In BIG RED, Jerome Charyn reimagines the life of one of America’s most enduring icons, “Gilda” herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red tresses and hypnotic dancing graced the silver screen over 60 times in her nearly 40-year career. The quintessential movie star of the 1940s, Hayworth has long been objectified as a sex symbol, pin-up girl and so-called Love Goddess. Channeling the ghosts of a buried past, Charyn finally lifts the veils that have long enshrouded Hayworth, evoking her emotional complexity --- her passions, her pain and her inner turmoil.

In THE PERILOUS ADVENTURES OF THE COWBOY KING, Jerome Charyn recreates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt through his derring-do adventures as New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider and soon-to-be 26th president. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley’s assassination in 1901, Charyn positions Roosevelt as a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president. With an operatic cast, including “Bamie,” his handicapped older sister; Eleanor, his gawky little niece; as well as the devoted Rough Riders, the novel memorably features the lovable mountain lion Josephine, who helped train Roosevelt for his “crowded hour,” the charge up San Juan Hill.

BITTER BRONX, Jerome Charyn's new collection, is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with the author's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row.

This unforgettable portrait of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War effortlessly mixes humor with Shakespearean-like tragedy to create an achingly human portrait of the 16th president. Jerome Charyn conducts an orchestra of historical figures and fictional extras centered on a profoundly moral but troubled commander in chief whose relationship with his Ophelia-like wife and his sons is explored with penetrating psychological insight and the utmost compassion.