How Long Have I Been Here

How Long Have I Been Here is a collection of a variety of stories, some set in 1960s Chicago, others in Mexico around the same period and later, and still others concerned with wayward youth versus adult loneliness, with worship of a dead writer, with isolation, with old age. All, in one form or another, have to do with love and longing, with the complexities of human relationships.

TRILOGY BOOK TWO includes three books from my numerous writings. Writing and philosophizing for so long now, I am pleased to get to do this while others simply cant take the time. In my journeys, I dont know if I am getting closer to knowing anything, and it seems the more I know, the more I know I dont know. I suppose all we can be sure of, is that as long as we are alive, we have the opportunity to keep searching, while continuing to delve into our minds and hearts for clues to greater meaning and purpose on earth. How long have you been standing here, God? is the title of the book, and it comes to you along with two others, Evolution: Facts and Fairy Tales and Amistad (Spanish for friendship). All three were written with you (the reader and fellow life-mate) especially in mind. If you struggle with your personal spirituality, and need greater awareness that God is on all sides of you, then maybe How long have you been standing here, God? (Book One) will be helpful. If you are wondering about your origins, trying to figure out how it all came about, then perhaps Evolution: Facts and Fairy Tales (Book Two) will make things even more confusing! During my time in Central America, I have learned plenty about the concept of friendship, and I mean that in the context of the whole of life. Amistad (Book Three) is a book about befriending the people, places and things that make up our lives.

This psychological sci-fi thriller from a debut author follows one doctor who must discover the source of her crew's madness... or risk succumbing to it herself. Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship—all specialists in their own fields—as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility. Shortly after landing, the crew finds themselves trapped on the ship by a radiation storm, with no means of communication or escape until it passes—and that’s when things begin to fall apart. Park’s patients are falling prey to waking nightmares of helpless, tongueless insanity. The androids are behaving strangely. There are no windows aboard the ship. Paranoia is closing in, and soon Park is forced to confront the fact that nothing—neither her crew, nor their mission, nor the mysterious Eos itself—is as it seems.

Locus Recommended Reading List Open this book to any page and find yourself enspelled by these lush, alchemical stories. Faced with the uncanny and the impossible, Rickert’s protagonists are as painfully, shockingly, complexly human as the readers who will encounter them. Mothers, daughters, witches, artists, strangers, winged babies, and others grapple with deception, loss, and moments of extraordinary joy. Praise for Mary Rickert's books: "The Memory Garden is a lovely book of women, friendship, sadness and healing, and it is genuinely uplifting. Like the garden of its title, this is a book to take in slowly, to spend time in, to wander through; you'll likely find your-selves the better for it."— NPR "This is a novel haunted by mortality—with people who died young, with people now old and dying, with ghosts. But it is often a joyful novel, a novel of life, forgiveness and good meals with friends and strangers."—Los Angeles Review of Books "I've seldom read a book as gentle, and yet as powerful."— io9.com "Rickert writes with a blend of poetical language and dark suspense."—The Washington Post "A poet of the extremes housed within the human heart."—Locus Mary Rickert has long been an undiscovered master of the fantastic. Her first collection, Map of Dreams, received the Crawford and World Fantasy awards, and stories from this collection of new and selected work have received the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. She has worked as kindergarten teacher, barista, Disneyland balloon vendor, and in the personnel de-partment of Sequoia National Park where she spent her time off hiking the wilderness. She is the author of two collections and the novel The Memory Garden and she has received the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. She lives in Wisconsin. See more at maryrickert.com.

CANADA READS 2020 WINNER NATIONAL BESTSELLER 2020 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER How do you find yourself when the world tells you that you don't exist? Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, she faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From her parents, she internalized the lesson that revealing her identity could put her in grave danger. When her family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage. Backed into a corner, her need for a safe space--in which to grow and nurture her creative, feminist spirit--became dire. The men in her life wanted to police her, the women in her life had only shown her the example of pious obedience, and her body was a problem to be solved. So begins an exploration of faith, art, love, and queer sexuality, a journey that takes her to the far reaches of the globe to uncover a truth that was within her all along. A triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, We Have Always Been Here is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one's truest self.