Books published by Pfp Publishing

Cynthia lives an unassuming life and experiences "spells" of intense spiritual intimacy. Devoted to her elderly Dad and not interested in socializing, she develops a deep friendship with a supportive priest. When he is killed in a mysterious accident, a message begins to emerge from Cynthia's prayers. Best of 2013 List-Publishers Weekly.

There is a stream that courses through American roots music. Its source is in the Appalachian foothills in a place called Maces Springs, Virginia. It was there that A.P. Carter, his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law Maybelle began their careers as three of the earliest stars of country music. These three didn't just play the music emerging from their hill country upbringing. They helped invent it. The stream these three created turned into a rushing river and moved through several generations of musicians, most notably touching the life of one Johnny Cash who first heard the Carters - including a young June Carter - over the airwaves. It was a wonderful twist of fate when Cash, as a Sun Records artist, first met Mother Maybelle and her girls. the Carter Sisters. and vowed to June that "I'm gonna marry you someday." The Winding Stream is an oral history that tells the tale of this important music dynasty. In their own words, family and friends, musicians and historians offer first-hand recollections and insightful observations that illuminate the Carter and Cash contributions to American popular culture.

A hilarious account of one absolutely disastrous Italian vacation, a story full of illness and good food, cold houses and warm people, bad decisions, marital spats, and family love. True in every detail, it is the tale of a trip award-winning author Roland Merullo made with his wife of many years, their two young children, and his brave octogenarian mother in an attempt to escape the New England winter and enjoy Italian cuisine, architecture, warm weather, and each other. Shortly after arriving at their rental house north of Rome, however, the Merullo family finds itself neck-deep in a swamp of misfortune. A stomach flu takes hold of their younger daughter and will not let go. The house is freezing cold, isolated, and patrolled by a pack of pesky mongrels. Hoping to escape the situation, the family heads south on a 500 mile drive, only to encounter, among a cast of eccentric characters, more bad luck. Their ability to cope - sometimes - and laugh - afterwards - forms the heart of Taking the Kids to Italy.

More than a series of engaging anecdotes, The Family Business gives readers a glimpse into the real world of the private investigator, and how that profession's stresses can bear on family life. Funny, poignant, and informative, it taps into the bottomless curiosity readers and viewers have about the hidden aspects of life - both criminal and domestic. This memoir tells the story of a multi-generational private investigation agency, founded by Phillip DiNatale, a former Boston police detective who was chosen to be one of four investigators tasked with catching the Boston Strangler. There are revelations of some of the most interesting cases this family team has worked on over the past forty years - from cheating husbands and wives, to rape accusations, the theft of a Stradivarius violin and a Louis the XIV desk, large-scale gray-marketeering, missing children (including the son of an African dictator), wiretapping, and some widely publicized industrial accidents on Boston's "Big Dig." The Family Business offers a look beneath the surface of city life, into the minds of those who break the law - from murderers and rapists, to welfare cheats and petty thieves as well as insight into families troubled by divorce, addiction, and secrets.

In direct contrast to the venerable Paris Review interviews, Talk Show puts contemporary writers on the late night couch and poses questions about everything except writing. Tune in for questions and answers about first concerts, movie remakes, childhood heroes, family myths, worst jobs, first cars, road trips, generational traumas, life-changing technologies, first dates, embarrassing moments, preferred Saturday morning cartoons, irrational fears, favorite first albums and much more. Though oftentimes irreverent and humorous, these interviews offer remarkable insight into the authors' perspectives as well as our time. A published author and an owner of a successful bookstore located just outside Boston, Jaime Clarke was able to earn of the trust of these artists and thus elicit several interesting and frank revelations. Contributing Authors include: Elisa Albert, Mike Albo, Will Allison, Steve Almond, Allison Amend, Jami Attenberg, Julianna Baggott, Daphne Beal, Thomas Beller, Aimee Bender, Sven Birkerts, Jenna Blum, Charles Bock, Chris Bohjalian, Lisa Borders, Christopher Boucher, Ryan Boudinot, Sarah Braunstein, Adam Braver, Kevin Brockmeier, Kiara Brinkman, Blake Butler, Maud Casey, Susan Cheever, Emily Chenoweth, Brock Clarke, Jon Clinch, Leah Hager Cohen, T Cooper, Elizabeth Crane, Sloane Crosley, Michael Dahlie, Quinn Dalton, Lisa Selin Davis, Nina de Gramont, Anita Diamant, Rebecca Donner, Tony D' Souza, David Ebershoff, Brian Evenson, Joshua Ferris, Maria Flook, Emily Franklin, Joshua Furst, Lisa Gabriele, Elizabeth Gaffney, Sophie Gee, Julia Glass, Myla Goldberg, Tod Goldberg, Elizabeth Graver, Ben Greenman, Lev Grossman, Jennifer Haigh, Paul Harding, Sheridan Hay, Joshua Henkin, Nellie Hermann, David Hollander, Ann Hood, Samantha Hunt, Karl Iagnemma, Perrin Ireland, Bret Anthony Johnston, Molly Jong-Fast, Rachel Kadish, Daphne Kalotay, Pagan Kennedy, Dave King, Owen King, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Aryn Kyle, Adam Langer, David Leavitt, Don Lee, Dennis Lehane, J. Robert Lennon, Francie Lin, Sam Lipsyte, Ellen Litman, Margot Livesey, Yael Goldstein Love, Michael Lowenthal, Allison Lynn, Fiona Maazel, Amy MacKinnon, Alice Mattison, Elizabeth McCracken, Ron McLarty, Kelly McMasters, John McNally, Mameve Medwed, Askold Melnyczuk, Dinaw Mengestu, Kirsten Menger-Anderson, Adrienne Miller, Lydia Millet, Rick Moody, Antonya Nelson, Joshua Neuman, Thisbe Nissen, Alix Ohlin, Ann Packer, Ed Park, Matthew Pearl, Heidi Pitlor, Hannah Pittard, Neal Pollack, Dan Pope, Mark Jude Poirier, Melissa Pritchard, Margo Rabb, Nelly Reifler, Irina Reyn, Nathaniel Rich, Stacey Richter, Lewis Robinson, Roxana Robinson, Peter Rock, Elissa Schappell, Ben Schrank, Salvatore Scibona, Elizabeth Searle, Jim Shepard, Karen Shepard, Rachel Sherman, Gary Shteyngart, Robert Anthony Siegel, Christopher Sorrentino, Dana Spiotta, Wesley Stace, Alix Strauss, Darin Strauss, Felicia Sullivan, Hannah Tinti, Peter Trachtenberg, Jen Trynin, A.J. Verdelle, Vendela Vida, Daniel Wallace, Amanda Eyre Ward, Sean Wilsey, and Moon Unit Zappa.

The Calling is the story of Blackford "Toad" Turlow, an ambitious, impressionable young man who aspires to be a writer. The voice in his head is that of Eldon Odom, a famous - sometimes infamous - novelist to whom Toad apprentices himself. In the beginning, Toad devours every morsel from Odom, both words and actions. But along the way he learns far more than the art of crafting fiction. He discovers that behind Odom's genius is a warped human being who abuses himself and those around him with alcohol, drugs and debauchery. Instead of teaching his eager disciples about writing, Odom uses them to fulfill his base desires. But Toad listens carefully to "The Old Man," the writer who years before was Odom's own mentor and who describes himself as "just the strange boy who cared to write things down." Toad is also influenced by the echoes o f his reckless, lovable dead sister, Trish; Odom's lean and lusty girlfriend, Lindy Briggs; Odom's loving and patient wife, Miss Sully; and by Toad's own girlfriend, the knowing Ardis Baines From this boozy, brilliant cast of characters, Toad eventually learns that a man and his art are two different things, that the worth of one may far exceed the other, and that there are dangerously thin lines between creativity and madness, between dedication and obsession. The Calling is beautifully written and thoroughly engrossing novel of passion and purpose - one that tells much about the calling and the called. "The characters ...are vividly realized, resistant to stereotypes. And the story's three female leads - Ardis, Toad's sometime girlfriend; Missy Sully, Odom's wife; and Lindy, Odom's current mistress - are complex individuals who play out their expected roles in unexpected fashion," said Nancy Pate in her review for the Orlando Sentinel. And, the Winston Salem Journal wrote, "Watson has much to say about life and art, about creativity and obsession, about the danger of violating reasonable bounds. He says it very well."

Music In and On the Air is a wonderful collection of radio pieces from Pulitzer Prize winning critic Lloyd Schwartz. The book explores contemporary classics, musical theatre and film, and includes almost all the reviews Schwartz has presented since becoming the classical music critic for NPR's Fresh Air. Offering up reflections on performers and composers, from Bolet to Horowitz, Cole Porter to Elvis Costello, Casals to Toscanini-Schwartz brings us closer to music in the air. Host Terry Gross said it best: "Lloyd is my favorite classical music critic and I've been privileged to present him on Fresh Air. That he writes so knowledgeably about movie musicals makes me love him even more. He's a poet, of course, and his gift for language makes him a pleasure to listen to as well as to read."

The mother of a childhood friend summons Nick Blud back to his old Ukranian-American New Jersey neighborhood, where something unspeakable has just happened, in this harrowing tale about friendship and love, America, and the immigrant's dream.

In a spirited narrative that travels from old Ukraine to New Jersey, Melnyczuk follows his character through the betrayals of World War II and the promises of marriage. His novel is a reminder that history is not something that happens only to others. 202 pp.

A family rallies around an errant son, even as a long-hidden secret that has touched all their lives comes to the surface. "The Boston Globe" selected "Revere Beach Boulevard" as one of its Top 100 Essential New England Books and author Richard Russo called it ," . . a great novel --ambitious, heartfelt, and oh-so skilled." 322 pp.

"Merullo skillfully explores the lives of ordinary people caught in a dramatic transference of power . . . it is smoothly written and multifaceted, solidly depicting the isolation and poverty of a city far removed from Moscow and insightfully exploring the psyches of individuals caught in the conflicts between their ideals and their careers."--"Publishers Weekly"

Merullo shares his spiritual, intellectual, and emotional discoveries, writing about his relationship with his father, his working class upbringing and upper class education, the early years of his marriage, and the gift of children. 204 pp.

The family car plunges into a frigid harbor; the mother escapes but her four-month-old daughter drowns. Four years later, that mother loses her four-month-old son to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Twenty-two years later, her twenty-five-year-old son drowns in Malawi, a place he considered "paradise." That mother, Irishwoman Mags Riordan, endured those three tragedies, and became changed in a very different way after the third. In 2000, while bringing a memorial stone to the village where Billy Riordan drowned the year before, Mags saw paradise. But she also saw need in an area with one doctor for 800,000 people. Four years later, she opened the Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic in Cape Maclear, Malawi, where a volunteer staff of international doctors and nurses has tended to 275,000 patients. This is a story about motherhood, grief, healing, and traveling into the unknown, showing keenly how one person indeed can change the world, with little more than two hands and one broken heart

Includes an interview with the author and reading group discussion questions.

For Merelene Durham it's been fifteen years of coping, of determination not to lose her purchase on this world: a world that has become almost unendurable since her rakish husband, Mayfield, fled after encephalitis turned their son Roland's mind into a strange, shell-holed country. Blind Tongues is the story of what happens when Mayfield unexpectedly returns, and his conviction that a newly made fortune can make Roland whole again, of a brilliant local attorney whose body bears the scars of aviation heroics in World War II, and finally of Merelene herself, who must choose between these two competitors in love while trying to accept the sweet simplicity of her ageless son. Sterling Watson, author of The Calling and Fighting in the Shade, has created a stunning evocation of a Florida coast town and of the people struggling for love and solace within its borders.

From chapters entitled "Writer's Block" to "Finding a Mentor" to "Impatience and Rejection," Merullo covers these topics with the insight, empathy, and encouragement of an author who has been there, in this no-nonsense handbook and guide for aspiring and established writers alike. His works have been praised by "The Boston Globe" and "Kirkus Reviews."

Leo Markin, a young U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat veteran who survived the war, found himself so changed by the experience that he simply could not find a way to return to his home, family, and his fiance in a working class city of his birth outside of Boston. He is torn between the peaceful, natural way of life on the island of Losapas and the rougher rules of his upbringing. 304 pp.