Capra Press

Maxine Rose Schur is scheduled for two readings from her travel memoir;
Places in Time: Reflections on a Journey

1. HOTEL REX
562 Sutter St,
San Francisco, CA 94102
Weekday Wanderlust Wednesday, January 21 at 7:00pm
A monthly reading series featuring Bay Area travel writers and other wanderlust-afflicted scribes. Named “Best Mental Escape” by San Francisco Magazine.

2. LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:

Places in Time: Reflections on a Journey 2nd Edition

Maxine Rose Schur
Saturday, February 14th, 2015 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

For years readers have delighted in Maxine Rose Schur’s award-winning travel essays. Now, all the tales of her unusual honeymoon are gathered in one illustrated volume. Whether camping in the center of Paris, dangling off a Panamanian tramp steamer, or hitching across Australia, her tales are funny, exciting and tender. Maxine Rose Schur set out to see the world. With high spirits and little money, she traveled not only far geographically, but emotionally, toward the hearts of others. She faced the violent grief of a Mexican sheriff, celebrated a wild elopement in Turkey and was initiated into a mysterious daily ritual with an Iranian forest ranger. Looking back, she tempers her youthful encounters with mid-life wisdom, capturing the spirit of all those she met, and evoking cherished places in time. If you’re looking for travel writing that blends gentle insight with delicious surprise, fasten the seatbelt on your armchair and come along. Maxine Rose Schur is a children’s book author and travel journalist. Her essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Insight Guides, Salon.com, Jetsetter, Escape and travel essay anthologies by Traveler’s Tales and Random House. She has twice won the Lowell Thomas Award given by the Society of American Travel Writers

COMING SOON!

The Man Who Gave Away His Organs: Tales of Love and Obsession at Midlife by Richard Michael Levine

http://richardmichaellevine.com/

The eight stories and the novella that make up The Man Who Gave Away His Organs: Tales of Love and Obsession at Midlife, by Richard Michael Levine, have the cultural scope, time span, and in-depth character development usually found only in novels.

As the subtitle suggests, the mostly middle-aged protagonists have reached some crisis in their lives, generally revolving around love and obsession, in some cases obsessive love, when an unexpected turn of events or twist of fate leads them in new, unanticipated directions. Even when they explore ideas, the stories are intimately connected to life in all its vibrant detail. They are hilarious and tragic, sometimes at the same time, and sharply observant of people, places and society.

The characters remind you of people you know, and then, also like people you may know, can turn bizarre and incomprehensible even to those closest to them.

The dialogue in these stories snaps with wit. The prose is at once lyrical and prickly, tender and sardonic, and always, sentence-by-sentence, read-aloud beautiful.

Above all, The Man Who Gave Away His Organs will entertain you throughout as few other short story collections have.

Richard Michael Levine has written magazine articles for many national publications, including Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, New York, The New York Times Magazine and Esquire, where he was a contributing editor and wrote a monthly column on the media for a number of years.  He has been a staff writer and editor at Newsweek and The Saturday Review and has taught at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.  His bestselling non-fiction book, Bad Blood: A Family Murder in Marin County, was published by Random House and New American Library and has been translated into several language.  His poetry has been widely published in literary magazines and collected in Catch and Other Poems.

Last night Malcolm Margolin of Heyday Books hosted a Capra Press salon which featured reminiscences of founder Noel Young and the glory days of small press publishing. Author Maxine Rose Schur read from the Capra re-issue of her book; Places in Time: Reflections on a Journey. Among the attendees was Herb Gold who just celebrated his 90th birthday and was one of the original Capra Press authors.

Malcolm Margolin and Heyday Books will be hosting a Capra Press author soiree at Heyday on Monday, April 21 at 6:00 PM, 1633 University Ave., Berkeley. Maxine Rose Schur will read from her recent Capra release, Places in Time: Reflections on a Journey. Publishers, Hilary and Phil Brodey will be on hand to talk about Capra Press past and present.

Maxine Rose Schur’s award winning travel memoir is a fascinating account of a young woman’s life as a trusting and adventurous traveler in the carefree days prior to 9/11. Now available on Amazon and your local book seller! It is a perfect holiday gift!

Maxine Schur’s facinating account of her young life as a trusting, adventurous traveler will make the reader long for the seemingly carefree travel of the days before 9/11. A thrilling read!

Publication Date: September 2, 2013

Its 1954 and Tony De La Torre is 13-years-old and coming of age in Havana, Cuba.

The author’s publisher, Capra Press, gave me a copy of this novel in exchange for my review.

The 50’s must have been a remarkable time in which to come of age. Customs and the idea of what was appropriate changed so dramatically and the human view of the world was expanding at light speed through the magic of television. The older generation clung to the past while the younger generation raced to the future. Tony is a child of the 50s growing up in a changing Cuba where old world customs and superstitions rule while time stops for no man and neither does progress. Mendoza’s

Cuba is colorfully and nostalgically written. His affection for the country and time shine through the narrative. The country of Cuba is a character unto itself in A Cuban Summer and truly one of the best ones.

Tony comes from a wealthy family which affords him certain luxuries and freedoms that other characters of the era may not enjoy enhancing the experience for the reader and as the character heads for  broadening our experience of a long gone Cuba. We’re able to leave Havana and follow him to Varadero Beach where his grandparents own a home. Tony’s family is restrictive in that they don’t talk about a politically changing Cuba as discussion of politics is forbidden. Employees of the family help shape Tony’s view of the world and enable him to do things he would never have imagined being able to do that ultimately shape who he is as a character. To Mendoza’s credit, everything about the way Tony is written screams of an authentic 13-year-old character. He’s obsessed with the female form and self pleasure though he’s painfully shy around girls. He wants to live his life as rambunctiously and mischievously as he can but he does have responsibilities of which he is painfully aware. Tony is a character written so well that he springs from the page. Mendoza’s skill has the reader stepping back in time with fully realized characters in a well described world.

A Cuban Summer was a fun read. Tony and the story are written with a respect to real human experience. Tony experiences laughter, love, sadness and the sweet

pain of growing up. His journey through this story was one that we’ve heard a thousand times with truly special and unique spin.

Mendoza is a great writer and A Cuban Summer is a fabulous novel. If you like nostalgic works that speak with the spirit of a long gone era, pick this one up today.

Tony Mendoza is a photographer and author. He has written several books on the subject of photography. His first book with Capra Press was titled “1985, Ernie: A Photographer’s Memoir.” A Cuban Summer is his first novel.

If this sounds like a book for you, you can order it from Amazon.com by clicking the title anywhere in this review.

For more information about Tony Mendoza and his work, follow the links below:

Capra Press: https://caprapress.net/2013/05/392/

Website: http://www.tonymendozaphoto.com/pages/writing.asp

This just in from the Midwest Book Review:

A Cuban Summer
Tony Mendoza
Capra Press
978-1592661022      $15.00
http://amzn.com/1592661025

A Cuban Summer’s dedication is to the “Cuba before Fidel that I remember with affection, a country that overflowed with energy, laughter, and many imperfections.” It’s this dedication that sets the stage for a novel replete with Cuban culture, ideals, and changes; all set against the backdrop of 1954 where Tony de la Torre comes of age during one memorable summer.

Tony is no ordinary lad: his family is wealthy and he’s been raised by servants with the trappings of inherited luxury. So when Tony’s coming of age coincides with the many social and political changes affecting Cuba’s place in the world, the forces affecting both Tony and pre-Castro Cuba are brought to the foreground in a novel replete with social and sexual tension and growth.

One wouldn’t expect to have a humorous overtone running through a story which embraces so many personal and political changes, but in fact A Cuban Summer uses such humor as a binding force to capture the spirit and lively peoples of the land, and this is one of the features that makes this novel so endearing.

Another notable feature: by choosing an adolescent boy’s viewpoint, the changes brought about by social and personal forces come neatly together in a perspective that can be readily understood by Cubans as well as those with little prior familiarity with the country’s peoples and politics.

From family and religious roles to the increasing intrusion of politics into personal and public affairs, A Cuban Summer  neatly captures the atmosphere of a very Catholic, very well- defined society which stands on the brink of revolutionary changes.

Tony Mendoza’s storytelling ability is only equaled by his ability to capture a teen’s evolving emotions: “The young woman who ran that coffee machine was as attractive as a movie star, in Tony’s opinion. He often went to the coffee stand after school and asked her for a cortadito, a small cup of espresso. What he especially liked about her was how she always referred to her clients as mi amor, or mi vida, my life. She seemed to be on intimate terms with everyone. When Tony ordered his cortadito she often said: como estás, mi amorcito? How are you, my little love? It was worth getting a cup of coffee at that stand just to hear her say that.”

Tony’s blossoming feelings for young Carmen (and other girls) and his assessments of how to enter into a “proper Cuban courtship”, his evolving awareness of philosophy and ecological and world relationships, and his eventual realization that Cuba lives in his soul as much as he spends time on its soil makes for a blossoming saga of a summer during which everything – even his relationship with Cuba – will change.

In the end you have a bittersweet, gentle novel steeped in old-world Cuban culture and sentiments that provides readers with a lovely snapshot of old world values in flux. When his changing, evolving and terrific summer is over, Tony will find himself in a new place: one in which his own presence in the old world has become a memory of the past.

D. Donovan, eBook Reviewer, MBR

Tony Mendoza’s A Cuban Summer will be released on Labor Day, September 2, 2013!

https://www.facebook.com/ACubanSummer?skip_nax_wizard=true

Here is the cover for our upcoming title, A Cuban Summer to be released Summer/Fall 2013.