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Parkgate Digital / Parkgate Press
Dirtyville Rhapsodies
Dirtyville Rhapsodies
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$9.95 USD
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Do you really know your neighbors, America? Look again. Look closer. This darkly comic short story collection focuses on ordinary people caught in all manner of conundrums, fiascoes, and legal dilemmas, much of it their own stinking fault. Set mostly in Atlanta (capital of the "Dirty South"), Dirtyville Rhapsodies features everyday folks who overcome vice and personal tragedy, scoundrels so foul they attract news headlines, and the wayward souls who find salvation in society's crevasses. Some of them will weave meaning from pratfalls, devastating loss, and downright stupidity. And some won't.
'Best Summer Beach Reads 2013' Men's Health Magazine (reviewed alongside Stephen King and Dan Brown, May 2013).
Finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award.
Gwinnett Daily Post (author feature, May 2013).
Atlanta Magazine (review, August 2013).
"This collection feels like a modern American neighborhood. Here stands a story with a secret. There stands a story with a missing child. Up the block lives the narcissist weight-lifter and, a few houses over, a couple off on a honeymoon that changes everything. Josh Green reports from the literary homeland with a lion's heart and a steady hand. This fine book belongs on the shelf with any other collection published in recent years."
Charles McNair of Paste Magazine
"Dirtyville Rhapsodies is a stunning, rollercoaster ride of a book. Sit back and get ready to have the top of your head ripped clean off."
Robert Rebein, author of Dragging Wyatt Earp
"Dirtyville Rhapsodies combines a sharp-eyed satirical verve with pathos and compassion. These richly observed stories navigate the often bewildering terrain of contemporary America, from the hallucinatory reality of breastfeeding clinics to the spandex paradise of membership gyms. Josh Green has a fine grasp of the rhythms of everyday life, and his sustained verbal inventiveness brings a compelling power to this remarkable collection."
Dr. Patrick Hayes
Author of J. M. Coetzee and the Novel
St. John's College, Oxford University
"That tragedy and comedy go hand-in-hand is implicitly understood and used by Mr. Green to maximum effect: when the humor comes--and there is plenty--it is of the caliber to make a reader on a public bench turn to a stranger and grin. The stories in Dirtyville Rhapsodies display an already maturing talent and are a fine credit to the genre."
James Manlow
Author of Attraction
Bournemouth, England
"Characters in Josh Green's stories are, to echo Shakespeare's Brutus, 'bound in shallows and in miseries,' but that's not all they are. They're more than the sum of their sorrows, more than by-products of loss and unfulfilled desire. Green's crackling, true-hearted prose allows us to see behind the sometimes hilariously sorrowful curtains of his heroes' troublesome lives and re-discover for ourselves the potentially redemptive power of empathy."
Tom Noyes
Author of Spooky Action at a Distance and Other Stories and Behold Faith and
Other Stories
"My favorite piece in [Lake Effect, Volume 13] is 'Twenty-First Century Itch' by Josh Green. The story starts with twangy sort of dialect I feared might weigh down the narrative flow, but I was pleasantly surprised at Green's ability to dial the technique back when appropriate, allowing a charming and sad story to unfold... Any story about this kind of topic runs the risk of being overly sentimental, but Green handles it deftly."
Robbie Dressler, Pacific University
"Josh Green's sharp, in-the-moment prose captures universal feelings in a situation both mundane and peculiar. 'Blood Allies' is a short, potent study in brotherhood and insanity."
Eastown Fiction review of "Blood Allies"
"Dirtyville Rhapsodies does not shy away from tackling life's big themes head-on, and what he achieves here is remarkable. The scope is big, the detail heartbreaking; from the husband in 'Missing Athena' who spots his abducted wife's umbrella rolling in the night breeze, to the body builder ejected from his gym in 'The Delusional Mister Necessary,'
Acknowledgements:
The Baltimore Review: "Missing Athena"
Los Angeles Review: "Pinch Points"
The MacGuffin: "Exultation"
The Adirondack Review: "Clarity"
New South: "The Abduction"
Lake Effect: "Twenty-First Century Itch"
The Midway Journal: "The Bushmaster"
Eclipse Literary Journal: "Hanging Abdul"
Eastown Fiction: "Blood Allies"
Hoosier Writers Anthology 2010: "The Delusional Mister Necessary"
Main Street Rag's "Law and Disorder" Anthology: "The Gulch"
Creative Loafing (Atlanta): "Down and Out at the Breastfeeding School"
'Best Summer Beach Reads 2013' Men's Health Magazine (reviewed alongside Stephen King and Dan Brown, May 2013).
Finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award.
Gwinnett Daily Post (author feature, May 2013).
Atlanta Magazine (review, August 2013).
"This collection feels like a modern American neighborhood. Here stands a story with a secret. There stands a story with a missing child. Up the block lives the narcissist weight-lifter and, a few houses over, a couple off on a honeymoon that changes everything. Josh Green reports from the literary homeland with a lion's heart and a steady hand. This fine book belongs on the shelf with any other collection published in recent years."
Charles McNair of Paste Magazine
"Dirtyville Rhapsodies is a stunning, rollercoaster ride of a book. Sit back and get ready to have the top of your head ripped clean off."
Robert Rebein, author of Dragging Wyatt Earp
"Dirtyville Rhapsodies combines a sharp-eyed satirical verve with pathos and compassion. These richly observed stories navigate the often bewildering terrain of contemporary America, from the hallucinatory reality of breastfeeding clinics to the spandex paradise of membership gyms. Josh Green has a fine grasp of the rhythms of everyday life, and his sustained verbal inventiveness brings a compelling power to this remarkable collection."
Dr. Patrick Hayes
Author of J. M. Coetzee and the Novel
St. John's College, Oxford University
"That tragedy and comedy go hand-in-hand is implicitly understood and used by Mr. Green to maximum effect: when the humor comes--and there is plenty--it is of the caliber to make a reader on a public bench turn to a stranger and grin. The stories in Dirtyville Rhapsodies display an already maturing talent and are a fine credit to the genre."
James Manlow
Author of Attraction
Bournemouth, England
"Characters in Josh Green's stories are, to echo Shakespeare's Brutus, 'bound in shallows and in miseries,' but that's not all they are. They're more than the sum of their sorrows, more than by-products of loss and unfulfilled desire. Green's crackling, true-hearted prose allows us to see behind the sometimes hilariously sorrowful curtains of his heroes' troublesome lives and re-discover for ourselves the potentially redemptive power of empathy."
Tom Noyes
Author of Spooky Action at a Distance and Other Stories and Behold Faith and
Other Stories
"My favorite piece in [Lake Effect, Volume 13] is 'Twenty-First Century Itch' by Josh Green. The story starts with twangy sort of dialect I feared might weigh down the narrative flow, but I was pleasantly surprised at Green's ability to dial the technique back when appropriate, allowing a charming and sad story to unfold... Any story about this kind of topic runs the risk of being overly sentimental, but Green handles it deftly."
Robbie Dressler, Pacific University
"Josh Green's sharp, in-the-moment prose captures universal feelings in a situation both mundane and peculiar. 'Blood Allies' is a short, potent study in brotherhood and insanity."
Eastown Fiction review of "Blood Allies"
"Dirtyville Rhapsodies does not shy away from tackling life's big themes head-on, and what he achieves here is remarkable. The scope is big, the detail heartbreaking; from the husband in 'Missing Athena' who spots his abducted wife's umbrella rolling in the night breeze, to the body builder ejected from his gym in 'The Delusional Mister Necessary,'
Acknowledgements:
The Baltimore Review: "Missing Athena"
Los Angeles Review: "Pinch Points"
The MacGuffin: "Exultation"
The Adirondack Review: "Clarity"
New South: "The Abduction"
Lake Effect: "Twenty-First Century Itch"
The Midway Journal: "The Bushmaster"
Eclipse Literary Journal: "Hanging Abdul"
Eastown Fiction: "Blood Allies"
Hoosier Writers Anthology 2010: "The Delusional Mister Necessary"
Main Street Rag's "Law and Disorder" Anthology: "The Gulch"
Creative Loafing (Atlanta): "Down and Out at the Breastfeeding School"
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