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Friday, August 28, 2020

Corie Adjmi on Blog Tour for Life and Other Shortcomings, October 1-16

Posted By amy @ 10:19 am | No Comments

Life and Other Shortcomings: Stories
by Corie Adjmi

Publication Date: August 4, 2020
She Writes Press
Paperback & eBook; 170 pages

Genre: Literary/Short Stories

 

 

Life and Other Shortcomings is a collection of linked short stories that takes the reader from New Orleans to New York City to Madrid, and from 1970 to the present day. The women in these twelve stories make a number of different choices: some work, others don’t; some stay married, some get divorced; others never marry at all. Through each character’s intimate journey, specific truths are revealed about what it means to be a woman―in relationship with another person, in a particular culture and era―and how these conditions ultimately affect her relationship with herself. The stories as a whole depict patriarchy, showing what still might be, but certainly what was, for some women in this country before the #MeToo movement. Both a cautionary tale and a captivating window into women’s lives, Life and Other Shortcomings is required reading for anyone interested in an honest, incisive, and compelling portrayal of the female experience.

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Praise

Included in 2020’s Best Beach Reads by Parade “A compelling collection that captures the mystery and menace beneath love and family life. ” ―Kirkus Reviews

“Corie Adjmi has a flair for dramatizing scenes. She homes in on the killer moment, and her dialogue is so honest that I was cringing at times . . . It is just so vivid. ”
―Susan Breen, author of The Fiction Class

“Corie Adjmi’s stories are sharply written, unsparing, and spot-on. With wisdom and humanity, Life and Other Shortcomings plumbs the mysteries of adult life: the menacing underside of love, the protean nature of grief, and the baffling difficulty of staying true to ourselves and the things we value most. Assured in her storytelling, Adjmi writes with force and perception. Her stories are a must-read.” ―Elyssa Friedland, author of em>The Floating Feldmans and The Intermission and Love and Miss Communication

“Pitch perfect and very haunting, Life and Other Shortcomings is a true delight. Adjmi’s interlocking stories are as funny as they are tragic. Her characters are so real and relatable, you’ll find yourself rooting for them, even as they get into trouble. Adjmi is a great new talent.” ―Alison Espach, author of The Adults

“All that glitters is not gold in Corie Adjmi’s wonderful short story collection Life and Other Shortcomings. Adjmi exposes the fear, envy, and yearning that simmer just beneath the surface of her characters’ beautiful lives. Her writing is both elegant and powerful. I was hooked from the first page to the last.” ―Ellen Sussman, New York Times best-selling author of four novels, A Wedding in Provence, The Paradise Guest House, French Lessons and On a Night Like This

About the Author

Corie Adjmi grew up in New Orleans. She started writing in her thirties, and her award-winning fiction and personal essays have since appeared in over two dozen publications, including North American Review, Indiana Review, South Dakota Review, and, more recently, HuffPost and Man Repeller. In 2019, Life and Other Shortcomings was a finalist for the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for short fiction from BkMk Press. When she is not writing, Corie does volunteer work, cooks, draws, bikes, and hikes. She and her husband have five children and a number of grandchildren, with more on the way. She lives and works in New York City.

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

02_In the Land of ArmadillosIn the Land of Armadillos: Stories
by Helen Maryles Shankman

Publication Date: February 2, 2016
Scribner/Simon & Schuster
eBook & Hardcover; 304 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction/WWII/Short Stories/Literary

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A Spring 2016 Discover Great New Writers selection at Barnes & Noble.

A radiant debut collection of linked stories from a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, set in a German-occupied town in Poland, where tales of myth and folklore meet the real-life monsters of the Nazi invasion.

1942. With the Nazi Party at the height of its power, the occupying army empties Poland’s towns and cities of their Jewish populations. As neighbor turns on neighbor and survival often demands unthinkable choices, Poland has become a moral quagmire—a place of shifting truths and blinding ambiguities.

Blending folklore and fact, Helen Maryles Shankman shows us the people of Wlodawa, a remote Polish town: we meet a cold-blooded SS officer dedicated to rescuing the creator of his son’s favorite picture book, even as he helps exterminate the artist’s friends and family; a Messiah who appears in a little boy’s bedroom to announce that he is quitting; a young Jewish girl who is hidden by the town’s most outspoken anti-Semite—and his talking dog. And walking among these tales are two unforgettable figures: the enigmatic and silver-tongued Willy Reinhart, Commandant of the forced labor camp who has grand schemes to protect “his” Jews, and Soroka, the Jewish saddlemaker and his family, struggling to survive.

Channeling the mythic magic of classic storytellers like Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer and the psychological acuity of modern-day masters like Nicole Krauss and Nathan Englander, In the Land of Armadillos is a testament to the persistence of humanity in the most inhuman conditions.

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Praise

“Moving and unsettling…Like Joyce’s Dubliners, this book circles the same streets and encounters the same people as it depicts the horrors of Germany’s invasion of Poland through the microcosm of one village…Shankman’s prose is inventive and taut…A deeply humane demonstration of wringing art from catastrophe.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Every story in this remarkable collection reveals Helen Maryles Shankman’s talent for surprising, disturbing and enlightening her readers. Blending the horrors of war with the supernatural, she creates a literary landscape that is strangely mythical and distinctively her own. These stories haunted me for days after I finished reading them.” – Sarai Walker, author of Dietland

“With unflinching prose and flashes of poetry Helen Maryles Shankman spirits her readers back through history to the Polish hamlet of Wlodawa during the dark days of Nazi occupation. Horrific reality and soaring fantasy meld in serial stories that include an avenging golem, an anti-Semite who shelters a Jewish child, brutal SS officers who lay claim to ‘their own Jews’ and an unlikely messiah whose breath smelled of oranges and cinnamon. That scent will linger in the memory of readers as will the haunting stories in which barbaric hatred is mitigated by the reflection of a survivor who reflects that love is a kind of magic. There is, in fact, literary magic in these well told tales.” – Gloria Goldreich, author of The Bridal Chair

“Populated with monsters and heroes [human and perhaps not], but mostly with ordinary people caught up in horrific events they neither understood nor controlled – this series of intersecting stories drew me in completely, making me read them again to find all the connections I missed the first time. The writing is fantastic, and I marvel at Shankman’s literary skills.” – Maggie Anton, author of the bestselling Rashi’s Daughters trilogy

“In The Land of the Armadillos is a moving collection of beautifully written short stories that readers of Jewish fiction will celebrate. Not to be missed.” – Naomi Ragen, author of The Sisters Weiss

About the Author03_Helen Maryles Shankman

Helen Maryles Shankman lived in Chicago before moving to New York City to attend art school. Her stories have appeared in numerous fine publications, including The Kenyon Review, Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Grift, 2 Bridges Review, Danse Macabre, and JewishFiction.net. She was a finalist in Narrative Magazine’s Winter Story Contest and earned an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers competition. Her story, They Were Like Family to Me, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Shankman received an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art, where she was awarded a prestigious Warhol Foundation Scholarship. She spent four years as as artist’s assistant and two years at Conde Nast working closely with the legendary Alexander Liberman. She lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a year, spending the better part of each day in an enormous barn filled with chickens, where she collected eggs and listened to the Beatles.

Shankman lives in New Jersey with her husband, four children, and an evolving roster of rabbits. When she is not neglecting the housework so that she can write stories, she teaches art and paints portraits on commission. In the Land of Armadillos, a collection of linked stories illuminated with magical realism, following the inhabitants of a small town in 1942 Poland and tracing the troubling complex choices they are compelled to make, will be published by Scribner in February 2016.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads | Amazon Author Page

Blog Tour Schedule

Tuesday, February 2
Review at Worth Getting in Bed For

Wednesday, February 3
Spotlight at Library Educated
Spotlight & Giveaway at It’s a Mad Mad World

Thursday, February 4
Review at A Chick Who Reads

Friday, February 5
Guest Post & Giveaway at A Literary Vacation

Monday, February 8
Review at Oh, for the Hook of a Book!

Tuesday, February 9
Interview at Oh, for the Hook of a Book!

Wednesday, February 10
Spotlight & Giveaway at Passages to the Past

Thursday, February 11
Review at I’m Shelfish

Monday, February 15
Review at Back Porchervations

Tuesday, February 16
Guest Post at The Lit Bitch

Wednesday, February 17
Review at Cynthia Robertson’s Blog

Friday, February 19
Review at Ageless Pages Reviews

04_ITLOA_Blog Tour Banner_FINAL

Please join S.R. Mallery as she tours with HF Virtual Book Tours for Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads Blog Tour, from December 1-19.

02_Sewing Can Be Dangerous CoverPublication Date: December 16, 2013
Mockingbird Lane Press
Formats: eBook, Paperback, Audio Book
Pages: 276

Genre: Historical Fiction/Short Stories

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The eleven long short stories in “Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads combine history, mystery, action and/or romance, and range from drug trafficking using Guatemalan hand-woven wallets, to an Antebellum U.S. slave using codes in her quilts as a message system to freedom; from an ex-journalist and her Hopi Indian maid solving a cold case together involving Katchina spirits, to a couple hiding Christian passports in a comforter in Nazi Germany; from a wedding quilt curse dating back to the Salem Witchcraft Trials, to a mystery involving a young seamstress in the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire; from a 1980’s Romeo and Juliet romance between a rising Wall Street financial ‘star’ and an eclectic fiber artist, to a Haight-Asbury love affair between a professor and a beautiful macramé artist gone horribly askew, just to name a few.

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Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads is now in AUDIO!!! Listen to narrator, Suzie Althens, breathe life and depth into these stories!

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Audible.com
iTunes

About the Author03_S.R. Mallery

S.R. Mallery has worn various hats in her life.

First, a classical/pop singer/composer, she moved on to the professional world of production art and calligraphy. Next came a long career as an award winning quilt artist/teacher and an ESL/Reading instructor. Her short stories have been published in descant 2008, Snowy Egret, Transcendent Visions, The Storyteller, and Down In the Dirt.

“Unexpected Gifts”, her debut novel, is currently available on Amazon. “Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads”, her collection of short stories, Jan. 2014, both books by Mockingbird Lane Press.

For more information please visit S.R. Mallery’s website. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Sewing Can Be Dangerous and Other Small Threads Blog Tour Schedule

Monday, December 1
Review at Unshelfish

Tuesday, December 2
Review at Bibliotica

Thursday, December 4
Spotlight & Giveaway at Teddy Rose Book Reviews and More

Friday, December 5
Review at History From a Woman’s Perspective
Interview at Dianne Ascroft Blog

Monday, December 8
Review at WV Stitcher

Tuesday, December 9
Review at 100 Pages a Day – Stephanie’s Book Reviews
Guest Post & Giveaway at Historical Fiction Connection

Wednesday, December 10
Review at A Book Geek
Guest Post at What Is That Book About

Thursday, December 11
Review at Book Nerd

Friday, December 12
Review at Based on a True Story

Monday, December 15
Review at CelticLady’s Reviews

Tuesday, December 16
Review at Book Babe

Wednesday, December 17
Review at Just One More Chapter

Friday, December 19
Review at Book Drunkard

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