Vine Leaves Press is an indie publisher that celebrates stories that leave a lasting impression. Today, LitNuts is shining a spotlight on three exciting new releases from VLP:
- Flirting With Extinction by Joanna Kadish
- The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light by David Starkey
- Listen to Me by Cordelia Frances Biddle
Read on to learn more!
Flirting With Extinction
NEW RELEASE: January 14, 2025Genre: Essays & Stories
Paperback: $17.99
Ebook: From $6.99
As a girl growing up with nine brothers and a much younger sister, Joanna Kadish was determined to prove that females were just as tough—if not tougher. From training wild horses and swimming icy rivers to trekking through remote wilderness, she pushed herself to the limit, even risking her life to tame an untamable rodeo bronc.
After converting to Judaism and adopting her new husband's name, she moved to Washington state and helped create a utopia on their island home. Their children thrived in an environment filled with art, music, and freedom. But the idyllic life took a dark turn when their teenage son, Micah, along with his friends, defaced a yeshiva, with one drawing swastikas and the chilling message, “this way to the gas chambers.”
As the law came down hard on Micah, the family faced the unbearable loss of their other son, Seth. In these essays and stories, Kadish explores the deep-rooted trauma inherited from Holocaust survivors. Micah's great-grandfather was killed in a German labor camp, and Micah's grandfather, with his mother and sister, fled Germany shortly before Kristallnacht. Decades later, that trauma continues to haunt the family, proving that the wounds of history are not so easily healed.
Praise for Flirting with Extinction
★★★★★ “Pushes mortality to the very edge with broncos, sharks, and drugs, coming together to create a disturbing picture of American life.” ~JoeAnn Hart, author of Arroyo Circle
★★★★★ “These imaginative essays and stories, told in varying perspectives, are pulled together by the impulse to test our limits... All ask the same question: how much is too much? Kadish looks in unwavering honesty at the heartbreaking consequences of one wrong move.” ~Cheryl Pappas, author of The Clarity of Hunger
The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light
NEW RELEASE: January 21, 2025Genre: Poetry
Paperback: $17.99
Ebook: From $6.99
Based on iconic representations of Bible scenes, David Starkey’s poems attempt to recapture some of the strangeness of great Italian painters like Giotto, Fillipo Lippi, Bellini, Caravaggio, and Gentileschi, while incorporating elements of contemporary life into work that is by turns witty, wild, sad, subversive and reverential. Twelve mystical and timeless conté crayon drawings by artist Rafael Perea de la Cabada deepen and argue with Starkey’s often skeptical interpretations of the Gospel. The result is a reading and rendering of the New Testament like no other.
Praise for The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light
★★★★★ “Powerful, personal, and purifying.” Heather Sellers, author of Field Notes
★★★★★ “In Starkey’s poems, the miraculous walks arm in arm with the mundane in language that, at turns, carries notes of liturgical grandeur and captures the music of the colloquial.” ~Todd Copeland, author of Like All Light
★★★★★ “A collection to be read and cherished not only for its artistry and wisdom but also for the light it casts upon topics that are as significant and as urgent today as ever they were.” ~Teresa Godfrey, author of How Will They Name Us?
Listen to Me
NEW RELEASE: January 28, 2025Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Paperback: $14.99
Ebook: From $5.99
Cordelia Frances Biddle’s Listen to Me vividly reinterprets biblical women as complex, resilient figures, uniting across centuries to challenge misogyny and inspire solidarity and equality. Blending fire and humor, Biddle reveals Eve, Ruth, Bathsheba, Queen Vashti, Delilah, et al, as real people possessing complex and turbulent inner lives.
Using contemporary language, she invites the reader to challenge assumptions and shibboleths while the women gather in pairs and as a group to recount their personal histories. From Babylon to the "dicey and pricy burgs" of Sodom and Gomorrah to 21st Century Manhattan, Eve and her companions' longing and rage, trauma, hope, outrage, and empathy create a sisterhood that is readily transferred to modern society.
Praise for Listen to Me
"A sharp-witted takedown of the male-centered biblical narrative and an inspiring, impassioned battle cry for sisterhood.” ~Kirkus Reviews
“Biddle gives voice to women of the Bible in this unique reimagining." ~Publishers Weekly
★★★★★ “Want to hear Eve’s side of the Eden story? Or Bathsheba’s view of David? And what really went on with Naomi and Ruth? Timely and thought provoking, sometimes anger-inducing, heart-breaking and humbling.” ~Merry Jones, author of The Woman in the Cupboard
★★★★★ “Irreverent in a deliciously feminist way.” ~Maria Leonard Olsen, author of the Amazon bestseller 50 After 50
About the Publisher
Vine Leaves Press likes to blur the line between commercial and experimental works. They publish book-length vignette collections, writing reference books, short story collections, memoir/autobiography, and character-driven novels with a literary bent. Subscribe to the Vine Leaves Press newsletter to receive FREE advanced review copies of upcoming new releases, news about their authors and subscribers, and/or to read the monthly opinion column, SPILL IT! or a daily dose of 50-word stories. Learn more at VineLeavesPress.com.