Party Boys: How the Ballinger Brothers Built the Greatest Nightclubs on Earth
Lon BallingerIndependent, 2024. $24.68
The Ballinger brothers, three guys who grew up poor in rural Canada, were atypical Manhattan impresarios—in spite of, or because of this, they successfully reinvigorated iconic Webster Hall in the East Village, running it from 1988 to 2017 as a come-on-in antidote to pretension, a club where human decency ruled. "We made 40 million people dance," Ballinger marvels. Now co-owner of Stewart House in Athens, he began writing it all down for his grandchildren and ended up with an insider memoir leavened with sound business advice.
I Make Envy on Your Disco
Eric SchnallUniversity of Nebraska Press, 2024, $21.95
Sam Singer is 37, a disgruntled Manhattan art advisor who's about had it with his work and his partner alike. At a crossroads that's barely taken form, he decides to head to Berlin for a gallery opening and finds vivid human connection in a city at a crossroads of its own. Schnall, a Salisbury, Connecticut, resident and Tony Award winner for the Broadway revival of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," has won the Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction for this latest novel.
Trust and Safety
Laura Blackett and Eve GleichmanDutton, 2024, $28
Rosie, fighting the feeling that she's failing to launch, dangles the possibility of a baby to coerce hubby into her Hudson Valley dream house, which even the realtor admits is a nightmare. His tech job evaporates the night before the seven-figure closing, but his domineering mama jumps to the rescue—what could go wrong in the land of fresh and local, renting a dilapidated outbuilding to an enviably hip poly couple? This second novel from Gleichman and Blackett is insightful, hilarious, and hard to put down.
Odie is Being Called Back, and Other Poems
Gerard MalangaBottle of Smoke Press, 2024, $15
Malanga, now a Hudson resident, began writing poetry as a teen and then, at 20, became Warhol's first assistant at the Factory from 1963-1970, appearing in all of Warhol's films, fully immersed in the chaos and glitter of the era, and beloved by many. Along with being a photographer and artist, he's published 17 books of poetry over five decades; just this spring, he was elected Chevalier of Arts and Letters in France. His straightforward lyricism works beautifully in these musings on cats and humans and lives lived.
Because of Eve
Rondavid GoldAustin Macauley, 2023, $15.95
Into a world racked by conflict over reproductive rights and gender issues, ruled by greed and the hasty excesses of Big Pharma, Gold introduces an entirely new ingredient: a pill that enables women to clone themselves, producing little girl-babies without the need for spermatozoa. Introducing the concept through the eyes of a medical student who moonlights as a detective and is confronting a suspicious death, the debut novelist and Woodstock resident unfolds it over the course of 137 rapid-fire chapters full of intense dialogues between over 30 characters.
