Contemporary Fiction
Available widely in ebook, paperback, and hardcover formats.
I Am Alex Locus is the story of a twenty-three-year-old woman who learns, quite by chance, that her mother, who died when Alex was 14, wrote stories that few people saw. She decides to collect them from the attic in the upscale suburban house where she grew up and see if they revealed anything about her mother. She’ll regret starting her quest time and time again as she learns unpleasantness about her mother and her father.
Literary Fiction
For these books, Joseph P. Garland is the author. They are available on Amazon and other book retailers, in ebook, paperback, and generally hardcover versions.
Gilded Age Novels
Róisín Campbell: An Irishwoman in New York begins in 1870. Róisín Campbell is a daughter on a dairy farm on the eastern part of County Limerick, Ireland. Economics being what they are, she must emigrate. Her eldest brother will stay on the farm and her eldest sister has married a nearby farmer. But her other older siblings are in Liverpool but she is fated to go to New York.
A Studio on Bleecker Street begins in May 1872. The main character, Clara Bowman, is referred to in passing in Róisín Campbell, and Emily Connor, who appears several times in that first book become Clara’s best friend. Although this is a stand-alone novel, it intersects with the final scene of Róisín, and numerous characters from that first novel appear in this one, in something of an attempt to find out what became of them.
This is the story of a woman newly out in society and what happens to her when the man she intends to marry dies in a train crash with his sister, and Clara’s best friend.
A Maid’s Life begins much as Róisín Campbell does. A maid from Ireland comes to New York in the early 1870s. She trains at the House of Mercy and becomes a maid at a fashionable house, that of the Palmers. The story diverges as the maid–Margaret Treacy from County Mayo–finds herself exiled from that house for reasons unknown. She wanders throughout New York until she discovers the meaning of love.
Bridget & Joseph in 1918 is a story mixing facts learned about Joseph P. Garland’s paternal grandparents and an imagined story of how they got together. Available at Amazon and other ebook outlets.
Inspector Washington & The Priceless Necklace is a short crime/mystery story involving an NYPD Inspector who appeared in A Studio on Bleecker Street. Set chiefly in Newport, Rhode Island. Available exclusively as an Amazon ebook (and Kindle Select).
Gilded Age Shorts
I’ve begun a series of very short pieces set at the time period of Róisín Campbell and A Studio, i.e., the 1870s. Some will have characters who appear in one of those books. Others will be built around a portrait by John Singer Sargent, which will be the book’s cover. They will all be on Kindle Select.
The Single White Rose is a story of an unexpected, and unexplained, gift and the encounter that comes of it. Amazon ebook.
Romances
These romances of varying orientations and lengths.
Coming to Terms is a contemporary, multi-generational romance novel set chiefly in Manhattan and the New York suburbs. It includes a fair amount about life at a New York law school and wrestles with the limits of Catholicism. Available as an ebook or a paperback at Amazon and elsewhere.
Disowned is the story of Mary Elizabeth Nelson, who is the aunt of Suzanne Nelson/Neally, one of the main characters in Coming to Terms. It is the story of her estrangement from her family in California and the life she builds for herself in New York. Available at Amazon.
A Theory About Valentine’s Day is a short novella about best friends. What happens when platonic friends find their regular Thursday night dinner will be on February 14: Well, he laughs about the inanity of proposals that day—it’s his “theory”—but then he asks her an interesting question and she must decide how to respond. Available at Amazon.
A Vintage Gown* (*and the women who own it) is a romance about the effect a Dior gown has on two lovers who believed they were lost to each other forever. Available at Amazon.
A Fairytale of New York is the story of a British man who meets an Irish woman who is working in an Irishy tavern in midtown Manhattan. After several days of romance, they part company. Until he comes home on vacation to his parents’ house in Brighton and she is sitting in the sitting room. A romance. Available at Amazon.
Accidently in Love begins, from a song entitled “Prison,” about a twenty-something who inherited a good half-million when his parents were killed in a Gulfstream crash. His living is changing as he, Peter Edgar, is struggling to find meaning in his job and more generally when he literally runs into Amy Reid on a summer Saturday and on a sidewalk near his lavish apartment on Park Avenue. He and she will go through a lot along the way.
Along that way, he’ll meet Bridget Casey, a pediatric-cancer nurse at nearby Lenox Hill Hospital. Their relationship is platonic and they become great friends but she becomes great friends with Evelyn Manners, a very attractive woman who has glided through life and is also trying to make sense of it. And that she does, with the help of Bridget Casey. Available at Amazon, including in paper, and as an ebook from other sellers through Draft2Digital.
The Prodigal Daughter is the story of a gay woman who takes the train from New York to Chicago, to see her dying father. She’s been told he’s a changed man. She learns otherwise. Available at Amazon.
An American Historian on Oxford’s High Street is the tale of a widowed, tenured professor of history at a university outside of Chicago who runs into a former student while out on Oxford’s High Street. Despite his daughter’s misgivings, and some of his own, they meet again when she, now getting a Ph.D. from MIT, appears at his office. And they reconnect. Available at Amazon.
An International Exchange is, I think, a sweet story about the encounter of a New Yorker and a Romanian in Lenox, Massachusetts. It is published by JMS Books but available elsewhere.
Something Different
My Songs is a collection of lyrics from songs I’ve written over the years. At Amazon.
My Pride and Prejudice Variation
I am at work on a Pride and Prejudice variation. It is entitled Becoming Catherine Bennet and follows the lives of the various Bennets and Darcys and Bingleys, etc. after the weddings of Darcy and Elizabeth and of Bingley and Jane. The first five chapters of this work-in-progress are here.
Dermody House 