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MONARCH: Stories by Emily Jon Tobias subverts the reader's common perceptions about how love can heal, how loss and suffering can transform, and how every character deserves a second chance. America's city scars, sewers, alleyways, and bars are landscape to their wars, as characters heal and transform under wind turbines and on open roads, in golden cornfields and with the wails of Chicago blues. Heroes in this collection are the marginalized, the sufferers, the down-trodden, the misfits, the wanderers, and the wounded, shaped by grief but not defined by their scars.

MONARCH honors each human being's capacity for change. Characters drive the collection, turning up the dial to raise the volume of voice for unsung heroes who are shades of the sufferers and healers in all. In collection, MONARCH is an exploration of the human condition through a lens of the damaged who learn to love through small acts of kindness, given and received. MONARCH's characters bear traumas with their bodies, and often, they transgress. They break in, break down, and ultimately, break open.

An inclusive invitation, MONARCH aims at an intimate portrayal of scarred characters on American streets beating the drum of current culture against the fierce rhythm of critical social justice issues. With this at its heart, the collection Includes a reading guide written by the author with prompts intended to inspire discourse between readers, writers, and students making the work of special interest to librarians, teachers, book clubs, and beyond.

Foreword by Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas.

MONARCH: Stories

Emily Jon Tobias, author

Literary Fiction

Black Lawrence Press

May 17, 2024

190 pages

Price $22.95

ISBN: 978-1-62557-085-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023042587

Distributed to bookstores by Small Press Distribution (SPD) and Ingram

To preorder or request a review copy contact Black Lawrence Press:

blacklawrencepress.com

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Hi Emily! Congrats on Monarch! It sounds great and I'm sure some readers will appreciate learning about it. Happy holidays!

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To the Bones, an Appalachian folk horror/ecojustice novel with a dash of dark humor. https://bookshop.org/p/books/to-the-bones-valerie-nieman/8354710?aid=2292&ean=9781946684981&listref=fiction-and-poetry

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Did you notice? Fascinating that both books posted thus far have "bones" in the titles!

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Hi Valerie! So happy to hear about this book. Thanks for telling us about it today. Happy holidays, book friend!

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My new novel , 'BONE WHISPERS' will be available in February from Epicenter Press, WA. It's a literary mystery, set mostly in post-World-War 2 England, on the Dorset coast.

Nessa Halloran returns from the US to her inherited house in Dorset, to hear that a skeleton from sixty years ago has been found on the beach and while following the paths of her childhood again, has to ask herself what these bones - a woman's bones - have to do with her, and what happened here when she was young.

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Did you notice? Fascinating that both books posted thus far have "bones" in the titles!

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Hi Rosalind! Oh, my goodness, this story premise is intriguing. Congrats on the book and thanks for telling us about it today. Happy holidays!

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