From the blue-collar realism of his early writing to his expansive later stories, the cool-eyed intensity and steady witnessing of Carver's work remains an inspiration for readers and writers alike.Call If You Need Me traces the arc of Carver's career, not in the widely anthologized stories that have become classics, but through his uncollected fiction and his essays. Here are the five "last stories," discovered a decade after Carver's death. Also here are Carver's first published story, the fragment of an unfinished novel, and all of his nonfiction--from a recollection of his father to reflections on writers as varied as Anton Chekhov and John Gardner, Donald Barthelme and Sherwood Anderson. Call If You Need Me does not merely enhance the stature of a twentieth-century master; it invites us to travel with a singular artist, step by step, as he discovers what is worth saying and how to say it so it pierces the heart.

    Here Wright adds to his third trilogy (Chickamauga [1995], Black Zodiac [1997], and Appalachia [1998]) a section of new poems that suggest new directions in the work of this sensuous, spirit-haunted poet.

    Misfit and motherless, they share an American desert summer of darkly illuminating signs and portents. In locales as mirrored strange as a nursing home where the living dead are preserved, to a wildlife museum where the dead are presented as living, the girls attend to their future. A remarkable attendant cast of characters, including a stroke survivor whose soulmate is a vivisected monkey, an aging big-game hunter who finds spiritual renewal in his infatuation with an eight-year-old–the formidable Emily Bliss Pickles–and a widower whose wife continues to harangue him, populate this gloriously funny and wonderfully serious novel where the dead are forever infusing the living, and all creatures strive to participate in eternity.

    Its popularity owes much to the lyricism of the prose, thepitch-perfect rendition of black vernacular English, and the memorable characters--most notably, Janie Crawford. Collecting the most widely cited and influential essays published on Hurston's classic novel over the last quarter century, this Casebook presents contesting viewpoints by Hazel Carby, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Barbara Johnson, Carla Kaplan, Daphne Lamothe, Mary Helen Washington, and Sherley Anne Williams. The volume also includes a statement Hurston submitted to a reference book on twentieth-century authors in 1942. As it records the major debates the novel has sparked on issues oflanguage and identity, feminism and racial politics, A Casebook charts new directions for future critics and affirms the classic status of the novel.

    End of the line, Lee thought, where else would she find him? She stopped in front of him, almost as tall as him in her pumps, knowing full well that everybody in the joint was watching her and not giving one thin damn.She could only stand there a moment though, and then she had to touch him; she put her arms around his neck and her cheek next to his, just to feel him after all this time, to smell him after all these years. And then he put those hams of his around her and they stayed like that, not saying anything, for maybe a minute.Finally she put her lips against his neck and then on his mouth and she stepped back to look at him again."Oh, you goddamn mick," she said. "Where you been?"At 35, Tommy Cochrane is a washed-up boxer who missed out on a shot at the heavyweight title and has to hang up his gloves for good when he's diagnosed with an aneurysm. His best friend and former sparring partner, T-Bone Pike, isn't in great shape either as the two of them head to Toronto on a quest for the $5,000 Tommy desperately needs to buy back his grandfather's farm.In the big city, Tommy and T-Bone encounter an intriguing cast of characters operating on the questionable side of the tracks. Fat Ollie runs the weekly poker game on Queen Street; Buzz Murdoch gives Tommy a job as a doorman at the Bamboo club; Herm Bell is a sharp kid on a run of luck; and Tony Broad is a small-time hood with big-time ambitions and a seedy sidekick named Billy Callahan. There's also Lee Charles, a sharp, cynical, smart-mouthed torch singer, who happens to be Tommy's ex-girlfriend.In the tradition of James Ellroy, Brad Smith has readers instantly embroiled in a quick-paced plot that involves guns and money, good guys and bad guys, double and triple crosses, and an exciting, suspenseful payoff. An unerring tradition of '50s Ontario, rich in local colour and with the kind of crackling dialogue that drives an Elmore Leonard novel, One-Eyed Jacks is a great read that opens up the underbelly of Toronto the Good.

    Yet peacekeeping is not child's play. A tale of high-tech warfare set in near-future Solvakia, God's Children is the story of the 3rd Platoon, Company, 2nd Battalion of the 13th Infantry, and two young officers who try to keep a peace that is falling apart before their very eyes.Simultaneously an action-filled adventure and a study of contemporary issues facing today's soldier, this novel displays Coyle's vast knowledge of military affairs through thrilling yet realistic scenes. Proving once again that Coyle is a master of military fiction, God's Children is as timeless as war itself.