BEFORE AND AFTER A SLICE OF CAKE
Product Details
Before and After a Slice of Cake by Leah Browning
Quiet Ocean Studio & Press, April 2027
Trade paperback, $20.00, Stories, 328 pages
Print paperback ISBN-13: 979-8-9990752-4-6
E-book ISBN-13: 979-8-9990752-5-3
Audiobook ISBN-13: 979-8-9990752-6-0 (retail)
Audiobook ISBN-13: 979-8-9990752-7-7 (library)
Cover painting by Rubens Peale
Audiobook narration by Mallory Fuccella
Please visit Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Powell’s, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Parnassus, Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts, Elliott Bay Book Company, and other online and brick-and-mortar booksellers for additional information or to pre-order a copy of the book.
Sample from the Collection
The nursery has been invaded by poinsettias and seven-foot firs, crowding around the cash registers with their red velvet bows. The houseplants, even the orchids and bonsai trees, have been pushed backwards to make room.
I find the rubber plant leaning against the back wall, between an old Coke machine and a door marked Employees Only. He’s half my height and looks like he’s seen better days. Still, I wind up carrying him toward the neck of the store and taking him home with me.
My apartment is on the fourth floor of an old brick building. Every afternoon, I join him by the window, curling up on the sofa with a blanket and a book as the pale winter sun moves slowly across the living room. Within a few weeks, he’s already doubled in size. His leaves turn thick and glossy.
A year passes, then another. I have lost other plants in the past, but I feel good about this one. The following summer, we marry in a small ceremony on the beach.
This is an excerpt from “Plant,” a story by Leah Browning, first published in Passages North.
Discussion Guide for Readers
A discussion guide for readers will be available for Before and After a Slice of Cake: Stories by Leah Browning. This printable PDF is intended for book clubs, classes, and other discussion groups.
Discussion guide for Before and After a Slice of Cake (forthcoming)
About the Book
The dogs went off like a bomb.
There were five of them, big German shepherds, lunging and straining against the metal fence separating their property from the concrete pad where we parked our car.
They began barking the minute they heard the tires crunching down the gravel driveway. Our headlights swung across their faces, panting and snarling blindly in our direction. Their fur stood on end. We cut the lights and sat for a moment, waiting. They seemed otherworldly, glowing like that in the moonlight.
The second full-length collection of short fiction by Leah Browning, Before and After a Slice of Cake, features a generous selection of stories about risk and reward.
A woman falls in love with her new houseplant. A mouse at the center of a laboratory experiment makes a dangerous friend. And, in a series of interconnected stories, two young newlyweds move across the country and find themselves trapped in their new home by the neighbors’ dogs.
Reality and surreality are interwoven in this array of strange, haunting, sometimes suspenseful stories. As in her first full-length compilation, Browning’s writing runs the gamut: Before and After a Slice of Cake includes everything from reflective literary fiction to miniature gems of magical realism. These stories are fitted together like puzzle pieces, creating an elaborate jewel box of a collection.
About the Author
Leah Browning is the author of Souvenirs from Another Life, a collection of short stories published by Quiet Ocean Studio & Press. She is also the author of a pair of flash fiction mini-books, Two Good Ears and Loud Snow, published by Silent Station Press; a collection of poetry, When the Sun Comes Out After Three Days of Rain, published by Kelsay Books; three short nonfiction books from educational publisher Capstone Press; and six chapbooks of poetry and fiction. Browning’s work has appeared in Four Way Review, Flock, Harpur Palate, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Threepenny Review, Necessary Fiction, Contrary Magazine, Waxwing, Passages North, Vestal Review, Terrain.org, Clockhouse, Fractured Lit, Belletrist Magazine, Parhelion Literary Magazine, Santa Ana River Review, Superstition Review, The Westchester Review, Newfound, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, and the storySouth Million Writers Award. In addition to writing, Browning has served as editor of the Apple Valley Review since 2005. Before and After a Slice of Cake is her second full-length collection of stories.
For More Information
Please visit Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Powell’s, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Parnassus, Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts, Elliott Bay Book Company, and other online and brick-and-mortar booksellers for additional information or to pre-order a print copy of the book. It may also be possible to request a copy of the paperback from your local library if it is not already on order.
Before and After a Slice of Cake will be available as an e-book. It can now be pre-ordered from Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Google Play, Kobo, Smashwords, and other sources. A list of these, including links, is available on Books2Read. Alternatively, you will be able to request the e-book from your local library via OverDrive/Libby or Hoopla.
An unabridged audiobook, narrated by Mallory Fuccella, will be for retail sale from Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Spotify, Google Play, Kobo, Libro.fm, and elsewhere. It is going to be distributed to libraries through OverDrive/Libby, Hoopla, and other platforms. Once it is available for pre-order, if it is not already on order through your local library, you may be able to submit a request asking the librarians to purchase a copy of the audiobook for their collection.
To read a little more of the book before purchasing a copy, please view the Fiction page for selected excerpts from Before and After a Slice of Cake and other stories by Leah Browning.
You are also welcome to read more and/or follow Leah Browning on the following sites:
Website: https://www.leahbrowninglit.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leahbrowninglit
Twitter/X: https://x.com/leahbrowninglit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leahbrowninglit
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/leahbrowning.bsky.social
Blogspot: https://leahbrowning.blogspot.com
Medium: https://medium.com/@leah_browning
LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/author/browningleah
The StoryGraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/authors/7ad7f6c7-07ba-42fe-a0bb-a6243d61030e
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/leah_browning