Search Results for: tom shachtman

A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany

A Jericho's Cobble Miscellany by Tom Shachtman. In tones of peach shading to brown, a white steeple on a church stands above a forest of trees turning fall colors.

A Jericho's Cobble Miscellany by Tom Shachtman. In tones of peach shading to brown, a white steeple on a church stands above a forest of trees turning fall colors.A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany

by Tom Shachtman
ISBN: 978-1-963695-57-1 paperback $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-963695-58-8 ebook $9.99
April 21, 2026

An invitingly varied and intimate look at what makes a small town tick.—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany by Tom Shachtman:

Shachtman’s literary novel chronicles life in a humble New England village, the fictional town of Jericho’s Cobble, a rural place though not a remote one.  From a babysitter’s diary to the thoughts of an abandoned barn to a guitarist looking to make a go at the big time, the fun comes from seeing what each new perspective will reveal.  Surprises abound.  An invitingly varied and intimate look at what makes a small town tick. —Kirkus Reviews

Adults and young adults will enjoy reading A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany. Through poems, plays, diary entries, newspaper articles, dialogues, and narratives, the book reveals a rural community’s history and people—alive and dead, and their gossip, activities, successes, and struggles. The short chapters allow readings in one sitting and beg readers’ reflections on their own lives. Along the way, there are also life lessons. “It is not [. . .] having had significant achievements [. . .] it is existing in a manner that touches others in positive ways and imparts to them an indelible sense of having had direct interaction with a unique and very interesting specimen of humanity who has enriched their lives” (344).—Patti Kidd, Reedsy Discovery

A patchwork quilt, stitched from voices, artifacts, and memories.  It’s messy and alive, much like the New England hamlet it captures.  I found myself laughing at one passage and then feeling the weight of grief a page later. A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany is about what it feels like to live in the shadow of history while stumbling through the present.  I would recommend it to readers who want to sink into the rhythm of a small town that is both ordinary and mythic. If you’re willing to wander, to let yourself be surprised, you’ll find something touching here.—Literary Titan

I loved it. Rich in detail, every turned page a surprise, the different voices animate and inanimate (I got a special kick out of “Lament for an Upright”), the vivid imagination, and much more.—John G. Ryden, Director Emeritus, The Yale University Press

I really love it … The orchestra of voices, alive and dead, works very well in evoking the feeling of place, the history of it, the complexity. It is powerfully nostalgic for me but also feels true to how layered a place it is. I especially love the use of signs, epitaphs, markers, newspapers, transcripts, to evoke the whole community, and the richness of each part of the town. The form is experimental, and I can sense the complexity in that. But it hangs together well, and I feel curious and connected all the way through. It is the very movement between forms that keeps me reading. Each of the voices feels fully realized and fleshed out, even when brief. And the cumulative effect is that of a chorus, each holding a part of the story.—Eiren Caffall, 2023 Whiting Prize winner and author, The Mourner’s Bestiary, and All the Water In The World.

Praise for Tom Shachtman’s The Memoir of the Minotaur

Memoir of the Minotaur by Tom Shachtman - front cover shows the shadow of Asterion, the Minotaur in his labyrinth with a red silken cord leading to a distant light above. The book cover also shows two awards medallionsA romping confessional riff on the classic tale, a portrait of the artist as a young bull. Shachtman’s rollicking prose weaves mythology into a gripping yarn and gives antiquity’s voiceless celebrity monster a soaring human heart.—Charles Graeber, NYT bestselling author of The Good Nurse and The Breakthrough

Seldom have I written a review in which I can quiet the voice of the critic while losing myself in the story. As I read The Memoir of the Minotaur, that critical voice was very quiet; I am not exaggerating when I say the prose is so nearly flawless that we may as well call it perfect. There is not one phrase that has not been carefully selected and evaluated. Shachtman is a word-master.—Five-star Reedsy review

Praise for Tom Shachtman’s Echoes, or The Insistence of MemoryEchoes or, The Insistence of Memory a novel by Tom Shachtman shows ancient gold figure with echoes of the image fading on a background of solid blue.

“Ell’s own searching identity merges with that of her rediscovered Warrior Princess as the novel moves beyond its characters to explore how our notions of history and memory are comprised of an infinity of fragments that interrelate in  many ways.”—Kenneth Knoespel, poet and professor emeritus in history and literature, Georgia Tech

Author Tom Shachtman smiling with a button down shirt, glasses and a crown of white hair.Tom Shachtman has published forty books, most recently Echoes, or The Insistence of Memory, and The Memoir of the Minotaur. His histories include The Day America Crashed, Skyscraper Dreams, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold, and The Founding Fortunes; his social analyses, Rumspringa and The Inarticulate Society; the classic coffee table book, The Most Beautiful Villages of New England; and an eclectic trilogy of short novels about sea lions, Beachmaster, Wavebender, and Driftwhistler. His award-winning documentaries have aired on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and BBC. He holds degrees in experimental psychology and in drama and has taught writing at NYU and lectured at Harvard, Georgia Tech, the Library of Congress, Stanford, and other institutions.

 

 

Echoes

Echoes or, The Insistence of Memory a novel by Tom Shachtman shows ancient gold figure with echoes of the image fading on a background of solid blue.

Echoes

Echoes or, The Insistence of Memory a novel by Tom Shachtman shows ancient gold figure with echoes of the image fading on a background of solid blue.or, The Insistence of Memory

a novel by Tom Shachtman

ISBN: 978-1-956440-49-2 paperback $22.95
ISBN: 978-1-956440-50-8 ebook $9.99
August 15, 2023

Ell, a millennial of European and Mexican heritage, has one humorous children’s book published, but her more serious writing projects are stalled, her boyfriend has dumped her, and she is deeply frightened by a recurring dream. To solve her problems, she delves into family mysteries—Civil War-era slaveholding, madness, and theft of artifacts. The key to all, previously unknown to Ell but remarkable, is a female Confederate warrior ancestor whose nightmare echoes her own. By tracing both of their dreams to ancient times, and by using insights from modern genetic theory, Ell solves the mysteries and enables herself to move forward.

What people are saying about Echoes or, The Insistence of Memory:

“Ell’s own searching identity merges with that of her rediscovered Warrior Princess as the novel moves beyond its characters to explore how our notions of history and memory are comprised of an infinity of fragments that interrelate in  many ways.”—Kenneth Knoespel, poet and professor emeritus in history and literature, Georgia Tech

author Tom Shachtman and his book Echoes, Or the Insistence of Memory
Click image to read the interview.

Author Tom Shachtman, with a crown of white hair around a tanned face. The photo is black and white, and he wears a button-down shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. He has a cheeky smile.Tom Shachtman has published forty books, most recently The Memoir of the Minotaur (Madville Publishing, 2020). His histories include The Day America Crashed, Skyscraper Dreams, Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold, and The Founding Fortunes; his social analyses, Rumspringa and The Inarticulate Society; non-fiction children’s books such as Growing Up Masai; and an eclectic trilogy of short novels about sea lions, Beachmaster, Wavebender, and Driftwhistler. His award-winning documentaries have aired on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and BBC. He holds degrees in experimental psychology and in drama and has taught writing at NYU and lectured at Harvard, Georgia Tech, the Library of Congress, Stanford, and other institutions.

 

Reviews: Memoir of the Minotaur

The Memoir of the Minotaur by Tom Scachtman Book Cover

Recommended by US Review of Books

The Memoir of the Minotaur
by Tom Shachtman
Madville Publishing
book review by Kate Robinson
“In your next incarnation, each of you must resolve to make yourself the sovereign of your own labyrinth of joy and pain, and to set as your task the recognition of and empathy with the labyrinths of others.”

Horror marries philosophical hilarity in this spin-off of the bawdy Greek myth of the minotaur. He is born of an engineered union between a white bull and Queen Pasiphaë—wife of King Minos of Crete—whose unnatural desire in this version thrusts her to a tragic end when she is slain by birthing the horned infant. As a side note, Pasiphaë is assisted in her bestial endeavor by Daedulus the architect, best known as the father of Icarus and creator of the labyrinth where Minos banishes Asterion, the minotaur. Eventually slain by Theseus, who is aided in navigating the maze by Minos’ daughter and the monster’s half-sister, Ariadne, Shachtman’s minotaur then shares his tale with an audience of fifty centuries in Hades, waxing poetic with philosophical musings.

The author’s significant experience as playwright, historian, and author of a book about serial killers serves him well in this appalling but entertaining tale. Shachtman adeptly distills the original rendering into brilliant twenty-first-century prose and characterizations, decipherable by the standards of both literary and trade fiction audiences. The contemporary slant brings these grisly aspects to life in sharp focus with minute detail, as is often customary in modern storytelling and filmmaking. Readers will also find that the illustrious but tragic minotaur engages in prodigious quantities of graphic sex and cannibalism with the sacrificial humans dispatched by Minos to the labyrinth, where both they and the monster are forever trapped. The cautionary tale explores the complexities of attachment, lust, deceit, power, violence, and the various types of suffering caused by these conditions. However, it does so in a straightforward, ribald fashion that makes the tragic subject matter more palatable and the minotaur’s characterization more uniquely human.

RECOMMENDED by the US Review

A 9 out of 10! for Tom Shachtman’s
The Memoir of the Minotaur

Tom Shachtman’s Memoir of the Minotaur is one of the most intriguing books I’ve read in a long time. It’s pretty violent – as gods and monsters in ancient times are wont to be – but it’s also pretty funny. One can’t help but empathize and find oneself rooting for the poor old Minotaur who was really not given much choice but to play the monster everyone wanted him to be. You get the impression he would much rather have been left to frolic in a field but just shrugged and made the best of it. It was a thoroughly engrossing romp from start to finish, with a healthy dollop of mythology and ancient history thrown in!

Helen Seslowsky
Oblong Books & Music
Millerton, New York

A Five Star Review of

The Memoir of the Minotaur
by Tom Sachtman

Must read ???? ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

Tom Shachtman is a word-master; if you are a fan of Neil Gaiman or Salman Rushdie, you don’t want to miss this book.

SYNOPSIS

The Memoir of the Minotaur, a novel by Tom Sachtman

The Memoir of the Minotaur is the posthumous confessions of the half-man, half-bull of Crete as offered to an audience of recently-deceased, 21st century fellow souls in Hades’ domain. It shares ts form with other popular retellings of the monster narrative such as John Gardner’s Grendel, and the narrative voice has likenesses to the exuberance, bawdiness and blasphemy of Salman Rushdie and John Barth. It deals with themes of power, violence, sexuality and the role of storytelling, yet its most endearing quality is in presenting the hilarity and absurdity of our classical values interacting with our animalistic cores. The Memoir of the Minotaur is for readers unafraid of a rollicking good tale involving anatomically-complex beings, unforgivable puns, the champion serial killer of all times, scantily-clad Greek maidens and youths, articulate tyrants, and feminist proto-history leavened with theological impertinence.

Reviewer Comments

Seldom have I written a review in which I can quiet the voice of the critic while losing myself in the story. As I read The Memoir of the Minotaur, that critical voice was very quiet; I am not exaggerating when I say the prose is so nearly flawless that we may as well call it perfect.

The book is exactly as described in the title; Asterion, otherwise known as The Minotaur, is the monster that lived in the center of the Labyrinth of Greek mythology. The Minotaur speaks to us directly, in first person. His language shifts from classical to modern, with humor and 21st-century slang thrown in to surprise the reader and to remind us that Asterion has been living (well – not living, exactly) in Hades for fifty centuries, and is now meeting us in our own time.

In contrast to the labyrinth, which is, by nature, hard to navigate, this memoir is a straight line from birth to death and beyond. This is an interesting choice and it is appreciated, as this reviewer is not an expert in ancient myth. A meandering storyline would likely have confused me. The Minotaur lives a life in which his only diversions are eating (a lot of people) and sex (with a lot of people). Mr. Shachtman has depicted both pastimes unapologetically and with a matter-of-fact tone that’s perfect in the context of this story.

As I read the book I wondered what my experience would have been had I already been well-versed in Greek Mythology. I did finally give in to my curiosity by googling the Minotaur and his fate when I was nearly done with the book. I wish I hadn’t, and I don’t recommend researching the characters or events of the Labyrinth until you’ve finished the book. This author’s creative medium is clearly the written word, and there is not one phrase that has not been carefully selected and evaluated. The question/answer section after the end of the story feels staged as a way to allow some bragging, but Shachtman has a right to brag. This is a work of art and earns an unequivocal five stars. If you enjoyed Madeline Miller’s Circe or anything by Neil Gaiman you will not want to miss this book.

REVIEWED BY Catherine Beeman

I am a reader with ten years of bookselling experience who is passionate about sharing my love of books with others. My goal is to be direct and relatable, with hopefully a little humor thrown in.

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London Book Fair 2024

t was 1950’s house wife day. At our booth at the London book fair. Thanks to H.A Stories Lucid house press Madville publishing Micheal Nelson Brandy Miller Jennae Elle Beaugard R.L Merril Abeni Celeste And so many other authors

Six Madville Books went to the London Book Fair

Our friends, Jade and Wilnona, the “And I Thought Ladies,” took six or our recent titles to the London Book Fair this year. These are some of the pictures they sent back. We expect a few more, so check back! We wish we could have joined them. It looks like they had a really great time in our tiny 2 meter by 2 meter booth.

Here is an article we just read that does a great job of describing the experience of the London book Fair. That NYT Piece about LBF??

Madville books on display