New Releases From Humanist Press: The Outcast Oracle, Questions About God
Humanist Press is the publishing house of the American Humanist Association, providing material for the humanist/freethought/atheist market since 1995.
Check out two recently released books:
The Outcast Oracle by Laury A. Egan
“Simply delicious fun from start to finish” is how Kirkus Reviews described the second novel by Laury A. Egan, The Outcast Oracle, in its starred review. The Outcast Oracle is about a teenage girl, but it’s a book for any adult who remembers the traumas of adolescence and the shock of discovering that religion is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Set in 1959 on the shores of New York’s Lake Ontario, 14-year-old Charlene Beth Whitestone has been deserted by her parents, leaving her in the custody of her grandfather, C.B. Although he loves Charlie, he is a charming con artist, moonshiner, and religious fraud who inducts her into his various enterprises yet also encourages her dreams of becoming a writer. When C.B. suddenly dies, Charlie is left alone and must use her wits and resourcefulness to take charge of her life, all the while wrestling with the morality of continuing her grandfather’s schemes. When a handsome cowboy-stranger, Blake, arrives, he insinuates himself into C.B.’s religion business and into Charlie’s heart. Despite her resistance, Blake mounts a lucrative PR campaign, touting Charlie as an “oracle” and arranging for her to perform miracles.
“It’s this highly literary, easily accessible writing that lifts this story to the very top of the heap,” the Kirkus review concluded.
“The Outcast Oracle is a page-turning tour de force, full of humor, irony, winks at societal conventions, and serious revelations about the ruses and abuses of organized religion,” said Karla Linn Merrifield, author of Lithic Scatter and Other Poems. Other early reviewers have called the book “…wonderfully evocative” with characters that “feel vivid and alive.”
Laury A. Egan is the author of Jenny Kidd, a psychological suspense novel, and Fog and Other Stories, which was short-listed for a UK Saboteur Award. In addition to writing fiction, two poetry collections, Snow, Shadows, a Stranger and Beneath the Lion’s Paw, were issued by FootHills Publishing as well as a chapbook, The Sea & Beyond. Her work has appeared in over 35 literary journals and anthologies and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Web, and Best of the Net. Her website is lauryaegan.com.
Questions About God by Stephen Perry
Humanist poet Stephen Perry tackles the divine in Questions About God, which is being called “…an excitingly different read” by the New York Journal of Books, as well as “challenging and thought-provoking,” by Midwest Book Review, concluding that “Questions About God delves into fundamental mysteries with a unique and insightful flair.” The ebook contains 25 of the author’s creative photos and photo montages, as well as his dramatic reading of a number of poems, including the 121-line title poem.
Stephen Perry’s boundary-shattering poems feature many diverse voices. Complex, unpredictable narrators like Perry are rare in poetry, but even rarer is his range of subject matter, drawing on philosophy, science, history, etymology, archeology, psychology, poetry, sexuality, music, etc., in fact anything of human interest. Award-winning poet Frank X. Gaspar tells readers to “be prepared for a maelstrom ride through art, religion, philosophy, sexuality—in fact all things human, where categories break down and images meld into new relationships with one another.”
Perry’s Questions About God combines world mythologies of an astonishing range—from Greek to Judeo-Christian, from Hindu to Buddhist, even flirting with American Indian Blackfoot lore—coalescing all into a synthesis of science and myth in a grand celebration of the natural world. The perspective is wholly humanist, of interest to skeptics and agnostics and atheists and all those who distain the absurdities, crudities, and cruelties of a simplistic fundamentalist mindset.
Perry lives in Los Angeles, CA with his wife Susan K. Perry, the author of the Humanist Press novel Kylie’s Heel and the Los Angeles Times bestseller Writing in Flow. Their website is BunnyApe.com.