Books published by publisher Emerald Publishing Limited

As the popular Blue Moon Café series moves into its third volume, The Alumni Grill showcases award-winning veterans from the first two Blue Moon Café collections, handpicked by editors William Gay and Suzanne Kingsbury.In this stunning anthology of Southern prose and poetry, beloved authors such as Tom Franklin, Suzanne Hudson, and Brad Watson take us from the Deep South of Alabama, through backcountry Mississippi, to the hills of Appalachia. We feel the aftermath of murder, marvel at motherhood, taste sumptuous Southern cooking, stay out all night fishing, and ache from lost love. For fans of the Blue Moon Café series and anyone who loves short fiction, The Alumni Grill highlights the endlessly rich and varied voices of the South.

“Vollmer writes with great wisdom and insight about love, sex, and loss. He is particularly adept at depicting the thrilling experience of young love. Vollmer’s narrative voice, reminiscent of T.C. Boyle, is also fully realized and very appealing-irreverent, vital, and bristling with vivid imagery and detail.”Library Journal Starred Review“Matthew Vollmer has written a book that looks like America: it’s big, funny, sad and hopeful; its ambition is to take over the world. I’m behind it one hundred per cent.”Daniel Wallace, author of Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician and Big Fish“The characters who inhabit the hilarious, heartbreaking stories in Future Missionaries of America may be desperate; yet, for all their lost innocence, they have the capacity to celebrate life’s joy and pain. At its best, Matthew Vollmer’s writing bursts with a kind of ecstatic poetry.”Stewart O’Nan, author of Snow Angels, Songs for the Missing and Poe“In prose that manages to be both precise and expansive, Matthew Vollmer tells compassionate stories of people forced to take action against difficult circumstances. This collection is bold and risky, written by a courageous new writer.”Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight“From the opening rhapsody to the final prayerful note, Matthew Vollmer’s stories beautifully script the drama of a changed world in search of new words. Here you’ll find the tensile strengths of realism set beside the radical innovations of experiment, the enduring power of the story reinvented for our new day. Virtuosic in its variations yet held together by a ballast of obsession, Future Missionaries of America has more range than most novels while doing brilliantly what stories do best: it deepens the mystery of others by making that mystery familiar.”Charles D’Ambrosio, author of The Point and Other Stories and The Dead Fish Museum“There are large cracks in America, and a person can fall right down into them and never be seen again. Many of Matthew Vollmer’s characters are on the verge of doing that. Wacked-out teenagers, mountain survivalists, Adventist evangelists, compulsive gamblers, estranged mothers, Goth girls, world-class skate?boarders, English department dopeheads, broken-hearted dentists, every one of them caught in the midst of an unimaginable situation, usually involving inexpressible love or grief. I have never read any stories like these. Quite often, these stories are saying the unsayable.”Lee Smith, author of The Last GirlsBIO: Matthew Vollmer is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and currently teaches at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. His stories have been published in the Paris Review, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Future Missionaries of America is his first book.

The Alumni Grill Anthology of Southern Writers has grown out of Sonny Brewer's Southern Writers Reading series in Fairhope, Alabama, and is the companion volume to Brewer's Stories from the Blue Moon Café, now in its fourth year. This year's Grill features twelve Blue Moon veterans and is an eclectic assortment of fiction, poetry, and essays. In keeping with MacAdam/Cage’s and Sonny Brewer's commitment to new writers, The Alumni Grill, Volume II, includes writers with first books on the way – such as Jack Pendarvis, whose story, "The Poet I Know," is a hilarious inside look at a writing conference, and Brad Vice, who shares a quirky take on the 1950s KKK in Tuscaloosa – as well as writers whose first books are still in the works.

Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton—the faithless young naval lieutenant who abandons Madam Butterfly—was glimpsed fleetingly in Peter Rushforth’s previous novel, Pinkerton’s Sister. Now Ben steps out of the shadows and into the center of the stage, a young man haunted by the desolation of his boyhood years, unable to show or respond to love. Once again, in his mastery of language, his humor, his extraordinary imagination, and his superb sense of time and place, Peter Rushforth has given the world another masterpiece, ranking alongside, or surpassing, his earlier triumphs.

Are you an expert on One Direction? Can you name all the band members? Have you followed every twist and turn in the amazing One Direction story from X Factor wannabes to chart topping supergroup? If you think you know all about the boys from 1D, there is no better way to test your knowledge than with this fun quiz book. Do you know Niall’s favourite colour or which band member is known as ‘the joker’? Which member of the group is the youngest and who is the oldest? Where in the USA was One Direction’s music video set for their song ‘What Makes You Beautiful’? The answers to all these questions and more can be found in this book.Full of fascinating facts about 1D, including many personal details, The One Direction Quiz Book documents the boys’ journey from five unknowns to one of the most successful acts to emerge from The X Factor. With 100 questions all about your favourite group, this book is a must-have for fans of One Direction.

Bedtime Stories for Children | Children's Stories | Children's Picture Books | Picture Story Books | Children's eBooksAge Level: 3 and up | Grade Level: Pre K and up The Legend of Pineapples is a story about a young girl that learns the virtues of being neat and tidy and to take care of her things. It has a very happy ending. The Legend of Pineapples is the third book in the "Where Does It Come From?" series. Each book in the series is a legend about the origins of things such as Corn, Stars, Pineapples, Bananas, Geese, Turtles, Crows, Roosters, Magnolias and Owls. Each book in the series teaches the young readers a valuable moral lesson and end with some educational facts about the topic. Young readers love these stories, the illustrations and lessons.

In the early years of Queen Victoria's reign Abel Lackland's children are grown up. Two of his sons have followed their father into medicine. The other, Jonah, now married to Lilith's daughter, has achieved his dream of a career on the stage. However, the reality of being an actor is harsher than he ever imagined - it is a daily struggle to provide for his wife and children. Suddenly something comes into their lives that drives a wedge between them.

Set in the 1960’s Tasting Stars is the story of how a 13 year old girl living in the most difficult of circumstances finds her voice and in doing so changes lives in ways she never would have believed were possible. Hard copies can be purchased from www.tastingstars.co.nzRose Ann Dixon's family life in Otara seems unremarkable. Her home, which she shares with her father, mother, and five younger sisters and brothers, along with the family cat – called Hoodat – looks no different from those around it. But, her close friend and neighbours know otherwise. Each day, Rose faces problems that no one should ever have to deal with but deep love for her siblings sees her carry out quiet deeds of heroism in the face of increasing anger and violence meted out by her father. A gift from her thoughtful teacher marks on her thirteenth birthday, is a turning point in Rose’s life. After hearing Martin Luther King’s inspiring words, she realises that every child can have dreams and what’s more they have a right to expect them to come true. Discovering a family secret gives her newfound strength to confront her distant and ineffective mother about a past event that left lifelong scars which she now sees very differently. In order to save her siblings, Rose realises she must first abandon them, and begins a journey from Otara to Wellington and finally India. Sustained by the love and wisdom of a recently deceased Aunt and the unending kindness of her best friend Aya’s family she learns things about herself and others that enable her to take the actions needed to save her family. Karen Mills writes a thought provoking story about family violence with profound understanding – and delightful humorous touches.

Monty and Cookie are back in a brand-new adventure. While out in the woods Monty and Cookie stumble upon a strange machine, untouched for years. What follows is a monstrous adventure that will take them back to a time long long ago.Hold on tight because the excitement has just begun. We're off to a world undiscovered for thousands of years... Welcome to the Land of the Dinodogs!

Eric B. Martin’s sweeping and highly praised debut novel of young love and family feuds lays bare the new race and class wars of a swiftly changing south. By turns lyrical and brutal, Luck echoes with the voices of unexpected characters: the self-assured musings of Hermelinda Salmeron; local wise guy Harvey Dickerson philosophizing from beyond the grave; and a chorus of the county’s consciousness at Eddie’s Bar-N-Q.Eric B. Martin grew up in Maine, studied in North Carolina and Texas, and lives in San Francisco.

Haunted by the deaths of his mother and grandmother, both of whom perished while hiking through Australia’s Blue Mountains, Sam Browne returns to the country of his mother’s birth in search of his family’s history and a way to make a place for himself within it. By reading his grandmother’s memoirs, Sam begins to connect to his family’s ancestral home and understand the reasons that she and her daughter after her were so drawn to the Australian landscape and the mystery found there.

Following his celebrated debut, Horace Afoot, Frederick Reuss returns with another endearing hero—a six-year-old Gnostic with a photographic memory. Henry is being reared, at least intermittently, by gamblers, thieves, whores, and priests in one of America's most notorious sin cities. But from time to time, he seems to believe he's living as a saint in 5th century Byzantium, making this an ironic, funny, and heart-rending account of the ways we become our own saviors by choosing what to believe.