Sibylline Press

In early twentieth century Japan, women have few rights. Yet one precocious poet—a brooding daughter, locked in her room at night by protective parents—runs away from home to live a life of her choosing. She falls in love with a fellow poet and follows him across Siberia to Paris, where they witness the last days of the Belle Epoque. She perseveres through poverty, back-to-back pregnancies, infidelity, earthquake and fire, to become a name every Japanese schoolchild knows today as a pioneering feminist poet and the first person to translate the classical Tale of Genji into modern Japanese. In her single-minded dedication to her art, she inflicts wounds on a daughter that echo from her own childhood. She sets out to make amends, knowing it may be too late. Based on the life of poet Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) and filled with original translations of her poetry, Girl in a Box will ignite the discussion about the female artist’s challenge to create while juggling family, career, and personal freedom. Historical fiction at its best.

Crime reporter Eleanor Wooley is reporting on the annual Mother’s Day Rodeo when wildfire breaks out in Gold Strike County high country and a dead woman is pulled from the nearby Little Bear River. The community turns inward in fear. Wooley, following her own instincts and a series of deadend trails, worries that this year’s Rodeo Queen may be the next victim. During a high-country excursion to Me-Wuk sacred grounds to foil a scheme to dam the Little Bear River, wildfire breaks out again. Anishinaabe wilderness guide Leonard Parker appears again and continues to surprise. In the aftermath of one crisis after another in this second book of the Wild Horses Mystery series, it’s a beautiful wild stallion who Eleanor and her lover, rancher Easton Jode, have rescued from slaughter that restores the light in a small rural town living under the shadow of death.

An aging woman finds her place in the natural world as a huntress.Reviving Artemis is the unlikely story of a woman raised in mid-twentieth-century suburbia who lived in New York City as a young adult and moved to Vermont in 1984. For more than thirty years, she raised domestic livestock, kept bees, and cultivated fruits and vegetables while teaching literature and telling stories. But when she turned sixty, something shifted. Luskin was overtaken by a primal urge to step out of the garden, off the blazed trails, and into untracked forest by learning to hunt deer. Deeply personal, lyrically told, and funny, Reviving Artemis reveals Luskin’s ambivalence about guns and her fear of entering the forest alone in the dark. She persisted, using her literary acumen to read the forest and, as thoughtfully as she hunts for words, to hunt for deer. With the stories of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, childbirth, and wild nature to inspire her, Luskin became a huntress, determined to age fiercely and compelled to tell this story of finding her place in the natural world.

In the small coastal town of Sparrow, Maine, tradition runs deep—and change is rarely welcomeIn the quaint coastal parish of St. Gabriel-by-the-Sea, Reverend Miranda McCurdy arrives with visions of renewal—only to find her progressive ideas crashing against the rocky shores of tradition. When she challenges the cherished Thanksgiving pageant’s outdated “Pilgrims and Indians” costumes, she unwittingly ignites a firestorm within her congregation. As tensions escalate, a desperate Honduran woman seeking sanctuary in the church forces the parish to confront its deepest values, fracturing the community Miranda had hoped to rejuvenate. Facing a congregational vote of no confidence, the siren call of her former life as an executive chef at Seattle’s hottest new restaurant tempts her—an escape from the stormy waters of parish politics. But fate intervenes—in the form of a stray dog and an intriguing stranger—forcing Miranda to make an impossible choice: retreat to the familiar comforts of her culinary career or weather the tempest to nurture the fragile roots beginning to anchor her heart.

WARREN BEATTY WALKS THROUGH THE DOOR...In this offbeat memoir, Nikki Nash tells the story of an obsession that starts with a young girl’s movie-star fantasy. At fourteen, longing for excitement and something of her own, Nikki fixates on superstar Warren Beatty. She’s determined to find him and have him in her life forever. She creates a solid plan that she initiates four years later at the age of eighteen when she gets a job as a restaurant hostess where Beatty frequents. A year later, on a warm Sunday evening in April, after breaking a finger in a judo class and looking her worst—dirty hair pulled back, no make-up, broken finger in a glass of ice—Warren Beatty walks through the door and her plan comes to fruition. In this entertaining and genuine account of the inner workings of Hollywood, Nash pursues a vibrant career as a TV associate director, comic, writer, and actress. Her celebrity-infused journey is also a dance with drugs, religion, Hollywood culture, and other volatile mysteries in the city of angels, including her own metamorphosis.

SOMETIMES, LIFE DOESN’T FOLLOW A LESSON PLAN...After being attacked by a disgruntled parent in the parking lot of the private San Francisco Bay Area high school where she has taught English for the past twelve years, traumatized Chelsea Garden flees to her hometown of Imperial Flats in the Northern California foothills. When Chelsea meets beleaguered principal of Imperial Flats High School, Nora Delgado, the two realize they might have found each other at an essential crossroads. To complicate matters, her former classmate and messy first love, Evan Dawkins, has also recently joined the faculty at IFHS to teach music. And he wasn’t expecting Chelsea to walk back into his life. Other People’s Kids follows three educators: one at the beginning of his career, one in the middle of hers, and one on her way out.A story about teaching, hometowns, and risking change in midlife.

On Little Great Island, climate change is disrupting both life and loveAfter offending the powerful pastor of a cult, Mari McGavin has to flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up—a place she swore she’d never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island’s summer residents, now back himself to sell his family’s summer home. Mari and Harry’s lives intertwine once again, setting off a chain of events as unexpected and life altering as the shifts in climate affecting the whole ecosystem of the island…from generations of fishing families to the lobsters and the butterflies. Little Great Island Illustrates in microcosm the greatest changes of our time and the unyielding power of love.

A witty and fresh reimagining of the paths of Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty long after their storybook endings. Princesses Neve, Della, and Bry are sisters-in-law, having married into the royal Charming family, and for the last thirty-plus years, they’ve been living a coveted happily-ever-after life in the idyllic kingdom of Foreverness.  But royal life isn’t what it seems. Bry’s people-pleasing is exhausting her, Della’s exquisite and renowned beauty is fading with time, and Neve dreads the prospect of becoming queen one day, because power makes one a target, and she doesn’t want to be killed ... again. Then the king’s sudden death thrusts each princess into a personal quest that shows her the truth behind the kingdom’s “perfection” and challenges her sense of purpose. Will each of the royal women take her rightful place, build her new legend, and create her own new happily-ever-after, in midlife? And will the kingdom of Foreverness survive the drastic changes? 

The heyday of small press publishing in San Francisco lives againThis memoir that reads like fiction recounts the never-before-told story of the heyday of small presses in the 1980s and 1990s in San Francisco when Bay Area presses—armed with arrogance and personal computers—took the publishing field. The invention of the desktop computer was akin to the invention of printing press at the end of the Middle Ages, heralding a renaissance in the book business and ushering in a hotbed of creativity recognized even by New York City, the long-held center of all things publishing. In these glory days, presses like Foghorn Press, Nolo Press, Ten Speed Press, Heyday Books, Wilderness Press, New World Library, and Chronicle Books were a just few of many to partner with independent neighborhood bookstores to stage the first San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival which drew 35,000 readers.This is the often comic story of one of those presses and its intrepid publisher, Vicki Morgan.  At Foghorn Press, Vicki was 25, young and brash and ambitious. She set out to quixotically build a book publishing company from scratch with her eccentric brother to help. As part of their optimistic Morgan heritage, the siblings employed every strategy they had to grow Foghorn Press with no capital, 100-hour work weeks, cheap beer, irrepressible belly laughs, and no book publishing experience. Over 13 years, they assembled a cast of often preposterous authors and resistant staff while surviving a drunken ex-husband, a con artist, calculating distributors, a fleet of good ol’ boys, terrible cash flow, and their own differing aspirations. Books were brought to market and miraculously sold from their offices in the Boiler Room until Foghorn became a resounding success with sales, media, acclaim. But of course, the story doesn’t end there.

A crusading attorney’s death. Sabotage at a family winery. Secrets buried in California’s past…When corporate attorney Noli Cooper visits her godparents’ Santa Cruz Mountain winery, she’s hoping for a few quiet days to consider her future. But the future will have to wait. The body of her childhood mentor, a crusading social justice lawyer and local hero, is discovered in a rocky ocean cove. The sheriff is quick to call it suicide. Noli knows he’s wrong. Teaming up with PI Luz Alvarado, Noli dives into a world where nothing is as it seems.As threats mount and the winery teeters on the brink of ruin, Noli and Luz must navigate a treacherous landscape of greed, revenge, and long-buried secrets. Their investigation weaves through the rich tapestry of California’s vineyard history, the mystery of zinfandel grapes, and the haunting legacy of the Vietnam War. With a murderer on the loose, predatory neighbors circling, and Noli’s godfather framed for murder, the clock is ticking. Can two fearless women from different worlds unravel the truth before it’s too late?