Blazing Sapphire Press: 17 books

This is a collection of Alaska Native folklore and mythology. All the various regions and tribal groups are represented in this collection. The collector is John Smelcer who is a writer, poet, and folklorist and who is himself a member of an Alaska Native tribe. Several of the stories are accompanied...

This is retrospective collection of the photography of photojournalist James Crnkovich. It is introduced by Bob Mielke and has commentaries by Lester Joos. The book contains fifty-five of James's finest photographs in either black and white or color. The photographs document life in America under...

In Small Bites, Don Tassone offers readers bits of contemporary life, mostly gentle, mostly optimistic, often instructive. Stories range from flash-fiction size half-pagers to twenty-page studies of how relationships develop, how decisions are made and unmade, how persuasion and collaboration work. The...

This is the second collection of poems by St. Louis teacher and poet, Allison Cundiff, capturing some of her experiences as she grows up in Climax Springs, Missouri, and then as she extends her reach out into the world at large.  The forty some poems gathered here are expressions of wonder and wisdom,...

This is a collection of stories from the Ahtna Indians of Alaska, collected and retold by tribe member John Smelcer.  Numerous illustrations by Larry Vienneau accompany the stories and numerous pictures of the Ahtna Indians and the storytellers are also included.  The book's Foreword is by Gary...

Live Free or Croak is a collection of poetry by poet/songwriter Larry Rogers.  Rogers, a Vietnam vet. and longtime resident of west central Arkansas, draws on his sharp wit, playful love of words, and  sensitive powers of observation to produce some of the finest snapshots of modern American country...

Shome Dasgupta, a young American author of Bengali descent, uses magical realism to explore  his South Asian roots in this series of fourteen stories mostly set in modern day Kolkata, the city his parents came from and the one where their extended families continue to live.  The stories reflect...

In this, his seventh book, poet Dave Malone gives readers glimpses of life-shaping moments. In a chapter titled "School Days and Light," we watch a bully, and a too-young bride; in the "Aux Arcs" (Ozarks) section, we meditate on family values. "Love Language" reads sky, lake, and tree. The book ends with elegies, sharp and subtle, for (extra) ordinary people.

The collection contains fifty-one poems divided into five sections, each (except the truncated last) containing eleven poems. The first section, Ozark Dark, introduces the rocky landscape and heavy mud of the Ozarks, the coyotes, bobcats, and deep poverty with which farm families cope. In the second...

In Patricia Watts’ new novel, The Frayer, we watch an uncannily seductive Louisiana bayou man as he goes about “fraying” the inhabitants of a prosperous apartment building in Fairbanks, Alaska, and destroying the building itself. Angelo Fallon’s eerie powers are both physical and psychological....

Gretchen Johnson gives a sensitive and humorous account of dating in Southeast Texas. Paige, the heroine of the novel, is a young, recently divorced transplant from Minnesota and a professor of English Literature at Lamar  University.  She's fascinated by the culture(s) of her adopted state and...

Get Back is a collection of twelve short stories by Don Tassone. Though most have been published in different online journals before, this is his first collection of stories in print.  These stories share the theme of discovery or actually of rediscovery, rediscovery of talents, pursuits, and loves...

Nick Reynolds is a highly successful food company executive.  He’s also a bully, feared by his employees and estranged from his wife and children.  After his latest blow-up at work, Nick’s boss orders him to take the summer off and sort himself out.  Angry and despondent, Nick sets off, alone,...

Becky Hoffman, therapist, blocks memories of her own childhood sexual abuse; her memories must surface as she works with a similarly traumatized patient, and as she confronts her own unplanned pregnancy and dysfunctional family.  Steven Wineman has decades of experience in community mental health, and a gift for sensitive, compassionate portrayals of difficult people.