Book picks similar to
The Eater of the Absurd by John Burroughs


poetry
books-by-friends
contemporary-surrealists
contest-books

Ride Your Heart 'Til It Breaks


Deborah Hawkins - 2014
    But now Stan knew he didn’t want to be the shallow bad boy Marilyn had described. He wanted to be the man Carrie Moon had loved. Loving him was all that had kept her alive. The emptiness of her marriage had made the ache of lost love burrow deeper into her heart and soul. Carrie stood transfixed between worlds: life, but emotional death if she left alone as he wanted, or death in all forms if she stayed, and the fires reached them. On a cool October evening in 1994, attorney Karen Moon enters an enchanting little jazz club, in San Diego and unexpectedly falls hopelessly in love with the star attraction, trumpeter Stan Benedict. Although Stan is a world class flirt, who has every woman in the audience longing to go home with him, Karen hears a deeper truth in his music. Behind the performer’s confident, shallow mask is a vulnerable, lonely man longing to be loved. Karen risks her chance of partnership at Warrick, Thompson by secretly crossing ethical boundaries to save the club from destruction by her client, Waterfront Development. She and Stan begin a tumultuous affair that culminates in an unplanned pregnancy and a hasty marriage. But their relationship is increasingly threatened by the demands of Karen’s job as a highly paid securities lawyer and by the rising crescendo of Stan’s frequent infidelities. Through mounting heartbreak, Karen struggles to hold on to Stan until they are swept apart by a tide of personal and professional loss. Thirteen years later, longing for forgiveness, Stan reappears in Karen’s life. Now a superior court judge and married to Warrick, Thompson partner Howard Morgan, Karen is faced with Howard’s threats to destroy her if she leaves their marriage. Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks is an unforgettable, intricately woven tale of passion, loss, self-discovery, and redemption.

Badge Without Honor


Emily Kendricks - 2017
    Making matters worse, his new love interest, Dianne Lawson, becomes the next target, forcing Bocello to go head-to-head with the most diabolical killer of his career, who has been hiding in plain sight. Unable to trust anyone around him, he tracks the killer who seems to always stay one step ahead of the investigation…until everything comes to a heart-pounding climax as Bocello races against time to reach his love before it’s too late.

Stealing the Highland Bride


Kenna Kendrick - 2019
    When the noble Laird Iain Cameron is brutally killed by the sinister Murdoch Mackintosh, Rhona and her clan find themselves at his mercy. Filled with desire for her, Murdoch makes her his wife and claims her child as his own.Stewart Mackintosh was forbidden to fall in love with his brother's wife. All he ever wanted, was for his clan to thrive and peace to be restored. Now he is losing himself to a woman he shouldn't desire. But to be with her, Stewart must make the ultimate sacrifice to save Rhona and the bloodline of Clan Cameron.

My Heart from Inside: An emotional page turner about two babies switched before birth


Aviva Gat - 2019
    The only thing missing is a baby. Unable to get pregnant, Cameron turns to in vitro fertilization in hopes of becoming mother. When the positive pregnancy test comes back, she thinks she can finally have it all. That is, until she gives birth and realizes her baby’s blood type is not compatible with her own.There is just one explanation: a mistake at the IVF clinic. An investigation reveals that the baby is genetically related to Avery and Graham, another couple who went through IVF at the same clinic. They also recently had a baby—who happens to be Cameron and Andy’s genetic child.When the mix up is discovered, a heated battle ensues: should the couples switch babies so they can raise their genetic child, or should each keep the baby the mother nurtured inside her for nine months?The ethical and legal dilemma plays out in the character’s personal lives and the courtroom where multiple questions are raised: Does nature or nurture make someone a mother? What is better for the babies?My Heart from Inside is an emotional page turner with unexpected twists and turns. It will make you think about the meaning of motherhood, and what you would do in the characters’ shoes. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Lisa Wingate, and Liane Moriarty.

The Greatest Game


Greg Rajaram
    The price we paid for becoming intelligent was to become painfully ignorant of the difference between good and evil.Adi, a 10-year-old boy, works together with two old philosophers as they try to unravel the prophecy of a promised King. With insatiable curiosity, Adi must work with the wise men as they rationalize with each other on why and how humans became intelligent. Together they attempt to answer some of the most profound questions related to existence. Does evolution end with human beings or is there an ‘Overman’ who can reach evolution’s pinnacle? Will this Overman be able to define values for humankind?Centuries later a young boy promises his mother that he will always uphold the love that she has taught him. It is a promise that drowns him in the nectar of the gods. Krish grows up to be an engineer and joins a team of scientists as they try to create artificial consciousness in a machine.Krish soon realizes that he has a bigger fight on his hands. A fight to preserve love in a desolate world. His quest for true love ultimately leads him down a path where he comes face to face with a fearsome snake delivering a kiss of death.Humans have come a long way by questioning the nature of objects around us and pushing the limits of our intelligence, but it’s now time that we ask the greatest question yet: when does intelligence transcend to become consciousness?

Emergency Brake


Ruth Madievsky - 2016
    This is a new voice made of sunlight, knives, emergencies, heat, honesty, bottles of vodka, and a tanker full of talent. Madievsky has created something we should not go without."- Matthew Dickman"Go ahead, try all you want pulling on Ruth Madievsky’s Emergency Brake—but just remember it won’t do you any good. This will be the most exciting and inventive first book you have read in years, and this poet’s take-no-prisoners attitude makes for an ecstatic joyride. These deeply moving poems reflect the raw darkness paring at the edges of our lives, and they reveal how that dark can sometimes move to the very centers of our being. Sexy, irreverent, sorrowful, thrilling—the poems of Emergency Brake become a young woman’s survival manual for the Twenty-First Century: ignore it at your own peril."- David St. John"...a metaphor-maker par excellence"- ZYZZYVA"The social importance of Emergency Brake doesn’t come at the cost of artful finesse; a cleverly engineered speaker who invites distrust through sly direction guides us through the collection’s gallery of sex and Los Angeles sprawl..."- Columbia Journal"Emergency Brake is filled with boxcar after boxcar of metaphors you’ll wish you wrote, but Madievsky got to them first. You’ll want to hate her if it wasn’t for that sugary child jumping up and down behind your ribs, yelling, 'Do it again! Do it again!'”- Harpur Palate

The Beautiful and the Broken


Illiana Cenjur - 2018
    It can often seem like there's no way things will ever get better. I wrote this book to remind you that it will, and to give you some comfort and hope along the way. May you find the healing and love your heart deserves. -Illiana Cenjur

It Never Rains


Roger McGough - 2014
    Moved on to Caius Became the baius knaius. 'Oxford Blues' is one of the many new poems in this expanded and revised edition of The State of Poetry, Roger McGough's book of short humorous verse which was published in 2005 as part of Penguin's 70s series celebrating its 70th anniversary. From a poem commissioned to commemorate Dylan Thomas in just 140 characters, which unfortunately comes to an end mid-word, to a pre-emptive erratum notice, these poems show McGough at his inventive, hilarious best - and there are also new line drawings by the author offered at no extra cost.

Counting Backwards From Gone


Kat Savage - 2019
    Her little sister, Angela, was brutally murdered and Savage has been searching for the strength to write her grief down ever since. Finally, just shy of six years later, and one year after justice finally rained down upon the man to blame, Savage found the courage to try. This collection is an 18-poem narrative of the very real and raw emotions felt by the author over the years since the tragedy. Here, she pays homage to her baby sister and bleeds her own pain onto paper for anyone who might need help finding their own strength.

Queen Anne's Lace


Dawn Gardner - 2019
    Lacy starts on a journey to find to find the man that could change her life. As Lacy gets closer to finding the man, circumstances force her to do something that she will regret for the rest of her life. This explosive coming-of-age story set in the late 1970s is full of twists and turns, forgiveness and courage.

Fireflies at 3 am


Danni Thomas - 2020
    It’s a book with the flow of poetry but the ebb of short stories – rightfully called “Shoetry”. This creation takes you to the roots of humanity - stripping back the veneers of life, society and interaction to see people and their ways in an entirely new light.

My Song for Him Who Never Sang to Me


Merrit Malloy - 1975
    Her poems are intimate and real. They speak of lovers, friends, family, and self, with a powerful emotional honesty that makes you smile in self-recognition. My Song for Him Who Never Sang to Me is Merrit's first book.

Coma Therapy


Eric Victorino - 2007
    Important, so inspiring... Please read this book" -Sonny Moore, Recording Artist "There are very few ways to get inside the mind of a lyricist. One way is through reading their diaries, the other through sleeping with them. Eric's book is the more entertaining of the options. It's a raw look inside the heart and mind of a rock 'n' roll spiritualist whose struggles with love (Chaplin) and versus the world (Keaton) are laid out bare like an exhibitionist on a double-dare." -Mike Shea, Founder, AP Magazine "Coma Therapy" is the sound of a powerful new voice in contemporary American literature. Victorino's brand of punchy prose often draws comparisons to the likes of Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson. This debut collection of poems and short stories draws a dangerously thin line between the heartwarming and the horrifying... Eric Victorino then mischievously walks that line all the way to the last page. Defiant, triumphant, hopeful and wise.

Pandemonium


Armando Iannucci - 2021
    It tells the story of how Orbis Rex, Young Matt and his Circle of Friends, Queen Dido and the blind Dom'nic did battle with 'a wet and withered bat' from Wuhan.

The Scarlet Ibis: Poems


Susan Hahn - 2007
    The resonance of this image grows through each section of the book as Hahn skillfully employs theme and variation, counterpoint and mirroring techniques. The ibis first appears as part of an illusion, the disappearing object in a magician’s trick, which then evokes the greatest disappearing act of all—death—where there are no tricks to bring about a reappearance. The rich complexity multiplies as the second section focuses on a disappearing lady and a dramatic final section brings together the bird and the lady in their common plight—both caged by their mortality, their assigned time and role.  All of the illusions fall away during this brilliant denouement as the two voices share a dialogue on the power of metaphor as the very essence of poetry. bird trick iv It’s all about disappearance. About a bird in a cagewith a mirror, a simple twiston the handle at the sidethat makes it come and go at the magician’s insistence. It’s all about innocence.It’s all about acceptance.It’s all about compliance.It’s all about deference.It’s all about silence. It’s all about disappearance.