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The feminine spirit of the West comes alive in early twentieth century Montana.
Copper Sky
by Milana Marsenich
(Fiction)
Set in the Copper Camp of Butte, Montana in 1917, Copper Sky tells the story of two women with opposite lives. Kaly Shane, mired in prostitution, struggles to
find a safe home for her unborn child. Marika Lailich, a Slavic immigrant, dodges a pre-ar-ranged marriage to become a doctor. As their paths cross, and they become unlikely friends, neither woman knows the family secret that ties them together.
"Copper Sky is a riveting story of darkness and redemption, rising from the ashes of two fiery tragedies in Butte, Montana. Marsenich creates two heroines whose great losses lead them ever closer to truth. And as their stories unfold, the Butte of one hundred years ago startles to full and undeniable life." -- Phil Condon, author of Clay Center, Montana Surround, and Nine Ten Again
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Interview with author Robert Klose on WABI-TV
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Wings of a Flying Tiger
by Iris Yang
World War Two. Japanese occupied China. One cousin's courage, and another's determination to help a wounded American pilot.
In the summer of 1942, Danny Hardy bails out of his fighter plane into a remote region of western China. With multiple injuries, malaria, and Japanese troops searching for him,
the America npilot’s odds of survival are slim.
Jasmine Bai, an art student who had been saved by Americans during the notorious Nanking Massacre, seems an unlikely heroine to rescue the wounded Flying Tiger. Daisy Bai, Jasmine’s younger cousin, also falls in love with the courageous American.
With the help of Daisy’s brother, an entire village opens its arms to heal a Flying Tiger with injured wings, but as a result of their charity the serenity of their community is forever shattered.
Love, sacrifice, kindness, and bravery all play a part in this heroic tale that takes place during one of the darkest hours of Chinese history.
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With candor, beauty, and unusual insight, their story reveals both how decent people can justify horrific acts, and the emotional power required to heal.
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Mr. Wizard
by Jeff Wallach
Two brothers. One mother. One big question.
Two days before her death, Jenny Elliot suggests to her fifty-year-old son Phillip that, being half-Irish, he should be more careful about his drinking. Phillip, along with his brother Spencer, has grown up believing they were the fully Jewish-American offspring of
Jenny and her late husband who died in the Vietnam War. Was his mother uttering some dementia-inspired fantasy, or was her true character shining through in her last moments to leave the brothers a clue to their real heritage? After her death, Philip decides to take a DNA test.
The brothers set off on a genetic treasure hunt in search of who they really are—and what that might mean. Are they purely products of their genetics; or were they formed more completely by their social interactions and upbringing? Are they merely victims of randomness; or are they some combination of those factors? And who, exactly, is Mr. Wizard?
justice, identity, revenge, and terrorism. With candor, beauty, and unusual insight, their story reveals both how decent people can justify horrific acts, and the emotional power required to heal.
Open Books Featured Titles
Who Are You, Fred?
by Eileen Maloney Ryan
High school isn't easy, especially with a learning disability.
While Fred is sure his learning disability is the reason he can never find his shoes, he mostly believes his LD is the reason he will never feel normal.
Trailers, Quotes, The World of Literature, Did you know?
Much, much more!
Fred and his best friend Henry, who has ADHD, attend Mrs. Hogan’s resource class where she teaches them what LD and ADHD mean, and more importantly, what role the disorders will play in their lives.
As Fred navigates four years of high school—confronting bullies, struggling with homework and tests, losing his shoes, and trying to answer the question, Who are you, Fred?—readers will gain an understanding about the complexities of
learning disabilities.
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"A stunning
debut novel"
--Amazon Vine Voice
Featured Title 2023
At The Seams by Pamela Gwyn Kripke
For precocious eight-year-old Kate Nichols, life in suburban New York seems pretty ordinary for the late 1960s. There are ballet classes, pet bunnies and air raid drills, outings to grandparents’ homes and humiliating boys in chino pants. She derives strength from the surgeon father she idolizes and her family’s lineage of dressmakers, all of them sewers who plan and execute with precision.
Glassman by Steve Oskie
Mark Glassman does a surprisingly good job of feigning confidence, fooling everyone but himself.
Mark Glassman is twenty-five in 1979. Self-taught after dropping out of college, he devises a course of study that encompasses such varied works as The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Universal Baseball Association, and Portnoy's Complaint. But the amount of alco-
Featured Title 2023
But Kate’s understanding of her world is shattered when her mother announces that she had an older brother who died inexplicably in the hospital just days after his birth. As she navigates adolescence, she must choose whether to crack open the mystery or acquiesce to the family’s established pattern of secrecy and repression. It’s not until she is a single mother that her own feelings of loss trigger a search into the past, revealing a tale of generational trauma, maternal strength and how far we’ll go to protect the people we love.
Upcoming Titles for Fall 2023
Reviews, Excerpts
& Awards
Rolling in the Deep
by
Arthur Kevin Rein
Congratulations to Ooen Books author Mathieu Cailler as winner of the best new novel in the category of Romance at
the Los Angeles Book Festival competition!
Click cover to purchase your copy
Featured Title 2023
Trigger Warning by Robert Klose
Within these halls of learning, one must proceed with caution.
Happily ensconced as a tenured Professor of Biology at the small Skowhegan College in the wilds of Maine, Tymoteusz Tarnaszewski—who goes by the moniker "T"—suddenly finds himself in unknown
territory when an incident in a colleague's classroom motivates the college administration to issue a blanket policy requiring the installation of "trigger warnings" in all syllabi.
T, believing that this would constrain his teaching, refuses to comply, even after one of his own students lodges a complaint about something T said during the course of a genetics lecture. The administration's judgment is swift: T will be terminated at semester's end for insubordination.
What recourse, if any, does T have to save his position? And what will he do when he learns the higher-ups knew, early on, that the student who lodged the complaint against him is actually a threat to the school?
2018
Nautilus Award Winner!
Congratulations to OB author Anne Marie Ruff, winner of the 2018 Nautilus Award for fiction.
Congratulations to OB author
Cheng Wang!
Finalist in Best Book Awards Multicultural nonfiction
Cheng Wang, now at home in both America and in China, maintains an optimism in confronting today's social polarization between the East and the West.
Culled from hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Bar Jonah, dozens of others who either knew or were involved with him, Montana State investigators and prosecutors, and Zach Ramsay’s mother, Espy retells Bar Jonah’s entire life—from the time before he was conceived to after his death—and those who were harmed by him in unparalleled detail and scope.
Author Iris Yang Is Back In The Cockpit After Two-Year Grounding
Meet Open Books Authors
From Bangor Daily News
by Valerie Royzman
Trigger Warning, which is Robert Klose’s third novel, was published earlier this month. Those curious about hot-button topics on college campuses...will likely be drawn to the book. It also has a wider appeal because learning, whether at the elementary or college level, has become politicized, Klose said. "This is a political issue more than anything,” he said. “People take sides. It ties into cancel culture, where if an invited speaker is thought to be objectionable by even a small group of students, the school could disinvite that person.”
FA Confidential
Riko Radojcic
Big things often have small beginnings.
As National Security Adviser to the President of the United States, Jane Stewart shepherds an act through congress to subsidize manufacturing of silicon chips on American soil.
Argon Zhi, an executive at one of the world’s best semiconductor foundries, accepts the responsibility to craft a plan for ensuring the competitiveness of Taiwan's technology companies and ensure the continued independence of his country.
Cedric Dyson's job as a Failure Analysis engineer is to figure out why some chips do not work the way they are supposed to. When he notices a pattern among the failing chips sent to his FA lab, he uncovers a shocking truth.
Jane, Argon and Cedric, each operating within their professional domains, make a series of decisions that lead to an international blame game which could escalate into an open conflict between the world’s powers.
Will a new silicon chip factory subsidized by the US government, an act of sabotage compromising a multi-billion dollar fab, and a Failure Analysis expert on the case lead the world to a brink of WWIII?
Featured title for 2023
OB author Arthur Kevin Rein recently met readers at Briars & Brambles in Crivitz, Wisconsin.
Featured Title 2023
Glassman
Steve Oskie
Mark Glassman does a surprisingly good job of feigning confidence, fooling everyone but himself.
Mark Glassman is twenty-five in 1979. Self-taught after dropping out of college, he devises a course of study that encompasses such varied works as The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Universal Baseball Association, and Portnoy's Complaint. But the amount of alcohol he consumes, the vast quantities of pot he smokes, and the other drugs he experiments with compromise the seriousness of this endeavor.
When Glassman falls in love with Teresa Devlin, he realizes that he is terrified of her sexually, and that his only recourse is to resume his pursuit of Sarah Sloane, one of his housemates in a shared living arrangement. Soon Glassman arrives at the neat psychological ploy of playing the two women off one another.
Eventually, Glassman packs his bags for Long Beach Island, where he spends the winter feeling sorry for himself. Will he ever fully recover from acting out to an extraordinary degree? Is happiness even possible for a person such as himself?
Featured title for 2023
Within these halls of learning, one must proceed with caution.
Happily ensconced as a tenured Professor of Biology at the small Skowhegan College in the wilds of Maine, Tymoteusz Tarnaszewski—who goes by the moniker "T"—suddenly finds himself in unknown territory when an incident in a colleague's classroom motivates the college administration to issue a blanket policy requiring the installation of "trigger warnings" in all syllabi.
T, believing that this would constrain his teaching, refuses to comply, even after one of his own students lodges a complaint about something T said during the course of a genetics lecture. The administration's judgment is swift: T will be terminated at semester's end for insubordination.
What recourse, if any, does T have to save his position? And what will he do when he learns the higher-ups knew, early on, that the student who lodged the complaint against him is actually a threat to the school?
Uncle Joe's Senpai
Micah Thorp
The band is back!
Instead of playing in rundown bars, Uncle Joe’s Band now sell out concert halls.
Prior to a tour in Japan, a letter arrives claiming one of the band members, Ian, is the father of an unnamed young woman, who coincidentally is the member of another band, Stygian Teal. In the hopes of identifying Ian’s daughter, Uncle Joe’s Band attends a Stygian Teal concert. Much to their surprise, they find not one, but four Stygian Teal band members, any of which could be Ian’s daughter.
Meanwhile, as the band’s namesake Uncle Joe, an aged deadhead, makes his way across North America during the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, another Uncle Jo, Joji Kinsara, makes his way across the Japanese archipelago. Everywhere he goes, Joji leaves large painted haiku poems, which become noted works of art. In his travels Joji visits the Nagano Winter Olympics, starts an environmental revitalization of Mt. Fuji, and helps ensure that a young Masako Owada becomes a future empress.
As they journey through Japan, Uncle Joe’s Band attempts to discern which young woman is Ian’s daughter, how to deal with newfound fame, and what it takes to formulate a family.
"Arthur Kevin Rein’s tension-filled YA tale revolves around a teen-aged boy dealing with personal challenges and a crime mystery. Rife with smart, inquisitive, original characters who are allowed to act like both real kids and superheroes at the same time, the story rollercoasters through plot twists, leaving readers breathless. Teens and adults with a love for adventure will devour this far-from-simple mystery and its PG-style danger, seduction and intrigue."
Goldfinch in the Thistle
Khristy Reibel
Is love strong enough to save a kingdom and stop history from repeating itself?
Goldfinch in the Thistle follows the lifelong love story of James V, King of Scotland, and his mistress, Maggie Erskine.
Marriage is impossible, even after Maggie gives birth to a royal son. Margaret Tudor, the king’s mother, longs to bring her son and her brother Henry VIII into an alliance with a marriage to an English noble or princess and fulfill her promise to her father to join Scotland and England together. Meanwhile the King’s secretary, Thomas Erskine, who has a salacious secret, encourages a royal French marriage. Both James and Maggie know that a royal marriage—something which Maggie cannot provide—will bring much needed money to build Scotland and keep the King’s uncle from subsuming it under England’s cloak.
But when the new Queen of Scots finally arrives at Stirling Castle, what will it mean for Maggie and her son?
Set in sixteenth century Scotland against the background of the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance in northern Europe, and the reign of Henry VIII, Goldfinch in the Thistle is a story of unfulfilled promises, loyalties, and shifting perspectives.
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All's Fair: A Jonathan Benjamin Franklin Mystery
David L. Gersh
Why would Pamela Knorrington claim a painting was stolen from a museum that had never heard of the it? Is she crazy? Or can a thief make works of art disappear?
In desperation Pamela calls her friend, Mimi Aaron, the billionaire, Simon Aaron’s ex-wife. Her tale arouses Mimi’s curiosity. The weather in New York has been lousy and Mimi is bored silly. Los Angeles looks pretty tempting.
She recruits a reluctant Jonathan Benjamin Franklin to assist her. Jonathan’s wife, Nicole DeSant, is seven months pregnant and Jonathan isn’t about to leave. But Mimi Aaron can be very persuasive indeed. Besides, Nicole has Rufus, her beloved pug, to watch over her. And while Jonathan is a dear, he does tend to hover a bit too much.
In the wilds of Bel Air, working night and day, Mimi and Jonathan seek to unravel the mystery. And they discover … nothing. Then Pamela Knorrington disappears.
Jonathan is once again in over his head. Maybe he just should stop digging. Particularly since a Columbian drug lord would like to bury him.
Piecing together the fabric of a family's loss.
For precocious eight-year-old Kate Nichols, life in suburban New York seems pretty ordinary for the late 1960s. There are ballet classes, pet bunnies and air raid drills, outings to grandparents’ homes and humiliating boys in chino pants. She derives strength from the surgeon father she idolizes and her family’s lineage of dressmakers, all of them sewers who plan and execute with precision.
But Kate’s understanding of her world is shattered when her mother announces that she had an older brother who died inexplicably in the hospital just days after his birth. As she navigates adolescence, she must choose whether to crack open the mystery or acquiesce to the family’s established pattern of secrecy and repression. It’s not until she is a single mother that her own feelings of loss trigger a search into the past, revealing a tale of generational trauma, maternal strength and how far we’ll go to protect the people we love.
The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Huffington Post, Slate, Salon, Medium, New York Magazine, Parenting, Elle, D Magazine, Creators Syndicate, Gannett Newspapers and McClatchy.
Pamela holds an AB in English from Brown University and an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University and was selected to attend the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop for Summer 2022. Born in Manhattan, Pam grew up in the city’s northern suburbs and currently lives outside Philadelphia.
Pamela Gwyn Kripke is a journalist and author whose stories have appeared in publications including
Who Are You, Fred? by Eileen Maloney Ryan
High school isn't easy, especially with a learning disability.
While Fred is sure his learning disability is the reason he can never find his shoes, he mostly believes his LD is the reason he will never feel normal. When he walks into high school on the first day, he wishes his LD would just go away. With two successful and confident siblings, Fred knows he is the kid in the family who is different.
One constant in Fred’s life is his dog, GB. Nobody listens to Fred as well as GB. But when GB’s health starts to decline, Fred realizes he has to start talking to someone else.
Fred and his best friend Henry, who has ADHD, attend Mrs. Hogan’s resource class where she teaches them what LD and ADHD mean, and more importantly, what role the disorders will play in their lives.
As Fred navigates four years of high school—confronting bullies, struggling with homework and tests, losing his shoes, and trying to answer the question, Who are you, Fred?—readers will gain an understanding about the complexities of
learning disabilities.
Will a family curse lead to an ultimate sacrifice?
It's been less than two months since Sam Robel and Diane Warren took down the Manticores and their connections to organized crime. The disgraced family is a wounded but still dangerous animal, crouched in the Northwoods, licking its wounds. Sam and Diane think the fireworks for the summer of 2013 are over, but then Diane's father suddenly appears at Noquebay Resort, released from prison under suspicious circumstances with only half of a twenty-year sentence for negligent homicide completed. And then a girl that Sam thought was gone forever visits him with news that transforms his and Diane's lives forever.
In a far-away city there hides a woman who unwittingly holds the key to the future for both Sam and Diane. But there is fear in this woman's eyes and words she will not speak. Will solving her riddle prove fatal? Can a family curse be put to rest? In this story of heroism and sacrifice, Sam and Diane are swept to a place where nothing is guaranteed and everything is at stake.
from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2019 and has written for numerous publica-tions both in print and online.
A native Californian, Tom was born in Laguna Beach and grew up in the town of Capistrano Beach. He is a runner, avid surfer and hiker who enjoys the outdoors, exotic foods, classical music, and strong English teas.
Tom Garlinghouse is a science journalist and novelist based in Santa Cruz, California. He received an MA in science journalism
Such Stuff as Dreams by Thomas Garlinghouse blends historical fiction with supernatural elements to create a story in which the past impinges on the present and ancient bonds of friendship and loyalty transcends time.
It’s 1936 and Hollywood screenwriter Joe Holliday has a secret. He can see and communicate with ghosts. But because of a difficult childhood, he has long suppressed his ability.
When the mercurial head of Apex Studios tasks him with writing a modern version of a Shakespeare play, Joe gradually regains his ability. Reopening himself to the spirit world brings him into contact with an old acquaintance—someone from his very distant past. This persistent, and very illustrious, spirit has a different writing task for him—some unfinished business the two had embarked upon over 400 years ago.
When these two tasks ultimately come into conflict, Joe is forced to choose. It is a decision that will have far-reaching, life-changing consequences.
Peopled with imagined and real characters, such as Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, and a very famous writer, Such Stuff as Dreams is part ghost story, part tale of “Hollywood’s Golden Age,” and part chronicle of a man’s journey through the buffeting winds of love, change, loyalty and things remembered.
Goldfinch in the Thistle by Khristy Reibel
Is love strong enough to save a kingdom and stop history from repeating itself?
Goldfinch in the Thistle follows the lifelong love story of James V, King of Scotland, and his mistress, Maggie Erskine.
Marriage is impossible, even after Maggie gives birth to a royal son. Margaret Tudor, the king’s mother, longs to bring her son and her brother Henry VIII into an alliance with a marriage to an English noble or princess and fulfill her promise to her father to join Scotland and England together.
Set in sixteenth century Scotland against the background of the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance in northern Europe, and the reign of Henry VIII, Goldfinch in the Thistle is a story of unfulfilled promises, loyalties, and shifting perspectives.
Read a review of At The Seams in Readers' Favorite
hol he consumes, the vast quantities of pot he smokes, and the other drugs he experiments with compromise the seriousness of this endeavor.
When Glassman falls in love with Teresa Devlin, he realizes that he is terrified of her sexually, and that his only recourse is to resume his pursuit of Sarah Sloane, one of his housemates in a shared living arrangement. Soon Glassman arrives at the neat psychological ploy of playing the two women off one another.
Will he ever fully recover from acting out? And is happiness even possible for a person such as Mark Glassman?
“It is like a drug, this temptation to return to the past. I remember swinging on my swing in the back yard of Vivian Street, barefoot and smiling. The to and fro motion, not unlike a cradle rocking. That time, that sunny-day setting embraced my mind, body and spirit. Vivian was an integral part of who I had become. If only that old swing could act as a time machine that could catapult me back to that idyllic freedom layered in the security of home like a warm blanket.”
—from the memoir Getting Over Vivian
Jill Carstens developed her identity as a child running through the vacant fields of the neighborhood where her parents built their house on Vivian Street within a stone’s throw of Colorado’s front range.
It was an unspoken assumption that they would live happily on Vivian Street forever. But it is lost and so is she, at the age of 16, by an ugly divorce. Carstens and her brother are evicted from the only life they know, displaced on unexpected detours.
“Soon the only role my brother and I seem to have is to stretch ourselves, impossibly, like tightropes, spanning the frustrating distance between our parents’ new houses.”
Yet if it weren’t for that exodus, she might not have set off to find new places of belonging. Her searching validates her notion that place does matter. And that finding a community within those places is vital. As Carstens’ journey evolves, she faces continued loss while Denver goes through a disruptive gentrification.
Eventually, through milestones and adventures, using her lens of perpetual self-reflection, she will discover unlikely coordinates, places that begin to connect, creating junctions leading to a new life-map.
These 10 spooky books to read this Halloween season offer a range of spooky and eerie experiences, from classic Gothic horror to contemporary psychological thrillers, making them perfect choices for Halloween reading. Prepare to be thrilled and chilled with these 10 spooky books to read this Halloween season.
These 10 iconic wizards and magicians from literature have left a significant mark on the world of fantasy and magic. These wizards come from a variety of literary traditions and have each left a lasting impression on readers through their magical abilities, wisdom, and unique personalities.
These 10 must-read novels about professors feature some of the most well-known professors in literature, from hapless lecturers and eccentric misfits to scapegoated faculty members, and more. Spend some time with your favorite prof with these must-read novels about professors.
What's with the shoes?
OB Author Eileen Ryan launches her new novel, Who Are You, Fred? in Chicago
As for the shoes, you just have to read the book!
OB Author Robert Klose will greet readers and sign copies of his new novel,
Within these halls of learning, one must proceed with caution!
Click image to enlarge
Sometimes wiseguys are nice guys!
Stephen Spotte’s bittersweet novel Wiseguys in Paradise opens at the start of the 1960s. An unnamed drifter from southern Appalachia just out of the Army takes a job as dishwasher at an Italian restaurant in Coney Island famous as a gathering place for New York mobsters. The patrons and staff befriend him, and he falls in love with a divorced woman with a young daughter. Wary of commitment, he abandons them and hitch-hikes to Key West. From there the story segues between locations as the narrator finds himself immersed in an unlikely community of love and friendship whose members include Mafia wiseguys, other drifters, a Jesuit priest/marine biologist, immigrants, gays, and lesbians. Spotte's regional dialects crackle with authenticity.
Stephen Spotte’s other novels include, In an Empty Room, A Conversation with a Cat, The Singing Bones, Animal Wrongs, and Witchy Illusions.
BookFest Award Winner for Fall 2023
BookFest Award Winner Fall 2023
Nevergreen
by Andrew Pessin
A smart, fast, funny, and incisive portrait of today's liberal arts college scene, cancel culture—and more!
A chance encounter—if it is by chance—gives J. the opportunity he’s been hoping for but never expected would present itself. A physician in a midlife funk, obsessed with paintings of corpses and dissections, he is asked to speak about his subject of
interest at the beautiful and secluded island campus of Nevergreen College. “Welcome to the asylum!” announces the woman who arranged the invitation and greets him at the dock, and his restless stomach seems an eerie harbinger of what is to come—an initially curious and ultimately terrifying overview of academentia. No one actually shows up for his lecture, but that doesn’t stop it from becoming the center of a firestorm of controversy—with potentially fatal consequences.
Beneath the Same Heaven
by Anne Marie Ruff
A story of love and terrorism...
Beneath the Same Heaven is a love story of an American woman and a Pakistani-born Muslim man, who seem to have bridged the divide between Western and Islamic world views. But when the husband’s father is killed by a US drone attack near the Afghan border, their cross-cultural family des-
cends into conflicting ideas of loyalty,
Coming of age doesn't only happen to the young.
When a former close friend and rival is murdered, world-weary but still aspiring optimist Jeffrey goes back to the beginning, to those fraught college years at Yale University during the 1980s and to her, to make sense of what happened—only to discover that what needs most making sense of is himself.
By turns smart, funny, and heart-wrenching, Bright College Years tracks Jeff and an ensemble cast as they navigate the shortest, gladdest, most complex years of life.
Andrew Pessin's other OB novels include, The Irrationalist and Nevergreen.
Upcoming Titles for 2024
Andrew Pessin is Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, with degrees from Yale and Columbia—though he is perhaps most popular with his students for his appearances years ago as “The Genius” on the Late Show with David Letterman. He is author of 4 novels, many academic articles and books, as well as four philosophy books, one textbook, and one audio Philosophy course for a general audience.
Coming of age doesn't only happen to the young.
Open Books author Robert Klose
will Participate in Maine Authors for Lewiston in memory of the shooting victims of the Lewiston Maine mass attack on October 25th and for continuing community support!
Please join Bob and the other Maine authors if you live in the Lewiston area.
