RAB Publishes The Provocateur's Payback, An International Erotic Thriller

Riverdale Avenue Books’ Publishes The Provocateur’s Payback, an Acclaimed International LGBT thriller

“A fantastic portrait of decadence filled with wit.” — Vanity Fair (Spanish edition)

RIVERDALE, NEW YORK, March 27, 2015  -- Riverdale Avenue Books is pleased to announce the publication of The Provocateur’s Payback by Paco Munoz-Botas under the its LGBT Magnus imprint.  Previously published in Spain, the international thriller received rave reviews in Europe.

The Provocateur’s Payback, an erotic thriller of international intrigue, introduces a trio of memorable characters: Curro, disillusioned playboy who’s left the club scene behind in search of a new life purpose after losing his beloved dog; Dima, handsome martial arts champion who’s fled from goons in the Russian Mafia; and Eugenia, elegant super-model with stunning green eyes whom the witless gossips of Madrid society have long pegged as Curro’s ideal consort.

The action opens on a warm spring afternoon, as Curro’s driving his convertible sports car, heading back to Madrid from a country house weekend. His world is turned upside down when he hears a desperate plea: “Hurry, please! Quickly! Get going, they want to kill me.” Before Curro can protest, Dima’s flopped in to the passenger seat. Abandoning caution, Curro agreeably floors the gas with the mysterious stranger next to him.

The action speeds along from Curro’s apartment, where Dima finds safe haven to recover from the stab wounds he suffered that fateful night; to Madrid’s Royal Opera House, where Russian thugs stalk Dima; to a posh Madrid night spot where Dima meets Eugenia, and an instant attraction sparks between them. Curro, with his keen sense of sexual chemistry, detects a special link between them, even as he hopes that Dima might save a spark for him.

Praise for The Provocateur’s Payback

 “The most delirious gay thriller in the history of [the] Spanish novel.”—Eñe Literary Magazine

“One of the season’s literary surprises.”—Shangay Magazine  

“A fascinating story filled with humor, violence, and eroticism.”—El Cultural Magazine

About the Author

Paco Muñoz-Botas is a Spanish writer born in Madrid in 1956. He studied journalism, enjoys international travel, collecting art and resides in Madrid and Málaga, Spain. This is his first novel.

Just Pubbed Award-Winning Debut Short Story Collection Blue Talk and Love by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Riverdale Avenue Books Publishes Award-Winning Debut Short

Story Collection

 Blue Talk and Love

by

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

“Blue Talk and Love’s voice, despite material that seems frankly

contemporary, is paradoxically lyrical, nearly Faulknerian."  --Rick Moody, judge for the American Short Fiction Short Story Contest

Riverdale, NY – March 20, 2015 – Innovative hybrid publisher Riverdale Avenue Books announces the publication of the award-wining short story collection Blue Talk and Love by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan in its Magnus imprint. The collection has already received praise from Rick Moody, Cheryl Clarke, Samuel R. Delany, Darryl Pinckney, LaShonda Katrice Barnett and Jewelle Gomez.

Blue Talk and Love tells the stories of girls and women of color navigating the moods and mazes of urban daily life. Set in various enclaves of New York City — including the middle-class Hamilton Heights section of Harlem, the black queer social world of the West Village, the Spanish-speaking borderland between Harlem and Washington Heights, and historic Tin Pan Alley — the collection uses magic realism, historical fiction, satire and more to highlight young black women's inner lives.

The storylines range widely: a big-bodied teenage girl from Harlem discovers her sexuality in the midst of racial tensions at her Upper East Side school; four young women from Newark, New Jersey, are charged with assaulting the man who threatens to rape them; a pair of conjoined black female twins born into slavery, make their fame as stage performers in the Big City.  In each story, the characters push past what is expected of them, learning to celebrate their voices and their lives. 

Praise for Blue Talk and Love

“Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is a sharp social observer as well as a bold experimentalist. She has an arresting ear and a courageous heart. Her language races with her intelligence and humanity.”

---Darryl Pinckney, author of High Cotton and Out There: Mavericks of Black Fiction   

"Sullivan’s prose shocks, intrigues, and transports us through fourteen artful and unique stories.  And so do her rich and inimitable characters, most of them young black women struggling in a world they did not make but one they must confront, tear down, and remake.  Black girls matter and Sullivan shows us just how much."

-- Cheryl Clarke, author of Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women and Living as a Lesbian

"Mecca Jamilah Sullivan's debut collection of fiction dazzles with images, language and heart.  She slips inside her characters and renders their inner lives with painterly precision so with each story we enter a complete world drawn with brilliant color and raw emotion.  Yet it is the mystery of life itself which she evokes so strongly and that holds us fast."                                    

-- Jewelle Gomez, author The Gilda Stories

"In a prose as rich and sumptuous as brocade, these stories hit with the

the force of primal myths. They can be tender, they can be funny, and

they can shock. This is a book that grabs you low on the spinal

column and rattles your teeth together. Sullivan is a powerful and impressive

writer."

    --Samuel R. Delany, author of Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders 

“Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s debut story collection is a remarkable work best described as elegiac blues… Blue Talk and Love stuns with subtle imagery, powerful linguistic energy, and chiseled, innovative control.”
 –LaShonda Katrice Barnett, author of Jam on the Vine

About the Author

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, she received the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mellon Foundation, and the Center for Fiction in New York City. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Best New Writing, American Fiction, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Feminist Studies, and elsewhere, and she is Associate Editor for Arts & Culture at The Feminist Wire.

Riverdale Avenue Books Publishes “The Glass Stiletto, A Kinky Cinderella Tale” to Tie-In with Disney Movie

"Ms. Kenley writes one sizzling Cinderella! Her sexy imagination improves a classic fairy tale.”--Ashlyn Chase, bestselling author of the Flirting With Fangs series

Riverdale, NY – March 12, 2015 – Innovative hybrid publisher Riverdale Avenue Books will publish The Glass Stiletto, A Kinky Fairy Tale by Rachel Kenley to tie-in with the world-wide release of the live action version of Disney’s Cinderella.

In this adult version of the classic fairy tale, Mariella isn’t sure she wants to actually marry the prince now that she has her freedom from her wicked stepfamily.  And the prince knows she is different than any other woman he has ever met, especially when she teaches him a thing or two about truly being free and letting go – while tied to her bed.  This femdom retelling is an enrapturing adult bedtime story.

“Riverdale Avenue Books’ Publisher Lori Perkins took a chance on The Glass Stiletto when I first submitted it to her and was the only publisher I'd met willing to consider a femdom novel,” explained romance author Rachel Kenley. “Even now, in most published BDSM stories, the hero is the dominant and the heroine finds her joy - and strength - in submission.  The heroines of fairy tales are always having such a tough time of it that I thought it was time for them to have the chance to be in charge, and Cinderella was the first to come to mind as a character who deserved a stronger role.”