New Release Books by Jeffrey Hickey

There was once a campground on the Northern California coast where a fresh, bubbling stream met the vast Pacific Ocean. The sandy beach was large, the grasses were tall and soft, three ducks had a problem, one man had a cold, and a horseshoe pit was in the middle of the solution. This is the story of a trip my family took to Wages Creek.

As a professional storyteller and teacher, Griffin Donnelley has a mesmerizing way with words. In fact, it has enabled him to cut quite a swath through the small towns in California where he teaches in schools and performs in bookstores and town halls. Nonetheless, he just can''t seem to catch a break, and is chugging along in his Camry from gig to gig, heading straight for utter burnout. Is there still time to reroute his faltering existence, or is his future looking decidedly scary? Droll and dead-on in its sizing up of contemporary culture, Scary, Man is author Jeffrey Hickey''s wry and singular story of one man, his wife, and their daughter. Together, they embrace a new normal at the turn of the twenty-first century in America, while trying their hardest in the land of the free, and the home of the afraid. An absorbing work of literary fiction peppered with gay themes and social commentary, this humor-inflected take on small towns, small minds, rumor mills, and rampant paranoia will strike an all-too-familiar chord with readers trying to make their way through the shaky American landscape, while keeping marriage and morals intact, and mayhem at bay.

Have you ever felt that your presence at a sporting event influenced the result? Are you certain your team could not possibly succeed without you at the game? Do you believe your adherence to a precise routine on game day, whether at the stadium or in your own home, is the key to winning or losing? And if you don''t hold to these rituals exactly, do you believe in your heart that your team is doomed? If you are a sports fan, you know about superstitions, curses and hexes. The sporting world is littered with these legends. Some, like the Curse of the Bambino, the Curse of the Billy Goat, or being on the cover of Sports Illustrated, are well known and documented. More recently, there has been a rising swell of evidence supporting the Madden Curse. But there are other stories similar to these that have never been told. This is one of those stories. It is the story of a boy named Mark O''Bern.