Jean Ryan’s ‘Strange Company’ Now Available in Paperback and Audiobook from MadeMark Publishing
It’s hard to overstate how wonderful it is to be able to share Jean Ryan’s amazing essay collection Strange Company in both paperback and audiobook. Some people are writers, some are artists, and Jean is that rare author who is both. Her award-nominated fiction sears the heart and jolts the mind, and her essays are constructed with the excruciating detail of a master.
Of her Lambda Literary Award finalist short story collection Survival Skills, Publishers Weekly said: “Ryan controls devastating psychological material with tight prose, quick scene changes, and a scientist’s observant eye.”
And from the Los Angeles Review: “With her debut collection Survival Skills, Jean Ryan brings to the short story what Mary Oliver does to poetry.”
Strange Company now an audiobook, narrated by Nikiya Palombi, available on Audible, Amazon and iTunes.
About Strange Company:
In Strange Company, a delightful collection of short essays, Jean Ryan brings us closer to the natural world. From lizards to lady bugs, from the inscrutable sloth to the resplendent quetzal, Ryan reveals some of our commonalities with earth’s creatures and hints at the lessons we might learn from them. Do lizards fall in love? What do sloths think about all day? Why is the blood of a horseshoe crab so valuable? Do starlings flock for fun? Can a parrot serve as a therapist? Do turtles ever grow bored with their long lives? Why would a crow foster a kitten? Can snails be fearless? These are just a few of the questions Ryan poses in Strange Company as she invites the reader on a wild journey through land, sea and sky. While these essays acknowledge our responsibility to Mother Nature, the insights they offer are affirmative and heartening. With her precise, elegant prose, Ryan draws us into the tantalizing world of animals and their oddities.