After the Rapture (2023)
Forthcoming from Mason Jar Press in March 2023!
In a world just slant from our own, the people are waiting for the Rapture. But what they get is not at all what they thought it would be. Whether they’re pilgrimaging to the Very First Kentucky Fried Chicken, living in life-sized Barbie houses, taking the Marriott staff hostage, trading Candy Corn on Wall Street or draining Loch Ness to “find out the goddamn truth once and for all,” there is a familiar sort of desperation in this post-Rapture existence. In moments you will laugh at the absurdity of their world, and in other moments the darkness will feel all too familiar…
Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction (2020)
Buy from Ad Hoc Fiction or order signed copies
**Winner of the 2021 Reader Views Award! Finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and International Book Awards!
Now available as an audiobook! Watch book trailer
Flash fiction is changing the way we tell stories. Carving away the excess, eliminating all but the most essential, flash fiction is putting the story through a literary dehydrator, leaving the meat without the fat. Veteran writer, publisher, and teacher Nancy Stohlman takes us on a flash fiction journey: from creating, sculpting, re-visioning and creating books of flash, to best practices for writers in any genre. If you’re already a flash fiction lover, this book will offer new inspiration. If you teach flash fiction, you’ll want this book as part of your repertoire. And if you’re new to the form, you might find yourself ready to begin.
Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities (2018)
*Finalist for a Colorado Book Award!
Buy from Amazon/Big Table Publishing or order signed copies
Watch book trailer
Step right up and meet a woman so determined to be a star she’ll try anything, including spray on Instant Fame! Meet her reflection, who dreas of a life of her own and manages to find lone on the internet! See the man desperately trying to earn a world record in teh most bizarre way possible! Learn the origins of the Four-Legged Woman and the Human Skeleton! Clown mothers, suicidal ringmasters, cult leaders who teach the cha-cha and Alaska Jackson’s Traveling Medicine Show…each one takes center stange in this vaudeville of flash fiction. Flash Fiction, microfiction, short-short stories…regardless of the name, it’s all the same–a compressed story that packs a punch. Enter a cabaret of the weird, the absurd, and the bizarre with this bold and bawdy new collection from Big Table Publishing.
The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories (2014)
Buy from Lulu/Pure Slush Press or buy signed copies
“The Vixen Scream is a collection of compelling and strikingly original stories – an imagination functioning at full throttle. Nancy Stohlman is a word-alchemist, and here is her book of wonders!” – Robert Scotellaro
“Hilarious, irreverent, twisted, bawdy, brilliant – these short shorts by Nancy Stohlman feel like a series of off-kilter encounters with the strangest characters you swear you’ve met before in a previous, more interesting lifetime. With sly humor and daring, Stohlman weaves tiny tales reminiscent of Etgar Keret, but with her own inimitable stamp. The Vixen Scream and other Bible Stories is an amazing collection. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of reading it.” – Kathy Fish
The Monster Opera (2013)
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A writer travels to Mexico City in search of a new story. . .but the monsters are already waiting for her. The more she writes, the more their whereabouts, as well as their desperation, are revealed. The Monster Opera is a gothic literary noir, a genre-bending novel-meets-libretto that combines recitative with dialogue, aria with prose, and ultimately asks the question: Who owns a story? The Monster Opera is a multi-genre extravaganza and the second flash novel available from Bartleby Snopes Press.
Now a stage show!
Searching for Suzi: a flash novel (2009)
Buy from Amazon or order signed copies
“There is an immediacy that keeps one turning the pages . . . This is a great romp into the world of stripping. Page by page our plucky narrator reveals more of herself until the perfect ending lays it all bare.”
Barcelona Review
“The exploitation has to be turned around on itself at some point. Searching for Suzi tells the story of Natalie, an ex-stripper who reflects on her life as she returns to Omaha, Nebraska where she grew up. Discussing the obsession with appearance and the concept of sexy that ranges from the glamour and stripping industry down to childhood beauty pageants, Searching for Suzi is a fascinating and very highly recommended read.”
Midwest Book Review
Nancy Stohlman 