Michael Cooney

Kathleen Mazzetti has transferred to a small Catholic high school in the North Bronx to escape years of harassment from an older boy at Teddy Roosevelt High. It is the 1970s and neither the courts nor the police will protect her from John Rovazzi. At St. Finbarr's, she keeps her head down, eager to avoid attention. Her classmate Paul Hanlon is sympathetic to the shy newcomer but busy with his own life of sports and friends. Then, thanks to a well-meaning priest, he learns that Rovazzi has followed Kathleen to her new school and threatened not only her but also her family. When it becomes clear that her life is truly in danger, Kathleen and Paul come up with a risky plan to stop the stalker once and for all, a plan that involves a carefully written script, the Rocky Horror Picture Show and the New York City subway system.

This is the second collection of stories by Michael Cooney set in a mythical town inspired by the history and people of the factory towns that flourished in the Mohawk Valley. An earlier set of stories, entitled Asteronga, New York, appeared in 2013 and focused on a boy growing to adulthood in the early 1960s. This collection draws on a wider range of history and legend. The founding family of Mormonism is at the center of

These new tales from Michael Cooney range far across space and time. In the title story, an archaeologist 30,000 years in the future journeys from Mexico to the ruined city of New York in pursuit of a world that vanished beneath the ice. In "Sole Surviving Victim" a present day drive-by shooting leads to a journey back into a time of slavery and arbitrary execution. And only a few years from now, a retired couple adjusts to an overheated world where climate denial is official policy, but cannot stop worrying about their rebellious grandson. A fugitive from a new Christian dictatorship only stops running when he learns to speak in tongues. In a brutal post-apocalyptic world a war chief tells the tale of his conquests to his own assassin. An ancient Hopi myth unlocks the only door to an escape from a dying world. An anthropologist addicted to old-fashioned methods visits the planet Drimmold, eager to prove that a band of monkeys is fully human despite the lack of fire, tools and violence. A space traveler named Jack Murphy arrives at another planet and is worshiped as a god but then he disappears. And a brave young woman tries desperately to save a doomed human colony in which all technology is based on the control of giant sea creatures.

This novel is based upon actual events of the 1640s in and near the Dutch village of Rensselaerswijck in the upper Hudson River Valley. Now known as Albany NY, the settlement was the center of the lucrative Dutch fur trade with the neighboring Mohican and Mohawk tribes, even as they warred with each other for control of that trade. Among the historical figures encountered are Harmen and Jelisje van den Bogaert, Isaac Jogues, Arent van Corlear, Johannes Megapolensis, and Adriaen van der Donck. The story is told by a young Mohican boy in a time when European diseases and war are creating chaos in the ancient cultures of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. Using his intelligence and imagination, he finds acceptance among the Mohawks and a new home with the family of the adventurous and bisexual Harmen van den Bogaert. When Harmen faces execution for a crime the Dutch term unspeakable, Matouac and a young slave girl named Catharina set out to save their friend.

"In the Forest of Tombolo" is inspired by the experiences of an American soldier during the closing days of World War II. By the time John Squillace fell in love with Michelina Colonna, he had deserted from the American army and ended up with a group of renegades and deserters inhabiting a tract of wasteland near Pisa. When the outlaw camp in the forest of Tombolo was broken up, John was assigned to guard the American poet Ezra Pound, who had spent the war making broadcasts for Mussolini. Before he can be reunited with his love, John is sent to the Pacific. When he finds her again after many years, Michelina reveals the great sorrow of her life. Desperate to save her infant son from an abusive father, she had abandoned the baby years earlier in New York. Returning together to America, they search in vain for the boy. A common interest in poetry leads them to a friendship with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and only then do they meet her son, a protege of Allen's and a poet himself. Terrified that the young Gregory Corso will hate her what she has done, she will not tell him that she is his mother.

The Great Monroe High School Fire is based upon events surrounding the unsolved arson fire that did major damage to James Monroe High School in the South Bronx over thirty years ago. The characters are inspired by the young people who learned how to survive in that era of gangs, drugs, and failing educational schools. The narrator, Joey Sanchez, lives in the worlds of both his Italian mother and his absent Puerto Rican father and is influenced by very different people. There is his impoverished mother whom he cannot bear to disappoint. And there is his closest friend Sapo who joins him in a frenzy of graffiti writing while they are still at Junior High 22, and who later nearly gets both of them killed in a drug deal gone wrong.

These eleven linked stories trace the life of a boy growing to adulthood in a small Mohawk Valley factory town in the mid twentieth century. The central character tells of a special cemetery kept by the undertaker

This novel tells the story of the Little Falls textile strike of 1912 from the perspective of one of its leading participants, M. Helen Schloss. She was a public health nurse and an active socialist before she came to Little Falls, New York at the invitation of a group of wealthy women. When workers at the Phoenix and Gilbert textile mills struck against wage cuts in October, she was ready to support them in every way she could. Over the next three months, Little Falls was the national focus for the growing labor movement as Socialist Party and IWW activists from around the country joined the battle. But it was not the radical celebrities of the era who won the strike. It was the largely female, immigrant workers and the two women who led them: Helen Schloss and Matilda Rabinowitz. Also included is an excerpt from Matilda's unpublished memoir, courtesy of her granddaughter Robbin Legere Henderson. Matilda went on from Little Falls to lead strikes across the country and was an active writer until very late in life. Helen, who organized medical care at the great Paterson and Ludlow strikes, vanishes from history after she went to Russia in 1921.

In the winter of 1885 William Druse disappeared from his run-down farm near the tiny village of Jordanville, New York. It took a month for the suspicions of his neighbors to lead the local sheriff to arrest Druse

This novel is based on the true story of Hanyost Schuyler, whose role in saving the lives of hundreds of Americans besieged at Fort Stanwix in 1777 has long been forgotten. Hanyost does not care about nor understand the stories of fighting in faraway Boston or New York City. He is much more interested in learning the old ways of his Mohawk neighbors and spending time with the young warrior Onatah and his sister Ataentsic. But now that the Revolution is coming closer to the Mohawk Valley, everyone must choose a side. Will he follow his uncle Nicholas Herkimer, the newly appointed general of the rebel militia ? What of his neighbors, Joseph Brant, the war chief of the Mohawks, and his intriguing sister Molly? They have always been good friends to Hanyost, yet their loyalty to King George III is known to all.

Hanyost Schuyler does not understand the stories of fighting in faraway Boston or New York. He is much more interested in learning the old ways of his Mohawk neighbors and spending time with the young warrior Onatah and his sister Ataentsic. But in 1777 the Revolution is coming to the Mohawk Valley and everyone must choose a side. Will he follow his uncle Nicholas Herkimer, the newly appointed general of the rebel militia? What of Joseph Brant, war chief of the Mohawks, and his intriguing sister Molly? They have been good friends to Hanyost yet their loyalty to King George is known to all. And then there is the powerful memory of the old wanderer from the Carolinas who wiped away the darkness form Hanyost's eyes and brought him back to the daylight world. What would Black Jacob want him to do now?

The Kerwood brothers are not your everyday Tom, Dick and Harry. So when Tom Kerwood and his wife Linda nervously await Mrs Potter from the adoption agency, who's to assess them at home, it's not surprising that events get out of hand. Dick has returned from a French smuggling trip with brandy and cigarettes - and two Kosovan refugees. Meanwhile, hospital porter Harry has embarked on an ambitious plan (involving body parts) to get the price reduced on the house Tom and Linda want to buy. Hilarious mayhem ensues, as Tom must fabricate ever wilder explanations to placate Linda, Mrs Potter and a suspicious policeman. Seen to critical acclaim at London's Duke of York theatre in 2005, the Cooneys' smart, resourceful comedy starred the McGann brothers.

Eric has pocketed thousands of pounds through fraudulent DSS claims. When Norman (the lodger) opens the door to a DSS Inspector, deceptive mayhem follows. Meanwhile Linda (his wife) consults Dr Chapman regarding the discovery of her husband's lingerie (all part of his swindling activities)!