Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More


Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia PyeShelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye

Thanks to Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity, LLC, I am giving away one print copy of ‘Shelf Life of Happinessby Virginia Pye.

Description Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye


In these bittersweet, compelling stories, Virginia Pye’s characters in Shelf Life of Happiness long for that most-elusive of states: happiness. A young skateboarder reaches across an awesome gap to reconnect with his disapproving father; an elderly painter executes one final, violent gesture to memorialize his work; a newly married writer battles the urge to implode his happy marriage; and a confused young man falls for his best friend’s bride and finally learns to love. In each case, Pye’s characters aim to be better people as they strive for happiness–and some even reap the sweet reward of achieving it.

Praise Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye


“…a deeply moving meditation on the complexity and potential generosity of love.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS

“How do we attain and hold onto happiness? Although this question has been the implied or overt subject of countless self-help books, it has no neat or simple answers. The stories in Virginia Pye’s compelling new collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, acknowledge this reality in fresh and perceptive ways. And they allow us to witness transformational moments in the lives of characters who are seeking out happiness or life satisfaction, or struggling with its elusiveness.”—SMALL PRESS REVIEWS

“Shelf Life of Happiness is a collection of impressive range and deep emotional intelligence. These are stories crafted with a sharp eye for the absurd intricacies of modern life, stories that are remembered later with such clarity and feeling that they seem like one’s own memories.”—KELLY LUCE

“These are terrific stories. The deep surprises their characters keep offering each other show a rare understanding of human nature.  From a dying man’s marriage to a small town’s mysterious murders, the emergencies of ordinary life illuminate this book. A joy to read.”—JOAN SILBER

About Virginia Pye


Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye

(c) Tennessee Photography

VIRGINIA PYE is the author of two award-winning novels, Dreams of the Red Phoenix and River of Dust, and the forthcoming short story collection, Shelf Life of Happiness. Her stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in The North American ReviewThe Baltimore ReviewLiterary HubThe New York TimesThe RumpusHuffington Post and elsewhere. She lived in Richmond, Virginia for many years and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Website: www.virginiapye.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VirginiaPye

Buy Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye


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Giveaway Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye


This giveaway is open to Canada and the U.S. only and ends on November 9, 2018 midnight pacific time.  Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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Live Show, Drink Included by Vicky GrutLive Show, Drink Included by Vicky Grut


Thanks to Bernadette Jansen op de Haar of  Holland Park Press, I am giving away two copies of ‘Live Show, Drink Included’ by Vicky Grut.

Description Live Show, Drink Included by Vicky Grut


For the stories in this collection Vicky Grut takes inspiration from a range of often ordinary situations and explores how easily things can go awry or take an unexpected turn.

Be prepared to be not only entertained but also taken by surprise when reading the fourteen mini-novels in this collection.

Praise Live Show, Drink Included by Vicky Grut


‘These delicious, dark, funny and affecting stories – reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor – remind us that life does not come with simple solutions and that often it is in the terrifying messiness that we are the most alive.’ –  Tania Hershman

‘Some are dark and disturbing tales of lives viewed from under the mad end of a microscope, others are more of a glimpse of lives gone sideways.’ – Alexei Sayle

About Vicky GrutLive Show, Drink Included by Vicky Grut


Vicky Grut is a lecturer in creative writing and most of the stories in this collection have been published in magazines or in anthologies published by Picador, Bloomsbury, Duckworth and Serpents’ Tail.
Website: https://vickygrut.com/
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/VickyGrut

Buy Live Show, Drink Included by Vicky Grut


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Giveaway Live Show, Drink Included by Vicky Grut


This giveaway is open worldwide and ends on October 19, 2018 midnight pacific time.  Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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Queen for a Day: A Novel in Stories by Maxine RosalerQueen for a Day: Novel in Stories by Maxine Rosaler


Thanks to Deb Zipf of Meryl Moss Media, Inc., I am giving away one print copy of ‘Queen for a Day: A Novel in Stories’ by Maxine Rosaler.

Description Queen for a Day: Novel in Stories by Maxine Rosaler


After Mimi Slavitt’s three-year-old son, Danny, is diagnosed with autism, she finds herself in a world nearly as isolating as her son’s. It is a position she shares only with mothers like herself, women chosen against their will for lives of sacrifice and martyrdom. Searching for miracles, begging for the help of heartless bureaucracies while arranging every minute of every day for children who can never be left alone, they exist in a state of perpetual crisis, normal life always just out of reach.
 
In chapters told from Mimi’s point of view and theirs, these women emerge as conflicted, complex individuals, totally unsuited for sainthood, often dreaming of the day they can just walk away. Taking its title from the 1950s reality TV show in which the contestants—housewives living lives filled with pain and suffering—competed with one another for deluxe refrigerators and sets of stainless steel silverware, Queen for a Day portrays a group of imperfect women coping under enormous pressure.
 
In her impressive debut, Rosaler tells their stories in ironic, precise, and vivid prose, with humor and insight born of firsthand experience, and offers readers “the gut-heaving, throat-choking, darkly comic truth—about parenthood, marriage, love, rage, and hard-won survival” (Eileen Pollack, author of The Bible of Dirty Jokes). 

Praise Queen for a Day: Novel in Stories by Maxine Rosaler


“With intelligence and sympathy, this compassionate and darkly humorous debut tells the stories of mothers of children with disabilities”-Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

“An engrossing and compassionate collection showing motherhood in its most unrelenting form.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

 “I was both moved and impressed by this novel, and the intelligence and sympathy with which the author presents her afflicted characters.” —Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Foreign Affairs and The Language of Houses

 “Maxine Rosaler’s ‘novel in stories’ resembles Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, except rather than surviving an absurd and unjust war, the burden here is one of mothering an autistic child. Like O’Brien, Rosaler explores the mettle and morality of Mimi Slavitt on the ‘battlefield of her existence.’” —DeWitt Henry, founding editor of Ploughshares, author of Sweet Marjoram: Notes and Essays

 “Maxine Rosaler’s stories are both hard-edged and comic, both laced with despair and hopeful against all expectation. New York City is the setting, a struggle to prosper in the face of bad choices and deeply ingrained perversity is the theme. Constant, however, is a narrative voice that proves irresistible, and a craftsman’s approach to the construction of these contemporary parables.” —C. Michael Curtis, fiction editor, The Atlantic

About Maxine Rosaler


MAXINE ROSALER has had fiction and nonfiction published in The Southern Review, Glimmer Train, Witness, Fifth Wednesday, Green Mountains Review, The Baltimore Review and other literary magazines. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Fiction. Her short stories have been cited in editions of Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.

Buy Queen for a Day: Novel in Stories by Maxine Rosaler


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Giveaway Queen for a Day: Novel in Stories by Maxine Rosaler

This giveaway is open to the U.S. only and ends on June 221, 2018 midnight pacific time.  Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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