Every Boy Should Have a Man (21 page)

“Allen has created a consummate tragicomedy of African American family secrets and sorrows, and of faith under duress and wide open to interpretation. Perfect timing and crackling dialogue, as well as heartrending pain balanced by uproarious predicaments, make for a shout-hallelujah tale of transgression and grace, a gospel of lusty and everlasting love.”
—Booklist

“
Jesus Boy
is one of those books that makes you sit up and go . . . WHAT? No novel should be this enthralling. With a mesmerizing style, Preston L. Allen offers sentences that you reread because of their sheer enchantment and sense of wonder they invoke . . . in magical prose that lights up the pages. This is a novel unlike any I’ve ever read and among the very best of the decade. What a joy to read a book you can truly call a contemporary classic.” —Ken Bruen, author of
Sanctuary and The Guards

“Ten More Titles to Read Now: Think African American Romeo and Juliet, as played out in a devout Christian community.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine

“This latest from Allen is hilarious . . . Scenes of preaching and singing in the church convey the boisterous fervor of African American gospel music and religious practice in a soulful, vibrant style . . . This is a very enjoyable and well-done novel; highly recommended."
—Library Journal

“A riveting story of star-crossed love,
Jesus Boy
plumbs the hypocrisies and impossible stringencies of evangelical America with humor and no small amount of pathos. This novel is definitely a guilty pleasure.” —Cristina García, author of
Dreaming in Cuban

Also by Preston L. Allen
and available from Akashic Books,
 at bookstores, and from e-book vendors everywhere.

___________________

All or Nothing

“As with Frederick and Steven Barthelme’s disarming gambling memoir,
Double Down,
the chief virtue of
All or Nothing
is its facility in enlightening nonbelievers, showing how this addiction follows recognizable patterns of rush and crash, but with a twist—the buzz is in the process, not the result . . . As a cartographer of autodegradation, Allen takes his place on a continuum that begins, perhaps, with Dostoyevsky’s
Gambler,
courses through Malcolm Lowry’s
Under the Volcano,
William S. Burroughs’s
Junky,
the collected works of Charles Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr., and persists in countless novels and (occasionally fabricated) memoirs of our puritanical, therapized present. Like Dostoyevsky, Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieu—the chained (mis)fortunes of the players, their vanities and grotesqueries, their quasi-philosophical ruminations on chance. Like Burroughs, he is a dispassionate chronicler of the addict’s daily ritual, neither glorifying nor vilifying the matter at hand.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Dark and insightful . . . The well-written novel takes the reader on a chaotic ride as . . . Allen reveals how addiction annihilates its victims and shows that winning isn’t always so different from losing.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A gambler’s hands and heart perpetually tremble in this raw story of addiction. ‘We gamble to gamble. We play to play. We don’t play to win.’ Right there, P, desperado narrator of this crash-’n’-burn novella, sums up the madness . . . Allen’s brilliant at conveying the hothouse atmosphere of hell-bent gaming. Fun time in the Inferno.”
—Kirkus Reviews

PRESTON L. ALLEN
is a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and a winner of the Sonja H. Stone Prize in Fiction for his collection of stories
Churchboys and Other Sinners.
His work has appeared in various literary anthologies and journals including
Las Vegas Noir, Miami Noir,
the
Seattle Review, 1111, Drum Voices,
and
Black Renaissance Noire.
His novels
All or Nothing
and
Jesus Boy
have received rave reviews from
O, the Oprah Magazine, Library Journal, Feminist Review,
and the
New York Times.
He teaches writing in South Florida.

About Akashic Books

___________________

Thank you for purchasing this Akashic Books e-book.

Sign up to our email list to receive special offers, access to free e-book excerpts, and vendor-wide digital sales information. Follow
this link
to join our list, or browse online to wwww.akashicbooks.com. Free e-book excerpts are available for multiple platforms at
www.akashicbooks.com/subject/digits-ebooks/

___________________

Akashic Books is an award-winning independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers. Akashic Books hosts additional imprints, including the Akashic Noir Series, the Akashic Drug Chronicles Series, the Akashic Urban Surreal Series, Punk Planet Books, Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series, Open Lens, Chris Abani's Black Goat Poetry Series, and AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series.

Our books are available from our website and at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. 

"As many in publishing struggle to find ways to improve on an increasingly outdated business model, independents such as Akashic—which are more nimble and less risk-averse than major publishing houses—are innovators to watch." —
Los Angeles Times

"It's heartening that even as the dinosaurs of publishing are lurching toward extinction, nimble independent publishers like Akashic are producing high-quality, innovative content."
—Portland Mercury

"Akashic fits in that very slight category of publishers, growing slimmer every day, whose colophon is a recommendation on its own."
—Toronto Star

"Akashic is one of the most impressive of the newer small presses, in part because of editing and production values that rival and perhaps surpass the big houses. We're grateful to them . . ."
—Denver Post

"Akashic serves as a prime example of the diversity that marks the small press movement."
—Mystery Scene

"What's great about Akashic is its sense of adventure and its smart eclecticism . . . Anything carrying the logo comes with the guarantee that it's worth checking out."
—Hartford Courant

"An excellent small press."
—In These Times

"[Akashic] fully conveys the charms and possibilities of small press publishing . . . placing a priority on the quality of the books, rather than the possible marketing opportunities they offer."
—Poets & Writers

"Akashic is the brainchild of the charismatic Johnny Temple, the bassist of the rock group Girls Against Boys. Temple set up Akashic to give attention to literary works that are ignored, as well as to prove that publishers don't have to exploit their writers." —
IUniverse.com

E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.akashicbooks.com