Ben East Books

Author: Ben East

  • Dundee Book Prize Winner–Amy Mason

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    Writer and performer Amy Mason of Bristol, UK today was named winner of the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize for her novel The Other Ida. Congratulations, Amy! The Other Ida, which follows an angry and depressed twenty-something daughter of famous parents, will be published by Cargo Press as part of the £10,000 prize. Amy’s other accomplishments include an…

  • CURRY PATTA, JUNGLE OATS, AND PEACE CORPS

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    My wife keeps a curry plant to flavor her beautiful Indian cooking. Our boys have taken to snapping off the greenest leaves and eating them raw. Their chewing fills the air with a sharp, fresh scent. Yesterday, the plant was brought indoors—frost—to spend the night on our low kitchen table. When the boys found it…

  • The Return of Preston Lang

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    Stoked to learn Preston Lang will be back soon with his second crime book, The Blind Rooster, a “crude slice of American Noir, sunny side down”. Echoes of Jim Thompson and Elmore Leonard? Bring it. Preston Lang released his discreetly funny debut, The Carrier, last spring, weaving three narrative threads into one heartless tale. Drug courier Cyril and stick-up girl Willow pursue…

  • Post Season Baseball–Guts

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    To kick off Major League Baseball’s season of glory: a short story about baseball featuring steroids, breast milk, and courage. From Guts, first published by Atticus Review September 2012. That sweet curving thumb of mine put a wild spin on every ball I threw. Curveballs, sliders, pitches that dropped four inches just before the plate. Northern…

  • Review–You Can Lead a Horse to Water

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    (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive) Queue the circus music when Sam, Muller, and Max join Max’s father Otis and mother Ruby in The Rec Room of Sound, Otis’s Internet radio broadcast, to consume pot-laced brownies and interview Bisquick the Mynah bird best known for biting nipples and repeating the phrase “Gimme some titty action”. As…

  • New York Times Responsible for Flow of ISIS Volunteers

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    The hyperbole above is intended in jest, of course, an eye-catching headline to mimic today’s lead story on NYT’s home page. It’s the Times’ second such sensational headline on the subject this week. America Steps Up Fight to Stem Flow of ISIS Volunteers Click to the story, however, and a different picture emerges. Suddenly the…

  • Calling Out the Grey Lady

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    Today the @NYTimes posted a teaser making it sound as if “radicalized young Muslim Americans” are “flowing” into Syria to join the fight there. Flowing? The article itself indicates that “American law enforcement and intelligence officials say more than 100 Americans have gone to Syria, or tried to so far.” Let’s do the math. In…

  • Clichés Are Spooky

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    Fellow writers! The CIA has been keeping a classified dossier on public enemy number one, and I’m not talking about terrorists, coup-plotters, pirates or smugglers. I’m not even talking about an orange leadership that now denigrates Intelligence Community efforts and insults their sacrifice. No, the enemy in question, as common as the common cold, is the…

  • Review–The Way Inn

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    “Your personal details aren’t the new currency, but they are the new price of admission.” The Way Inn is an exceptionally well-written novel of acute observation and creative imagery in a world both real and surreal. Will Wiles succeeds throughout with prose that is imaginative and immersive, complex and compelling. Experience the moment as the…

  • The Family Hightower–Out Today

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    Brian Francis Slattery’s keen omniscience delivers the crime story of a century, a tale grounded on history and fact—obscure Americana, strange third world realities—taking the reader from 1995 Cleveland to  1986 Sub Saharan Africa before traveling back to prohibition and a 20th century historical tour of Ukraine and Romania. Where and when are we? We are all times…