Finally. The new glossy boasts a coming-of-age theme from a diverse class of writers, artists and photographers, including a cover-story book excerpt (and Q&A) from Maggie Rawling Smith’s heart-bending YA novel Catamopus, out next year on R&R Press. The cover features the lovely work of the world-renowned artist Cyfi. A flowering Final Word and symbiotic collage by Teré Fowler-Chapman closes out. In-between, rock & roll frontman Eddie Baranek pens an ode to mowing Detroit lawns for living while enjoying international rock-star fame. One of the country’s preeminent music journalists, Fred Mills, authors a moving homage to fatherhood. Internationally loved poet Brittany Perham takes us beneath surfaces, author Nicca Ray offers some gritty Hollywood street words, and writer-songster Cait Brennan untangles some teenage confusion. Also, lots of new work by emerging and established creators, including Jay Rochlin, Mike Sendrow, Kelly Fordon, James Diaz, Jacob from the Cigar Shop, Linda Suzu Kawano, Jeff Gardner, Barry Smith, Constantine Ballard, Tashi Saheb-Ettaba, Brandi Cole, Ember Gulden, Curtis and Jon Endicott and many worthy others.
Marlowe's Revenge was chosen as one of the 2023 Southwest Books of the Year!
TOP PICK: "This was a weird one, and weird ones meant trouble." So writes Dan Stuart near the opening of Marlowe's Revenge, the last of a trilogy. He's right, of course. Stuart has had plenty of experience in weird climes. As leader of the legendary band Green on Red, he's known rock-star fame. In the wake of fame, he's known addiction and climbed from the wreckage. He's been known to hit the links to work out the demons, and he's seen bad guys and Gila monsters up close. All figure in this picaresque tale starring alter ego Marlowe Billings and a Tucson that the tourist bureau won't rush to endorse, where drug smuggling, murder, skulduggery, dubious legal ethics, raw violence, and many another "preternatural event" figure. There's even some golf amid episodes set in plenty of recognizable Tucson landmarks. While he's paid his dues researching his shaggy-dog story, Stuart is clearly having a grand time with it—and so will readers. - Gregory McNamee
"People act like poetry is this obtuse thing that you have to 'get.' Freeman (and this is a compliment) makes it impossible not to. He tells you about his dad, about beer fridges in garages, about the Great Lakes, about birds, about history. And that's stuff we can all take with us. He tells us about philosophy, and theology, and about native tree-life to Michigan. He sees things, he tells stories about history." A fun and insightful discussion of Poolside at the Dearborn Inn from Tony DeGenaro.
"Real life, they say, is often stranger than fiction. The last few years on this seemingly damned planet have certainly seen that borne out. In the case of Dan Stuart, the two planes are mixed, stirred and served on a platter." Check out this interview with Dan Stuart in the LA Weekly!
"Revenge and temptation usually go hand in hand. The fleeting pleasure they offer often gives way to regret, yet we can’t resist them. Get tangled up in this terrible twosome, and you’re probably fucked." An interview with Dan Stuart in the Phoenix New Times.
Poet and teacher Michael Collins has written a fantastic close read of poems from Poolside at the Dearborn Inn for the international literary journal North of Oxford.
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Marlowe Billings returns to Tucson in the '90s to get clean and save a failing marriage. Staving off demons with countless rounds of golf, he stumbles into his hometown’s crime-ridden underbelly, where old friends and a brewing cartel war threaten his sobriety, his sanity, and his life.
Here's what authors are saying about Marlowe’s Revenge:
"Marlowe's Revenge is sun-bleached desert noir at its finest. Violent, funny, weird, and 100% original. Count me a huge fan."
—Tod Goldberg, New York Times bestselling author of Gangsterland, Gangster Nation and Living Dead Girl
"I want to thank the El Tiradito shrine that Marlowe Billings rides again. Dan Stuart was in one of my favorite bands, Green on Red, and now has created Marlowe Billings my favorite golf loving, ex-junkie, trouble-collecting miscreant. With Marlowe’s Revenge, Dan Stuart proves once again he keeps getting better and better."
—Willy Vlautin, award-winning author of The Motel Life, Lean on Pete and The Night Always Comes
"With his latest literary effort, former Green on Red frontman Dan Stuart offers a pulp meditation of bad men doing bad things, the hopeless and hapless that surround them, and the cascading nature of addiction and regret. Marlowe’s Revenge is part murder mystery, part faded love story, part redemption tale (without much redemption). Beautiful, twisted, and real – this is high desert poetry about low people. As a memoirist and noirist, Stuart continues to be a goddamn revelation."
—Bob Mehr, New York Times bestselling author of Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements
"In Marlowe’s Revenge, Dan Stuart provides us multilayered characters who walk familiar and coveted sites in their search for reckoning with the city’s past, and their own. Their interwoven worlds and lives are both thrilling and fascinating."
—Lydia R. Otero, author of La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City and In the Shadows of the Freeway, Growing Up Brown & Queer
"Finally, Tucson gets the neo-noir novel it deserves: gritty, romantic, broken-hearted, and surprisingly funny."
—Stacey Richter, award-winning author of short story collections My Date with Satan and Twin Study
"Marlowe's Revenge is top rate screwball noir, a finger clicking mix of guns, drugs, golf and rock & roll. Think Carl Hiassen, Dave Barry and Laurence Shames, with a little Charles Willeford on the side. Hip, hardboiled and hilarious."
—Allan Jones, author and former editor of Melody Maker and UNCUT Magazine
"A merciless, funny and reluctantly empathetic novel that places Dan Stuart’s dusty lower Arizona on some fractured literary roadmap between Jim Thompson’s West Texas to James Ellroy’s Los Angeles. Plus, golf. And a sinking rock & roll star."