Charles Simmons

Salt Water

Forms a poignant account of the course of man's life, with each chapter focused thematically and moving from past memories, to the present, to an imagined future

Wrinkles

Acqua di mare

Jonathan Margin and Newbold Press, the man everyone loves to bait, struggle for editorial control of a book review magazine

The Belles Lettres Papers

DIVDIVA young writer-to-be embarks on a comic coming-of-age journey through the crushing mediocrity of work, the vagaries of fate, and the mysteries of sex/divDIV A confused and conflicted but not altogether angry young man shares his observations, disappointments, rants, and sexual desires in a revealing series of letters to an unnamed friend. Our hero wants to be a writer, but is stuck doing mind-numbing work for an unscrupulous encyclopedia publisher. He muddles through two engagements, one to a bright-eyed Catholic virgin, the other to a woman pregnant with another man’s child. And the Great American Novel he is writing—about a man named Austin who is becoming invisible—may be a bit too much for the reading public to handle. But as long as he’s got his friends (like Jose, who is determined to bed and wed his cousin Rita the nun), his health (no thanks to the medical establishment that killed his father), and his libido, everything should turn out okay./divDIV Winner of the William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel—more outrageous than Catcher in the Rye and more scandalous than Portnoy’s Complaint—Charles Simmons’s Powdered Eggs is an unforgettable view of young American life through an amusingly jaundiced eye./divDIV/div/div

A Novel

Powdered Eggs

A Scripture manual, alphabetically arranged, to facilitate the finding of proof texts. 2nd stereotype revision

Alphabetically and Systematically Arranged. Designed to Facilitate the Finding of Proof Texts

A Scripture Manual

The everyday insanity of life at a fictional literary review The journal Belles Lettres has a long and storied history, which is what enticed young editor Frank Page over its threshold in the first place. But Frank did not anticipate the infighting, backstabbing, and utter oddity that are all business as usual at the respected magazine. Still, nothing can match Frank’s thrill at discovering a new literary phenom. But the book industry seems to be on the decline. Integrity is going extinct as conglomerate giants gobble up smaller organs and trample innovation and daring into the muck of commerciality. At least Frank’s position gives him a front-row seat at the publishing world’s fight of the century, as deposed editorial icon Jonathan Margin takes on self-serving corporate overseer Newbold Press in an ink-splattered battle to the death.

A beleaguered young editor at a famous girly magazine swears off sex, only to find himself more deeply mired in lust and love than ever before There are perks to working at a men’s magazine that unabashedly celebrates the unclothed female form. However, the constant parade of exquisitely beautiful women strolling in and out of Oliver Bacon’s office can prove most distracting. Oliver opts to treat his situation with extreme measures: he resolves to try celibacy. But being chaste is easier said than done when one is toiling in a garden of earthly delights, with temptation blooming all around. The challenge gets even more difficult when a particular darling turns up to plunge Oliver’s life and libido both into pure chaos. In an insightful and outrageous romp, Charles Simmons wickedly charts the minefields of lust and love.

An Old-Fashioned Darling

In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned.... So begins this sweet, ominous novel by Charles Simmons. Set against an idyllic landscape of water, sand, and sky, it recounts in exquisite detail the momentous events of a boy's 16th summer that reveal to him the dark facts of adult passion. On Bone Point, an island off the New England coast, the boy's long, lazy days of boating and swimming are sharpened by a growing awareness of his charismatic father's infidelities. Add to this the presence of a flirtatious middle-aged woman and her beautiful 20-year-old daughter, who have rented the guesthouse, and the tale is set in motion. This tautly constructed novel is both startling and haunting—an irresistible story of memory, desire, and suspense.

Alphabetically and Systematically Arranged : Designed to Facilitate the Finding of Proof Texts

Chronicle Books

Kathleen Alcalá

Recounts the lives of a nineteenth-century Indian woman who flees the desert of New Mexico when Mexican soldiers attack her village, her daughter, and a Latina woman from present-day Los Angeles who becomes fascinated by her own ancestry. 10,000 first printing. IP.

Charles Simmons

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