Joseph Dobrian’s talent for portraying complex characters and relationships which in his novels can develop in ordinary, historical, or bizarre settings gets new and daring expression in The Pilgrim and Other Tales, his first book of short fiction. The ten stories in this collection take the reader on voyages to the Spanish Civil War, the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, a central African jungle, 1980s Manhattan, a remote Romanian monastery, and the next world. Ranging from brutal, to sentimental, to mysterious, to absurd, the stories challenge conventional ideas about love, combat, inner struggles, personal demons, man’s inhumanity to man, the purpose of life and death. Each story contains a great question that will gnaw at the reader’s mind and demand serious reflection. The author uses a mixture of wit, compassion, merciless insight and sometimes a little Schadenfreude to illustrate his characters.

Teenaged Christine Wainwright’s parents regard her and her musical ambitions as inconveniences. Christine’s earnest, vain elder brother David is the star of the family: an up-and-coming novelist who’s given his parents a perfect daughter-in-law and two adorable grandchildren. The middle child, Melissa, is struggling with her teaching career and a choice between two men: steady, pragmatic Leander Washington and worshipful Connor Lowe. When Christine disappears, suspicion falls on the Wainwrights’ scheming neighbor, Andy Palinkas, who loathes Christine's parents. The unfolding mystery exposes the truth behind the Wainwrights’ respectable façade: a convoluted saga of unwanted children, disastrous marriages, romantic double-crosses, and domestic plots and counter-plots.

Andy Palinkas is a modern Don Quixote. He’s unattractive, and mistrustful of others. He’s obsessed with a girl he can’t win. He embarrasses himself at sports. Plus, as Andy observes, “Having a younger brother who can beat you at anything: That has got to be the worst thing in the world.” As he grows up in State City, Iowa, in the mid-1960s, Andy copes with life by making himself the hero of his own saga. He creates alternative realities in which he’s powerful, accomplished, brave and sometimes vengeful. To his own amazement, by his senior year at State City High, Andy has become one of the cool kids. Then, he faces a decision that might cost him the status and admiration he’s earned. Will Andy stick to his principles, and fight? Hard -Wired will resonate with any adult who remembers the humiliations, the painful humor, and the occasional victories of adolescence.

By turns playful, angry, clever, serious, sentimental, cynical, and ribald, Joseph Dobrian’s essays and journalism turn conventional wisdom on its ear. This collection of Joseph Dobrian’s non-fiction provides new, contrarian perspectives on a wide range of subjects, and dares you to disagree. In the course of this book, the author: • explains what it means to write honestly • debunks the concept of “unconditional love” • contrasts modern and old-fashioned ideas of etiquette • discusses the finer points of food, drink, and personal style • looks askance at politics, justice, and religion • dissects “The Awful English Language” • advises on how to keep romance alive • suggests what music to listen to, on the last night of your life Whether or not he’s right, is for the reader to decide but Joseph Dobrian is never in doubt. “The American Orwell. Agree with him or not, Joseph Dobrian is a wonderful writer.” Casper Melick “Even if you can’t agree with everything in Joseph Dobrian’s aptly titled book of maddening and illuminating essays and I certainly can’t you can’t help but admire the passion and perception revealed in each one. Provocateur, devil’s advocate, pontificator, stylist, romantic, 24/7 judge and jury, humanist despite his best intentions to the contrary, he will irritate you, entertain you, and just possibly make you rethink your own indefensible positions.” Holly Carver

What happens when a professor at a small college decides to defend the school’s iconic but politically incorrect sports mascot? What happens when he falls into the middle of a feud between two famous writers? What happens when the college’s reform-minded president decides to use the professor as “the chicken who’s killed to frighten the monkeys”? And what happens when a fashionable filmmaker decides to make a movie about the whole to-do?

Nobody knows what to make of Jimmy Megaffin a heavyweight boxer who insists that he has lived through the entire history of his sport, from the days of ancient Greece. He fights because “I am not good at anything else.” At first, he fights for the right to walk the streets of his neighbor-hood in Newark; later, to avenge his dead brother; to provide for his mother; to vindicate his long-frustrated manager; and to protect (as best he can) the integrity of a sport famously riddled with corruption. Megaffin meets (and mostly befriends) all the important heavyweights of the mid-20th century, from a fading Joe Louis to a rising Cassius Clay. When he’s not fighting, he’s reading or writing so he also encounters some of the most prominent literary figures of his era: Norman Mailer; George Plimpton; John Steinbeck; Nat Fleischer; the wisecracking Betty Bugle; and his nemesis through the ages, the elegant Denis D’Arval. The Pretender is the ultimate novel for the boxing fan full of rock-’em-sock-’em action and for any reader curious about the mind of a professional fighter and the history of the “Manly Art.”

In his latest collection of (mostly) bite-size essays, Joseph Dobrian rips apart the prevailing catechisms of political correctness, secular progressivism, intersectionality, and liberal Christianity. Dobrian stands for freedom, individual dignity, and objective truth, but politics and religion aren’t all that’s on his mind. Among other topics, he discourses on: · the fundamentals of effective fiction · his favorite “celebrity behaving badly” story · how to get started on your own book and finish it · sports heroes from Joe Louis to Jana Novotná · proper responses when listening to Tchaikovsky · how to handle complaints in any business situation Joseph Dobrian doesn’t mean to be kind but whatever the issue, he leaves no doubt about where he stands. “Joseph Dobrian is Alceste. He’s the first man I would want sitting by me at any party, no matter the company.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth “Mr. Dobrian is always honest, often wise but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.” Benjamin Franklin “Of all books ever written, this is one of them.” Casper Melick