Mary Mackey's Publications

Praise for Mary Mackey's Sugar Zone

In Sugar Zone, Mary Mackey takes you on a fascinating journey to the interior, somewhere between Saint Theresa's Inner Castle and the thicket of Eros—but also a place of desperate actuality, even if it is “on the other side of the world.” Mackey joins other visionary poets of dépaysement–Henri Michaux in Asia, John Ash in Anatolia, Sharon Doubiago in Peru, Lorca in Manhattan. But Mackey really seems to recover a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forro, and death. Please read “Cold Snap”; who but Mackey could have written it? Sugar Zone authoritatively creates a language and a culture; but the lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home.
—Dennis Nurkse

Mary Mackey's new collection Sugar Zone is the culmination of many trips to Brazil. Most poems crackle with powerful and lush imagery; others are stark and draw their strength from the wisdom of the saying. These are death haunted poems but full of the vitality of the jungle, the favelas of Rio, the Amazon itself.
—Marge Piercy

Sugar Zone
Poems by Mary Mackey
Published by Marsh Hawk Press 2011
www.marshhawkpress.org
ISBN 978-0-9846353-1-3
$15.00
On sale October 1, 2011
Available from Small Press Distribution
http://www.spdbooks.org
Also available for pre-order at bookstores and online booksellers

The Widow's War

“Mary Mackey gives her readers yet another woman warrior, this one a fighter in the Civil War. We thrill to the story of Carrie Vinton as she courageously takes the side of freedom over slavery” —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

With an “inventive imagination and crisp style,” bestselling author Mary Mackey has captured readers' hearts with her epic, sweeping works of historical fiction. Now in THE WIDOW'S WAR, she presents a novel of a woman's fierce spirit, rebellious love, and struggle for justice set against the backdrop of the approaching Civil War.

In 1853, Carolyn Vinton is left alone and pregnant in Rio de Janeiro when her fiancé, abolitionist Dr. William Saylor, disappears. Grieving and desperate, Carrie is easy prey for William's stepbrother, Deacon Presgrove, who convinces her that William is dead and offers to take her back to the United States and marry her to give her baby a father.

Carrie soon realizes that she has been betrayed at every turn by her new husband. Deacon's father is a proslavery senator, and Deacon plans to use Carrie's inheritance-not to fight slavery as he promised-but to support it. Carrie's love for William and her powerful abolitionist views have never died. When she discovers that William is alive and fighting to bring the Kansas Territory into the Union as a free state, she escapes the clutches of her husband and joins him.

Their passionate reunion takes place in the midst of a violent civil war that will soon engulf the entire nation. As abolitionists and proslavers battled over the Kansas Territory, fire and fury sweep across the plains threatening to tear Carrie and William apart forever.

When a band of pro-slavers kidnaps Carrie's child, William, and thirteen free blacks, Carrie arms a band of African-American soldiers and leads them into battle to save the hostages from certain death. Beautifully researched and written, The Widow's War is a fast-paced, compelling tale that offers readers passion, adventure, the magic of Afro-Brazilian religious practices, and the story of the first African American soldiers to fight in the Civil War.

The Widow's War
by Mary Mackey
Berkley Trade Paperback Original, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-425-22791-6
$15.00
Available in bookstores, from online booksellers, and
in a Kindle edition from http://www.amazon.com/

The Notorious Mrs. Winston

Her novels have been praised for possessing meticulously accurate historical detail and a bountiful array of vibrant characters. Now Mary Mackey makes a grand return with a beautifully written story set during the American Civil War, as a fierce abolitionist in a loveless marriage falls helplessly in love with a Confederate soldier.

Married to an older man who sees her as little more than a possession, Claire Winston feels trapped and unhappy, but she knows her personal suffering pales in comparison to the hardships of the nation, which is teetering on the precipice of civil war. And she has a secret that helps ease her despair: her family's devotion to the cause of assisting runaway slaves to freedom, a purpose she embraces, and of which her husband is unaware.

Still, the empty pretense of her marriage makes her vulnerable to temptation, and soon she finds herself captivated by John Taylor, her husband's nephew. In his arms she finds the passion and tenderness her marriage lacks, but as much as John loves her, he is devoted first and foremost to the Confederacy, and to the band of rebel guerillas known as Morgan's Raiders.

Separated from John for more than two years by the forces of history, and by her husband's machinations, Claire will travel boldly across the war-torn country in search of her lover. Until, disguised as a male soldier, she finds herself drafted by none other than General Morgan himself, swept up in the greatest guerilla raid in American history, and caught between her loyalty to the Union and her love for John.

*Publishers Weekly

Acclaim for Mary Mackey's previous novels
"Grand adventure and a grand reading experience."
- Pat Conroy

"A complex, colorful saga, engrossing and realistic."
- Publishers Weekly

"Inventive and imaginative."
- The New York Times

"Deserves a place on the shelves next to the work of Jean Auel."
- Booklist

"Fascinating."
- Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Notorious Mrs Winston
Novel by Mary Mackey
Published by Berkley Books 2007
(The Penguin Publishing Group)
http://www.penguin.com/
ISBN 978-0-425-21512-8
$15.00
Available in bookstores, from online booksellers, and
in a Kindle edition from http://www.amazon.com/

Breaking the Fever

Marsh Hawk Press has a poetry collective which features mary Mackey's work http://www.mhpress.blogspot.com/

"Most poets seem to write poetry with the will, relentlessly suppressing every part of themselves that isn't ecstatic. Mary Mackey writes as a whole person - mind and senses-and the poems are marvelous."
- Dennis Nurkse, author of Burnt Island

"The poetry in Breaking the Fever offers truths both personal & political, visions both actual and imaginatively broad. Ranging in setting from her childhood Indianapolis to a Brazilian favela, in subject from ecological tragedy to marital passion to the thoughts of a thoroughly contemporary Leda, Mary Mackey's crisp-edged perceptions are set down in this new collection of poems with a sensuous, compassionate, and utterly unflinching eye."
- Jane Hirshfield author of Given Sugar, Given Salt

"Your poems are delightful . . . even when they are elegiac"
- Wendell Berry, author of Given, from a letter to the Author

Breaking the Fever            
Poems by Mary Mackey
Published by Marsh Hawk Press 2006
www.marshhawk.press.org
ISBN 0-9724785-8-2
$15.00
Available from Small Press Distribution
http://www.spdbooks.org
Also available at bookstores and online booksellers

Sweet Revenge

In this delightfully wicked, deliciously funny romantic comedy, Kate Clemens introduces the unconventional Nora Wynn, a woman who finds herself in the revenge-consulting business - and business is booming. But revenge isn't so sweet when someone turns the tables on Nora herself . . . and this time, love may find a way to set things right.
Publication date: May, 2004

Purchase from www.bookpassage.com
and Amazon.com

The Stand In

A spoiled movie star and an underpaid grocery store check-out clerk trade lives with hilarious consequences. Based on Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper", this novel is a comic look at the Hollywood Pecking Order. Written under Mackey's pen name Kate Clemens.

Purchase from www.bookpassage.com
and Amazon.com

The Fires of Spring

“Fascinating…” —Marion Zimmer Bradley

In the year 4300 B.C., a young woman named Keshna comes of age as a female warrior and daring avenger. When the nomad diviner Changar kidnaps Queen Marrah’s son Keru, Keshna vows to hunt Changar down, but Changar has put Keru into a trance, taken possession of his soul, and turned him against his own people. Volume three of The Earthsong Trilogy.

“Mackey combines a researcher’s precision with storytelling magic.”
—Marija Gimbutas, author of The Civilization of the Goddess.

”Heart-pounding…”
—Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul.

Available at Iuniverse.com, Amazon.com, bookstores, and other on-line booksellers

The Year the Horses Came

Volume One of The Earthsong Trilogy evokes the moment in pre-history when marauding nomads brought horses, male gods, and war to a goddess-worshipping Europe that had known peace for thousands of years. Against this perilous backdrop, a passionate, dangerous love develops between Marrah, a gifted priestess, and Stavan, one of the invading warriors.

“A researcher’s precision combined with storytelling magic.”
—Marija Gimbutas, author of The Civilization of the Goddess

“Vivid, dramatic, compelling.”
—Marge Piercy, author of Woman on the Edge of Time

"Fascinating . . . the best of its kind" - Marion Zimmer Bradley (author of "The Mists of Avalon")

Available at Iuniverse.com, Amazon.com, bookstores, and other on-line booksellers

The Last Warrior Queen

Like Jean Auel and Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mary Mackey takes us to a place where myth and reality meet. The year is 3643 B.C.E. The great matriarchal cities which have dominated the earth are about to disappear as hordes of nomads overrun the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia. Born into one of these tribes is Inanna, a woman who speaks the language of plants and whose touch can heal. Led by her powers to the City of the Dove, where love is sacred and sex is an act of worship, Inanna fulfills her destiny by becoming a great warrior queen.

Available at Iuniverse.com, Amazon.com, bookstores, and other on-line booksellers