Our Lady Of Greenwich Village

In his brilliant second novel, Dermot McEvoy sweeps his readers into the midst of one of the most heated political races in New York City history, where an unlikely player decides to make her presence known. First it hits the papers that the Virgin Mary has appeared to Jackie Swift, an affable G.O.P. congressman with a couple of nasty habits. She then appears in a dream to Wolfe Tone O’Rourke, a liberal political consultant who is still haunted by the ghost of Bobby Kennedy, whose death he feels responsible for.Swift uses the Virgin, soon styled “Our Lady of Greenwich Village,” to put a strong anti-abortion spin on his current run for office, which immediately polarizes Greenwich Village. O’Rourke, beset by his many demons, sees something familiar in the Virgin’s dancing eyes and the line of her smile and decides to run against Swift with the campaign slogan “NO MORE BULLSHIT.” With help from unlikely characters like Cyclops Reilly, a one-eyed newspaper columnist for the Daily News, and Simone “Sam” McGuire, O’Rourke’s pretty, no-nonsense assistant, Tone is sent on a transcontinental journey that forces him to confront his own ghosts and dig deep into his family history, all to answer one burning question: What does Our Lady of Greenwich Village really want him to do? Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

A vibrant portrait of a celebrated urban enclave at the turn of the twentieth century.

Jay Dolan transformed the writing of American Catholic history a quarter-century ago by telling the story from the bottom up instead of from the top down. In recent years a number of parish histories have appeared that reflect and expand this new methodology. They successfully relate the life of a local faith community to the larger religious and secular world of which it is a part, and reciprocally illuminate that bigger world from the perspective of this local community. St. Joseph's Church in Greenwich Village offers a fruitful opportunity for this kind of history. During the life span of this parish, the Catholic community in New York City has grown from a mere thirty or forty thousand to over three million in two dioceses. St. Joseph's Church began as a poor immigrant parish in a hostile Protestant environment, developed into a prosperous working-class parish as the area became predominantly Catholic, survived a series of local economic and social upheavals, and remains today a vibrant spiritual center in the midst of an overwhelmingly secular neighborhood. Its history provides a fascinating glimpse of the evolution of Catholicism in New York City during the course of the past 175 years. The history of this parish is worth telling for its own sake as the collective journey of one faith community from immigrant mission to pillar of society and then to spiritual outpost in the Secular City. However, it has significance far beyond the boundaries of Greenwich Village because it documents at the most basic and vital level of Catholic communal organization the interaction between change and continuity that has been one of the most prominent features of urban Catholicism in the United States over the past two centuries.

When Greenwich Village Was Ours! is a collection of written memoirs and short stories from various people who grew up in Greenwich Village, New York City.

A “riveting and enlightening account” (Bookreporter) of a mostly unknown chapter in the life of Eleanor Roosevelt—when she moved to New York’s Greenwich Village, shed her high-born conformity, and became the progressive leader who pushed for change as America’s First Lady. Hundreds of books have been written about FDR and Eleanor, both together and separately, but yet she remains a compelling and elusive figure. And, not much is known about why in 1920, Eleanor suddenly abandoned her duties as a mother of five and moved to Greenwich Village, then the symbol of all forms of transgressive freedom—communism, homosexuality, interracial relationships, and subversive political activity. Now, in this “immersive…original look at an iconic figure of American politics” (Publishers Weekly), Jan Russell pulls back the curtain on Eleanor’s life to reveal the motivations and desires that drew her to the Village and how her time there changed her political outlook. A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962. When Eleanor moved there, the Village was a zone of Bohemians, misfits, and artists, but there was also freedom there, a miniature society where personal idiosyncrasy could flourish. Eleanor joined the cohort of what then was called “The New Women” in Greenwich Village. Unlike the flappers in the 1920s, the New Women had a much more serious agenda, organizing for social change—unions for workers, equal pay, protection for child workers—and they insisted on their own sexual freedom. These women often disagreed about politics—some, like Eleanor, were Democrats, others Republicans, Socialists, and Communists. Even after moving into the White House, Eleanor retained connections to the Village, ultimately purchasing an apartment in Washington Square where she lived during World War II and in the aftermath of Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Including the major historical moments that served as a backdrop for Eleanor’s time in the Village, this remarkable work offers new insights into Eleanor’s transformation—emotionally, politically, and sexually—and provides us with the missing chapter in an extraordinary life.

Greenwich Village Vignettes is a collection of short stories, or vignettes, chronicling a boy’s coming of age during the time period after the Second World War, to the close of the tumultuous and life-changing decade of the 1960’s. The area was always known for its artists, bohemians and intellectuals. My world consisted of an Italian-American ghetto, with all the hopes, pitfalls and myriad characters such an environment produced. Pictures emerge that are happy, sad, funny, poignant and tragic. Pictures of life that are an homage to the Greenwich Village I knew and grew up in, and to those who passed through there with me. These recollections are based upon factual events. To a limited degree, sequences have been rearranged or juxtaposed to fit the story line. Ultimately, it is a memoir and not a document of history. Any failure to be exact is due to the many years that separate me from their occurrence. It is what I remember, and relying upon that, in itself, exposes its fallibility.

In early twentieth-century New York, a young social butterfly discovers the darker side of the big city . . . First in this suspenseful historical mystery series. A year before World War I breaks out, the sidewalks of Manhattan are crowded with restless newcomers chasing the fabled American Dream, including a sharp-witted young woman who discovers a talent for investigating murder . . . New York City, 1913. Twenty-year-old Louise Faulk has fled Altoona, Pennsylvania, to start a life under dizzying lights. In a city of endless possibilities, it’s not long before the young ingénue befriends a witty aspiring model and makes a splash at the liveliest parties on the Upper East Side. But glitter fades to grit when Louise’s Greenwich Village apartment becomes the scene of a violent murder and a former suitor hustling for Tin Pan Alley fame hits front-page headlines as the prime suspect. Driven to investigate the crime, Louise finds herself stepping into the seediest corners of the burgeoning metropolis—where she soon discovers that failed dreams can turn dark and deadly . . . Praise for the Louise Faulk Mystery series “Maisie Dobbs fans will be pleased.”—Publishers Weekly