Novels
Jeanne Larsen:
Jeanne Larsen has published three critically-acclaimed novels (Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, and Manchu Palaces) with Henry Holt & Co, and others in Europe and the U.S. Each is set in a different time in Chinese history, and like Sally Paradiso, each blends a dash of magical realism with a little po-mo playfulness.
Her first book, James Cook in Search of Terra Incognita (University Press of Virginia) was winner of the AWP awards series in poetry. Since then, she has since published two collections of translations of Chinese poems: Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao (Princeton University Press) and Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China.
Jeanne has received a nice assortment of grants and awards, and teaches literature and creative writing at Hollins University. When she’s not somewhere else, she lives in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, just west of the Blue Ridge. She stands easily 5’10”—a little taller right after yoga class.
Believe it: Jeanne thinks E-Readers are the cat’s meow.
SALLY PARADISO: A Novel
What happens after Sally Paradiso, a short, red-headed Good Girl full of secret spunk, comes home to find her boring husband in bed with someone else? Will she ever learn to stand up to her awful brother-in-law, the worst polluter in Alloway County? And what on this green earth is she going to do about those visions she’s been having?
Sally Paradiso is a magical, sexy, thought-provoking comic novel about a truly quirky place: the 21st-century United States. It follows one southwest Virginia woman’s early-midlife sea change, and the coming of age of her new-millennial daughter. Sometimes it’s satirical, sometimes a little bawdy, sometimes just plain fun.
Woven through the tale of Sally’s adventures is a sequence of planet-hugger prose-poems to the Appalachian Mountains and the rest of Mama Gaia. Fans of Larsen’s earlier novels (Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, Manchu Palaces) will recognize her Buddhist perspective and her wit.
New readers and returnees alike will be charmed by this sassy Southern comeback to On the Road. You’ll meet down-home second-generation hippies, friendly Yankee lesbians, a sleek guru named Leonard, and a sensitive journalist half in love with Emily Dickinson—and half with Sally herself.
It's Barbara Kingsolver, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Lee Smith, and William Faulkner heading for Walden Pond in a red Toyota mini-truck. It’s a thought-provoking treat for book clubs, and it’s a laugh-out-loud delight.
To download SALLY PARADISO, press here:
Sally Paradiso Part 1
Sally Paradiso Part 2
*** *** *** ***
Jim DeFilippi:
Website: jimdefilippi.com
SPEEDO
Flap Copy:
Chester Earl Costagravas needs to get hold of some wedding money before his Julietta leaves him for someone offering her a better reception. First, there’s the thousands of dollars on the table, just begging to be heisted, at Dr. Bohansen’s weekly poker game. Then there’s the stolen Yogomani lamp that Chester Earl’s buddy Ralphie says is worth a lot, created by the Chinese during the Tang dynasty before they got around to inventing fake orange juice. Julietta’s mother and foster brother, Foster, are no help—they’re under indictment for driving up to a museum in Albany and attacking a ceramic buffalo with baseball bats.
Oh, and it’s 1999, and Ralphie says this new year, this Twenty-hundred, will bring calamity and confusion.
So, when Chester Earl’s kid brother comes to him terrified with a story of watching a head-shot suicide that left no body, Chester Earl must think of a solution for everything.
And he must do it quick.
They often call Chester Earl “SPEEDO.”
To download SPEEDO for free, click here: Download SPEEDO
*** *** ***
Jim DeFilippi:
THE FAMILY FARM 
Flap Copy:
Aging Vermont farmer Warren Lareaux refuses to give up any piece of his land or of his life—not for love, not for family, not for the law. His brother Ty represents all three of these forces. The two men are thrown into a deadly battle that neither one wants nor can escape. Can either brother survive the magnificent forced combat?
THE FAMILY FARM is DeFilippi’s first novel set in Vermont, the state he has lived in since 1974.
To download THE FAMILY FARM, click here: The Family Farm
*** *** ***
COP, COP, LAWYER
Flap Copy:
COP, COP, LAWYER is DeFilippi’s most complex novel. It continues the story of Long Island homicide cop Joe LaLuna (BLOOD SUGAR). Joe is back from being dead, back from the Islands, back on the job, and still in love with his high school sweetie—the still troubled and still dangerous Audie McKenna.
To download COP,COP, LAWYER, click COP, COP, LAWYER Part 1
COP, COP, LAWYER Part 2
*** *** ***
JIVE PALACE
Flap Copy:
Jive Palace is a literary crime novel set in 1966. Truman Capote has just published his classic crime book, In Cold Blood. Smalltime reporter Vincenzo Jimmy Spacone gets a lead that Capote missed the real story of the killings. As Spacone gets drawn deeper and deeper into the story, he realizes that it will either deify him as a reporter, or crucify him as a man.
To download JIVE PALACE for free, click here: Download JIVE PALACE
*** *** ***
FOG 50 
Flap Copy:
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder wasn’t around in 1956, but Soldier Malökovsky sure left some good chunk of himself in that North Korean P.O.W. cage, and he came back home packing something malignant inside him instead.
FOG 50 poses as a 1950s hard-boiled pulp crime novel, but read between the lines, read between the chapters. This novel’s ending might shock you. It sure as hell shocked Soldier.
To download FOG 50 for free, click here: Download FOG 50
*** *** ***
DUCK ALLEY
Flap copy:
Jay Tasti and Albert Niklozak grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s in a tough little section of Long island called Duck Alley. The sounds of garbage cans clattering and railroad cars rumbling by were usually drowned out by their teary-eyed laughter.
The friendship held steady into adulthood. But when the decomposed body of a teenage girl is found half-washed out of the earth in upstate New York, their friendship begins to unravel. Set into motion is a series of events that will test the two friends’ commitment to each other, to themselves, and most of all to their sense of honor.
To download DUCK ALLEY for free, click here: Download DUCK ALLEY
To purchase a hard copy of DUCK ALLEY, click here: Purchase Hard Copy
*** *** ***
BLOOD SUGAR
Flap copy:
Thirty years ago in high school, Audrey McKenna could drive Joe LaLuna blind with her beauty and her secrets, with a Coke on the side.
Now Joe is an ace Long Island homicide detective, and she's a murder suspect, still using her beauty and secrets and coke to blind lovers like Joe.
Brown Fedora Books is a Rogue Publishing Company
To download BLOOD SUGAR for free, click here: Download BLOOD SUGAR
To find out above purchasing a hard copy of BLOOD SUGAR, personally inscribed to you and signed by the author ($10, includes postage), please inquire with an E-mail to: jim@jimdefilippi.com
To buy a Kindle version of one of Jim's books, click here: Kindle Store