Books published by publisher M P Publishing Limited (24 May 2012)

In 1974, the young and callow Englishman George Armitage goes to Madras in the hopes of returning with at least the beginning of his Ph.D. dissertation. Instead, he comes home with a bride named Viji, an Indian woman he barely knows. This seemingly unlikely pair eventually wind up in Sacramento, where they buy a ranch house and give birth to triplets. In this new American world of shag carpets and pudding pops, Viji seeks consolation in her prayer room, which she visits frequently to gossip, sass, and seek advice from the framed portraits of her dead relatives. It is here where Viji feels most herself, where she immerses herself in the comforts of home, and where these deceased family members “felt as real to her as she’d been to them.”The relative calm of Viji’s California existence is interrupted when George’s father shows up on their doorstep, unexpected and unannounced. Granddad Stan encourages the triplets to pee in the rosebushes, beds the neighbor’s maid, and takes every opportunity to flummox Viji in every way he can. So when Viji’s sister sends an out-of-the-blue invitation to visit India, she prepares for her first trip home in nearly eleven years, not knowing for sure if she’ll ever return to the States.A hilarious and heartfelt debut, The Prayer Room re-examines the meaning of family—the people who live down the hall, the people who exist only in our memories, and the people who roll their eyes at you from within their picture frames.

From the acclaimed author of The Judas Field, a beautiful and haunting portrait of the men who served on the great American railroads.It’s Christmas Eve, 1940. Along an isolated stretch of railway between Meridian, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana, two locomotives travel toward one another through the dark winter landscape. A.P. Dunn, engineer aboard the 4512 southbound freight, reminisces about the last trip he made through the snow. And though he can remember every detail about that voyage in 1923, what he can’t recall are the events of a few hours ago—where he ate breakfast, how he got the gash on his forehead, or what he did to make his crew treat him so strangely.On the northbound Silver Star, a luxury passenger train packed with returning college students and gift-bearing families, brakeman Artemus Kane has his own memories to contend with: French trenches and German snipers, a failed marriage, and a too-short layover spent with Anna, the brilliant and lonely woman he has just left behind in the Crescent City. In Pelican Road, Howard Bahr returns to his greatest theme—the tragic nobility of those attempting to overcome difficult situations through love, honor, and sacrifice—and shows that on the railway, catastrophe is never more than a distracted moment away.

Kate Banner, an American midwife, heads to Mexico for a three-week visit in the mid-1980s and ends up staying south of the border for eight years. From Mexico she travels first to Nicaragua and then to Guatemala, two nations torn by revolution and sunk in horrific poverty and violence. Along the way, she delivers babies, administers what first aid she can, and becomes involved with a group of activists, most of them from North America. The novel opens in the midst of a hurricane, during which a young pregnant woman goes into labor in a rowboat. Kate successfully delivers the child, but the mother dies soon afterwards. It is this event that starts the wandering midwife thinking about going home at last. When a longtime love affair with an American arms supplier to theSandinistas goes south, Kate heads to Guatemala where friends have a house for a little rest and some thinking time. All thoughts of Indiana are banished, however, when she meets her fellow lodger, Father Dixie Ryan, a priest who is struggling with his vocation. The two become lovers and decide to open Hummingbird House, a clinic and school for Guatemalan children. Unfortunately, even the best intentions can go disastrously awry, and Kate must experience terrible loss before she can find eventual salvation.

Both humorous and heartwarming, Dog is the story of Jill Rosen—a single, childless professor who has given up on finding love—and Phil, the wise, young dog she adopts, almost by accident. Although Jill finds her routines disrupted and her wistfulness about past loves stirred, she forges a connection with the dog that takes her by surprise in her solitary middle age.

“A life by inference is better than no life at all.”Dunn pushes his propensity for quirky to the limit, creating a full-length novel entirely upon the margins of a fictitious biography of Jonathan Blashette, a three-legged circus performer–cum entrepreneur and humanitarian. When his editor loses the manuscript of this biography, he offers to publish the only text left: his footnotes.Dunn holds up a funhouse mirror to the pedestaled residents of the twentieth century and has a laugh at the expense of the events and luminaries of an era that perhaps took itself just a little too seriously.

When the body of seventeen-year-old Sheila Barnes is found on Lloyd Cotton’s dairy farm in 1941, nearly all the citizens of the quiet town of Zebulon, Mississippi, feel the effects of her murder. But those most deeply affected by the tragedy include her young husband, Stoney, and the Cotton family, who took Sheila in and grew to love and respect her.Though badly abused by her father, labeled “slow-witted,” and burdened with a physical deformity, Sheila approaches life with a natural, cheerful optimism and an unwavering belief in the healing powers of magic. She quickly becomes the Best Friend of eleven-year-old Annette Cotton, and subtly charms and changes those around her, proving to many that true wisdom often comes from unlikely places.Marshall has created a page-turner of stunning lyrical beauty that is impossible to forget. At the heart of this literary murder mystery is the powerful truth that love conquers all—even death.About:Bev Marshall, a native of McComb, Mississippi, lived as a nomadic military wife for many years. She has returned to her Southern roots and teaches English at Southeastern Louisiana University. She lives in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, with her husband. Walking Through Shadows is her first novel.

This collection of thirty Southern writers gathers some of the finest authors in the country—with stories, essays, and a poem. Demonstrating a range of styles, topics, and themes these stories display each writer’s craftsmanship and talent and together form a testament to the grand literary tradition of the South.About the EditorSonny Brewer owns Over the Transom Bookstore in Fairhope, Alabama. He was editor of the city magazine in Mobile, Alabama, associate editor of an Alabama weekly newspaper, and a feature columnist; he edited an anthology of Fairhope writers and artists called Red Bluff Review, and is the author of a parable on aging cleverly disguised as a children’s book, Rembrandt the Rocker, and a book of dime-store philosophy called A Yin for Change.Contributors:Marlin BartonRick BraggJill Conner BrowneC. Terry Cline, Jr.Pat ConroyTom CorcoranBeth Ann FennellyPatricia FosterTom FranklinWilliam GayJim GilbertW.E.B. GriffinWinston GroomMelinda HaynesFrank Turner HollonSilas HouseSuzanne HudsonDouglas KelleyTom KellyMichael KnightBev MarshallJennifer PaddockBarbara Robinette MossJudith RichardsRichard ShackelfordGeorge SingletonMonroe ThompsonSidney ThompsonBrad WatsonSteve Yarbrough

A moving fable about luck, persistence, and hope, grounded in the often tragic reality of modern-day immigration, by the winner of the 2004 Prix Goncort.Captain Salvatore Piracci has sailed along the Italian coast for the last twenty years, intercepting boats with clandestine African immigrants who have risked everything in the hope of reaching the new Eldorado. But when Piracci is confronted by a woman haunted by the death of her son, killed during an illegal crossing, he is forced to question the validity of his border-patrolling mission. Meanwhile, two brothers prepare to leave Sudan and make the dangerous passage to Europe. Separated mid-voyage, Suleiman, the youngest, vows to make it to the promised land and find the means to reunite with his ailing elder brother. At a time when debates over immigration and national identity dominate headlines in the United States and Europe, best-selling author Laurent Gaudé offers a unique portrait of the individuals who compromise their dreams and endanger their lives in search of a better existence.Laurent Gaudé is the author of Death of an Ancient King (winner of the Prix de Goncourt des Lycéens and the Prix des Libraires) and The House of Scorta (winner of the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award). His novels have been published in twenty different languages, and he is also an accomplished playwright.

The author who took readers into the strange and fascinating world of Salt Lake City escort services (in Calling Out) now returns to New York, where a single woman becomes inexplicably drawn to a college student accused of murder. Grace drinks alone in the same bar every night, confides in her longtime bartender, and observes New York City life from the sidelines. A copy editor in her mid-thirties, she is estranged from her family and, in many ways, from herself. But when a local coed is found dead, and a college student from Grace’s hometown is arrested for the murder, something within her stirs. Though the media has portrayed the boy as a spoiled rich kid who killed as revenge for a rebuffed sexual advance, Grace senses deeper layers to the story.Consumed by discovering the truth behind the case, Grace strikes up an unlikely friendship with the accused murderer, Charles. Barely sleeping and slipping further behind at work, she inadvertently dredges up dark parts of her own childhood, including the death of her younger sister twenty-five years earlier. And when Grace returns to her childhood home in Ohio, intending to chase the mystery surrounding Charles, she finds that the mystery she is chasing is actually her own.