New Releases by Joan Spilman

West Virginia is hidden, and nothing is more hidden than the lives of its women. Four different women “speak their piece” in this novel: Lorraine: a daughter abandoned by her mother. Carmen: a mother who tries to explain. Jenna: the young daughter who, in a desperate effort to alleviate her mother’s pain, falls flat when confronted by an unexpected reality. Lizzie: the furious source, who, though dead, lives and moves within each relationship, the strength of her memories spanning generations. A tour de force of Appalachian life beginning in the early 1900’s unto the present day. This Will Never Stop is a must read for fans of Appalachian fiction and the women who struggle within the confines a culture which not only resists change, but resists them. ____________________ Cover Design by Ashley Belote

King and Queen Duckworthy are in a dither! The royal eggs have hatched, but the ducks are zombies. Do they belong to Queen Esmerelda or to Purple Rage, the terrible zombie from the Forbidden Bog? Will they live in the castle, where they love to tear things apart, or will they live in the Bog, swallowing bullfrogs whole? Enter the wonderful World of Waddle and find out! Coming soon: Megachomp D.D.S., Waddlepedia, and Heart Stealer.

Sansablatt Head is a blast, exploding all over the page in the shape of richly textured characters, plot, and landscape. Imagine a King-Sansablatt-trapped in his own giant wooden head. Imagine his Queen- to-Be Claudine. She loves him so much she almost kills him (an axe to that head is just what he needs to be free, she thinks). And don't forget Eugenia (who stops this disaster before it starts), an outrageous Big Mama General who rules with an iron hand (and a smart one). She insists that Claudine's short cut cannot dispel the spell that keeps the King from attaining his true height and claiming his Kingdom, that only the long cut can-the intricate route through dangerous woods (described with a T for terror) to the top of a mountain where inside a cave, but I'm treading on dangerous ground here myself because I don't want to give away anything about this marvelous journey and its surprising adventures. That's for me to remember with pleasure and for you to find pleasure in yourself. But I can tell you one thing: Imagine first and last, longest and hardest about the main character-Alec-who doesn't have a friend on earth except Sansablatt, the Head: a lucky friendship for an unlucky boy because it carries him out of our world (where he's always been out-of-place) into a parallel one called Quelle where, from the moment he and the Head flip down into it by way of a mud pit, he slowly discovers what it means and what it takes to become part of the right place at the right time. Wouldn't we all like to learn that lesson? Well, you will, and have a lot of fun on the way, when you accompany Alec all the way from the first to last page of Sansablatt Head, a fantastic fantasy written by Joan Spilman. Llewellyn McKernan