Ethan Mueller, the narrator of Brother Carnival, has suffered a crisis of faith and is on the brink of taking his own life when he is informed by his father that he has an estranged brother who is an author. Whereupon he is handed a collection of his sibling’s stories and novel excerpts and urged to seek him out. “These stories are his effort to find you, Ethan. He’s been where you are now. Seek him out but it won’t be easy.” In effect, “Christopher Daugherty’s” writings function as the protagonist’s brother in absentia, thus creating the “dialogue” and suspenseful interplay between them. By immersing himself in the pieces, Ethan Mueller’s pursuit of his brother is a quest to discover himself.

It’s 1923 in Midland, Texas, and Miss Dara falls in love with her best friend who also happens to be a girl. Terrified, Miss Dara takes a job at Sugar Land Prison for men, hoping to keep her secret attractions under lock and key. Once there, she befriends inmate and soon-to-be legendary blues singer Leadbelly, who sings his way out (true story) but only after he makes her promise to free herself from her own prison. Sugar Land is a triumphant, beautiful debut novel about the hearts refusal to be denied what the heart wants.

“With SUGAR LAND, Stoner creates a captivating story for the ages’a young, southern girl in the 1920s who becomes a ballsy broad in a double-wide, and on the journey learns about love the hard way. This heartbreaking and hysterical book inspires us with a brave and unusual life. SUGAR LAND is for anyone who still believes in love.”—Jillian Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and Everything You Ever Wanted

30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces. When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? Most importantly, how will she put this new skill of hers to use? As she seeks answers to these questions, she travels to Kansas to see the tornado maverick she worships; falls in love with Matt, the tabloid journalist who has come to investigate her; visits fires raging out of control in Los Angeles; and eventually voyages with Matt and Diane to the methane fields of Siberia. A woman experiencing power for the first time in her life, she must figure out what she can do for the world without hurting it further. The story poses questions about science and intuition, women and power, and what the earth needs from humans.

AWARDS

HONORABLE MENTION – 2019 Eric Hoffer Award, General Fiction
SILVER – 2018 Nautilus Book Awards, Fiction (Large Publisher)

ADVANCE PRAISE

“A riveting tug-of-war between science and intuition, doubt and belief, impending devastation and the hope of survival. Even the most rational among us will find wisdom here, wonder, and truth.”—Eileen Pollack, author of A Perfect Life

“How can you not love this beautifully brainy, indelibly moving, knock-your- socks-off novel about a female meteorologist who can control the weather? Grounded in both awe and science, aching with wonder, and written with the dazzling surprise of a double rainbow, Emmons is a brilliant alchemist, making you truly believe that the inexplicable is sometimes the most gloriously possible thing of all. None of us are alone. None of us are alone, none of us should be alone, and we should all realize our connection to the Earth. Like the tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes and perfect blue skies, she’s a natural literary force to be reckoned with.”—Caroline Leavitt, author of Cruel Beautiful World and the New York Times bestsellers Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow?

Losing Beck is the story of Jennie Silver, who is trying to get over a man who was greatly influenced by the renowned Hungarian emigré novelist Avigdor Element. Spanning a hundred years of history from when Nijinsky danced ‘The Afternoon of the Faun’ in Paris in 1912, through World Wars I and II, to very close to the present, Jennie keeps a diary, writes a play and a novella in her attempt to control her desperate, high-pitched emotions focused on a man she is uncontrollably drawn to and at the same time finds repugnant. A man who is one of the keepers and part of the legacy of Element’s bad behavior.

PRAISE FOR LOSING BECK

“A diary of amour fou; a two-act play featuring Nijinsky as an apparition of art and madness; a novella largely about the sexual politics of poetry publication. This triptych of narratives contains a plenitude of characters driven by overpowering emotions and dark motives. Each section is energized by a story-line of repetition compulsion arising from the desire to enjoy bodily pleasure, to have and hold the power to make others lustful about the physical beauty of oneself and one’s mastery as an artist. It isn’t always pretty to watch page by page, but the frottage of scene after scene of shame and desire, rage and submission, forms Susan Hahn’s testament, her ‘repertoire of horrors.’ I was especially fascinated by the meticulous scrutiny of family relations, especially mother-daughter attachments, often dramatized against a backdrop of twentieth-century Jewish history. Admirers of Susan Hahn’s poetry will recognize some of the motifs, and some of the gorgeous language, woven throughout these Strindbergian plots. This work is the poet’s urgent gift to her devoted readers, who will be thankful, once again, that an author of such x-ray vision lives among us?”—Laurence Goldstein, author of Clear and Queer Thinking: Wittgenstein’s Development and His Relevance to Modern Thought