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David A. Ross
Author
Publisher
Photographer
David A. Ross was born January 6, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois. In addition to his career as a novelist (Good Morning Corfu, 2009; Open Books; How High The Wall, 2008; Open Books; Sacrifice and the Sweet Life, 2003, Escape Media; A Winter Garden, 2003, Escape Media; Stones, 2001, Escape Media; Xenos, 1998, Escape Media; The Trouble With Paradise; 1997, Escape Media), he is a former columnist and contributing editor for Southwest Art Magazine (1984-1985). His first novel, The Trouble With Paradise, was awarded third prize in the 1997 National Writer's Association Novel Competition. David A. Ross lives on the Island of Corfu, Greece, where he is the editor of Corfu Magazine.
Books by David A. Ross
The Trouble With Paradise
In this whimsical novel, a star-crossed weekend sailor is shipwrecked on a wayward South Seas island. Stranded there by the trickery of a Hawaiian kahuna, and accompanied only by his sagacious parrot, Julian Crosby eventually meets the island’s only other human resident, a soft-spoken siren who seems at once out of place yet somehow thoroughly natural to her environment.
As Julian is initiated by the longtime foundling in the ways of this Shangri-La, the female solitary alludes time and again to a past that seems to suggest a solution to one of the century’s inimitable mysteries – the disappearance of 1930’s flying ace Amelia Earhart. Is it somehow possible that the missing aviatrix is still alive?
One man, one woman: alone in paradise. But in the denouement of a ferocious storm, the castaway finds he must confront the preconceived limits of his courage and ingenuity, even in Paradise.
Title: The Trouble with Paradise
Author: David A. Ross
Publisher: Escape Media
Publication Date: January 1998
Format: Trade paperback, 159 pages
ISBN: 0-9661861-0-9
First Edition: 3,000 copies
Retail Price: $12.00
XENOS: A Romantic Novel of Travel and Self-Discovery in the Grecian Isles
Doran Seeger studied each face around the table. His newfound companion, Alarice Van Zyl, suddenly and miraculously understood Greek. Her sister, Gisela, was relying on him, he sensed, for something as yet unstated. Their Greek benefactor and friend, Modestos Thromos, yawned prodigiously, as he’d been at the dock late last night trolling for tourists. And Elena, Modestos’ discerning wife, looked anxious as she imagined the latest exploits of her debonair son.
For Doran, these once-unfamiliar images had become so compelling that he could only surmise: If I don’t tear myself away from this place immediately, I shall remain here forever, forget my concerns and responsibilities, and renounce my personal history once and for all.
Title: XENOS
Author: David A. Ross
Publisher: Escape Media
Publication Date: August 1998
Format: Trade paperback, 232 pages
ISBN: 0-9661861-1-7
First Edition: 2,000 copies
Retail Price: $12.95
Stones: A Novel of Art, Love, Intrigue and Magic in the South of France
A young Parisian sculptor, Cornelius Valentine, retreats to a tiny village in the South of France to escape a failing romance with his coquettish model, Arielle Pieronette, and to attempt his masterwork. There, in the tiny medieval village of Seillans, a delusional local artisan, Madame Sylvianne, confuses him with a figure in her past, the celebrated dada artist Max Ernst. Seeking revenge for unrequited love, she sets out to slowly poison the surrogate.
Caught between recollections of his recent past and a compulsion to cast his vision in stone, the sculptor cracks his masterwork on the final blow before its completion. Sick and alone in Provence, his spirit fades as his health declines from the gradual ingestion of Sylvianne’s poison.
Back in Paris, his estranged lover, Arielle, learns of his illness and travels to Provence to help him recover his health. But the failed sculpture has left a severe emotional and philosophical scar on the young artist. And the poison has taken its toll.
The story culminates in a dramatic (and twisted) Romeo and Juliet suicide pact between Cornelius and his lover, Arielle.
Title: Stones
Author: David A. Ross
Publisher: Escape Media
Publication Date: May 2001
Format: Trade paperback, 229 pages
ISBN: 0-9661861-2-5
First Edition: 2,000 copies
Retail Price: $13.95
A Winter Garden
Motivated to expatriate by guilt and remorse after helping to design guidance systems and smart bombs for the U. S. Military, Doran Seeger has lived the past decade in Europe. Wandering from country to country, he has encountered new societies and new ideas, yet after ten years abroad he still struggles to appease his conscience. Living in Prague and working as an underground art dealer, a chance encounter with the sister of his former lover persuades him to return to Greece, where a society that embraces real civility, not to mention a few idiosyncrasies, tenderly draws the habitual itinerant out of reticence and cynicism. With his longtime Greek friend Modestos Thromos at his side, Doran plants a winter garden; and as he patiently tills the Grecian soil, he reclaims his integrity, his sense of joy, and his humanity.
Title: A Winter Garden
Author: David A. Ross
Publisher: Escape Media
Publication Date: February 2003
Format: Trade Paperback, 314 pages
ISBN: 0-9661861-6-8
First Edition: 3,000 copies
Retail Price: $15.00
Sacrifice and the Sweet Life
“They had never felt the fall, never sensed their descent. They heard only a deafening rumble, and then there was darkness – only darkness and crushing weight…”
So begins a profound and disturbing collection of eight short stories, four poems and one vignette by award-winning writer and author of four previous novels, David A. Ross.
A lonely and deranged sorcerer; a noon-time Bozo, a local television-star; observant and bewildered tourists; angry, drunken cock-fighters; obedient anarchists; a guilt-ridden engineer; each one experiences the curious juxtaposition of the two overriding ideas contained within the collection’s title, Sacrifice and the Sweet Life.
In ‘NL Centrum,’ a drug-ruined anarchist proclaims, “The world theater maintains drama and tension through the perpetuation of greed and injustice and so forth…” In ‘La Sorcière de Seillans,’ a driven sculptor is obsessed to “explore the space within the stones,” and in ‘In Search of the Perfect Former-Communist Beach Town,’ a malcontented traveler observes, “Some of the locals are a bit surly, Sean, so let’s try to overlook ungracious behavior. Just enjoy the shore, the rich red wine and the paprika.” One thing is certain as Giuvanni, the lust-ridden Florentine hotel clerk laments, “In our world, sacrifice is unavoidable.”
Title: Sacrifice and the Sweet Life
Author: David A. Ross
Publisher: Escape Media
Publication Date: October 2003
Format: Trade Paperback, 162 pages
Categories: Short fiction, prose and poetry
ISBN: 0-9661861-7-6
First Edition: 3,000 copies
Retail Price: $13.00
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©David A. Ross 2009 -2010 Design by Medscape Internet Development
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Upcoming novel
How High The Wall
Hermes Hawthorne is fifteen and lives in Grassy Knoll. Caught spray-painting graffiti on the wall of a house in Green Meadows, a neighboring and only slightly more affluent subdivision, he is remanded to the treatment of a psychiatrist who diagnoses him with ADHD and prescribes Ritalin therapy. Such a punishment, however, does not console Frank Brickman, the angry homeowner whose house Hermes has defaced. Frank conspires to build a wall to separate the two subdivisions, but how high must a wall rise to ensure the separation of barely distinguishable classes in a modern-day American suburb?
Title: How High The Wall
Author: David A. Ross
Publisher: Open Books
Publication Date: January 2009
Format: Amazon Kindle edition
Categories: Novel; fiction
Retail Price: $4.95
(for PC, Blackberry, PocketPC, Smartphone, Symbian Os, Palm Os, Cybook and iLiad)
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Good Morning Corfu: Living Abroad Against All Odds
The Island of Corfu in Greece is known as the Emerald Isle. William Shakespeare's metaphorical play, "The Tempest", was derived from the island's thunderous autumnal storms. Henry Miller, as well as Gerald and Lawrence Durrell, once called Corfu home. It is an island of intense beauty with fertile green land, golden beaches, turquoise waters, a beautiful Venetian-built city, and one of the most gregarious - and sometimes one of the most treacherous - cultures in Europe. More than a million people from all over the world visit Corfu each year, and over 30,000 expatriates live year round on the island.
GOOD MORNING CORFU: LIVING ABROAD AGAINST ALL ODDS chronicles the experiences and observations of an American expatriate living on this Mediterranean outpost of dizzying extremes. From wide-eyed wonder to cultural and personal confusion, from unbridled joy to deep despair, and from empathy to outright loathing, these short essays examine both local and expatriate lifestyles through the lens of one deeply immersed yet forever removed, fundamentally involved yet perpetually on the perimeter of a most curious culture. Even more than a journal of events and experiences, the essays consider many of life's more profound issues and concerns with insight, optimism and humor.
Title: Good Morning Corfu: Living Abroad Against All Odds
Author: David A. Ross
Publisher: Open Books
Publication Date: January 2009
Format: Amazon Kindle edition
Categories: Nonfiction
Retail Price: $4.95
(for PC, Blackberry, PocketPC, Smartphone, Symbian Os, Palm Os, Cybook and iLiad)
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