Korza Books is an independent trade publisher headquartered in Portland, Oregon. We are community oriented, defiantly readable and happy to meet you.
RELEASES
The Last Grand Tour By Michael N. McGregor
American tour guide Joe Newhouse wants nothing more than to reach Venice. Since moving to Munich after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he’s watched his business fail, his wife leave him, and his love for Europe diminish. Now he faces one last ten-day tour with a surly group that doesn’t want to be there. As he leads them through the mythic lands of Europe’s Romantic past, he grows increasingly disturbed by their stories of earlier lives, puzzled by their desire to be with a man who doesn’t arrive, and entangled in an illicit affair that promises to either save him or plunge his tour—and his life—into madness.
Soaked in the Romantic atmosphere and dark deeds of old Europe—as well as the freedoms and hopes of a new era—The Last Grand Tour takes us on a perilous journey through Hitler’s Berchtesgaden, Mozart’s Salzburg, and Mad King Ludwig’s Bavarian fantasyland before reaching its stunning climax in the murky waters of Venice. Along the way, it explores the often-shifting lines between fidelity and freedom, illusion and reality, regret and desire.
The Last Grand Tour releases 1.28.25!
Preorder your copy from Powell’s Books, from Bookshop.org or wherever else print books are sold and distributed by Ingram. Preorder the ebook Edition from Amazon or other online retailers.
Booksellers: contact the publisher directly at KorzaBooks(at)gmail.com for wholesale discounts and orders.
The Novel Killings By Kate Shelton
True crime podcaster and self-published author, Ana Adams, struggles to reach the success her co-host sister Bex believes they’re both capable of, finding herself stuck in a comfortable (if dreary) loop of isolation, social media, medication, and instability. But when an email arrives detailing a grisly murder that follows the plotline of Ana’s first book, she’s thrust into the spotlight. Sudden fame, overnight bestsellers, and a national profile are every author’s dream but that soon turns to nightmare when the killer strikes again. And again. While Bex and Ana race to catch the murderer, they must navigate their newfound celebrity, unwanted attention from obsessed fans, and the suspicions of the FBI.
With the bodies and the scrutiny starting to pile up, Ana knows she must plot another story to catch the killer and clear her name. Instead, she discovers unexpected connections, buried secrets, and the reality that true crime attracts true criminals.
The Novel Killings publishes on June 25, 2024!
Order it from Bookshop.Org, Powell’s Books or wherever else print books are sold. The ebook edition is an Amazon Kindle exclusive. Distributed by Ingram.
Altogether Different by Brianna Wheeler
It all started with a Peaches and Cream Barbie
When Brianna Wheeler was a child, she rejected her grandmother’s birthday gift of a Black barbie, and in doing so, rejected her own biracial identity.
After her grandmother’s death more than 30 years later, Brianna Wheeler inherited shares of a family trust, as well as her family matriarch’s extensive genealogy research. While Brianna organized her grandmother’s work, other inheritors fought amongst themselves to fortify their own inheritances. Brianna’s hybrid illustrated memoir braids her grandmothers research into a timeline that travels between the battles that preceded the civil war, and her own family’s battles with legacy, entitlement, and heritage.
Through learning about the heroic role played by her ancestor Dangerfield Newby—who fought alongside John Brown at Harpers Ferry in a bid to both end slavery and rescue his enslaved wife— Brianna confronts her own identity, heritage and family conflicts from a changed perspective.
A unique combination of creative nonfiction, personal memoir, historical research and original illustration, Altogether Different is available from Korza Books on October 17, 2023
How To Forget Almost Everything by Joshua James Amberson
When 15-year-old Elly Fox figures out his mom is losing her memory, everything in his life changes. Failing to snap her out of denial, he goes on a quest, hoping to find the cause of her memory loss before it’s too late. Along the way he falls under the influence of a charismatic memory guru and risks losing his best friend, all while navigating his gender identity, his suddenly shifting moral compass, and his sophomore year of high school.
Set in Portland, Oregon during the late-2000s financial crisis, How to Forget Almost Everything is an introspective coming-of-age story and an off-kilter adventure populated by bus transfer slips, small-town diners, a secret concrete block, and a former child chess prodigy.
“Charming, poignant, and funny, ‘How to Forget Almost Everything’ is a wonderfully written coming-of-age tale that vibrates with truth.”
– Annie Hartnett, author of ‘Rabbit Cake’ and ‘Unlikely Animals.’
Booksellers: This title is available on ingram with ISBN 9781957024035
Poetry For People: Fifty Years of Writing by Dixie Lubin
A poetry collection that is the literal work of a lifetime, Dixie Lubin’s “Poetry For People” is available now. Bringing together over five decades of written material, Poetry For People is the first collection from Kansas poet Dixe Lubin. From the tumult of her Southern Baptist childhood, to a free-love 1960s young adulthood, through fifty years of marriage and raising three daughters in poverty, while touching countless lives as a teacher and artist, Dixie has engaged with it all through her unique artistic lens.
Her voice encompasses the scope of the human condition, invoking earthly lust, mystic meditation, bawdy humor and vivid grief, connecting deeply with everyone fortunate enough to encounter it. Out of a life shaped by love, loss, and a devotion to humanity and the planet itself, this book is the indelible result of the inimitable Dixie.
Booksellers: This title is available on Ingram with ISBN 9781957024004
Split Aces by M.L. Schepps
For fans of EC Comics, Stephen King and the Twilight Zone comes this noir-inflected psychological allegory. Jim Dougherty—former “gifted kid” now drifting middle-aged millennial—had given up on his dreams of achieving lasting literary success, settling into the slow decay of dealing blackjack in a tired old casino out in the Nevada badlands. But when the mysterious stranger shows up at the table with knowledge of a mystery Jim thought he’d buried back in boarding school, he’s forced out of his rut and into danger. Jim learns that the price of self-improvement can be deadly.
Available via print at Antiquated Future
Booksellers: This title is available on Ingram with ISBN 9781957024028
“They say hell is the gulf between who you could have been and who you ended up as. But for me? I’ve learned to reject that kind of binary thinking, that all or nothing striving. Success isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. Any minute spent worrying about “what might have been” is another minute that comes between you and “what still could be.”
From “Split Aces” by M.L. Schepps
Is It Just Me Or Are We Nailing This?: Essays On BoJack Horseman
Published by Antiquated Future, this Broken Pencil Award winning zine was the genesis for Korza Books. Editors Michael Schepps and Molly E. Simas, working alongside editor and publisher Joshua James Amberson and a wide range of contributing Portland writers and artists, put together a celebration and examination of the Netflix series BoJack Horseman. The anthology touches on everything from screwball anthologies, existential absurdity, intergenerational alcoholism and much more. Proceeds benefit the Black Resilience Fund and the National Lawyers Guild.
With words from: Joshua James Amberson, Timothy Day, Jessica Fonvergne, Lauren Hobson, Tessa Livingstone, M.L. Schepps, Jourdain Searles, and Molly E. Simas. Plus an interview with Leca from BoJack Hidden Jokes.
Illustrations from: Eileen Chavez, Ross Jackson, Naomi Marshall, and Liz Yerby. Cover and back cover art by Sarah Mirk.
“This swift moment, easily missed by the casual watcher, points to the cognitive dissonance of existing with modern industrial systems by performing its fallacy in real time: What if we’re monsters! Aha, never fear! Monstrousness is codified into the fabric of our very institutions! so don’t worry about it! We the audience, aware of yet numbed by our own monstrous world, feel a flicker of recognition. We laugh while seeing ourselves reflected.”
Molly E. Simas–”All Contact is Contact” from “Is It Just Me Or Are We Nailing This: Essays on BoJack Horseman
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