Publishing select works of literary merit since 1996
River Boat Books was established in 1996 to provide both known and emerging writers with an opportunity to engage a wider reading audience. We provide editorial support, but we believe editorial control should remain in the hands of the writer, and we demand that our writers involve themselves in every step of the book publication process, including the selection of appropriate fonts, cover art, and marketing strategies. Partly we were inspired by writers Mark Twain and Virginia Woolf, who were publishing mavericks as well as great writers. They did whatever they had to do to bring great literature, their own great books particularly, to as wide a reading public as possible. This is our mission as well, and we believe our mission is more critical than ever.
(Click on a cover to find out more...)
After Thaddeus Jacobs, the adopted son of a traveling preacher, is found naked with a young woman, he is expelled from the only family he has ever known. Guided by visions and a mysterious voice, he makes his way to a coastal South Carolina island, where he struggles to make his peace with God and himself in spite of his own strange cravings and the superstitious hatred of the islanders, who think he is the devil. The price of his inner peace, however, is absolute isolation, and it is only when he meets Kilby, a thirteen-year-old boy, that he rediscovers what it means to be human.
Part myth, part fable, part satire, and part coming-of-age story, The Conjure Man plumbs the emotional depths of the human psyche in prose both dreamlike in the images it conjures and intensely vivid in the psychology it reveals. Told from the alternating viewpoints of Kilby and Thaddeus, it depicts a world where magic does exist, and miracles are possible.
Somewhere Between Earth and Heaven
ISBN-13: 978-0-9654756-6-2
$27 Hardcover, 2010
249 pages
ISBN-10: 0965475638
ISBN-13: 978-0965475631
$10.00 Trade Paperback, 2002
96 pages
by Jean Sulivan
translated by Sister Francis Ellen Riordan
ISBN-10: 096547562X
ISBN-13: 978-0965475624
$15.00 Trade Paperback, 1999
146 pages
Somewhere Between Earth and Heaven embraces a forward looking vision where the poet functions as "the antenna of the human race." This collection uses historical, cultural, and personal experiences to explore the nuances of negotiating current trends in Postmodern spirituality, relationships, and diversity. The essays and poems in this elegantly written debut collection focus on the symmetries between the spiritual, the physical, and the emotional worlds, challenging each reader to explore possibilities that might otherwise remain taboo, and in so doing, remind us of what it truly means to be human.
The four divisions of this book demonstrate a powerful and eclectic range of topics. Readers encounter an Italian love poem, Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Aristotle in Belgium, the Holocaust, and poignant portraits of Africa rarely seen.
Eternity, My Beloved tells the story of a rebel priest, Jerome Strozzi, who falls between the cracks of both church and state during the German occupation of Paris during World War II. Befriending prostitutes, petty thieves, and con-men, he becomes the unofficial pastor of the notorious Pigalle district. Told by a skeptical narrator who is himself searching for Strozzi's secret, this contemporary lyric masterpiece becomes a sustained meditation on love and freedom.
One Last Dance with Lawrence Welk & Other Stories
ISBN-10: 0965475603
ISBN-13: 978-0965475600
$9 Trade Paperback, 1996
143 pages
Peter Bellis' One Last Dance With Lawrence Welk And Other Stories is a surreal world of characters in stories where anything can happen. A young boy from Minnesota brings two ghosts together through music, a wealthy gadabout recalls the night of his death, an ancient miracle man travels the country roads of Florida in search of customers for his Blue Elixir of The Nile.
A 1997
MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD FINALIST
Author Jean Sulivan was the
Winner of the Grand Prix Catholique de Littérature
for his novel
The Sea Remains
Other Books from Other Publishers
(These are a few books from other publishers we wish to share with you. Click on the cover for more info.)
ISBN-10: 0312372507
ISBN-13: 978-0312372507
Minotaur Press, Hardcover 2007
Winner of the 2006 PWA/SMP Best First Private Eye Novel Prize!
ISBN-10: 0312593007
ISBN-13: 978-0312593001
Minotaur Press, Hardcover 2010
Superb taut Chicago Noir detective fiction with more than a dash of Dashiell Hammet!
ISBN: 9780984108398 (eBook)
ISBN: 9780984108374 (Hardback)
ISBN: 9780984108381 (Paperback)
Telemachus Press, 2010
Winslow Eliot's novels weave suspense with romantic tenderness in the tradition of Sydney Sheldon, Nora Roberts, and Daphne Du Maurier.
Daughters of the Urban Prairie
by Jill Lundquist, Renata Zrust, Claudia Brewington, Cheri Johnson
ISBN-10: 0-9654756-0-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-9654756-0-0
Trade Paperback
Scheduled publication date: 2012
An anthology containing poems and short stories from four women writers living in the Mid-West.
Jill's poems are cameos, an apt and sometime haunting response to a precisely constructed situation. Renata Zrust was born in 1980 into a family of artists and musicians. Her stories focus on the ongoing struggle between having fun and being responsible, and move relentlessly toward the conclusion that neither is quite satisfying. Claudia Brewington was born in 1953 in St. Paul, Minnesota and became a social worker. Her poems revel in metaphor. Cheri Johnson was raised in Lake of the Woods County in northern Minnesota. Her stories excel in subtlety and humor.
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