Bøger udgivet af McCaa Books

ROCK 'N' ROLL BROKE INTO MY LIFE when a teenage girl older than I blasted Bo Diddley on her record player. She was a dishwasher with curly hair. I heard the music come out of her bedroom window and could not get it out of my head. Later, at school at lunch hour in the gym when guys danced with girls, I heard Carl Perkins and I haven't been the same person since. I had grown up on folk music and on rhythm and blues-I played Leadbelly records everyday for a year-and rock 'n' roll sounded in my ears as though it had come out of black bars, the black ghetto, and the juke joints of the South. Soon after the British Invasion of the 1960s, when rock 'n' roll bands such as the Beatles and the Stones, came to the States, I went to England and lived with an American who played the guitar and sang the blues in British pubs. When I came back home and started teaching literature, I attended rock concerts on campus with tens of thousands of students and heard The Beach Boys, the Jefferson Airplane, and other bands. Mostly, I listened to rock 'n' roll with others, rarely by myself, and often in the company of women, many of whom show up in these poems and to whom I mean to remember and to pay homage. Moreover, I wrote these poems explicitly for the purpose of performing them in public and so I have paid particular attention to the sounds of the words on the page. Hopefully you'll hear music in the background even when you read this work quietly at home. About thirty women show up in Rock 'n' Roll Women plus one man. I didn't want to leave men out completely; some might say that the one man I have included isn't a very good example of American manhood. To that I would say, I am not trying to provide good examples of anything. Rather, I aim to capture a specific person, place, and time from the 1950s to the present day when I'm still likely to listen to rock 'n' roll on CD or on radio stations such as KWMR that broadcasts from Point Reyes Station in Marin and that must know that I'm listening and that there are others out here beside me who want to hear rock 'n' roll, too.

The Healdsburg Literary Guild is delighted to publish this new book, Healdsburg Alive!-Eight Sonoma County Writers Pay Homage to a Great Northern California Town. It follows a number of previous Guild publications, including Present at the Creation and three books entitled A Day in the Life of Healdsburg, in addition to several poetry chapbooks. This new book provided writers in the Healdsburg area with a four-session workshop in which to hone their writing skills along with an opportunity to publish their pieces. Armando Garcia-Dávila, Healdsburg's 2002-2003 Literary Laureate, led the workshop. The price of admission included marvelous meals prepared by Armando. The workshops met four times in 2010-once in each season. Armando opened sessions with a discussion of writing prompts, techniques, seeds, and subjects the participants might consider. Writers were then on their own for about three hours to wander Healdsburg and surrounding areas in Sonoma County, looking for inspiration for a story or a poem. Although the stated premise of the workshop was to write a piece that matched each season, writers followed whatever muse grabbed them and led their pens in preparation of a first draft. The group then reconvened and writers read their drafts. A lively discussion followed, offering each writer comments, ideas, and encouragement. Armando then selected and edited pieces for the book. And voila, we have Healdsburg Alive! We hope you enjoy it.

A beautifully crafted book of Ekphrastic Poetry by Robin Gabbert, written to works of art from California's wine country and others including Color photos of the art for each poem.

Company Secrets takes readers on a fascinating ride into the world of management consulting where nothing seems as it should, as two consultants visit a number of U.S. states, India, and Afghanistan. Along the way, they encounter Mafia mobsters, dishonest businessmen, murder, and a harrowing experience in Afghanistan. Buckle your belts and come along for the ride

In this collection of poems and stories, Armando Garcia-Dávila shows us why he is one of Sonoma County's best writers as he celebrates his Mexican heritage and grieves his church. Garcia-Dávila writes of his book, "What follows in this book are some revelations of my life and soul through a few poems and short stories. I have no pretensions to seek your understanding or forgiveness. I only hope you enjoy the pathos, sense of seeking, and humor in my work. The Catholic Church and our family's Mexican roots and modest means provided the foundation of my young years. I remain indebted to my parents, older brother, twin brother, and four sisters for the core of my being. Without them, I would be but a shadow. However, the church confused me early in life as I came to realize the fallibility of the institution. My intention in writing about it is not to offend but to simply offer its effects on me as an innocent and malleable child."

This story is based on a cross-country motorcycle trip the author made in 1968 with his older brother and two friends. The principal characters of The Trip, Tino, Sal, Gary, and Patrick, are based on the four young men who took a cross-country motorcycle trip in the summer of 1968-Tim (Patrick), Gerry (Gary), Tony (Sal), and Armando (Tino). The novel is a mix of fact and fiction. For example, The Trip's route is factual, but many of the events in the story are creations from the author's twisted mind.

In her sixth book of poetry, Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg marvels about the joys and the pains of reaching her tenth decade, the random cruelty and capriciousness of the wildfires that ravaged Sonoma County, California, and speaks of and to family and close friends as only her poetry can.

Sharon and David Beckman yearned to know Paris close up and at a lingering pace. This trip they decided not to be tourists. They'd go local. Writing vignettes was an afterthought. One day they just started writing. This book contains eleven vignettes, plus a poem. Their sojourn in Paris deepened their relationship with each other and enhanced their love affair with the city. To embrace the timeworn label City of Light is to revel in its profound beauty, but doesn't capture the hurly-burly, shoulder bumping, and traffic. Fortunately, their years in New York had conditioned them for this. Evenings sometimes brought the most memorable moments, when, after a salad, paté, baguette and glass of wine, they ventured out yet again, this time down rue Sainte-Geneviève and across the Place Maubert for an aesthetic, even spiritual, nightcap: moonlight touching Notre Dame's spire and sending the Seine sparkling, as if for the first time, westward under its bridges.They hope they've captured impressions and sentiments worthy of Paris in these vignettes.

This first gathering of lyrical works from poet Tim Nonn's journey into his oncoming blindness is sometimes beautiful, other times astonishingly wise. When he says 'going blind/is another way/of seeing/the heart clearly, ' he accepts the dare of kinship with Rumi and Basho, Roethke and Bly, a lineage of mystics and, perhaps ironically, seers. His unrhymed quatrains, deceptively simple, are fully armed with axioms: 'knowing is impossible/you must feel your way/into your heart/and get lost.' And his mastery of simple means as an approach to the ineffable is always in effect, as when 'in the presence/of a tree/stillness/is a conversation' or 'an evening song/of a bird facing darkness/had the lonely clarity/of one in love with light.' One in love with the light indeed. Here Tim Nonn welcomes you and it is likely you will find yourself happily entranced

This is the first collection of poems published by a new voice and is not likely to be her last. Written in a sparse, tight style, Karen Hayes describes life and her observations in a striking and haunting way, sure to make a reader pause and reflect.

Thank God that octogenarian Vilma Ginzberg cannot help herself. She must 'make noise, ' and once again does so insistently, angrily, touchingly, and beautifully in her latest poetry collection unsurprisingly titled making noise. Every poem that Ms. Ginzberg writes truly embodies the woman she is now, the product of her long life as a psychologist, activist, and all around feisty but loving human being. However, it's not enough for Vilma Ginzberg to look back and reflect on politics, sounds, loves, and music, she goes a step beyond and looks forward to her own death in a movingly provocative poem. You can hear Vilma's voice clearly in every poem. There's a gutsiness in the political poems, a bright singing in the poems about writing and creation, a rich solemnity in the poems that honor the memory of creators, poets, musicians, friends, and her own life's work-all part of the celebration reflected in the explosion of color and light chosen for the book's opening image. A very enjoyable read from start to finish.

In the Mouth of the Wolf has a layered set of characters, each with his or her own personal questions, who confront their past as it bears on their present behavior if they are to survive. Three men in the novel have varying degrees of war trauma. Their wives display different ways of absorbing the war experience upon the men's arrival home. The book principally encompasses the impact on marital relationships and other human connections when soldiers return from war. The story has its roots in the Vietnam War, but unlike the old stories that have all ready been told about Vietnam, this tale embraces homecoming for the main character, Memo Muir. A few scenes in Vietnam demonstrate the brutality that the war has on Memo's mind. Two of Memo's wartime buddies deal with their homecoming in different ways. Jack, a trauma surgeon in the war, was severely affected by his experience, though shows a significant amount of resilience. However, Chet completely shuts down and expresses his concerns and emotions by self-medicating with sundry drugs; thus, further slanting his perceptions that have been misshapen by his war experience, leading to dire consequences. In the Mouth of the Wolf comes from a Spanish saying, which means, "you don't have a chance," an apt metaphor for the characters' struggles. Memo and his wife separate because of Memo's war trauma, despite the deep love that imbues their souls. By the end of the book there are transformative experiences that bring about a surprise rapprochement between them.

The Healdsburg Literary Guild is delighted to publish this new book, Healdsburg and Beyond!-Forty Writers Celebrate a Special California Town and Beyond. It follows a number of previous Guild publications, including Healdsburg Alive!, A Day in the Life of Healdsburg, Present at the Creation, Healdsburg Haiku, and several poetry chapbooks. The contents of this new book are the results of an open call the Guild issued last year. The book features forty writers and poets and their fifty-two poems and seventeen short stories. It is organized into three sections. The first section, Healdsburg, has poems and short stories set in Healdsburg and its environs. The second section, and Beyond!, has poems and stories set, as the title implies, beyond Healdsburg's environs, although many of the pieces could best be categorized as place neutral or anywhere place. However, readers will visit several other states in the United States, and countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The third section, Literary Illuminations, features the fifteen winning entries in a quarterly contest the Guild conducted for its members from the first quarter of 2013 through the first quarter of 2015.

Waights Taylor's YA novel, Henry Tuttle: The Boy Who Ran to Glory, goes back in time to tell a timeless story about runners and running, especially the long distance kind. Henry Tuttle spans two generations and explores American values that are often most visible in the world of sports. Taylor has created a cast of memorable characters who run the gamut from youngsters to oldsters who learn indelible lessons about what it means to compete, to perform one's personal best, and to create bonds of friendship that go beyond well-beaten paths. This spirited and inspiring book will transport readers-whether they're 18, 81, or anywhere in between-to high school days and remind them how important it is to dream and to believe in the future

"I'm pretty sure the victim is a prostitute, and the MO looks just like the murder last month," Joe McGrath said. "The victim was garroted, and the body was arranged like an X. Whoever is killing these women is leaving a calling card behind."1947 Birmingham, Alabama, cloaks many mysteries under its segregated shroud: glittering social soirées, secret sexual parties, a Machiavellian civic leader, and multiple murders of black prostitutes in dark alleys. Racist police chief, Big Bob Watson, reluctantly assigns Homicide Detective Joe McGrath to the case. The black community stonewalls the investigation. Joe teams up with Sam Rucker, the city's only black private eye. Working across the racial boundaries of the day, they take us step-by-step to the city's heart of darkness in search of an elusive vicious killer.

In Vallejo, California, in 1954, a most extraordinary football season came to its conclusion for the Vallejo High School team. The team was undefeated, and Sports Illustrated wrote that the team was most likely the best high school football team in America. In addition, the magazine wrote that Dick Bass, the team''s star running back, was the best running back in the nation. The young men on the team had experienced something that only dreams are made of-a special time, a special season, and a season to remember. The Apache Gift tells the story of this incredible experience.

Like Homer''s The Iliad, Ida Egli''s new novel, Krisanthi''s War, is an antiwar epic that brings together the personal and the political and wanders back and forth from the 1930s to the 1980s. The war is World War II. Krisanthi is a modern-day Greek woman who chronicles the lives and the deaths of her family members who strive to survive during the invasion and the occupation of their homeland by German soldiers. Since the characters are mostly Greeks, they have names like Achilles, Penelope and Kalliope,and, since they''re Greeks, the Trojan War isn''t ancient history, but part of the living, breathing present. Krisanthi''s War is full of the sights and the smells of olives and goats, blood and wine, even as it explores the nature of orthodoxy and mystery. When liberation comes and the characters emerge from cellars and go into the Mediterranean sunlight the reader feels a sense of exhilaration and joy. It isn''t revenge or punishment that the author is after, but rather empathy and compassion. Egli offers no easy-to-follow recipe for how to endure in our own difficult times, but she does provide at the end of her narrative a recipe for Loukoumáthes, those delicious fritters often drizzled with honey that melt in your mouth. If you want to meet real Greeks, explore Greek history and fathom the nature of love itself, this book is for you.

"The body was bruised in several places. Dry blood and saliva were evident over parts of his face and near the mouth. Joe knelt down and read the piece of paper: mcgrath this here you last warnin. you and that black basterd rucker git outta town or you gonna be next." In Touch of Redemption, the second book in the Joe McGrath and Sam Rucker Detective Novels, the two men embark on a difficult journey-an attempt to find the murderers of Joe's father twenty-five years ago. It is 1948 in segregated Alabama, and Joe, a white man, and Sam, a black man, face numerous obstacles, the least of which is the racism and bigotry of the time, while struggling with the challenges of solving a murder case a quarter century old. The men face corrupt judges and law enforcement officials, and a secret fraternity of men determined to maintain the Southern way of life and 'the operation,' their illegal liquor business. All this occurs against a backdrop of a seemingly bucolic small Southern town, Montevallo, home to a college for women.