Milk and Oranges...

About the Book

Milk and Oranges, a collection of short fiction and essays examining life, love, and the tragedy and comedy of the human condition, has been published as an e-book by award-winning writer Charlene Wexler.

Whether she is tackling fiction or essays, Charlene Wexler writes from the heart. With a keen eye for detail and a way of looking at the world a bit sideways, Wexler’s writings in Milk and Oranges will entertain while they make you think.

In Milk and Oranges, Wexler’s fiction and essays are grouped in five categories.

How’s Your Love Life? features two fiction pieces that will cause female readers to nod their heads in agreement, and a warm essay on Wexler’s feelings for her husband, Sam.

The Cruel Club features both essays and fiction on the tragedy of the death of a child. Wexler has been a member of the Cruel Club since 1981.

In Family and Friends, you’ll meet some of the fun characters in Wexler’s life and in her fiction, and inevitably you’ll think about similar loved ones in your own world. The story Milk and Oranges, from which the title of this book is derived, appears in this section.

What would life be without our animal pals? Wexler shares some stories about four-footed friends and loved ones in Animal Magnetism.

The Passing Parade features Wexler’s fiction and prose observations on the changes in our fast-paced world.

After reading Milk and Oranges, you’ll see why Wexler’s first novel, Murder on Skid Row, was honored with an Apex Award for excellence. Her style makes you feel as if you are reading about or talking to dear friends.

Milk and Oranges is a collection of stories that will pluck at your heartstrings and tickle your funnybone. See http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106562.

 

Murder on Skid Row...

About the Book

"Spare any change?" and "I don’t know nothing" were the watchwords on Chicago’s Skid Row in the 1960s. Located on Madison Street, a little west of the city’s bustling and prosperous downtown, Skid Row was home to hustlers, winos, addicts, bums, lost souls, ripoffs, and kickbacks. Everyone, it seemed, had a secret.

Into this shady society steps Dr. Mel Greenberg, who describes himself as "fresh out of dental school, very idealistic, and very poor." He opens his new dental office "to help the downtrodden," he says. Instead, he finds himself in a world for which his working-class upbringing never prepared him, where a day might bring anything from a philosophy-quoting patient to a knife held at his neck. Eventually, he finds himself a suspect in murder.

Based on a true story, Murder on Skid Row is the first novel by Wexler. Told from Dr. Greenberg’s point of view, Murder on Skid Row takes the reader back to a place that was an integral part of Chicago for decades—but one today’s public officials and city-beautiful boosters would rather have us believe never existed.

In the pages of Murder on Skid Row,you’ll meet:

Ace, who "could flick a billfold from a pocket faster than a squirrel could pluck a nut from a tree."

Darlene, a ghetto girl torn between the better life working in Mel’s office can provide and her boyfriend’s world of gangs and drugs.

Tyrone, Mel’s "bodyguard" and more dangerous than Skid Row itself.

Jim Bones, a Vietnam vet forever scarred by the horrors of war.

Abe, whose pharmacy was one of the last thriving businesses left on Skid Row—but whose secrets held fatal consequences.

Plus a host of other characters who made up the tattered tapestry of Skid Row life. Toss in humor, pathos, and a murder mystery, and you have a gripping historical thriller. Chicago’s Skid Row is long gone, but Wexler brings it back in Murder on Skid Row.

The book recently won an Apex Award of Excellence from Communications Concepts, a writing and journalism think tank based outside Washington, DC.