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Tom Connor’s Gift
(mad grief, mad love, and a crooked road home)

— a novel by David Allan Cates
Available October 15, 2014

A recently-widowed doctor, stunned by grief, retreats to a cabin on Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. Inside she has a puppy and a stack of letters from an old lover. Outside, there’s a bear. As she revisits her letters, we come to see, through Tom Connor’s eyes, the dusty, broken alleys of Central America during the war years. The two narratives taken together explore themes of life-long love, about what we can see only when we are ready to see, and how hope can grow in the darkest of places.

Montana Bookstore Readers

In coordination with three Montana bookstores, Bangtail Press is pleased to announce the release of our Treasure State readers, available for purchase only through the participating bookstores themselves. More than ninety-five celebrated Montana authors donated their fiction, poetry, and personal essays to An Elk River Books Reader: Livingston and Billings Area Writers, A Fact & Fiction Reader: Missoula Area Writers, and A Country Bookshelf Reader: Bozeman Area Writers. Taken as a whole, these three books can collectively be seen as a paean to the extraordinary state of Montana letters as well as a tribute to the essential role played by independent booksellers.

Montana: Then and Now

— by Aaron Parrett
Available April 1, 2014

When Montana Territory was established in 1864, it was a land of teepees and ramshackle cabins, of lawless vigilantes and miners scraping out meager livings. One hundred and fifty years later, the dramatic changes to the Treasure State are overshadowed only by the startling similarities. On the occasion of Montana’s 150th territorial anniversary, Aaron Parrett compares where we started with where we are today, and along the way shows us a Montana we never could have previously imagined.

Steering with my Knees

— by Paul Zarzyski
Available January 1, 2014

If you know poetry in the West, you know the work of Paul Zarzyski. You know the electricity running through his verse, his punch-line crescendos and what he’s called the pugilistic puissance of his musical lines. And if you’ve heard him perform, you know that some of his most popular poems are those that have a sense of humor, that take quite seriously the notion of drawing out a smile. For the first time, Paul Zarzyski’s most popular “lite” poems are collected together under one cover. From “Whale in my Wallet” to “Benny Reynolds,” “Tumbleweed Munchies” to “Long Sagebrush Drives,” nothing entertains and provokes, amuses and inspires, quite like the king of the poet lariati. In addition to a hand-picked selection of previously-published work, Steering with my Knees also includes more than thirty never-before-seen original poems.

Metroliner

— by Toby Thompson
Passages: Washington to New York
Available November 1

An essential companion to Riding the Rough String, his previous collection of personal essays and profiles, Metroliner explores the two poles of Toby Thompson’s life on the East Coast. For more than forty years, he has ridden the rails between Washington, DC and New York, capturing not only the sensibilities of these two cities but the tenor of his time as well. Metroliner represents a career’s worth of reportage from one of America’s most accomplished writers.

High and Inside

— by Russell Rowland

Pete Hurley is not the first person to have the idea that building his dream house in the country will bring him some kind of peace and happiness. But he may be the first to arrive in Montana with a World Series ring, a three-legged dog, and a thirst for self-destruction.