Ben Bruton Literary

12/08/2018

More on Rob Hoerburger’s powerful novel WHY DO BIRDS (which I’m publicizing for 71 Songs; on sale March 2019):
New York City, 1982. A woman who was once the most popular singer in the world finds herself largely forgotten and in the grip of a deadly affliction. A younger woman, a sometime-DJ and survivor of a horrific childhood accident, sees musical apartheid wherever she turns. An undercover gay cop tries to reconnect to a long-subsumed musical memory. Popular music itself seems perched on the edge of a precipice.
WHY DO BIRDS presents pop music as not just soundtrack but as the very lifeblood of its characters. As their paths cross and collide, they turn to it for nothing short of regained innocence.

12/01/2018

I am truly excited to share with you WHY DO BIRDS (which I’m publicizing for 71 Songs; March 2019), the lyrical debut novel from New York Times editor and writer Rob Hoerburger. A literary approach to the world of pop music, it combines the perfect cultural pitch of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity with the kind of deeply drawn, historical characters of Michael Cunningham’s The Hours.

11/30/2018

BOOKLIST, one of the 4 major book trade magazines—which publishes early reviews of upcoming books of note—has just weighed in on Steven Sidley’s novel IMPERFECT SOLO (which I’m publicizing for Arcade Publishing/Skyhorse; on sale February 2019); and they love it:
“A melancholy, wry, and thoughtful meditation on love, music, and aging . . . Sidley wonderfully captures the hazy, bustling world of LA, and the descriptions of playing are comparable to Richard Powers at his best. Like Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to an End, the mundanity and frustrations of American corporate experience are depicted with unerring accuracy.”

11/21/2018

NPR’s Renee Montagne raves in advance about the latest novel I’m publicizing (Arcade Publishing/Skyhorse; February 2019), Steven Sidley’s IMPERFECT SOLO, calling it “a perfect riff on what it means to be human in this unsettled age—a complex range of notes from the profound, to the tender, to the laugh-out-loud. Anti-hero Joshua Meyer is, like the characters of Martin Amis and the Coen Brothers, hapless and hopeful, brave and bewildered; he is a little bit of all of us. Bravo!”

10/14/2018

Another absolute rave review for BEETHOVEN’S TENTH by Richard Kluger (which I’m publicizing for Rare Bird Books.) Tuesday’s HOUSTON CHRONICLE writes: “This tantalizing scenario plays out with gusto—or allegro con brio, to use a more fitting term—in “Beethoven’s Tenth,” a new novel that proves international intrigue need not be limited to industrial espionage or fighting terrorism.”

Imagine, just for a moment, that a nearly illegible manuscript purporting to be an embryonic Beethoven symphony is found in a stuffy Swiss attic. Would the world sound another ode to joy, or would this improbable discovery strike a sour note?

10/03/2018

A wonderful and extensive feature interview in the PORTLAND PRESS HERALD with author Jeffrey Lewis on his new novel BEALPORT: A Novel of A Town, which I’m publicizing for Haus Publishing. Set in a working class Maine coastal town, this feature also appeared Sunday in most newspapers in Maine.

Emmy winner Jeffrey Lewis, who splits his time between Castine and Los Angeles, will give talk about his book, 'Bealport,' on Tuesday in Portland.

09/21/2018

A fascinating feature interview from the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Kluger on his latest novel, BEETHOVEN’S TENTH (which I’m publicizing for Rare Bird Books). The feature will also appear this weekend in a multitude of other San Francisco Bay Area newspapers, including the OAKLAND TRIBUNE, EAST BAY TIMES, CONTRA COSTA TIMES, and MARIN COUNTY JOURNAL, among others.

Berkeley author Richard Kluger’s new novel built around the discovering Beethoven’s long-missing 10th Symphony.

09/21/2018

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO’s “ALL THINGS CONSIDERED” raved yesterday about Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Kluger’s novel BEETHOVEN’S TENTH (which I’m publicizing for Rare Bird Books) saying: “In Beethoven’s Tenth, Kluger has given music lovers, musicians and musicologists a fun and spellbindingly written work of fiction that has the power to remind readers everywhere of the immortal Beethoven’s real-life contributions and, in the end, of the immortality of music itself.”
(You can click below to hear the review read on-air or read it yourself).

Beethoven changed the course of music with his mighty nine symphonies. What would happen to music — and to the world — if the manuscript of a 10th symphony

08/28/2018

The venerable NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW includes Richard Kluger’s novel, BEETHOVEN’S TENTH (which I’m publicizing for Rare Bird Books) in their “New & Noteworthy” column this coming Sunday, September 2. Congratulations Richard and Rare Bird Books!

A selection of books published this week; plus, a peek at what our colleagues around the newsroom are reading.

08/25/2018

NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS raved today about BEALPORT: A Novel of a Town by Jeffrey Lewis (which I’m publicizing for Haus Publishing, on sale August 28): “Like the early Mohawk novels of Richard Russo . . . BEALPORT is often uproariously and corrosively funny . . . Jeffrey Lewis isn’t the first novelist to prove that you can wrest compelling, strange, funny, and surprising character-driven fiction out of town-crushing industrial demise. But he is, without question, the most recent writer to do it well.”

08/25/2018

Happy publication day, on 8/14 for Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Kluger on BEETHOVEN’S TENTH, which I’m publicizing for Rare Bird Books.
NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS raves: “For any who love Ludwig von Beethoven’s music, this novel is a must for its biography. For everyone else, it’s a great mystery story set against a backdrop of actual history . . . While definitely a mystery novel, BEETHOVEN’S TENTH has the flavor of some of the better tales of espionage and intrigue, with an ironic ending worthy of Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

07/21/2018

The TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, the most prestigious literary publication in the UK just weighed in on Jeffrey Lewis’s BEALPORT: A Novel of A Town—which I’m publicizing for Haus Publishing (on sale in the US August 28)—and they love it.
“Comprising short vignettes, the book aims to capture the character and consciousness of Bealport itself, flitting between individual lives, mock sociological overviews and the commentary of a Greek chorus of characters who meet at McDonald’s for their pre-shift breakfast. . . The portraits of the townspeople are endearing, drawn in well-chosen, economic details . . . The story is tightly and neatly constructed, and the hermetic nature of Bealport—where people live for the demolition derby, snowmobiling playoffs, the annual seaside picnic and the dignity of a day’s work—is deeply appealing, drenched in sympathetic nostalgia, folksy charm and pithy one-liners.”

06/02/2018

The next book I’m publicizing that I’m so excited about. THE BOOK I DIDN’T WANT TO WRITE by well-known French author Erwan Larher, who was shot by terrorists at the Paris Bataclan Theatre in 2015–the most violent night in French history since WWII.
“Literature doesn’t stop bullets. On the other hand, it can stop a finger from pressing a trigger.”
So excited to bring this already French success to the US with Locarno Press on November 13, the third anniversary of the massacre.

05/28/2018

The PLATTSBURGH PRESS-REPUBLICAN just raved about
Lauren Doyle Owens’ debut novel THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING, which I publicized for Touchstone Books, writing “The Other Side of Everything is more literary fiction than mystery . . . Add it to your summer reading list. It is one of the best reads of 2018.”

05/24/2018

“Lewis has created a rich tapestry of life. In lean, poetically precise prose he lays bare the realities of a town in decline and reveals the fears, secrets and aspirations that animate ordinary lives. This highly accomplished short novel is a moving and humane portrait of smalltown America, a vision of Trump’s republic in miniature.”
This is from a brilliant review in the national MAIL OF SUNDAY (UK) of American author Jeffrey Lewis’s BEALPORT: A Novel of a Town, which I’m publicizing for Haus Publishing (already a critical success in the UK and on sale in the US August 28). The same review also ran in the IRISH TIMES.

05/21/2018

A rave review from the LONDON EVENING STANDARD for American author Jeffrey Lewis’s timely and relevant BEALPORT: A Novel of a Town (already out in the U.K.), which I’m publicizing for Haus Publishing (on sale in the U.S. August 28). The reviewer writes:
“Comparisons between Jeffrey Lewis’s deft, bittersweet portrait of a Maine community and Thornton Wilder’s 1938 stage classic Our Town are inevitable. Both vividly evoke the interwoven lives of individuals with an easy down-home style that masks something larger and darker. In Wilder’s case, it’s the inevitability of death. In Lewis’s, it’s the destructive force of greed . . . Although Donald Trump is never mentioned, this is very much his America . . . [Lewis’s] prose is fluent and beautiful with a light, witty touch and he can evoke a character in just a few lines . . . A hugely satisfying read.”

Comparisons between Jeffrey Lewis’s deft, bittersweet portrait of a Maine community and Thornton Wilder’s 1938 stage classic Our Town are inevitable. Both vividly evoke the interwoven lives of individuals with an easy, down-home style that masks something larger and darker. In Wilder’s case, ....

05/11/2018

The first trade review, this one from KIRKUS REVIEWS, has just come in for Richard Kluger’s novel BEETHOVEN’S TENTH, which I’m publicizing for Rare Bird Books (on sale August 14), and it’s great!
“Kluger knows both his Beethoven and legal quiddities inside out . . . [A] seven-course banquet of musical legend and cold-hearted fraud.”

04/21/2018

A gorgeous essay I placed in today's NEW YORK TIMES for my publicity client, Lauren Doyle Owens, author of THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING (Touchstone Books). Congratulations Lauren! You make my job easy. xx

You were establishing roots for a suburban life I would never be able to provide.

04/16/2018

Watch this great video about BEETHOVEN’S TENTH by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and two-time National Book Award finalist Richard Kluger, my latest publicity client, being published by Rare Bird Books (on sale August 14). Brilliant novel about the possibility of a 10th symphony by Beethoven hidden for centuries but finally unearthed in a Swiss attic. But is it authentic or an ingenious forgery?

When a New Jersey man of modest means shows up at the posh Manhattan auction house of Cubbage & Wakeham with a tattered manuscript he claims to have found in...

04/03/2018

Sunday the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ran a rave review of Lauren Doyle Owens’ THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING (which I publicized for Touchstone Books) which read: “Owens delivers a quiet mystery in The Other Side of Everything that expertly uncovers the emotional depth of each character. It’s a terrific debut.”

A South Florida neighborhood - and three seemingly unconnected residents - reel from the murder of an elderly woman in Fort Lauderdale in author Lauren Doyle Owens's engrossing debut.

03/29/2018

THE ADVOCATE, the country’s leading LGBT publication, just included David Rocklin’s THE NIGHT LANGUAGE (which I publicized for Rare Bird Books) in its upcoming summer issue, calling it “a beautiful love story.”

Exciting new work from authors like Christopher Rice, Jake Shears, and Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley.

03/22/2018

David Rocklin’s superb novel, THE NIGHT LANGUAGE, which I publicized for Rare Bird Books, was just named a finalist for a 2017 FOREWORD INDIES BOOK OF THE YEAR award. Congratulations David!

The Night Language is a 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award finalist in LGBT (Adult Fiction). Oscar Wilde called gay love “the love which dare not speak its name” when homosexual relationships were illegal, stigmatized, and taboo. "The Night Language", by David Rocklin, revisits such a t...

03/02/2018

BUSTLE just featured Lauren Doyle Owens’ fantastic debut novel THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING, (which I’m publicizing for Touchstone Books), calling it “Intriguing and expertly paced . . . A tantalizing thriller you’ll want to finish in one sitting.”

For most readers, there is nothing more satisfying than getting caught up in a good, long book, but it isn't always easy to find time to read a 400-page novel. Between work duties, house responsibilities, and social obligations, sometime the best a b…

02/17/2018

An absolute rave from the TAMPA BAY TIMES for Lauren Doyle Owens’ THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING, which I’m publicizing for Touchstone Books. They write:
“Lauren Doyle Owens’ impressive debut novel, The Other Side of Everything, is a compelling mystery, but it is also an astute study of the profound disconnectedness with which so many Americans live.”

Adel Minor dies alone, in her three-bedroom ranch house in a South Florida suburb. It�s the fire people notice first, a column of smoke rising amid the 1960s ranch houses of Seven Springs, but once i

02/17/2018

Another stellar review of Lauren Doyle Owens’ THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING, which I’m publicizing for Touchstone Books. This one from SHELF-AWARENESS. They call it “a penetrating look behind the faces we present to the world.”

Welcome to the Web site for Shelf Awareness: Daily Enlightenment for the Book Trade, the free e-mail newsletter dedicated to helping the people in stores, ...

01/25/2018

So proud of debut author, Lauren Doyle Owens, and her novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING (on sale yesterday), which I’m publicizing for Touchstone Books. In this week’s issue of PEOPLE magazine, her book is a “People Pick.” They write of it: “A first-rate murder mystery . . . Owens sets up a wicked premise—someone is murdering elderly women in a Florida town—then transcends the serial-killer genre, digging deep into the lives of the victims’ neighbors; a widower, a painter and a teenager, all broken in some way. The result is a compelling tale of survival and hope.”

01/21/2018

More great coverage for Lauren Doyle Owens’ THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING, which I’m publicizing for Touchstone Books, in the BOCA RATON OBSERVER.

The Authority On Boca and Beyond

01/21/2018

A rave review from the FLORIDA WEEKLY for Lauren Doyle Owens’ novel THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING, which I’m publicizing for Touchstone Books. “Lauren Doyle Owens is someone to watch. Her stunning literary murder mystery debut is at once a nail-biter and a brilliantly nuanced evocation of how communities work and don’t work . . . This is a remarkable debut by a distinctive talent of great promise.”

¦ "The Other Side of Everything" by Lauren Doyle Owens. Touchstone, 272 pages. Hardcover, $25. Lauren Doyle Owens, who lives in the Fort Lauderdale area and has set her first novel there, is someone to watch. Her stunning literary murder mystery debut is at once a nail-biter and a brilliantly nuanc...

01/21/2018

Oline Cogdill of the SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL just published a rave review of Lauren Doyle Owens’ fantastic novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING, which I’m publicizing for Touchstone Books. As Cogdill writes: “A South Florida neighborhood and three seemingly unconnected residents reel from the murder of an elderly woman in Fort Lauderdale author Lauren Doyle Owens’ engrossing debut . . . ‘The Other Side of Everything’ is a terrific debut.”

Engrossing debut novel "The Other Side of Everything" explores what happens to the residents of a South Florida neighborhood in decline. Fort Lauderdale author Lauren Doyle Owens will discuss her novel at four events