Recommend this book:

Rhythm for Sale

Dr. Grant Harper Reid

2018 Finalist
300 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2018 Finalist
Rhythm For Sale the Chanticleer Grand Prize Journey Award Winning 5 Star book that was voted by the IndieReader Staff as one of the Best Self-Published books of 2015. Bookawards.com 2015 Gold Award Winner.The book is a deeply researched account of Harlem Renaissance producer Leonard Harper's life story.
Grant Harper Reid has documented Harper's tale with a very careful chronological arrangement of the details and facts. The book comes alive because or Reid's entertaining and descriptive writing style. Because of the contents in Rhythm For Sale.

A Harlem, N.Y. street was named "Leonard Harper Way" in 2015.

Reid begins with Leonard Harper as a young Alabama pickaninny boy dancing in Medicine shows in the racist South. After leaving Alabama, Harper tours the country with his song and dance partner Osceola Blanks, and they wind up performing at the Empire Theater in London. As a married couple Harper and Blanks, arrive back in the States smack dab in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. Master pianist Duke Ellington moves in with them. Harper is hired to be the main in-house producer at Harlem's fabled Connie's Inn nightclub.

Harper opens up his downtown Times Square Dance Studio. He teaches the Marx Brothers, Ruby Keller, Adele Astaire and Busby Berkeley's chorus-line in the fine art of (Dirty Colored), dancing with "that little extra something in the butt department." He forms his famous chorus-line the Harperettes, who jiggle and joggle in skimpy outfits while setting dance floors on fire. Leonard Harper produces in at least eight nightclubs and theaters just in New York City alone. The Cotton Club, the Hollywood Inn, Al Capone's Grand Terrace Cafe, the Lafayette Theater ant the Apollo Theater all owe their status and particular place in nightclub and theater history to Harper and his fast variety revues. He rules the nightclub and Black Musical Comedy world on The Great White Way and uptown in Harlem. Black And Blue and Ain't Misbehavin all came from Harper's Hot Chocolates' and only Rhythm For Sale tells the true story behind the making of that all-time legendary Broadway sensational revue.

The book is full of celebrities and gangsters who come and go. Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano are all integral players in Harpers show business world. Grandson Grant does not disappoint. These real life characters come to life. No cardboard cutout characters are in this book.

Rhythm for Sale finely peals away beyond the surface to reveal what lurks underneath the facade. Like a master chef, the author delves deep inside the ingredients of Leonard Harper's complicated personal life. We examine his relationships with his possessive mother, jealous brother, crippled and bitter wife, sexy girlfriends and his loving daughter.

The book ends with Harper's 1943 downfall. When his variety revue form of Colored Musical Comedy is , deemed out of date with his audience time on earth expires. His sad downfall is inevitable as the master stager is trapped and held captive of his past success. Perhaps the racial pigeonhole that forced him into working for only small-time Harlem nightspots caused his death. 

 "Clearly Leonard Harper was just about the most important contributor to the entertainment mystique that enveloped Harlem in the 1920's and 1930's. He essentially invented the nightclub floorshow, Harlem style that everyone, uptown and down, then emulated. He was one of the great dancers of his generation and one hell of a stage director and choreographer. Without him, I doubt we would have Broadway musicals as we know them today."-Barry Singer author of Black And Blue.

 "Harper's extraordinary accomplishments as an artist and innovator spanned the worlds of vaudeville, cabaret, burlesque and Broadway musical comedy. "-Jed Bernstein President of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. 

 rhythmforsale.com     

Recommend this book:

Hundred Miles to Nowhere

An Unlikely Love Story
Elisa Korenne

2018 Honorable Mention
344 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2018 Honorable Mention
  • 2018 FINALIST, NANCY PEARL BOOK AWARD
  • 2018 FINALIST, NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE BOOK AWARDS
  • 2017 FINALIST, THE NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS 
  • BESTSELLER, MIDWEST INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER ASSOCIATION
"Big city girl marries asmall town guy--that story. But never more engagingly told than in HUNDRED MILES TO NOWHERE" --Will Weaver, author of Sweet Land and The Last Hunter

A singer-songwriter moves from New York City to rural Minnesota for love, and finds somewhere, and someone, in the middle of nowhere. 

When Elisa Korenne took a month's break from New York City to be the resident singer-songwriter in middle-of-nowhere Minnesota, she didn't intend to stay. Then she fell in love with the local outdoorsman/insurance guy. One cross-country romance later, Elisa gave up subways, theater, City Bakery cookies, and her Brooklyn apartment to become the 1,153rd resident of New York Mills, a rural town ninety miles from the nearest metropolitan area, Fargo. 
She had to resort to moonshine to stay sane.

The barista knew her weekend plans before she did. The postmaster set up gigs for her behind her back. Chris expected her to eat roadkill for dinner. And you wouldn't believe the uproar when the Finnish Lutherans in town learned she was Jewish. Despite a gun-toting Millenialist neighbor and the furnace dying at twenty-six below, Elisa moved to Minnesota and married Chris anyway. Then a tornado threatens to destroy the home she had finally made for herself.
Hundred Miles to Nowhere is A Year in Provence for the Prairie Home Companion crowd, or Coop for fans of indie music.

Recommend this book:

Ten Cultures, Twenty Lives

Refugee Life Stories
Daina Jurika-Owen

2018 Bronze Medal
320 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2018 Bronze Medal

We often don't realize all it takes for refugees to navigate the path to resettlement. They face years of waiting and countless hurdles before arriving in a strange new land with few possessions and little knowledge of their new communities' language and culture.

How did a diverse group of refugees make their way to the US and settle in Abilene, Texas? Who helped them through the resettlement process as they embarked on their new lives?

In Ten Cultures, Twenty Lives, refugee storytellers from a broad swath of cultures—Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, Cuba, Iraq, Bhutan, and more—reveal their compelling, sometimes humorous, often bittersweet tales of resettlement in West Texas. Through their life stories, refugees share their powerful experiences about the long, hard road they took to get to the US.

Ten Cultures, Twenty Lives guides us through their journeys and draws us into the world of refugees and resettlement staff, describing the passion and energy needed to help these courageous storytellers resettle in the US and the challenges they faced.

Recommend this book:

Winds of Spirit

Ancient Wisdom Tools for Navigating Relationships, Health, and the Divine
Renee Baribeau

2018 Silver Medal
272 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2018 Silver Medal
Winds of Spirit is a practical guide to connect to powerful wind energies that navigate us toward authentic joy, power, and purpose.In this book, you’ll explore the rich mythology and cultural significance of wind, and discover a powerful system to utilize the subtle, healing energies in your life. Winds of Spirit will teach you how to connect with your true inner self, use your body as a compass, and receive life-changing messages from nature. Based on an ancient sacred technique used by farmers, shamans and sailors, this system will show you how to navigate your personal path, providing insight into how to manage the wind patterns and shifting conditions affecting you. You will also learn how to invoke wind deities—gods and goddesses from around the world—and the cardinal winds from the four quadrants of the sky, each of which relate to the inner landscape of your life: mind, emotions, body, and spirit. By working with the omnipresent winds in your life, you can restore harmony and balance, heal the body, and inspire creativity.Experiential practices include wind breath, wind bath, wind knots, and more! "Beautiful and thought-provoking . . . this absorbing book reveals Renee Baribeau as a modern, western medicine woman." — Hank Wesselman, Ph.D., anthropologist, and award-winning author of Awakening to the Spirit World, The Bowl of Light, and The Re-Enchantment"This is truly one of the best books I have read. It is inspiring and unique." — Sandra Ingerman, author of Soul Retrieval and Walking in Light

Recommend this book:

Entrancement

The Consciousness of Dreaming, Music and the World
Ruth Finnegan

2017 Finalist
288 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2017 Finalist
This powerful, ground-breaking study of dreaming, death, music, and shared consciousness brings together a staggering number of fields to explore what we know about dreaming and its interactions with other forms of consciousness. Setting a humanistic, evidence-based context, Ruth Finnegan engages with anthropology, ethnomusicology, sociology, psychology, parapsychology, cognitive science, and more, building a strikingly diverse base of evidence and analysis with which to treat a subject that is all too often taken lightly. Entrancement will quickly prove indispensable for anyone studying these altered states of consciousness and what we can know about how they work and what they do for our minds, bodies, and selves.

Recommend this book:

My Father's Daughter

From Rome to Sicily
Gilda Morina Syverson

2017 Honorable Mention
296 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2017 Honorable Mention
In this multigenerational story, My Father's Daughter: From Rome to Sicily, Gilda Morina Syverson travels with her Italian-born father, Italian-American mother and very-American husband to the village of her ancestors. This trilogy tale leads the reader through ancient sites of Rome, landscapes of a picturesque countryside, seaside villages of Sicily, olive trees in the valley of Mount Etna, while contrasting an emotional journey between a father and daughter. This Novello Literary Award Book Finalist, Nominee for the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction, 2016 Nominee for Author of the Year for the Artist Guild Award, 2016 Honorable Mention for Non-Fiction in the New England Book Festival, and 2017 Runner Up for Autobiography in the Great Southeast Book Festival exudes passion, eloquence, heartfelt language, and ancestral roots. Reader discussion questions are included for book clubs, reading groups and libraries. 
 "Travel south from Rome with Gilda Morina Syverson. Let her show you her ancestral land through the eyes of her closest ancestors, her parents, who travel with her and her husband. It's a trip well worth taking... vividly observed, richly detailed, gently humorous, and deeply poignant. The only thing better would be a trip to Italy." - William Martin, New York Times Bestselling Author of Cape Cod and The Lincoln Letter
"My Father's Daughter: From Rome to Sicily is a travel book in every sense. Syverson - a savvy, funny, elegant tour guide - expertly escorts us through the gorgeous time-locked terrain of Italy, but also along the often precarious byways of the heart. This book risks everything: its humanity, its courage, its sheer unbridled candor, the moving sweep of its poetic language and its refusal to turn away from the breathtaking mystery of love and ancestry." -Joseph Bathanti, North Carolina Poet Laureate, 2012-2014 
"Here's what's in store for you: A delightful journey into the heart of Italy, this family, and what it means to be human. My Father's Daughter is beautifully crafted, moving, entertaining memoir that will win you over from page one. If five stars is the highest rating, I give this book six." -Judy Goldman, author of the memoir Losing My Sister 
"Gilda Morina Syverson shares the journey of a lifetime, taking her elderly parents back home to visit Italy after decades in America. Gilda is a brave woman, an admirable daughter, and a very good writer -- she recounts the occasional bumps in the road with aplomb and the heartwarming, as well as, the frustrating moments with humor." -Sharri Whiting De Masi, writer Olive Oil  IQ app; Italy correspondent, Luxury Travel Advisor 
Gilda Morina Syverson is an award-winning poet, author and teacher of Memoir Writing who lives in North Carolina with her husband Stu.  Connect at gildasyverson.com

Recommend this book:

Eye to the Sky

Storytelling on the Edge of Magic
Bobby Norfolk

2017 Bronze Medal
224 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2017 Bronze Medal

Nobody knows how to tell a story like Bobby Norfolk, and here he tells his own life story. Norfolk grew up in hardscrabble neighborhoods of Saint Louis, Missouri, during the 1950s and 60s, sometimes walking to elementary school from an apartment his parents could not afford to heat. Lifting himself up by force of will and God-given talent, Norfolk defeated a childhood stutter to become a high school dramatist and later an exceptional college student. The path was never easy—and often frightening. With men of color being killed all-too-frequently in America, Norfolk sought a personal identity based upon talent and hard work, but also upon where safety and justice might be found. He tells these stories—some heartwarming or humorous, some frightful and treacherous—honestly, with a graceful mindfulness that all would do well to emulate.

Recommend this book:

The Mastery of You

Toward an Understanding of Self
Renu Persaud

2017 Silver Medal
300 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2017 Silver Medal
The Mastery of You takes you on a self-discovering journey that provides the framework for developing inner self-confidence. The priority shifts from other-centric to self-centric. And, in the end, giving you the tools in order to be a healthier, happier and balanced individual.

Recommend this book:

If You Were Me and Lived in... Germany

A Child's Introduction to Cultures Around the World (Volume 21)
Carole P. Roman

2017 Gold Medal
35 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2017 Gold Medal
Join Carole P. Roman when she visits the beautiful land of Germany in the newest book of her informative series. Learn about the varied customs and cultures. Travel to the central Europe to discover what you would eat and do for fun. See the land through the eyes of a youngster like you and understand what life is like in this exciting place. Don't forget to look at the other books in the series so that you can be an armchair world traveler.

Recommend this book:

Motions and Moments

More Essays on Tokyo
Michael Pronko

2016 Gold Medal
265 Pages
Check current price
Non-Fiction - Cultural

2016 Gold Medal


Motions and Moments is the third book by Michael Pronko on the fluid feel and vibrant confusions of Tokyo life. These 42 new essays burrow into the unique intensities that suffuse the city and ponder what they mean to its millions of inhabitants.

Based on Pronko’s 18 years living, teaching and writing in Tokyo, these essays on how Tokyoites work, dress, commute, eat and sleep are steeped in insights into the city’s odd structures, intricate pleasures and engaging undertow.

Included are essays on living to size and loving the crowd, on Tokyo’s dizzying uncertainties and daily satisfactions, and on the 2011 earthquake. As in his first two books, this collection captures the ceaseless flow and passing flashes of life in biggest city in the world with gentle humor and rich detail.

Praise for the first collection, Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life:

"A clear-eyed but affectionate portrait of a city that reaches beyond simple stereotypes. An elegantly written, precisely observed portrait of a Japanese city and its culture." Kirkus Reviews

" Beauty and Chaos is a spectacular read. Its essays are long enough to be cohesive and provocative while remaining short and sweet. The collection is masterful and unique." Stephanie Chandler, SPR Review

“He notices the kinds of things that might be taken for granted by the Japanese and overlooked entirely by visitors.” Rebecca Foster, The Bookbag

Gold Award First Place for Cultural Non-Fiction (Reader's Favorite Awards 2015)
Gold Award (Non-Fiction Authors Association 2015)

Praise for the second collection, Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens: Essays on Tokyo :

“As chapters flow through Tokyo cultural experiences, readers receive a rare glimpse of the structure and nature of Tokyo's underlying psyche. It's a powerful, intimate consideration of many aspects of Japanese culture.” D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

"An insider's view of what life is really like in this pulsing, densely populated Asian metropolis...this little book of short, easy to read essays delivers to its readers an education." Vera A. Pereskokova Luxury Reading Blog

“Could one have a better guide? Anyone planning to work and live in Tokyo for a period of time will find Pronko indispensable.” BookReview

“Tokyo's Mystery Deepens is so much more than just a guidebook to Tokyo…it actually plunges into the minuscule details of what it is like to be a Tokyoite.” OnlineBookClub

Gold Award for Creative Non-Fiction (eLit Awards 2015 )
Silver Award for Travel Essay (eLit Award 2015 )

For more information, go to: www.michaelpronko.com