Ben East Books

Tag: Fiction

  • Review–Winterswim

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    The following was published January 6 at Atticus Review. REDEMPTION UNDER ICE: A REVIEW OF RYAN W. BRADLEY’S WINTERSWIM The prologue to Ryan W. Bradley’s Winterswim strikes quick and brutal: a violent pastor, a forced conversion to Christ, a victim on a frozen lake in the arctic night. The pastor murders his young female prey by pushing her…

  • Christmas at Pilchard’s Diner

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    Ben East
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    I enjoyed co-authoring the following piece with my son. Poor kid’s got Christmas on the brain. No harm; so do I. Merry Christmas, everyone. Christmas at Pilchard’s Diner Pilchard worked as a short order cook in his own diner on the outskirts of town. The patrons were a rough mix of millworkers and truck drivers,…

  • Review–The Blind Rooster

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    Reading Preston Lang’s The Blind Rooster (Crime Wave Press) feels a lot like people-watching at the Laundromat. The major figures resemble coin-op types, people resigned to the vague indignity of paying to have their underwear tumble around in a public washer. And don’t take your eyes off them for a moment—they’d just as soon pinch a quarter…

  • Brilliant Farce Out Tomorrow

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    Ben East
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    Highly recommended! You Can Lead a Horse to Water (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…

  • Review–The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes

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    Ben East
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    In time for Veteran’s Day (also Armistice Day), Atticus Review posted my latest look at today’s literature with David S. Atkinson‘s The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes. What better way to suggest the futility of the human experience than with a card game called Armistice? This game is not War, it is Armistice. Because, as…

  • Dear Bleach Garglers,

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    Ben East
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    A number of you have contacted me recently with a strange offer. “I’d drink bleach,” you say, “to get you to read a sample of my book.” Gargling it, injecting it between your toes, I’m astounded at the endless uses of bleach you’ve proposed to procure a book review from me. But far from an…

  • Dundee Book Prize Winner–Amy Mason

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    Ben East
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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…

  • Post Season Baseball–Guts

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    Ben East
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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–The Way Inn

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    Ben East
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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…

  • Out Next Week–The Family Hightower

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    Ben East
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    In The Family Hightower Brian Francis Slattery unspools a tale of global crime and capitalism spanning the last century. An example of his creative storytelling: Slattery introduces one of the novel’s most noble characters when she’s already carved into a disemboweled corpse, skin all sown up in jagged stitches. Dare the reader care about this eviscerated entity as the narrative delves…