New Fiction: A Reading

Nina Romano earned an MA from Adelphi University and an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. She is the author of four poetry collections: Cooking Lessons; Coffeehouse Meditations; She Wouldn’t Sing at My Wedding; and Faraway Confections; and a short-story collection The Other Side of the Gates. Her latest novel is set in China in the late 1800’s. The Secret Language of Women (Turner) tells the story of star-crossed lovers, Zhou Bin Lian, a Eurasian healer, and Giacomo Scimenti, an Italian sailor, driven apart by the Boxer Rebellion. When Lian is seventeen years old, she accompanies her father to tend the Italian ambassador, at the Summer Palace of Empress Dowager, where she meets and falls in love with Giacomo. Through voyage and adventure, their love intensifies, but soon is severed by Lian’s dutiful promise as the wife to another. Rebelling against the life forced upon her, Lian empowers herself to act out against the injustice and becomes the master of her own destiny. But her quest for freedom comes at a costly price: The life of someone close to her.

Steven Charnow grew up in New York City. After graduating from Queens College, he worked as a case worker for the NYC Bureau of Child Welfare, then joined the Peace Corps, serving two years in Medellin, Colombia. Returning to the United States, he settled in Los Angeles, where he partnered with a composer and wrote song lyrics in English and Spanish. He moved on to writing screenplays and was soon under contract to a film studio producing low-budget features.  In Charnow’s debut novel, Charlie Fig and the Lip (Unsolicited Press), a young man’s summer between high school and college is interrupted by the discovery of his father’s bullet-riddled delivery van in Jamaica Bay.

Thane Rosenbaum is the author of the novels, The Stranger Within Sarah Stein, The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible. His essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Huffington Post. A Distinguished Fellow at New York University School of Law, he is the author of Payback: The Case for Revenge and The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right. His latest book is How Sweet It Is! (Mandel Vilar Press). Set in Miami Beach, Florida in 1972, the novel follows the Posner family--two Holocaust survivors, Sophie and Jacob, and their son, Adam--doing everything they can to avoid one another in a city with an infinite supply of colorful diversions. For these two Holocaust survivors and their son, Miami Beach was to be their salvation. Where better to blend in, regain one's sanity, and live their lives? Instead what they discover is that Miami Beach is not a place of camouflage--all that sunshine highlighted the very things they wished to forget, and the abundant sun has turned their lives into a Disney World of funhouse mirrors and chaotic rides.