Culicidae Press

07/11/2024

Sad news today with the announcement of Shelley Duval’s death. She will continue to live through her movies…

The versatile actress, also memorable in 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller,' 'Nashville,' 'Popeye' and '3 Women,' produced TV series for kids as well.

06/21/2024

Happy to say that I just finished editing two upcoming books: The first is the third in a series of books we have published so far by Chicago author Geertje Suhr. This one is called "Love Me: A Novel" and it is, like the other two ("Learning About Love" and "The German Exchange Student") unmistakably autobiographical and a brilliant read. The other book is the first in a series of four planned historic-fiction novels by Luke Pittaway, the Copeland Professor of Entrepreneurship at Ohio University and a Justin G. Longenecker Fellow at USASBE. His first book is called "Yamacraw Bluff" and it begins in 1730s London, then moves to one of the future US colonies, Georgia, and the founding of the city of Savanna by Oglethorpe. A gripping story of early colonial history complete with bar brawls, scouting, and a love story. Both books will be released late this summer. Stay tuned....

05/19/2024

We just released the second book by author Rose Hamilton-Gottlieb. Here is the synopsis for the boomer novel "Pea's Ladies", set in Baltimore, Maryland:

Hobarth Manor is a building of light. Caryatids grace its marble facade, one on each side of eighteen windows. But the historic apartment building is soon to be demolished.

Percival Jamieson McNulty (“Pea”), was born in the building, to caretaker parents, and has lived there most of his fifty years. Now he must save five elderly tenants, for whom he feels responsible.

At eighty-five, Maizie is the eldest. Her solution to stopping the demolition is to “find out where the bodies are buried.”

Carlotta is a former concert pianist. The other ladies have voted to restrict her playing to two hours in the morning; thwarting, in her mind, the ability to make a “comeback.”

Sulie, the former proprietor of a once-famous restaurant, now lives on canned soup and crackers, but has useful connections from her past as a renowned chef.

Nan, a former artist of some note, has become a recluse who hasn’t left her apartment for years. Pea loses sleep worrying about how to save his favorite tenant.

The elegant and secretive Fiona has a past connection to the underworld. In the end, this shady past is key to “finding where the bodies are buried.”

Lacy Fox, the rightful heir to Hobarth Manor, is Pea’s long-lost childhood friend. Her husband has gained power-of-attorney over her property. It is he who has made the decision to replace the building with condominiums. Lacy and Pea reconnect and try to save the building. But help comes as each lady resurrects some part of her past.

For more information, go to https://culicidaepress.com/hamilton-gottlieb-peas-ladies/

04/21/2024

In honor of National Poetry Month, here is a piece by Bob Dylan that I have been listening to over the last few days: It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding). Poetry needs performance, and Dylan does the best version of this on the Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Live 1964 - Concert at Philharmonic Hall. Powerful stuff!

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Su***de remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in s*x, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

04/21/2024

We are now on WhatsApp for Business...

04/19/2024

Our author Sheriff Tony Thompson (through our imprint Hog Press) gave an interview about his book "Anyplace But Here" on KWWL.com's The Steele Report. See the interview here: https://www.kwwl.com/news/sheriff-tony-thompsons-new-book--anyplace-but-here--shows-criminalizing-mental-illness-is/article_d554db80-b740-11ee-b1e1-6fa3d4d0cc74.html

WATERLOO, Iowa (KWWL)

04/19/2024

Proud to have been part of the editing, design, and publishing process of this important book. Sheriff Tony Thompson, author of "Anyplace But Here: The Uncomfortable Convergence Between Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System" was part of a group of experts interviewed on the subject by ABC News. More info at

Law enforcement is often left to handle mental health cases, experts say, criminalizing our mentally ill.

04/07/2024

Our designer polytekton is currently doing the layout for the Japanese translation of our bestseller "The Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design" by Lassi Liikkanen. Two individuals in Japan, Seiju Takayama and Keiichi Kitagawa, have done the heavy lifting of translating the 200+ page book into Japanese. Street date is 9 May 2024, and the author will fly to Tokyo from Helsinki to introduce the book to the public.

04/07/2024

We're focusing this month on poetry through our imprint Musca Press. Check out your choices at

The German word for poetry is Dichtung, and Germans know a poem as a Gedicht. Both words derive from the middle-high-German tihten, old-high-German dihtōn, or tihtōn which mean to write, draft, compose, or conceive textually, and the German reference has its origin in the Latin dictare, to dictate...

03/15/2024

In celebration of Women’s History Month, we will donate 10% of any book sales to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. We also offer a discount for students and educators to any of our books by women authors. Use 2024EDU10 when you order through the link on our book pages. If you have problems applying the discount, let us know.

01/20/2024

Culicidae Press is happy to announce the publication of Richard Brantley's second book, “My Natural Methodism: Experience Becomes Words,” with us. Brantley’s culminating monograph, released on 15 January 2024, knits intellectual and spiritual autobiography with literary criticism. His measuring of faith in experience (empiricism) versus the experience of faith (evangelicalism)-fostered by parents steeped in literature-prefigured his career-long approach. A combination of personal commitment and professional dynamism sets a model for subjective as well as objective interpretation. Grappling with the sources of both taste and judgment seems called for in these dangerous times. Brantley's memoir/lit-crit hybrid delivers art and life alike.

Praise for My Natural Methodism
"In this characteristically generous-spirited, intellectually energetic new book, Richard Brantley pays tribute to family members, teachers, and authors who inspired his life’s intellectual-spiritual journey. Borrowing his title phrase from Charles Lamb’s review of Wordsworth’s “The Excursion,” Brantley reflects on how “natural methodism” accounts for science/faith conjunctions in Anglo-American writing, with special emphasis on Romantic and post-Romantic writers Wordsworth, Emerson, and Dickinson while applying his thesis to a host of later poets and novelists including Eliot, Auden, and Marilynne Robinson. In this time of STEM dominance in academia and valuation of curricula chiefly for immediate job prospects, Brantley makes a powerful case for literature’s enduring impact. And he does so with joy and gratitude."
Jane Eberwein, Distinguished Professor of English Emerita,
Department of English, Oakland University

"'My Natural Methodism' is Richard Brantley’s eighth book. It is an autobiography rich with literary criticism, its pages warm with references to the signatures of his life and his reading. His heartfelt intelligence is a gift for thoughtful readers to examine repeatedly. They will mark their place in the book and think about their own lives, their meanderings, intellectual and otherwise."
Samuel F. Pickering, Jr., Professor Emeritus,
Department of English, University of Connecticut, Storrs

"In 'My Natural Methodism: Experience Becomes Words', Richard E. Brantley culminates his “career-long quest for aesthetic understanding” of the Romantic influence in Anglo-American culture. He does so by deftly interweaving autobiography with scholarly analysis, thereby incorporating personal experience in what he variously describes as a “memoir/lit-crit hybrid.” He seeks nothing less than the “disciplinary re-enchantment” needed to combat the current decline of the humanities. The book brings both/and logic to academic writing that Brantley sees as too narrowly devoted to objectivity, at the expense of the subjective life blood of literature and the arts. Thus, intertwining formative years with professional expertise, and gracing his hybrid with humor and humility, Brantley elegantly manages his dialogue with the rich Anglo-American tradition of science, religion, and literature."
Paul Crumbley, Professor Emeritus,
Department of English, Utah State University

Now available worldwide. More information at
https://culicidaepress.com/brantley-my-natural-methodism/

01/14/2024

"My Natural Methodism," Richard Brantley's second book with Culicidae Press, will be released tomorrow, Monday, 15 January 2024 worldwide. For more information, please check out the book's webpage at https://culicidaepress.com/brantley-my-natural-methodism/ And yes, for those of you familiar with architectural theories, that is the weaver's knot on the cover from Gottfried Semper's magnum opus "Der Stil"....

12/27/2023

Now No. 1 in Mental Health Law on Amazon: Tony Thompson's "Anyplace But Here: The Uncomfortable Convergence of Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System", published through our imprint Hog Press on December 1, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/Anyplace-But-Here-Uncomfortable-Convergence/dp/1941892744

12/27/2023

We just released a new book by Sheriff Tony Thompson titled "Anyplace But Here: The Uncomfortable Convergence of Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System". Now ranking #1 on Amazon. More info at https://hogpress.com/thompson-anyplace-but-here/

12/27/2023

Press release for "Anyplace But Here" by Sheriff Tony Thompson, published through Hog Press, one of our imprints.

12/12/2023

And here is an exhaustive review of "Homicide on Hydra" on the Cross Examining Crime blog at

This is the second book by Groves that I reviewed, having in 2021 looked at Sherlock in the Seventies: A Wild Decade of Sherlock Holmes Films. When I was first approached to review this book, I mus…

12/12/2023

Going live on 12 December 2023: M. Sukoot's collection of illustrated poems "The Scream" via our imprint Handcar Press. More info at

Sukoot – The ScreamPost published:13/11/2023Post category:Books / Hardcover / Illustrated / Kindle or ePub / Paperback / Poetry This is a short promotional reel compiled by the author about the book. Available now worldwide.From the PrefaceThis collection [of poems] was born out of a desire to con...