Bøger udgivet af Open Books Publishing (UK)

Nine years after moving from Belfast to London, Grace Byrne wonders whether or not she made the right decision. She finds little satisfaction in working for the Anchor news team, and the eternal bitterness of her boss doesn't make it any easier. The only positive thing about being stuck in the office every day is Andy, with whom she has been smitten since first joining the Anchor team. After a less than comfortable conversation with her boss's assistant, Grace returns to her flat in Hampstead contemplating whether she herself might be the real cause of her dissatisfaction.Her modest flat is her sanctuary; yet when Grace returns home exhausted on a particularly blustery evening, she discovers a door in her home that she's certain she has never seen before. Rife with curiosity, she opens the door, takes one tentative step, and falls into an abyss, leaving behind her home in Hampstead and landing inside a pirate ship on Clare Island, Mayo.As Grace begins to unravel what has happened to her, she learns that she must now walk in the boots of Gráinne O'Malley, the notorious sixteenth-century female Irish pirate. At first, the reasons for this trans-migration and identity exchange are not clear, but Grace accepts her mission to follow in Gráinne's footsteps.Cast into the drama of a revolt against Queen Elizabeth I, Grace finds her courage, her inherent sense of purpose, her distant heritage, her present-day raison d'etre, and of course love. Celestial Land and Sea transports readers to the generational source of our shared heritage, and of our recurring challenges and our transcendent triumphs.

Sometimes the only way to find yourself is to leave behind everything you've ever known... and become a stranger.Abandoning a life filled with loss of family, love, and personal integrity, Doran Seeger is flying through a blinding storm on his way to a political awakening in Amsterdam, an unexpected affair in the Swiss Alps, a brush-by encounter on a train platform and the serendipitous discovery of a wadded up handbill that will lead him into a land where a gleefully absurd culture still embraces real civility: Greece.

Motivated to expatriate by guilt after helping to design guidance systems for the U.S. Military, Doran Seeger has lived the past decade in Europe. Wandering from country to country, he has encountered new societies and new ideas, though he still struggles to appease his conscience. Living in Prague and working as an underground art dealer, a chance encounter with the sister of his former lover persuades him to return to Greece, where a society that embraces real civility tenderly draws the habitual itinerant out of reticence and cynicism. With his longtime Greek friend Modestos Thromos by this side, Doran plants a winter garden; and as he patiently tills the Grecian soil, he reclaims his integrity, his sense of joy, and his humanity.

Nothing foreshadows the shambles into which the lives of four women of very diverse ages and backgrounds are thrown when their husbands' chartered plane vanishes in the Amazon jungle. Stunned by the disappearance, along with the news that the pilot neglected to file a flight plan, the wives band together, attempting to track the men on their catastrophic trip and discover whether they are dead or alive.Looking for company records that will tell them more about their husbands' partnership, a venture that has won a bid to design a satellite tracking system over the Amazon Basin for the Brazilian government, the three women are baffled by the discovery of a cache of alexandrites in a previously unknown safe deposit box. The appearance of these rare gemstones, as valuable as diamonds, is the first hint of the clandestine lives their husbands were leading.

Meet Fizzy Oceans-archivist, researcher, environmentalist and adventurer. On her travels she witnesses The Exodus, the Battle of Gettysburg and Hurricane Katrina, as well as many other historical and real time events. She meets notable individuals including Gandhi, Mark Twain, Jacques Cousteau, The Dalai Lama, Saddam Hussein and even a new species called the Quinngen.Such unique experiences and encounters spanning the world and time as we know them would not be possible for a single individual-especially not for a woman named Amy Birkenstock who works as a medical clerk in Seattle, Washington-but Fizzy Oceans, Amy's digital alter ego, is not in Physical Life. She lives, works and travels in the virtual world where the dead are very much alive, places like ancient Babylon and Pompeii have been reconstructed, and with the click of a button-WHOOSH!-one is transported throughout the Ages to events and destinations that make up our human history.Even as Amy's physical life existence is challenged by encroaching environmental disaster, economic instability, and societal breakdown, Fizzy's virtual world offers instant realization of vision and inspiration. The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans imagines the bridging of two worlds-the literal and the metaphorical-and questions what it is we have created, what has been lost, and what might be possible for us as individuals and for the Human Race.

You never know when you might be trapped in a glaze event...Two is for You follows an extremely handsome and young software developer's rise to prominence after inventing the world's first automated answering service. There's just one problem: Marco Salazar forgot to include numero dos for Español.As the vicious, unrelenting and unprecedented Winter Storm Wanda envelops New York and circles around Marco, details from his past strike at the heart of perception and identity in these heartless and competitive times. This darkly comedic satire examines the consequences of conformity and one's ability to change.Will Marco make it out alive? Or will Wanda, or the protesting group of Hispanic receptionists known simply as "The 2s", have their vengeance?

A memoir in her most personal voice, Teri Louise Kelly tells us what it is like to be born in the wrong body. "Let's forget the flounce and frills and sugar and spice; this isn't Cinderella and there aren't any glass slippers or pumpkins that change into carriages, but there is the simple madness of everyday existence as adequate compensation. And while there may not be many tears, there are tantrums and insane asylums and self-deprecating binges. None of which has anything to do with the most bizarre decision a person could make-changing one's sex-but all of which are central to this tale of outlandish head games with oneself and one's imaginary self, a three-foot-tall high priestess of mass deception. After all, if you're going to write a book about changing sex, then why not bend it completely out of shape and give it some balls?" A surreal, courageous, and compelling account of one person's realization, transition and reemergence, you will not soon forget Bent.

Orgasmo is author Donald O'Donovan's autobiographical account of a long ignored writer's vow to never write again. But, alas, the vow is as destined to failure as O'Donovan's puckish alter-ego is to literary obscurity.A love letter (of sorts) to LA, O'Donovan is in rare form as we watch his calliope of characters, hustlers and hopefuls alike, whirl past to chronicle the writer's long and perilous journey from penny-a-word hack writer for a pulp fiction mill to an underground literary beacon.

Highway is author Donald O'Donovan's third novel in which we find his quintessential hero, Jerzy Mulvaney, portrayed in early life as an over-the-road truck driver-a bedbug hauler, as the industry labels those who move furniture rather than commercial goods. But Mulvaney is anything but a typical road warrior; he is an aspiring author consorting with the underbelly of American society, a bohemian artist in search of stimulating experiences and colorful characters.Typical of O'Donovan's novels, not only the characters are colorful, but the situations in which they find themselves are equally vibrant. And then there is Jerzy Mulvaney himself, rough on the outside but thoughtful and sensitive on the inside. As he navigates his course from coast to coast over eighteen wheels, he is introspective and provocative. The miles grind away underneath the rubber, but the real story is inside Jerzy's mind as he searches for balance and expression.Highway is the road trip you always imagined but never took; mile after mile is marked with candid observations, outlandish circumstances and insights that define the American experience.

Located across the U.S.-Mexican border in Ciudad Juarez, Mariscal Street (otherwise known as the Boulevard of Broken Dreams) harbors Donald O'Donovan's quintessential character, Jerzy Mulvaney, as he unsuccessfully courts the Tarantula Woman-a prostitute named Ysela with a tattoo of a tarantula on her left shoulder blade. She is just one of many women in one man's unapologetic and aimless existence in Mexico where each day brings another round of whorehouses, drunken stupors, odd jobs, eruptions of violence and encounters with equally directionless individuals.Not since Charles Bukowski's Factotum has a transgressive autobiographical novel touched upon with such rawness the everyday realities of a modern-day American desperado. Yet somewhere in the midst of all the strident nihilism, O'Donovan's alter ego, Jerzy Mulvaney, manages to stumble upon an ambition of sorts: to become a real Mexican. "I wanted to destroy whatever remained of my identity, my American identity; to melt down into a primal being, because the greatest thing is to be unknown, anonymous, and truly free."Rather than a work of fiction, Tarantula Woman is a refreshingly honest document that subtly addresses such essential subjects as life, love, death and the challenge of simply being.

Jerzy Mulvaney, jack of all trades and master of none, lives by wits and nerve, alone and broke on the streets of LA, bumming booze and meals where he can, befriending the friendless, bolstering the downtrodden and hoping, finally, for a miracle that will justify a life lived on the fringe for the sake of art never accomplished. But will such a miracle present itself? Will his memories of the mysterious Tarantula Woman somehow materialize on the printed page? Will his stories of the road somehow yield the depth and wisdom he has sought through an unorthodox and adventurous lifetime? Will the illusive Night Train, its whistle ever distant yet beckoning like a siren, arrive in time to carry him to a better life and the fulfillment of a lost dream? If indeed it does, it will be just in time for Jerzy Mulvaney.

It is exactly one week until sixteen-year-old Mercy Swimmer is to play out a dream scenario: to spend an entire week with movie star Fiona Wonder, the prize awarded to the winner of a contest staged by a teen magazine.Mercy is kind and compassionate and always tries to see the best in everybody, even when those around her do not respond similarly. For example, her mother's snippy, hot-tempered friend Nikki is a kleptomaniac who constantly belittles her boyfriend. Her best friend Valerie has anger issues and a weight problem. Beautiful but cold Lady Redding, Valerie's mother, feels entitled to everything even as others go without. And Mercy's mother, a severe asthmatic who works two menial jobs in a "dead mall", seems to care more about Fiona Wonder and Mercy's upcoming week with her than the pressing issues in their own lives.Everything is on track for Mercy's upcoming week with Fiona Wonder, but when her mother's asthma flairs up, Mercy's world turns upside down and she is faced with a decision that will ultimately challenge her own capacity for compassion.A Week with Fiona Wonder shines an intense light upon the dire consequences of social exclusivity and suggests the alternatives of inclusion, empathy and, indeed, mercy.

Heartbeats is the light-hearted memoirs of one of the pioneers in modern cardiac surgery, Constantine "Dino" Tatooles, M.D. Dino's stories, as told to his brother James E. Tatooles, will quite literally "warm your heart" as well as provide a background to the advances in cardiac surgery made over the past fifty years.After Medical School, Dr. Tatooles interned at the University of Chicago and received a grant from the Heart Association to open his own medical laboratory. Later, the National Heart Institute selected Dr. Tatooles as one of five doctors to study at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland."That's where we started to perfect a lot of the new operative procedures that are used today," recounts Dr. Tatooles.Ironically, Dr. Tatooles recently had some difficult medicine of his own to swallow when he discovered that he needed a quintuple bypass. As his brother James E. Tatooles relates in Heartbeats, a procedure that Dino helped to develop eventually saved his life.

Happily married and living in Venice Beach, California, television executive Julia Elliott's orderly life collapses when her husband is sent to Brazil for a two-year assignment by his company. Knowing that she will not be rehired once she leaves her job, she nevertheless agrees to follow him to the land of sunshine, tropical fruit and string bikinis.But on arrival in São Paulo, Julia is shocked to discover that the city is marred by chaotic traffic, pollution, endemic graffiti and appalling slums. This is not the exotic paradise she envisioned.As her husband works the long hours typical of American businessmen in São Paulo, their marital relationship frays; and remembering warnings about glamorous, seductive Brazilian women, Julia becomes concerned about her husband's late nights and weekends at the office.Is her husband having an affair with his gorgeous secretary? And how does Julia really feel about Max Calhoun, the married, off-beat minister that she's met at an ex-pat theatrical group she joins?Passion Fruit explores the personal and social lives of ex-pat wives following their husbands along the path of international business: the challenges are momentous, and the consequences of bad decisions are life-changing. Yet through it all another Julia emerges, and the 'other Julia' is indeed a pièce de résistance.

Recently divorced and made redundant from his job, Julian Crosby needs a break from reality. That's why he's gone to Hawaii...If his personal circumstances had been different-if he were simply on a two-week vacation in Maui with his now former wife-then he surely would have laughed and said "no" to the outrageous offer from the funny-looking Hawaiian wearing a loud tropical shirt with an equally loud, not to mention obnoxious, blue and yellow parrot named Buenaventura perched upon his shoulder to buy a rundown boat called Scoundrel.But that was then and this is now... Or is it?Meanwhile, sixty years ago, Amelia Earhart is getting ready for her much publicized flight around the world. Is this daring adventure to be her final flight, her swan song? Or is she actually on a reconnaissance mission for President Roosevelt? And what does her ill-fated flight have to do with Julian, his innocent Hawaiian holiday and his newly-acquired boat? As Buenaventura reveals, "Only time will tell" as their two worlds unexpectedly and impossibly collide.In this award-winning novel a weekend sailor shipwrecked on an uncharted atoll in the South Seas eventually discovers the island's only other human inhabitant-a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to 1930s lost flying ace Amelia Earhart.

Every Happy Ending implies a not-so-happy beginning, and David Rat's story-from a groundbreaking career as the drummer of the 'Noise-Rock' cult band Rat At Rat R to a devastating addiction to heroin-follows a path from soaring heights (and highs) to the hellish basement of desperate addiction (the lowest of all possible lows).David Rat's gripping memoir is written not in conventional prose but rather, true to his highly artistic nature, in modern free-verse. His story documents not only his addiction but new-found loves, and lost loves too, and ultimately focuses on the source of his eventual recovery-his young son James.Indeed, fatherhood was David Rat's inspiration, as well as his motivation, to beat the needle. Brutally honest, gripping and openly apologetic, David Rat's story stands as a testament to hope, as well as a tribute to young James, and confirms that even in the darkest of circumstances a Happy Ending is still possible.

"A book of big heart, broad comedy, a clever wild ride and a damn good read."-Kim Taylor Blakemore, author of After Alice Fell and The Companion "Micah Thorp seamlessly weaves the past into present to explore the meaning of fatherhood and, just maybe, the meaning of life itself."-Jacqueline Vick, author of The Harlow Brothers Mysteries A down-and-out band, a girl searching for her father, and Jerry's guitar. The members of Uncle Joe's Band have spent years playing any venue that will pay for their unintelligible metal band performances while their rock and roll lifestyle has left them with bad livers, multiple divorces, and living in a squalid house in Vallejo, California. Then one morning everything changes when an assertive twelve-year-old girl named Allison appears on their front porch and announces that she has been sent to stay with her father for the summer. Meanwhile, years ago, the band's namesake and inspiration, Uncle Joe, takes a long strange trip as a vagabond hippie through the '60s, '70s, and '80s that includes brushes with Ken Kesey's bus, Watergate, the Pet Rock, Iran Contra, and Jerry Garcia. Inspired by their experience with Allison and their budding paternal instincts, recollections of Uncle Joe, and a well-played Stratocaster with the initials "JG", the members of Uncle Joe's Band begin to play a new tune in a major key.

When a group of extremely wealthy and very bored individuals develops a game in which they compete to secretly manipulate selected real life targets to perform crazy and demeaning behaviors, both the hero and heroine must conquer potentially life-threatening obstacles as they try to figure out whether they can trust each other, their friends, or the meanings of everyday events in their lives. Only Billionaires Can Play is frighteningly plausible, and readers will find both its premise and its conclusion highly unsettling as they come to realize that they can never again be certain of anything.

A smart, fast, funny, and incisive portrait of today's liberal arts college scene, cancel culture, and more. A chance encounter-if it is by chance-gives J. the opportunity of a lifetime. A physician in a midlife funk, he is invited to speak at a small college. But when he arrives at the secluded island campus of Nevergreen College he gets a lot more than he bargained for. No one actually shows up for his talk, but that doesn't stop it from becoming the center of a firestorm of controversy-with potentially fatal consequences. "Nevergreen brings to mind Vonnegut's brilliant short story, Harrison Bergeron, but on steroids. Pessin's is an unsparing satire, at once funny and horrifying and compelling because it's so real."-Howard Gordon, Emmy Award Winning Producer of Homeland, 24, The X-Files "One part Lucky Jim and three parts One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Andrew Pessin's terrific and terrifying novel may just be the great campus novel of our generation. Every page delivers a hearty laugh, and every laugh soon blooms into a painful stab of recognition, reminding us that we're all stuck on Nevergreen. This one is a pure delight."-Liel Leibovitz, editor at large, Tablet Magazine "Sharp, funny, and ultimately scary, Nevergreen cuts right to the quick of campus cancel culture and the ideological excesses that generate it. It may officially be a satire but it may as well be a documentary, it's so close to home. That something so serious can also be so entertaining is impressive."-William Jacobson, Cornell University "Welcome to Nevergreen, a small college in full descent into madness. Intelligent and witty, with crackling dialogue and keenly planted in the cultural firmament, Nevergreen engages from start to finish. More Animal Farm than Animal House. Be prepared to be offended and like it."-Scott Johnston, author of Amazon bestseller, Campusland "A biting satire of a college campus driven literally mad with political correctness. Funny, disturbing, and thought-provoking, Nevergreen will change the way you look at college life."-Michael Satlow, Brown University "Nevergreen is so painful I wanted to stop; yet so funny I kept going. Pessin has written a delirious yet detailed roman à clé for almost any campus today. Parody imitates life as Kafka wanders through Wokeland. In its own outrageous way, a triumph of sanity."-Richard Landes, Boston University "A rampage of a novel. Pessin's nightmarish, all-too-real satire of contemporary academia is part Pynchon, part Kafka, and the most ominous campus horror tale since C. S. Lewis had demons infiltrate Edgestow University in That Hideous Strength."-Michael Weingrad, Portland State University "Read Professor Pessin's fantabulous book on the nuking of the college mind. It is Kafka's Trial meets the movie American Pie, and it will make your sides heave with hilarity while your heart weeps over the horror that is 'wokefulness.' Read this book NOW, and then JOIN THE RESISTANCE."-Ze'ev Maghen, Shalem College, author of John Lennon and the Jews "Think a brilliant case of David Lodge meets 1984. You laugh until you realize just how close this is to reality. Pessin updates the academic novel to include cancel culture and virtue signaling. Strongly, strongly recommended."-Peter Herman, San Diego State University

"From Tea to Coffee is a wonderful exploration of history and a life that has extended across half a century and two continents. For those who believe that East and West can never meet or can only stand in opposition to each other, this memoir offers a beautiful counterpoint." -Bennett R. Coles, award-winning author of six published books including Dark Star Rising "Cheng Wang's transformative evolution from young Communist ideologue to astute western observer is a must-read cultural travelogue." -Don Vaughan, founder, Triangle Association of Freelancers, North Carolina Following Mao's call to the young during the Cultural Revolution, Cheng Wang, a so-called "Educated Youth," boarded a train destined for a secluded village in Inner Mongolia for the compulsory period of re-education. For the next three grueling years in rural exile, he pondered how his once privileged family had been caught in a political undertow, and how his own future might unfold. From Tea to Coffee is a story of struggle and triumph during China's modern-day cultural and political drama, and is a rare and personal account that showcases the Chinese national psyche. Like all political movements of the past, the Cultural Revolution was not the first of its kind, nor quite possibly the last, yet Cheng Wang, now at home in both America and in China, maintains an optimism in confronting today's social polarization between the East and the West.

A mystery novelist. A tormented physicist. A metaphysical adventure.In the early 1950s, the People's Republic of China invaded and annexed Tibet, forever altering the country's political and social landscape. For mystery writer Taylor Hamilton and his wife, Kate, these events seem part of a remote, forgotten past. Having fled San Francisco for the quiet of a small, coastal town, all Taylor wants to do is surf and write mysteries.But for Taylor's neighbor, an old man named Havelock Rowland, the invasion of Tibet-and its bloody aftermath-are forever emblazoned on his psyche. Reclusive and secretive, Havelock is a retired physicist who lives alone with an immense black dog and harbors a complicated and painful personal history.Gradually but inexorably, Taylor is drawn into Havelock's world of Tibetan metaphysics, and soon the past clashes with the present as strange events emerge to overtake the picturesque coastal town. A dangerous animal and a mysterious young man begin to threaten the area's inhabitants.From the Chinese takeover of Tibet in the early 1950s to present-day San Francisco, Big Sur, and Northern California, Mind Fields is a story of adventure, loss, mysticism, and ultimately, the importance of friendship and connection.