The Prince of Staten Island and Other Stories

An anthology of a dozen stories:

The TEN LOST TRIBES OF EUPHORIC SHORES IS fable of urban apocalypse. The mayor leans on the police, forcing them to ignore the home invasions that plague the 400 families of the gated retirement community of Euphoric Shores. The hoods say the geezers got bank, but got no flex, and they ain’t strapped. The neighborhood is on its own and confronts the problem in clever ways.

EROTIC SHOCK: Nixon is out. The reign of the old men is over. Conway has survived his years of smuggling out of Cuba, sells his plane, and returns home. The singles bar is born. The top tease at an escort service moves in with Conway. The real fireworks begin when they reunite after a breakup, and she brings a Viking princess to share the fun.

PRINCE OF STATEN ISLAND: Charlie Newton has sworn to de-fang, de-claw, and neuter Wall Street. On the last day of his life, at the corner of Battery Place and Greenwich Street, Charlie’s I-Phone rang. “This is Bruce Duncan, your astronomer. I am heading for higher ground in case of a large wave. I tasked the Consell telescope to observe the sky directly overhead with a diameter of two hundred miles at an elevation of ninety miles. Majorca is one degree of latitude south of New York. Their computer sent it a minute ago. The object appears to be twenty yards wide. The distance between Majorca and New York is 3,800 miles. At 20,000 miles per hour, and minus the two minutes since it was photographed, that puts it nine and a half minutes away. With a mass fifteen per-cent of the Tunguska event in 1908, this means a blast radius of six miles. It will come down somewhere along a line between Spain and Chicago. Good Luck, Mr. Newton.”

DOUBLE DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE: Frances Kemble enlists the aid of glamorous television psychologist Dr. Anita Karvakian to expose a presidential candidate in the ambush journalism of a television interview. Frances contemplated the injury of lies. She remembered the jellyfish-sting of their betrayal. The lie was a family with many sons. Frances ran their names. There were weasel-words—the Swiss Army knives of lying. There were spins—the quick coats of paint. There was boilerplate—the unpruned thicket where lies hid like leopards. There was hyperbole—the vine wrapped around the living truth. There was silence—the family ghost. There was sham, phoniness, fakery, duplicity, insincerity, hypocrisy, unctuousness, quackery, humbug, and bluff. There was pretension, perversion, distortion, exaggeration, equivocation, dissimulation, and cant. Frances thought of the Eskimos, who needed 32 different names for snow.

Another among the three stories of Conway, OF WINDAGE AND DEAD RECKONING: Conway is a smuggler in the Caribbean and the Florida Straits, flying a twin-engine Navajo. As the islands string out farther south, civilization grows weary, and the towns become simple. The farther he flew from the American mainland, the wider the stretches of blue water became, and more clear became the problem of survival. Conway sometimes refuels his white, twin-engine Navajo at lonely Duncan Town. The sky behind him glows with first light. Conway rises up from the airstrip, flying low and flat out, at two hundred and twenty-five knots. He turns west north-west up the Nicholas Channel, hugging the color change, in the low light, at the west edge of blue water. Alongside Cuban airspace, Conway switches off his collision lights, to fly dark. Always, Conway dreams of the forbidden string of islands off his port side—from Neuvitas in the south to Bacunayagua in the north. Above his left shoulder, Conway watches for the lights of Migs, rising up to shoot him down.

and more....

1119982659
The Prince of Staten Island and Other Stories

An anthology of a dozen stories:

The TEN LOST TRIBES OF EUPHORIC SHORES IS fable of urban apocalypse. The mayor leans on the police, forcing them to ignore the home invasions that plague the 400 families of the gated retirement community of Euphoric Shores. The hoods say the geezers got bank, but got no flex, and they ain’t strapped. The neighborhood is on its own and confronts the problem in clever ways.

EROTIC SHOCK: Nixon is out. The reign of the old men is over. Conway has survived his years of smuggling out of Cuba, sells his plane, and returns home. The singles bar is born. The top tease at an escort service moves in with Conway. The real fireworks begin when they reunite after a breakup, and she brings a Viking princess to share the fun.

PRINCE OF STATEN ISLAND: Charlie Newton has sworn to de-fang, de-claw, and neuter Wall Street. On the last day of his life, at the corner of Battery Place and Greenwich Street, Charlie’s I-Phone rang. “This is Bruce Duncan, your astronomer. I am heading for higher ground in case of a large wave. I tasked the Consell telescope to observe the sky directly overhead with a diameter of two hundred miles at an elevation of ninety miles. Majorca is one degree of latitude south of New York. Their computer sent it a minute ago. The object appears to be twenty yards wide. The distance between Majorca and New York is 3,800 miles. At 20,000 miles per hour, and minus the two minutes since it was photographed, that puts it nine and a half minutes away. With a mass fifteen per-cent of the Tunguska event in 1908, this means a blast radius of six miles. It will come down somewhere along a line between Spain and Chicago. Good Luck, Mr. Newton.”

DOUBLE DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE: Frances Kemble enlists the aid of glamorous television psychologist Dr. Anita Karvakian to expose a presidential candidate in the ambush journalism of a television interview. Frances contemplated the injury of lies. She remembered the jellyfish-sting of their betrayal. The lie was a family with many sons. Frances ran their names. There were weasel-words—the Swiss Army knives of lying. There were spins—the quick coats of paint. There was boilerplate—the unpruned thicket where lies hid like leopards. There was hyperbole—the vine wrapped around the living truth. There was silence—the family ghost. There was sham, phoniness, fakery, duplicity, insincerity, hypocrisy, unctuousness, quackery, humbug, and bluff. There was pretension, perversion, distortion, exaggeration, equivocation, dissimulation, and cant. Frances thought of the Eskimos, who needed 32 different names for snow.

Another among the three stories of Conway, OF WINDAGE AND DEAD RECKONING: Conway is a smuggler in the Caribbean and the Florida Straits, flying a twin-engine Navajo. As the islands string out farther south, civilization grows weary, and the towns become simple. The farther he flew from the American mainland, the wider the stretches of blue water became, and more clear became the problem of survival. Conway sometimes refuels his white, twin-engine Navajo at lonely Duncan Town. The sky behind him glows with first light. Conway rises up from the airstrip, flying low and flat out, at two hundred and twenty-five knots. He turns west north-west up the Nicholas Channel, hugging the color change, in the low light, at the west edge of blue water. Alongside Cuban airspace, Conway switches off his collision lights, to fly dark. Always, Conway dreams of the forbidden string of islands off his port side—from Neuvitas in the south to Bacunayagua in the north. Above his left shoulder, Conway watches for the lights of Migs, rising up to shoot him down.

and more....

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The Prince of Staten Island and Other Stories

The Prince of Staten Island and Other Stories

by Mike Kennedy
The Prince of Staten Island and Other Stories

The Prince of Staten Island and Other Stories

by Mike Kennedy

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Overview

An anthology of a dozen stories:

The TEN LOST TRIBES OF EUPHORIC SHORES IS fable of urban apocalypse. The mayor leans on the police, forcing them to ignore the home invasions that plague the 400 families of the gated retirement community of Euphoric Shores. The hoods say the geezers got bank, but got no flex, and they ain’t strapped. The neighborhood is on its own and confronts the problem in clever ways.

EROTIC SHOCK: Nixon is out. The reign of the old men is over. Conway has survived his years of smuggling out of Cuba, sells his plane, and returns home. The singles bar is born. The top tease at an escort service moves in with Conway. The real fireworks begin when they reunite after a breakup, and she brings a Viking princess to share the fun.

PRINCE OF STATEN ISLAND: Charlie Newton has sworn to de-fang, de-claw, and neuter Wall Street. On the last day of his life, at the corner of Battery Place and Greenwich Street, Charlie’s I-Phone rang. “This is Bruce Duncan, your astronomer. I am heading for higher ground in case of a large wave. I tasked the Consell telescope to observe the sky directly overhead with a diameter of two hundred miles at an elevation of ninety miles. Majorca is one degree of latitude south of New York. Their computer sent it a minute ago. The object appears to be twenty yards wide. The distance between Majorca and New York is 3,800 miles. At 20,000 miles per hour, and minus the two minutes since it was photographed, that puts it nine and a half minutes away. With a mass fifteen per-cent of the Tunguska event in 1908, this means a blast radius of six miles. It will come down somewhere along a line between Spain and Chicago. Good Luck, Mr. Newton.”

DOUBLE DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE: Frances Kemble enlists the aid of glamorous television psychologist Dr. Anita Karvakian to expose a presidential candidate in the ambush journalism of a television interview. Frances contemplated the injury of lies. She remembered the jellyfish-sting of their betrayal. The lie was a family with many sons. Frances ran their names. There were weasel-words—the Swiss Army knives of lying. There were spins—the quick coats of paint. There was boilerplate—the unpruned thicket where lies hid like leopards. There was hyperbole—the vine wrapped around the living truth. There was silence—the family ghost. There was sham, phoniness, fakery, duplicity, insincerity, hypocrisy, unctuousness, quackery, humbug, and bluff. There was pretension, perversion, distortion, exaggeration, equivocation, dissimulation, and cant. Frances thought of the Eskimos, who needed 32 different names for snow.

Another among the three stories of Conway, OF WINDAGE AND DEAD RECKONING: Conway is a smuggler in the Caribbean and the Florida Straits, flying a twin-engine Navajo. As the islands string out farther south, civilization grows weary, and the towns become simple. The farther he flew from the American mainland, the wider the stretches of blue water became, and more clear became the problem of survival. Conway sometimes refuels his white, twin-engine Navajo at lonely Duncan Town. The sky behind him glows with first light. Conway rises up from the airstrip, flying low and flat out, at two hundred and twenty-five knots. He turns west north-west up the Nicholas Channel, hugging the color change, in the low light, at the west edge of blue water. Alongside Cuban airspace, Conway switches off his collision lights, to fly dark. Always, Conway dreams of the forbidden string of islands off his port side—from Neuvitas in the south to Bacunayagua in the north. Above his left shoulder, Conway watches for the lights of Migs, rising up to shoot him down.

and more....


Product Details

BN ID: 2940045644907
Publisher: Mike Kennedy
Publication date: 08/15/2014
Sold by: Smashwords
Format: eBook
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Indianapolis author Mike Kennedy described by Trident Media Group, saying: Kennedy has a way with words and that readers attracted to Hemingway and Mailer will love Season of Many Thirsts (A novel brought to E-Books under the original title: REPORT FROM MALI). Publisher Alfred A. Knopf says of the manuscript: "This is a potentially important and significant novel on many levels, including formally." Little, Brown says of the novel: "Our admiration for its ambition and the energy and high-octane force it applies toward these engrossing geopolitical events. Chance and his team are memorable characters." Random House says: "Kennedy captures the strange, and intriguing world of Mali." Playwright Arthur Miller said of Kennedy: "Marilyn and I used to think there was something funny about Mike, and then we realized that he was simply hilarious."

Kennedy's message to the publishing world, "I have read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness from time to time across fifty years. During this, my most recent reading, it occurs to me that I am Kurtz and that all of you are Marlow. Kurtz lay dying in the pilot house of the river steamer. Marlow, the company agent, has found him and returns with him. Kurtz has spent years in the jungle pulling out ivory and sending it downstream. Finally, Kurtz agrees to return down river to civilization because he realizes that he has something to say, something with a value beyond his ton of treasure. Kurtz realizes that he has achieved a synthesis from out of his brutish experience. Kurtz imagines being met by representatives at each one of the string of railway stations during his return to civilization. He tells Marlow, 'You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability.' And then, sounding as though he steps into our own millennium, Kurtz adds, 'Of course you must take care of the motives—right motives—always.' Now I see that Kurtz is Conrad. Kurtz is not unique. He is every writer. It is only Marlow, the agent, who is unique, unique in his fidelity, not just to the job, nor only to the company, but to the civilization that sent him.

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