Digital Books

This was the first story I downloaded from Amazon Shorts, and I was not disappointed. Sullivan writes the clean lines, has the sure touch. He not only suspends disbelief, he eradicates it with his powerful prose. I've read his novel, BORN BURNING, and now realize he is also a master of the short story form.
This one will make you think and think hard.

Having edited a collection of mother-daughter stories (Snapshots, with Joyce Carol Oates), this sadly evocative tale makes me want to do a book about fathers and sons.

The complexities of relationships and the emotion behind them lie at the root of Thomas Sullivan's writing. In his novel, Dust of Eden, he addresses the love of a man for his dying father, and the various ways love can be misguided if given free reign. In this short story, Specimens, the father-son relationship is again the focus, but at a different focal point. A young boy and a jaded father meet in the middle in a moment of wonder, and the contrast is both poignant, and enlightening. Don't miss this story. For .49 you'll be thinking you should send Mr. Sullivan more money.

I've read all of Bill Markley's works, and his new short story "Spirits of the Mound" can proudly hold a candle to his longer, more elaborate books. Markley writes with a sort of whimsy that elevates the story above being merely a simple tale; it is a fairy tale grounded in history. Much like his books, when discoveries are made in his stories, the experience feels almost fantastical, as if something entirely new has been unearthed despite the fact that all of his stories take place in either the near or distant past.
This short story is great effort and sits well in Markley's fledgling career as a non-fiction writer. I hope this will not be his last foray into the world of fiction; here's hoping he someday writes an entire fictional novel based on historical events, and adds the same amount of whimsy and attention to detail.
"Spirits of the Mound" is a short story than can be used as a tool for education and for simply enjoying a good read.

Markley takes three well-known western heroes and teases history by questioning whether or not their encounters at the Mound of the Spirits were supernatural, real, or imagined. I enjoyed this story, and hope to read more of Markley's writing soon.

I felt like I was right there in the three major scenes of this short piece. It was a really good blend of historic fact and writerly imagination. I could almost feel those little bugs he describes biting my neck! I'm just glad they weren't - wow!

After reading the book "Never Play Leapfrog with a Unicorn", I had to know the rest of the story! I read "Staged Affair" part 1 and it filled in some of the missing blanks. It was witty, comical and heart felt. When the author wrote about being nervous in this, I actually felt nervous for and with him! I can't wait to read parts 2, and 3, and 4 and ...!

I can't begin to tell you how brilliant this writer is through all his previous writings. There is never a dull moment. The reality of life as it is and was in times past and present. Keep up the great work, you inspire me with your wit and humor.

Thank You,

He always is a thinkers, a dreamer, a man who is said to look at the world from the outside in-and in this I believe. I am usually not a short shory E-Book person, but once you read "Amok" you cannot help but to open your eyes to this talented writer. Publishers should check out out his work before an agent gets him!
Victoria Morrow

"StrADegy" presents the clearest view of the digital transformation and what it means to the advertising industry. The changes that are underway and the impact these changes will have on the way we consume media are clearly outlined. More than one man's opinion, it contains deeply researched relevant points of view from leading thinkers, both past and present. The fundamental concepts of consumer empowerment, the independence of advertising from program content and the reality of highly targeted messages are already taking root and the logical course is forcefully presented. This book is easy and enjoyable to read, but the transformation that is outlined will be anything but easy and enjoyable for the advertising industry. A must read for anyone working in the media or advertising industries.

Steve clearly describes how digital transformations pose a threat and an advantage to those in the advertisement industry. The shift in legacy advertising specifically narrowcasting/pointcasting, converging technologies, diverse distributed ad sources, interactivity, ad avoidance, and the increasing multitude of rendering mediums that present audio, video, text, and interactive ad content will present technological, methodological, logistical and financial surprises that you need to be aware of. Currently, players in the ad industry are begrudgingly active participants in this transformation. So read the book carefully and decide whether you want to have an advantage or simply be a casualty.

A thoughtful and very provocotive look at the future of advertising- a must read for anyone associated in the indusry or thinking of entering the industry.

Anthony, is a man who spends his days working at the steel mill and his nights taking care of his father. Although it is obvious that family is important to him, his father is the only family he has. He lives a simple existence and it appears he has been overlooked by luck and good fortune his entire life.

But, Anthony does not resign himself to a sad, worn-out life. He takes charge. With an extremely ingenious plan he robs the Stanhope residence -- a greedy family responsible for most of the sorrow in his life and also the town's.

This is the story of a good poor man who takes on an almost sinister rich man. Although he commits a crime, Anthony makes right the many wrongs of the town and imparts justice on those who deserve it.

...plus he gets the cash and possibly the girl of his dreams.

Anthony was depressed man who also had his heart broken from losing the love of his life to one of the Stanhope brothers, Jack. Anthony hated the brothers not because Felix and Jack got whatever they desired, no because of Felix destroying his small town to the point where no one could be finanically well off. Anthony knew the brothers well enough that they would have turned on each other for the missing money.

What drove Anthony to do what he did was the hope of being with his true love, and the thought of his town returning to normal before the Stanhope brothers became greedy.

Anthony was a lonely and heartbroken man, longing for the love of his life. Remembering his youth and looking at his picture of Mary and him, he became desperate for her. He was jealous of the man, Jack, who was married to her. Although Jack had won Mary's heart, Anthony wanted to prove to himself that he could win in the long run. He let the anger and the hurt of his heart to get the best of him and allowed money to get in between two brothers, Felix and Jack. He was greedy for Mary, but Jack was greedy for money, and Anthony knew just what to do in order to get him put in jail. Anthony was deceitful, but what he would do was worth the risk so he might be able to have Mary. He mislead others to believe that Jack took the money from Felix, which would in turn cause Jack to be put into prison. This meant that Anthony would no longer be lonely and heartbroken, because he would have the opportunity to be with the one he loved for so long.
The driving force for Anthony was the anticipation of being with the love of his life, Mary. His goal was to do anything that he possibly could to get her in his life and be with her for the rest of his life. What Anthony did, gave him the satisfaction that someday he and Mary would be together again.

Helen Epstein's work has always been a favorite of mine: informed, well written and in a style that teaches as she tells her personal stories.

Her father's story occurs at a time in Germany where there was an increased threat to Jews. It was a time when caricatures of Jewish merchants, store owners and athletes were used to build the foundation of making Jews as "different from us" and "less than us." It was this step that began to mark Jews as "non-people"and "not one of us," the German population. In so doing, when the Final Solution became evident, Germans no longer viewed Jews as regular people with whom to identify and care about and defend. Epstein's father's efforts attempted to counter such stereotypes and false separation amongst human beings. By using his athletic prowess he attempted to portray Jews as people like you, the everyday German person, persons who could become athletes, good athletes, very good athletes and so good that they could even make the Olympic team. This was meant to communicate that Jews could be people just like the people of other groups, including Germans, people whose plight one could empathize with. Kurt Epstein's efforts, among other things, worked to break down the separation of "you" and "me."
Helen Epstein's loving portrayal shows how an individual can make a difference. Her father was a HERO in that he made an unpopular decision for a worthy cause that many did not understand at the time.

Kurt Epstein, the author's late and former Czechoslovak father, embodied the bold new spirit of mid-20th century Judaism. Its aim? To debunk that age-old saw against the myth of the feeble "Jewish body," weak of physical stature but strong of mind. Jews were always deemed of being unfit for sport, "designed for the coffeehouse" and "for business"...whatever that meant at the time.

Kurt Epstein was a former member of the Czechoslovak Olympic swimming team during what's known in these parts as the halcyon days of the "First Republic" period, lasting from 1918-1938. Epstein, the father, attended Berlin's 1936 "Nazi" Olympics under controversial circumstances, and upon his return was susequently caught up in the maelstrom of hatred that consumed this part of the continent during WWII.

As one of his former nation's most successful competitive athletes, it boggles the mind how a man -- as Helen Epstein describes him -- "so staunch a citizen, so secure in his Czechdom," could have been carted off by his insensitive co-citizens after having proven himself so mightily in the pool.

Epstein hints at that roiling undercurrent of anti-Semitism which hides under a thin veneer of seeming Czech apathy in this part of the world. She tells us, and we know from personal experience, how it's always ready to pounce out at the slightest of provocations, usually at the instigation of an outside and malfeasant source.

For these reasons and hundreds more, the so-called "Czech Republic" has never been able to rise above its dim-witted destiny, and probably might never will.

I suppose that's fine, because the permanently-miserable citizens of this rainy landlocked statelet -- Middle Europe's on-again off-again garbage dump -- aren't interested in success nor in achieving anything of worth.

Goals? Legacy? Forget it about!

It's beer (160 litres/annum per capita), creamy goulash, and a penchant for constantly complaining about the corrupt state of their bloated and former Communist elected leadership -- now perched atop the nation's capital in Prague's Castle --- are what these shower-hating Bohemians do best.

Don't believe me? Come on over and sample them for yourself.

But I *do* go on, don't I?

Kurt Epstein was a man of sharp principles. He believed that if Czechs would all band together, much as they had under the clarion call for unity when Tomas G. Masaryk entered the city in 1918 (the national hymn should be "where have our leaders gone?" not "where is my home?"), that they could overcome their petty regional differences and learn to aspire for something greater than their claustrophobic little apartments and their blessed pints of "pivko."

Until his dying day, Kurt Epstein was a man working stridently for Czech causes in America, dispatching money and food aid and engaging in other supportive anti-totalitarian gestures from his home in the United States. Until the very end, he was Czech through and through -- which trumps anything these heirs to his erstwhile nation's legacy can boast about. That's the truth, folks.

Besides, what's a real Czech today anyways? There's no longer any such thing! These gimpy overweight and cigarette-loving (charred?) souls are a cobbled-together collective of a hodge-podge of varying ethnicities. The "geschmack" -- or flavour as they say in Yiddish -- is no longer present in these dour Bohemians. People like Kurt Epstein -- people who added an essential spark to the former Czechoslovakia's society -- are no longer with us, muscled out by collaborationist opportunist goons who have nothing to show for their consistent shows of perfidy other than cheekfuls of rear-sores from being booted so incessantly from behind! That'll serve you for your betrayal! When will you learn, oh dense and passive-aggressive Central Europeans? When will you learn?

Bohemia -- the largest of the three provinces in today's so-falsely-named-it-hurts "Czech Republic" -- seems to dominate the political and cultural affairs of this green bantustan. As such, efforts to rekindle the memory of the mighty swimmer, Kurt Epstein, and his sporting colleagues have come to naught.

Swimming in a vat of beer and pork stew, the Czechs can't hear what's going on "out there."

As they eventually surface for air -- they are people, too, 'natch -- the faint whisper of the paragons of their state's former incarnation -- men like Ms. Epstein's dad and the venerable "TGM" -- cannot possibly be heard over the cacophonous din of Ramstein German industrial metal music, their sickly and cloying sympathy for the world's so-called downtrodden (woe to the woebegone Czech), their meagre salaries, their "irony," and and their modern-day habit of forging a new "Czech future."

They want a history divorced from its collaborationist past, severed off from their dislike of the foreigners in their midst, but we're here to remind them that much went on here before you settled into that bar stool, Honza, and never left it. Soon we'll have to surgically remove you from it if you don't get up and stretch those deep-veined thrombosis legs of yours.

Kurt Epstein allows us to remember a time which will no longer be.

Besides HG, where have all the good Czechs gone?

-- ADM in Prague, the, er..."Czech Republic"

How many books have you read about Jewish athletes? Probably none. That is why this piece by Helen Epstein comes as such a welcome addition to a scarcely existent literature. Epstein focuses on Jewish athletes in Central Europe during the first half of the 20th century, using her own father as the centerpiece. Many readers are already familiar with Kurt Epstein from having read Helen Epstein's groundbreaking work "Children of the Holocaust." In it she reports on her father's dedication to swimming and water polo that led him to compete in the infamous Berlin Olympics of 1936.

In this essay she delves more deeply into her father's athletic proclivities, using his story to frame an essay that gives the reader a quick education about Jewish athleticism in Europe at that time, including an exploration of the social context within which it developed and was expressed. She seamlessly integrates her father's personal story with the larger social, political, and philosophical issues surrounding Jewish athleticism, most prominently the firmly entrenched view that Jews are people of the book, not the pool.

Yet some Jews did not turn out as expected, and those like Kurt Epstein who went "swimming against stereotype" should, at the very least, make the rest of us stop and think. Helen Epstein gives special attention to her father's ideals of sportsmanship, which seemed to be closer to his heart than anything he learned in Hebrew school.

Both personal and scholarly, this is a fine piece for anyone interested in the phenomenon of Jewish athletes and the implications of their achievements to their fellow Jews and to the larger world. With its clear understated prose that never fails to include the apposite fact and revealing detail, it also serves as a literary monument to the indomitable spirit of Kurt Epstein.

David Niall Wilson offers us an exquisite short story about that most pastoral and elegant summer sport, baseball. Don't be fooled, though, dear reader, because this tale about the Boys of Summer is firmly embedded in the cold bedrock of terror. While the long days of warmth play host to the crack of the bat and the umpire's gruff calls, a fast pitch can kill a batter if it catches him just wrong. Or...just right. When a fastball pitcher named Jeb "Rocket" Rabinowicz fired a ninety-five-mile-an-hour pitch at a batter named Smith in the summer of 1939, the ball went wonky and Smith was left dead at the plate. The ball that killed Smith becomes a favorite attraction in a baseball museum, made famous by its tragic trajectory. However, when an elderly man shows up at the museum one day and declares the ball a fake, this knowledge places everyone he tells in jeopardy. This is a finely crafted and very spooky story that illustrates how easily guilt can become a fertile a soil in which horror can grow.

Having (to my recollection) never read any works by David Niall Wilson, the short story "Take Me Back To That Ball Game..."--available through Amazon.com's Shorts program--was the perfect introduction.

While it's difficult to describe a short story without giving the whole she-bang away, Wilson has quite successfully mixed baseball, antiques, mystery, death, a curse, and a couple of curve-ball plot twists into this 16 page offering. And, even though I'm not a fan of baseball, Wilson's smooth and easy writing, intriguing plot, and believable characters sucked me into the tale.

"Take Me Back To That Ball Game..." is certainly worth the paltry $0.49 fee from Amazon. It is one of those perfect short stories that succeeds where so many fail: it setups you up well then pays off big in a short space. I look forward to delving into some of Wilson's longer works in the near future.

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You'll enjoy this story even if you're not a baseball fanatic. Wilson throws enough curves to make it an exciting time at the plate.

Here Dvorah Telushkin provides a complex and layered portrait of Isaac Singer and her interactions with him. There is the added attraction that Telushkin has a well crafted writing style, elevated while smooth, homey while erudite. To its credit, this memoir is not crafted in any chronological fashion. Each chapter is a slice of her life with Singer, their work together and conversations. She weaves us in and out of Singer and his world, leisurely but with a purpose, even reproducing, to great effect, the Yiddish cadences and accent of his spoken English. Possibly the strongest element in this memoir is Telushkin's fierce honesty with her own complex set of emotions about Singer. Here is a man who she is fashioning as a father figure, and (as a notorious Don Juan and egocentric) he is a poor pick. Telushkin shows the darker side of Singer's personality, and her own odd attraction to it; so in the end, this book is more about Teluskhin's journey of self-discovery and maturity than it is about Isaac Singer. But this does not detract from the quality of this work: driven, honest and beautiful, it is a haunting book of genuine emotional integrity.

This work gives an inside view of the daily life and work habits of one of the greatest masters of the short story the world has known. It is honest and painful in its realistic description of the great writer's last years. It is filled with rich Jewish knowledge and the wisdom and wit of the paradoxical difficult and yet very great writer Singer. Anyone who loves this writer will benefit from reading this very rich and vibrant work of devotion and memory.

Isaac Bashevis Singer was a controversial figure during his lifetime. Though his place in the twentieth-century canon of literature now seems secure, it is still often pointed out that thanks to the Holocaust, Singer's fame was granted to him at the cost of obscurity for other Yiddish writers. His personality also was known to be difficult. There are many who will tell you that Singer was a bastard, including Elie Wiesel (not normally a gossip) in "All Rivers Run to the Sea." Singer probably was one at least fifty percent of the time. Too many stories of his caprice, vanity, and greed for sex and money have been told to be discounted. As to the nature behind both the faults and the gifts, what one saw of it depended on who one was; any competitors for the limelight, real or imagined, got the worst of it. Women got both the best and the worst of Singer, the charm and naivete combined with the mistrust and the manipulation. It is thus fitting that a possibly definitive memoir of Singer should have been written by a woman. Dvorah Telushkin was the writer's secretary and occasional translator. She comes across as a most lovable person, without any of Singer's guile. But they still had a lot in common: they were both fearful and susceptible to flattery. Ms. Telushkin was estranged from her father, Singer from his only child. Dvorah's innocence fit Singer's feminine ideal, exemplified by the child-woman in "Shosha." For years, theirs was a relationship in perfect order. But after winning the Nobel Prize, Singer's ego ran away with him while his health deteriorated rapidly. He became more and more paranoid, finally rejecting Dvorah as he had rejected most others. Ms. Telushkin manages the difficult feat of recording Singer's decline honestly and without sentimentality, while leaving us in no doubt as to her lasting love for him and little as to its essential justice. It is to be hoped that she continues as a writer, one with large ambitions. She has been influenced by Singer; her achievement is to make his eerie tone blend so well with her sense of her own life as a bad dream that the influence comes to seem more like an inheritance. She rescues Singer from the context of Yiddish nostalgia and places him within his own heritage of Jewish fear, uncertainty, and faith, as little G-rated as Celine. This is a deeply touching, near-perfect book. It is required reading for Singer fans, but it is also recommended to anyone struggling to understand a difficult and much-loved parent.

TERRY ANDERSON AND THE OLYMPIC ASS-KICKIN TEAM
Terry Anderson and the Olympic Ass-Kickin Team
(Doublenaught)
Terry Anderson has knocked around the New South music scene for 20 years, as drummer for the Woods, the Backsliders and others, not to mention the writer of the Georgia Satellites' "Battleship Chains" and Dan Baird's "I Love You Period." This is his fourth solo album, and it's a killer. Southern-fried roots rock, butt-thumping country, lip-locking hooks and a good-natured sense of humor make the Olympic Ass-Kickin Team the best goodtime rock & roll band since Rockpile, whose Dave Edmunds seems to be a guiding spirit here. A reoccurring theme of the joys and perils of alcohol adds a bittersweet aftertaste, but overall, this is pure fun. Michael Toland [buy it]

Nothing pretentious or fancy about these guys. They just flat-out rock. What elevates this from good to great is Terry Anderson's songwriting--he's clever in the tradition of Chuck Berry, Louis Jordan, Nick Lowe, NRBQ, etc. In other words, he's clever-smart, not clever-cute. Tunes are killer, band is killer, performance is killer. This album is killer. So what are you waiting for? Order it NOW!

If you don't buy this record, your enternal soul is in jeopardy! Seriously! It's that good!

TERRY ANDERSON AND THE OLYMPIC ASS-KICKIN TEAM
Terry Anderson and the Olympic Ass-Kickin Team
(Doublenaught)
Terry Anderson has knocked around the New South music scene for 20 years, as drummer for the Woods, the Backsliders and others, not to mention the writer of the Georgia Satellites' "Battleship Chains" and Dan Baird's "I Love You Period." This is his fourth solo album, and it's a killer. Southern-fried roots rock, butt-thumping country, lip-locking hooks and a good-natured sense of humor make the Olympic Ass-Kickin Team the best goodtime rock & roll band since Rockpile, whose Dave Edmunds seems to be a guiding spirit here. A reoccurring theme of the joys and perils of alcohol adds a bittersweet aftertaste, but overall, this is pure fun. Michael Toland [buy it]

Nothing pretentious or fancy about these guys. They just flat-out rock. What elevates this from good to great is Terry Anderson's songwriting--he's clever in the tradition of Chuck Berry, Louis Jordan, Nick Lowe, NRBQ, etc. In other words, he's clever-smart, not clever-cute. Tunes are killer, band is killer, performance is killer. This album is killer. So what are you waiting for? Order it NOW!

If you don't buy this record, your enternal soul is in jeopardy! Seriously! It's that good!