A Pie & Chai Library
By Steve Watkins
Editor’s Note: Many contributors to Pie & Chai have published books or have new books coming. We wanted to feature them in the last issue of the magazine (for now) should readers want to check out more of their work. We’ve also included links to these contributors’ stories and essays that have appeared over the past two years in Pie & Chai.
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MARY BATTEN
BOOKS
Together: Nature’s Amazing Partnerships (independently published)
Over millennia, different species of organisms have coevolved, in many cases developing such tight fits that one could not survive without the other. They are perfect partners.
A Matter of Breeding: Race & Racism in Old School Southern Stories
(independently published)
A collection of stories set in the rural South during the 1940x and ’50s when racial segregation was the law of the land, governing relationships between Blacks and whites from birth to death.
Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean (Peachtree)
Life is tenacious, taking up residence in the most extreme environments on Earth. Deep ocean hydrothermal vents are extreme environments where water laden with toxic chemicals and hot enough to melt lead gushes from the seafloor. Yet organisms called extremophiles have adapted to life in this place where no one expected life could exist.
Life in a Frozen World: Wildlife of Antarctica (Peachtree)
A look at animals that have adapted to life in the ice, on the ice, and under the ice. Climate change is having an alarming impact on this frozen continent on the bottom of the Earth.
Aliens from Earth: When Animals and Plants Invade Other Ecosystems (Peachtree)
Invasive species travel the globe in the same way people do. Some alien species cause no problems, but many, such as gypsy moths and zebra mussels, have destructive effects when introduced into an ecosystem where they have no predators. Some aliens were introduced deliberately, but others entered by accident.
Baby Orca (Penguin Random House)
The story of a baby orca’s life from birth to the time she is able to hunt with other members of her family, or pod.
Hungry Plants (Penguin Random House)
A bug’s-eye view into the strange and fascinating world of carnivorous plants such as the Venus flytrap.
Wild Cats (Penguin Random House)
Wild cats are beautiful but deadly: lions, cheetahs, tigers–this book takes readers into the wild.
Spit: What’s Cool about Drool (Firefly Books)
Drool is one of the most amazing fluids in the body. It keeps your mouth moist, begins digesting food the minute you take a bite, keeps your teeth from wearing away, and keeps your tongue from choking you to death. Other animals also rely on spit in different ways. Anything with a mouth needs saliva to keep functioning.
FOR PIE & CHAI
“Off Our Rockers,” Sept. 1, 2023
“Confessions of an Oak Tree,” Dec. 1, 2023
“Burying Teeny Tiny,” April 1, 2024
“A Cure for What Ails You.” July 1, 2024
BIO
Mary Batten is a writer for television, film, and publishing. She is the author of 18 nature/science books for children and adults. Her many projects have taken Mary into tropical rainforests, astronomical observatories, and scientific laboratories. She was nominated for an Emmy for her scriptwriting on the Children’s Television Workshop series 3-2-1 CONTACT. In 2020, she created a book series, Life in the Extreme. The first book in that series is Life in a Frozen World: Wildlife of Antarctica (Peachtree 2020). The second book, Life in Hot Water: Wildlife at the Bottom of the Ocean, came out in 2022 and was selected by the National Science Teaching Association for its list of Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12. Her author website is www.marybatten.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.
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JIM HALL
BOOKS
Condemned for Love in Old Virginia: The Lynching of Arthur Jordan (History Press, 2023)
Condemned for Love tells the true story of the romance of Arthur Jordan and Elvira Corder, unremarkable in another time and place, but doomed in 1880 Virginia. The story is one of temptation and loss, of love pursued in a time of hate, of concealment and disastrous disclosure. It raises questions about family, honor, and law in post-Reconstruction Virginia. It describes a conflict between genders and generations and illustrates the casual dehumanization of the other. Most importantly, it highlights the practice of lynching and the evil of racism, issues that are still with us.
The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia: Seeking Truth at Rattlesnake Mountain (History Press, 2016)
The Last Lynching tells the true story of Henry and Mamie Baxley, a white couple, who were attacked in the middle of the night in their bedroom by Shedrick Thompson, a Black man who worked for them. The book pieces together what happened that night in 1932 and weeks later when Thompson’s body was found hanging from a tree a few miles away on Rattlesnake Mountain in Fauquier County. It contradicts the official version of Thompson’s death: a suicide. Instead, it describes a murder—Virginia’s last lynching.
FOR PIE & CHAI
“Why Lynching,” March 1, 2023
BIO
Jim Hall is a former reporter and editor at The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is a lifelong resident of Virginia with degrees from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Jim is also a former adjunct instructor at the University of Mary Washington and the author of two books on lynchings in Virginia. He is retired and lives in Fredericksburg. You can find his author webpage HERE.
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VERNON KEEVE
BOOKS
Southern Migrant Mixtape (originally published by Nomadic Press, rereleased by Black Lawrence Press, Winner of the 2019 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award)
Southern Migrant Mixtape explores the experiences and observations of a Black, queer man from Virginia who thought he was leaving racism and sexual intolerance behind in the regions where he initially experienced them. An emotive journey of growth, transformation of pain into armor, and the lessons that can be learned when people are true to themselves.
FOR PIE & CHAI
“Tennis Whites,” May 2023
“Mourning Glory,” July 2023
BIO
Vernon (Trey) Keeve is a lifelong learner and curator of learning spaces. He is a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University, researching literacies and pedagogies as resistance to settler colonialism. He is the author of Southern Migrant Mixtape, which received the PEN Oakland, Josephine Miles Award in 2019. You can find more of his work HERE.
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SUSAN WALLER LEHMANN
BOOKS
Southern Lies & Homicides: Tales of Betrayal and Murder (Level Best Books. January 2025)
Visions of Ted Bundy (White Rhino Press, 2017)
Echoes from the Mind (White Rhino Press, 2017)
25 Ways to Drive Your Mom Crazy (White Rhino Press, 2017)
FOR PIE & CHAI
“The Elevator,” March 2024
“The End of Civility,” September 2024
“Kindred Spirits,” October 2024
BIO
Susan Waller Lehmann is a licensed private investigator, capital murder mitigation specialist, freelance journalist, and award-winning author of two true crime books. Her newest book, Southern Lies and Homicides: Tales of Betrayal and Murder, a collection of true stories and essays, is scheduled for publication in January 2025 from Level Tru Books, a division of Level Best Books. Susan lives in the western United States with her husband and two golden retrievers. You can find out more about her at www.whiterhinopress.com, and on Facebook under “Susan Lehmann” and “Susan Lehmann Investigations.” You can also read more of Susan’s work on her Substack, The Weight of Words.
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TRISH MacENULTY
BOOKS
Historical novels
Battle Annie (Prism Light Press, 2024)
The Whispering Women (Prism Light Press, 2022)
The Butterfly Cage (Prism Light Press, 2023)
The Burning Bride (Prism Light Press, 2023)
Secrets & Spies (Prism Light Press, 2023)
Memoirs
The Hummingbird Kiss (Serpent’s Tail Press, 2001, reprinted by Prism Light Press, 2023)
My Mother’s Requiem (The Feminist Press. 2011, reprinted by Prism Light Press, 2024)
YA Historical
Cinnamon Girl (Livingston Press, 2023)
Other
The Pink House (Serpent’s Tail Press, 2004, reprinted by 2024 by Prism Light Press, 2024)
The Lullaby Motel: Stories (Serpent’s Tail Press, 2003, reprinted by Prism Light Press, 2021)
FOR PIE & CHAI
“The Trump Supporter Who Peed on My Mattress,” February 2024
“At Long Last, Love,” December 2023
BIO
Trish (Pat) MacEnulty lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with her husband, Joe, and two chubby little animals. Her website is trishmacenulty.com. Follow her on Facebook at Trish MacEnulty, Writer.
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KEN McFARLAND
BOOKS
The Architecture of Warren County North Carolina, 1770s to 1860s (Warren County Historical Association, 2001)
FOR PIE & CHAI
“Oysters Cracker-Feller,” December 2022
“I Dream of Genealogy,” January 2023
“Tree of Heaven and Hell,” September 2023
“Low on the Hog,” December 2023
“A Ghost on the Old Victrola,” March 2023
“Confederates in My Attic,” June 2023
BIO
Ken McFarland, who reports for Pie & Chai from a small town in Vermont, was born in Martinsville, Virginia, and grew up in Durham, North Carolina.
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BUCKY McMAHON
BOOKS
Night Diver (Anhinga Press, 2006) A collection of adventure yarns and cartoons based on dreams. “Reading Night Diver is the literary equivalent of having sex for the first time: frightening, blissful, transcendent, addictive, bejeweled with flashpoints of experience never to be forgotten. For my money, Bucky McMahon is the greatest—also the most underappreciated, underrated and overlooked—adventure travel writer working today, and one of the best on the team in that long scrimmage of yesterdays. Think of the spawn of weird marriages—Sir Richard Burton and Barry Hannah; Twain and Krakauer—and you’ll begin to get a fix on McMahon, a master essayist and luminous spokesman for the ineffable metaphysical moment lurking at the vortex of knee-buckling danger and heart-stopping fun.”–Bob Shacochis
FOR PIE & CHAI
“Notes from Underground.” November 2022
“The Umgebung.” December 2022
“Moccasin Springs.” December 2023
“Sixth Grade.” February 2024
“The War at Home.” November 2024
BIO
Bucky McMahon writes, paints, and sculpts in Atlantic Beach, Florida. While studying Creative Writing with Jerome Stern and Janet Burroway at The Florida State University, he wrote a humor column, “Barmadillo,” for the Tallahassee Democrat. As a contributing editor for Esquire, and a correspondent for Outside Magazine, he reported from many exotic and tragic locales around the world. His feature stories have been anthologized in the Best American Writing series, for sports (twice) and travel.
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JOHN MORSE
BOOKS
Gun (Star Dog Studio 2016)
Nothing interests a killer quite like killing. Everything else? Meh. In a sordid, sorry journey of woe and destruction, a gun joyfully narrates a disturbing tale of people and places encountered on travels around America. A Rick Steves travelogue it’s not. Like most misanthropes, the gun views the world with almost blinding cynicism, though it’s at least able to find delight in the occasional suicide or murder. It really is the little things. Nonchalantly perched on the edge between life and death, the gun examines the human condition with the ease of someone with not so much to lose but as an eagerness to give till it hurts. Takers? Anyone?
Straw Men (Star Dog Studio 2015)
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—isolated, insular and cursed with a populace every bit as mean as its winters—may be the creepiest place in America. Topping the list of creep factors is the area’s near cultish devotion to the decorative scarecrows that each fall adorn virtually every front yard and porch across the U.P. So when the straw men begin disappearing in one small town, it’s considered close to sacrilegious. Despite the determination of locals, slippery maneuvering keeps the two most likely suspects just out of blame’s reach. Are the events the antics of pranksters, or could there be something much more frightening at work?
’Toño (Star Dog Studio 2014)
Cocky and charming, a New York hustler happily burning through his youth tells how his world turns upside down when he falls into the orbit of ’Toño, a muscular wall of sexual heat operating an obscenely lucrative call boy ring on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. His sordid tale of love, lust and deep dysfunction reveals the disturbing science behind ’Toño’s business, which he soon realizes is a sticky web of money and violence ensnaring him as both perpetrator and victim. Set against the surreal backdrop of 9/11 and its aftermath, he chronicles his headlong dive into the debauchery and seemingly certain doom with wit, brilliance, and an unsettling insouciance. As he haplessly admits, “Desire is addiction, and I was hooked.” Spoiler alert: Don’t expect a visit to Betty Ford.
FOR PIE & CHAI
“Kiss ‘A’ as in ‘Apple’ Goodbye: The All New and Completely Updated Guide to Code Words for the International Spelling Alphabet,” July 2023
BIO
Everything you’ll want to know, and more, you’ll find at John’s artist website, Star Dog Studio. Well worth the trip.
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JAMES NOLL
BOOKS
(All published by and available at Silverhammer Studios)
The Wounded, The Sick, & The Dead
The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake
Captain Commander and the Space Spiders… FROM SPACE!
Forthcoming
Blood & Gold (sequel to The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake—early 2025)
The Devil’s Man (late 2025)
FOR PIE & CHAI
“A Modest Proposal,” November 2022
“Papa Don’t Preach,” February 2023
“Two More Things Destroying the Souls of the Teachers of America: Thing 1,” December 2022
“Two More Things Destroying the Souls of the Teachers of America: Thing 2,” January 2023
“Captain Commander and the space spiders… FROM SPACE!,” October 2023
“Percussed,” September 2024
BIO
James Noll has worked as a sandwich maker, a yogurt dispenser, a day care provider, a video store clerk, a day care provider (again), a summer camp counselor, a waiter, a prep cook, a sandwich maker (again), a line cook, a security guard, a line cook (again), a bartender, a librarian, and a teacher. Somewhere in there he played drums in punk rock bands, recorded several albums, and wrote dozens of short stories and a handful of horror, sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic novels, including Raleigh’s Prep, Tracker’s Travail, Topher’s Ton, The Hive, The Rabbit, The Jaguar & The Snake, and Mungwort. You can check him out online at silverhammer.studio.
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STEVE RABSON
BOOKS
Training and Deployment of America’s Nuclear Cold Warriors: Keepers of Armageddon (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, U.K., 2022), is a first-person account with fellow veterans stationed at an Army nuclear weapons base in Okinawa, Japan, during the 1960s.
Okinawa: Two Postwar Novellas, Institute of East Asian Studies Publications, University of California, Berkeley, 1989, reprinted 1996. Translations of one novella about a father seeking justice for his daughter raped by an American soldier in Okinawa under U.S. military occupation (1945-1972); and another about a teenage boy growing up in a bar/brothel for G.I.s run by his parents at their home during the early years of widespread poverty in U.S.-occupied Okinawa.
Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly: Changing Views of War in Modern Japanese Poetry (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1998). Translations of poetry from the late 19th and 20th centuries with historical background and literary criticism, including comparisons with the poetry of Western writers who also changed their views.
Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature from Okinawa, Co-edited with Michael Molasky (University of Hawaii Press, 2000). Translations of fiction and poetry including works depicting life under U.S. military occupation and amid the grossly disproportionate American military presence that continues in Okinawa to this day.
The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). History and first-person accounts of migrants from Okinawa to “mainland” Japan who encountered prejudice and discrimination as an ethnic minority.
Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa, Co-edited with Davinder Bhowmik (University of Hawaii Press, 2016). Translations of fiction and poetry.
Okinawa’s G.I. Brides: Their Lives in America, by Etsuko Takushi Crissey, translated from her book published in Japanese, 2000 (University of Hawaii Press, 2017). Personal accounts of their widely varying experiences in historical context including statistics on marriages, divorces, education, and employment.
FOR PIE & CHAI
“Southern Exposure,” October 2024
“Red Scared,” November 2024
BIO
Steve Rabson moved from Providence, Rhode Island, to Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 2011 after retiring from 30 years teaching at Brown University. He now teaches part time at the University of Mary Washington, and he continues to write books and articles about Japan and translations of Japanese literature. You can find more of his work HERE.
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REBECCA SIEGEL
BOOKS
Loch Ness Uncovered: Media, Misinformation, and the Greatest Monster Hoax of All Time (Astra Young Readers 2024)
An extensively researched, myth-busting middle grade account of the world’s most famous monster hoax—the Loch Ness Monster—and a cautionary tale of the dangers of misinformation.
To Fly Among the Stars: The Hidden Story of the Fight for Women Astronauts (Scholastic 2020)
This middle grade book provides a searing look at the birth of America’s space program, and the men and women aviators who set its course.
The United States Book (Welbeck 2024)
Go on a fact-packed adventure around the United States of America, and discover the wonder and beauty of the “Land of the Free.” Meet the presidents, find out what the American flag represents, walk along star-studded Broadway, discover the sports that Americans love, the food they eat, the languages they speak, the incredible natural wonders, all 50 states and–most importantly–the amazing people who call this country home.
Mayflower: The Ship that Started a Nation (Words & Pictures 2020)
This fact-packed children’s book marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s voyage, with edge-to-edge illustrated scenes, interspersed with detailed maps, inventories, and cutaways, along with engaging, narrative text to make this a history book to treasure and pore over time and again.
Wrecked! A Deep Dive into the World’s Most Famous Shipwrecks (Welbeck 2025)
From spacecraft and fighter planes to exploration vessels, merchant ships, and cruise liners, discover the gripping stories of conflict and courage behind some of the world’s most iconic shipwrecks.
How the Ghost Army Hoodwinked Hitler (Peachtree TBD)
This middle grade title takes readers into one of history’s most daring—and audacious—wartime programs.
FOR PIE & CHAI
“If They Want a Monster So Badly…” April 2024
BIO
Rebecca Siegel has worked in children’s publishing for 17 years, first as an editor and then as an author. Three of her books have received starred reviews in Booklist, including To Fly Among the Stars (Scholastic 2020), which was also named a Mighty Girl’s Book of the Year, and one of the National Science Teaching Association’s Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students. Another recent title, Mayflower (Quarto 2020), was called “unreservedly recommended” by the Midwest Book Review, and was named a 2021 EUREKA! Children’s Honor Book. In addition to books, Rebecca also occasionally publishes essays on sites including Huffington Post and Scary Mommy. You can find out more about her on her author website and on TikTok.
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ALISON ZAK
BOOKS
Wild Asana: Animals, Yoga, and Connecting Our Practice with the Natural World (North Atlantic Books 2023)
From Downward Dog to Cobra, Wild Asana invites you into an embodied exploration of the animals that inspire familiar yoga poses. Drawing on wildlife science, anthropology, Hindu mythology, Eastern philosophy, and personal stories, this insightful guide by environmental educator and yoga instructor Alison Zak explores the connections among our bodies, our minds, and the animals that inspire our practice.
FOR PIE & CHAI
“All Creatures Great and Small,” September 2023
“Wild Asana,” May 2023
BIO
Alison Zak is an animal, author, yoga teacher, anthropologist, and executive director of the Human-Beaver Coexistence Fund. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, daughter, and a few beloved beyond-human beings. Her author website is https://alisonzak.com/, and you can also see more of Alison’s work on Instagram, @animal_asana, and on her Substack, https://alisonzak.substack.com/.
