1960...

Spring 2017 edition of Mystery Tribune Magazine is an exciting collection of the short fiction, essays, book reviews and interviews by some of the best voices in mystery and suspense.The issue features:Stories by Lynne Barrett (Edgar Award Winner), Bill Soldan (Best American Mystery Short Stories 2017), Tai Matsumoto, Teresa Sweeney, Paul Heatley and Nick Kolakowski.Essays by Katharina Hall, Rosemary Johnsen and Elena Avanzas Álvarez (Los Angeles Review of B...

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF WRITING with fresh testimonials from fellow writers about why they love Stephen King and On Writing—and a few new words on the joy of writing from King himself.*ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S TOP 100 NONFICTION BOOKS OF ALL TIME*Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King’s critically lauded, million-copy bestseller shares the experiences, habits, and conv...

Picking up her story in the late ’60s at age 21, Cathy Gildiner whisks the reader through five years and three countries, beginning when she is a poetry student at Oxford. Her education extended beyond the classroom to London’s swinging Carnaby Street, the mountains of Wales, and a posh country estate.After Oxford, Cathy returns to Cleveland, Ohio, which was still reeling from the Hough Ghetto Riots. Not one to shy away from a challenge, she teaches at a high school where police es...

I Remember Me weaves an American tapestry of colorful tales, beginning with the timid musings of a young boy on the verge of becoming a man in the Jewish section of New Yorks Bronx neighborhood, and bringing us up to date with the mature insight of a man whose remarkable trajectory has sent him to the top of Hollywoods elite and sparked the careers of dozens of household-name entertainers. Along the way, Reiner treats his loyal readers to everything from the ordinary to the truly unforgett...

The New Yorker is, of course, a bastion of superb essays, influential investigative journalism, and insightful arts criticism. But for eighty years, it’s also been a hoot. In fact, when Harold Ross founded the legendary magazine in 1925, he called it “a comic weekly,” and while it has grown into much more**,** it has also remained true to its original mission. Now an uproarious sampling of its funny writings can be found in a hilarious new collection, one as satirical and witty, m...

Only yesterday boys and girls spoke of embracing and kissing (necking) as getting to first base. Second base was deep kissing, plus groping and fondling this and that. Third base was oral sex. Home plate was going all the way. That was yesterday. Here in the Year 2000 we can forget about necking. Today's girls and boys have never heard of anything that dainty. Today first base is deep kissing, now known as tonsil hockey, plus groping and fondling this and that. Second base is oral sex. Thi...

This eclectic, funny, and moving book tracks a life lived in music and words. Paul Quarrington ruminates on the bands of his childhood; his restless youth, spent playing bass with the cult band Joe Hall and the Continental Drift; and his incarnation, in middle age, as rhythm guitarist and singer with the band Porkbelly Futures.Ranging through rock ’n’ roll, the blues, folk, country and soul, he explores how songs are made, how they work, and why they affect us so d...

The New York Times bestselling author of Inheritance delivers her most intimate and powerful work: a piercing, life-affirming memoir about marriage and memory, sorrow and love. • "A beautiful book by a writer of rare talent.”—Cheryl Strayed, bestselling author of WILDHourglass is an inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time—abraded, strengthened, shaped in miraculous and sometimes terrifying ways by accident and experience...