From Stardust to Starlight
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BOOKSHOP | AMAZON | INDIEBOUND | BARNES & NOBLE
From the bestselling author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk comes a novel about Hollywood, the cost of stardom, and selfless second acts, inspired by an extraordinary true story.
Chicago, 1916. Doreen O’Dare is fourteen years old when she hops a Hollywood-bound train with her beloved Irish grandmother. Within a decade, her trademark bob and insouciant charm make her the preeminent movie flapper of the Jazz Age. But her success story masks one of relentless ambition, tragedy, and the secrets of a dangerous marriage.
Her professional life in flux, Doreen trades one dream for another. She pours her wealth and creative energy into a singular achievement: the construction of a one-ton miniature Fairy Castle, the likes of which the world has never seen. So begins Doreen’s public tour to lift the nation’s spirits during the Great Depression―and a personal journey worth remembering.
A sweeping journey from the dawn of the motion picture era through turbulent twentieth-century America, From Dust to Stardust is a breathtaking novel about one determined woman navigating change, challenging the price of fame, and sharing the gift of real magic.
“Kathleen Rooney takes us on a wild romp through the Jazz Age of Hollywood as she brings to life one of the most unforgettable icons of that era. In this vivid fictional retelling of the life of Colleen Moore―the original flapper of silent films―she reminds us that the line between fantasy and reality is gossamer and that even the strongest of women need their dreams.” ―Melanie Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator’s Wife and The Girls in the Picture
“If you love unexplored history; vibrant, strong women; and the glamour and grit of early Hollywood, you will adore this story. Full of magic and moxie, From Dust to Stardust is a Depression-era Cinderella story that leaves its mark.” ―Amy Harmon, New York Times bestselling author
“Enchanting.” ―Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy
Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey
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BOOKSHOP | AMAZON | PUBLISHER | BARNES & NOBLE
From the green countryside of England and the gray canyons of Wall Street come two unlikely heroes: one a pigeon and the other a soldier. Answering the call to serve in the war to end all wars, neither Cher Ami, the messenger bird, nor Charles Whittlesey, the army officer, can anticipate how their lives will briefly intersect in a chaotic battle in the forests of France, where their wills will be tested, their fates will be shaped, and their lives will emerge forever altered.
A saga of hope and duty, love and endurance, as well as the claustrophobia of fame, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is a tragic yet life-affirming war story that the world has never heard. Inspired by true events of World War I, Kathleen Rooney resurrects two long-forgotten yet unforgettable figures, recounting their tale in a pair of voices that will change the way readers look at animals, freedom, and even history itself.
“If you haven’t yet discovered the offbeat genius of Kathleen Rooney, start here with a novel both heartbreaking and sharply funny. It justifies its own premise on the first page, and quickly surpasses that premise. Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is brilliant and surprising at every turn.”
—Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer finalist for The Great Believers
“A properly mysterious, warmly convincing work of bright imagination. A pigeon and a haunted man returned generously, gently, to the story of the world.”
—Sebastian Barry, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Days Without End
“Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is a splendid novel; so smart, so beautifully written—a heroic tale of the cross-species relationship between pigeon and man during the Great War. Affecting and imaginative, this story vibrated deep in my heart because it all felt so very true.”
—Annie Hartnett, author of Rabbit Cake
“Kathleen Rooney’s immersive, immaculate new novel is both a memorial and an imperative, broadening our collective definition of humanity and courage. In bell-clear prose, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey paints a harrowing portrait of the callousness and deep compassion of those—both man and bird—involved in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Like Rooney’s rich and poignant characters, readers will emerge from the pocket irrevocably changed.”
—Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild
“In this extraordinary novel Kathleen Rooney manages to transport the reader both inside the foxholes of World War I and above them, flying over a landscape grotesquely altered by a war whose logic defies all efforts—both human and animal—to grasp it. Both a gripping tale of survival during and after war, and a contemplation of the ties between human and animal, this is a beautiful, original, deeply empathetic book.”
—Caitlin Horrocks, author of The Vexations
“Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is brilliant—elegant and wise, deeply felt and flecked with humor. Rooney has a gift for illuminating the intimate desires of her historical characters while offering insights into our own bruised reality. It takes command and courage to write a novel as daring yet as quietly resonant as this one. I was blown away.”
—Sarah Domet, author of The Guineveres
The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte
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SPORK PRESS | AMAZON
The hybrid book is a novel in flash fictions that looks at the paintings and life of the Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte from the perspectives of his wife Georgette and their shared series of beloved Pomeranian dogs, all called Loulou. They draw heavily on my recent work as the co-editor of Magritte’s Selected Writings, a lost manuscript that–with Eric Plattner–I rediscovered, edited, and brought out for the first time ever in an English edition in Fall 2016 in both the UK and the United States.
“The house is haunted but nobody’s home. Only us chickens, standing still as sculpture while Loulou, the immortal Pomeranian, & Georgette, Magritte’s guardian angel, take us on a tour of the asylum. The rooms in Kathleen Rooney’s The Listening Room are always listening, always watching. The walls have ears. The tears have eyes. Sometimes the screams are silent. Sometimes the silence is deafening. Stark & hard-edged as the paintings themselves, this novel in poems and flashes inhabits a world much like our own — suspended in a glazed animation of doomed hope & hopeful doom, where the virtual is realer than reality, where the muse & the bemused are confused, where the funny is wedded to the sad in unholy matrimony. “Mystery,” Magritte wrote late in life, “is not one of the possibilities of reality. Mystery is what is absolutely necessary for reality to exist.” Take a load off. Escape is not an option. There are no windows & no doors, only holes through which the sky or an oncoming train pours in. The stairs dead end. The clouds are voodoo dolls, sweet enough to eat. But who, Georgette & Loulou forever wonder, will devour whom?” ~Eric Plattner, co-editor of Rene Magritte: Selected Writings
O, Democracy!
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AMAZON
It’s late spring of 2008, and one of Illinois’ two Democratic senators is poised to become the next president of the United States. Colleen Dugan works for the other one—not on Capitol Hill, but in a Chicago skyscraper that overlooks Lake Michigan, among coworkers with little to do but field calls from angry constituents while the future of the nation gets decided elsewhere. In the coming weeks Colleen will navigate the perils of costumed protestors, thuggish union reps, vacuous interns, trifling bureaucrats, dirty tricks by the Senator’s Republican rival, and the unexpected discovery of a scandalous secret that will give her the power to change the course of the election and shape her own fate—though not necessarily for the better.
A quarterlife crisis viewed from the ghostly perspective of the Founding Fathers, O, Democracy! is a hilarious and heartbreaking story about American politics and the difficult business of being a good citizen: walking the tricky line between self-sacrifice and self-sabotage, between doing your part and knowing your place.
“O, Democracy! is a rare literary creation: an often very funny novel that looks with an unblinking eye at the inherent contradictions in today’s political and cultural landscapes. Kathleen Rooney’s debut novel is ambitious, smart, and hard to put down.”
—Christine Sneed, author, Little Known Facts
“With O, Democracy!, Kathleen Rooney makes a swift and seamless transition from poetry to fiction, pairing her skill for image with a fresh voice, humor, and a keen eye for the political world she navigates here. An exciting debut.”
—Elizabeth Crane, author, We Only Know So Much
“O, Democracy! infuriates and inspires. Rooney has written a brilliant and fiercely readable novel of politics and ideals, both an indictment and a celebration of the American Experiment, which will leave you breathless.”
—Jonathan Evison, author, West of Here