Great literature increases knowledge of and desire for the good life by showing readers what virtue looks like and where vice leads. It is not just what one reads but how one reads that cultivates virtue. Reading good literature well requires one to practice numerous virtues, such as patience, diligence, and prudence. And learning to judge wisely a character in a book, in turn, forms the reader's own character.Acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. In reintroducing ancient virtues that are as relevant and essential today as ever, Prior draws on the best classical and Christian thinkers, including Aristotle, Aquinas, and Augustine. Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounter with great writing.In examining works by these authors and more, Prior shows why virtues such as prudence, temperance, humility, and patience are still necessary for human flourishing and civil society. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, features original artwork throughout, and includes a foreword from Leland Ryken.

    From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.A New York Times Bestseller.

    This edition has been professionally formatted and contains several tables of contents. The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.

    Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David’s flawed humanity to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job’s incendiary questioning of God’s ways, these magnificent works of world literature resonate with a startling immediacy. Featuring Alter’s generous commentary, which quietly alerts readers to the literary and historical dimensions of the text, this is the definitive edition of the Hebrew Bible.

    He’s spent most of his life on the ranch of his kindly guardians, Mr. and Mrs. Reese, herding sheep alone in the mountains. But while the Reeses treat him like a son, Horace can’t shake the shame he feels from being abandoned by his parents. He decides to leave the only loving home he’s known to prove his worth by training to become a boxer.Mr. Reese is holding on to a way of life that is no longer sustainable. He’s a seventy-two-year-old rancher with a bad back. He’s not sure how he’ll keep things going without Horace but he knows the boy must find his own way.Coming down from the mountains of Nevada to the unforgiving desert heat of Tucson, Horace finds a trainer and begins to get fights. His journey to become a champion brings him to boxing rings of Mexico and finally, to the seedy streets of Las Vegas, where Horace learns he can’t change who he is or outrun his destiny.Willy Vlautin writes from America’s soul, chronicling the lives of those who are downtrodden and forgotten with profound tenderness. Don’t Skip Out on Me is a beautiful, wrenching story about one man’s search for identity and belonging that will make you consider those around you differently.

    Tyrant shows that Shakespeare’s work remains vitally relevant today, not least in its probing of the unquenchable, narcissistic appetites of demagogues and the self-destructive willingness of collaborators who indulge their appetites.

    Short-listed twice for the Booker Prize and the winner of a record four Miles Franklin Literary Awards for Best Australian Novel, he has a gift for language virtually unrivaled among writers in English. His work is both tough and tender, primordial and new - always revealing the raw, instinctual drives that lure us together and rend us apart. In The Shepherd's Hut, Winton crafts the story of Jaxie Clackton, a brutalized rural youth who flees from the scene of his father's violent death and strikes out for the vast wilds of Western Australia. All he carries with him is a rifle and a waterjug. All he wants is peace and freedom. But surviving in the harsh saltlands alone is a savage business. And once he discovers he's not alone out there, all Jaxie's plans go awry. He meets a fellow exile, the ruined priest Fintan MacGillis, a man he's never certain he can trust, but on whom his life will soon depend. The Shepherd's Hut is a thrilling tale of unlikely friendship and yearning, at once brutal and lyrical, from one of our finest storytellers.

    He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don’t have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything. The story of people living off the land and by their wits in a backwoods Kentucky world of shine-runners and laborers whose social codes are every bit as nuanced as the British aristocracy, Country Dark is a novel that blends the best of Larry Brown and James M. Cain, with a noose tightening evermore around a man who just wants to protect those he loves. It reintroduces the vital and absolutely distinct voice of Chris Offutt, a voice we’ve been missing for years.Chris Offutt is an outstanding literary talent, whose work has been called “lean and brilliant” (New York Times Book Review) and compared by reviewers to Tobias Wolff, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. He’s been awarded the Whiting Writers Award for Fiction/Nonfiction and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, among numerous other honors. His first work of fiction in nearly two decades, Country Dark, is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970.

    Taking her own experience of translating Roland Barthes’s lecture notes as a starting point, the author threads various stories together to give us this portrait of translation as a compelling, complex and intensely relational activity. She recounts the story of Helen Lowe-Porter’s translations of Thomas Mann, and their posthumous vilification. She writes about the loving relationship between André Gide and his translator Dorothy Bussy. She recalls how Robinson Crusoe laboriously made a table, for him for the first time, on an undeserted island. With This Little Art, a beautifully layered account of a subjective translating experience, Kate Briggs emerges as a truly remarkable writer: distinctive, wise, frank, funny and utterly original.

    For the future ...But these streets know many stories, some hide secrets … Jean holds the key to the disappearance of a famous artist … Jim's youth is shattered during the euphoric raves of ’89 … A brutal boyhood prank scars three generations of Frank's family … Corina’s gambling addiction costs her far more than money … And Alan, a man devastated by his past, unravels the darkness of his terrifying father, a man whose shadow has loomed large over the estate for a lifetime. And then there is the ageless Peg Powler, part myth, part reality: why is she stalking them all?‘Human nature? Class politics? Whatever it was, it wasn’t us … Deep down we were part of a whole, single energy, and all we had to do was be ready to sink down together.’

    She walked out on her beloved son Reuben when he was just a boy and fears he'll never forgive her. When Reuben marries a petite blonde gentile, Gilda takes it as the ultimate rejection. Her cold, distant son seems transformed by love - a love she's craved his entire adult life. What does his new wife have that she doesn't? And how far will she go to find out?It's an obsession that will bring shocking truths about the past to light . . .Bitter is a beautiful and devastating novel about the decisions that define our lives, the fragility of love and the bond between mother and son.

    Medallion Honoree. When twelve-year-old Ben’s parents don’t come home from work one day, he doesn’t know what to think—they’ve shown lack of responsibility before, but nothing like this. His six-year-old sister Lucy is more scared than he is and clings to him for support. Unwittingly fearful of the police and Child Protective Services, the children don’t want to end up in foster homes and will do anything to avoid being separated. Their journey—fraught with obstacles and people who may not have their best interests at heart—plays a significant role in building Ben’s character and eventually determining his fate.

    Not many works of literature can boast that their publication brought about actual social and labor change, but that's just what The Jungle did, as it led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In today's society, where labor and safety of the food we eat remain key concerns for all, Sinclair's shocking story still resonates. Bringing new life and energy to this classic work, adapter and illustrator Kristina Gehrmann takes Sinclair's prose and transforms it through pen and ink, allowing you to discover (or rediscover) this book and see it from a whole new perspective.

    This near-future world is utterly dependent on these little understood mechanisms and implants.And so when the terrible, dry winds sweep out of the abandoned places in America, silencing all devices, Francine and the man she has grown to love make a decision that will determine if they’ll face a premature ending or, maybe, find a chance to start life over.This superb literary novel can’t be characterized as dystopian or science fiction. Audrey Schulman has written an absorbing, recognizable story, a book that is humane, generous and surprising. Readers will shiver as they keep turning the pages.

     The endless London winter had been bitterly cold. The steady work as a freelance insurance fraud investigator was mundane and repetitive, but this suddenly changes early on a frozen February morning. The wealthy client was desperate. Just how was his high flying young son making so much money? It sounded like a dream assignment. An escape from the city and a bit of travel. And for a while it was. But on an idyllic island paradise, someone is watching, and a deadly criminal cartel operates quietly in the shadows. As Green digs deeper he uncovers the truth, but a series of unfortunate events occur. Events far beyond his control. Events that result in unspeakable violence and horror. The cartel must be stopped, but who will be the next to die? The action comes hard and fast in this gripping 1st in series page turner and culminates in an ending that will stay in your mind for a long time. A very, very long time... Pick up The Snowman Of Zanzibar today and prepare for the ride of your life.

    The Penguin Classics Book is a reader's companion to the largest library of classic literature in the world.Spanning 4,000 years from the legends of Ancient Mesopotamia to the poetry of the First World War, with Greek tragedies, Icelandic sagas, Japanese epics and much more in between, it encompasses 500 authors and 1,200 books, bringing these to life with lively descriptions, literary connections and beautiful cover designs.

    But the actual life underneath these various legends remains elusive; what did he look like as a laughing child or young soldier? What did he say in his most personal letters? How did the train tickets he held on his way from France to Spain or across the American Midwest transform him, and what kind of notes, for future stories or otherwise, did he take on these journeys? Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts from a Life answers these questions, and many others. Edited and with an introduction by the manager of the Hemingway estate, featuring a foreword by Hemingway’s son Patrick and an afterword by his grandson Seán, this rich and illuminating book tells the story of a major American icon through the objects he touched, the moments he saw, the thoughts he had every day. Featuring over four hundred dazzling images from every stage and facet of Hemingway’s life, many of them never previously published, this volume is a portrait unlike any other. From photos of Hemingway running with the bulls in Spain to candid letters he wrote to his wives and his publishers, it is a one-of-a-kind, stunning tribute to one of the most titanic figures in literature.

    S. Eliot in all its complexity. Major poems range from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', through the post-war desolation of 'The Waste Land' and the spiritual struggle of 'Ash-Wednesday', to the enduring charm of 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'. The Spectator praised Jeremy Irons's interpretation as 'so accessible, reading Eliot as if finding his words for the first time, grappling with them, relishing them, using them to express feelings that we all share as we struggle to accept, to recognise or relinquish'. Dame Eileen Atkins also appears alongside Jeremy Irons in the reading of 'The Waste Land'.These are the readings, as heard on BBC Radio 4 over Christmas 2016/17.Six programmes gather together the verse: Prufrock and Other Observations; Poems (1920); The Waste Land; The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday and Ariel Poems; Four Quartets; and Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

    All he can do is recall his life so far, dissect it, write it, gathering all the memories around what would mark his existence forever: his mother’s departure in the summer of 1994, when he was only ten, so that she could join the Zapatista uprising that was shaking up the whole country. Her mysterious escape from one day to the next only worsens with his clumsy father’s secrecy, silence and awkwardness, a man unable to carry the responsibilities for his son and teenage daughter. This worsens with the boy’s erratic investigations to uncover the reasons for his mother’s decision to leave. All he can do is create an anguish-filled parallel world: he will unsuccessfully seek refuge in his origami obsession, or in his sensory deprivation tank in which he locks himself up to see if he can erase his existence. Finally, with the help of Rata, a young delinquent dating his sister, he will undertake a voyage of discovery to the darkest corners of his Mexico City, where he will meet the face of gratuitous cruelty, as well as the selfless kindness of strangers. In his second novel, Daniel Saldaña París has created a bone chilling, exact portrait of a hypersensitive childhood that must torture and repeat itself in the mind of the protagonist.

    Their bond remained strong until Harley left for college; but after several years in Europe, Harley has finally returned home, and he has brought with him a loud, thoughtless group friends. It's up to Janet to remind Harley that he has a higher calling than merely seeking a good time with his friends from town. If only she can get him to attend church, and maybe even teach the boys in his old Sunday-school class, she’s certain she can remind Harley of principles by which he once lived. But there are many people vying for control of Harley Bruce, and Janet can only pray for the strength she’ll need to help her friend regain his faith in God.

    There, sparks fly when she tangles with Adam Fielding, a visionary businessman-farmer determined to make his own way and answer to no one. Neither is looking for marriage, but they give in to their undeniable chemistry.Annie and Adam's marriage brims with early promise and unanticipated passion, but their dream of having a child eludes them as a mysterious illness of mind and body plagues Annie's pregnancies. Amidst deepening economic adversity, natural disaster, and the onset of world war, their personal struggles collide with the societal mores of the day. Annie's shattering periods of black depression and violent outbursts exact a terrible price. The life the Fieldings have forged begins to unravel, and the only path ahead leads to unthinkable loss. Gold medal - Independent Publisher Book Awards, Best Regional FictionSarton Women's Book Award for Historical FictionWestern Writers of American Spur Award, Best First NovelGrand Prize Short List, Eric Hoffer Book AwardsFirst Runner-up for Historical Fiction, Eric Hoffer Book AwardsFirst place, Goethe Award for Historical Fiction, Chanticleer InternationalFinalist, National Indie Excellence AwardsFinalist, High Plains Book AwardsFinalist, Nancy Pearl Book AwardsFinalist, Chatelaine Awards, Chanticleer InternationalFinalist, Spur Awards, Best Traditional NovelFinalist, Next Generation Indie Book Awards,Finalist, Da Vinci Eye Award, Eric Hoffer Book AwardsSemifinalist, Somerset Awards, Chanticleer InternationalPowell's City of Books Staff Pick

    Which is a lot better than spending your money on coffee or whatever. Anyways, it’s good poetry. Love, Mira."—Mira Gonzalez, author of i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together"In TOM SAWYER, Joseph Grantham is pulling it all back and stripping the language clean. These are poems about broken hearts and growing up, packed full of jokes and weirdo thoughts from a weirdo mind. When I think about Joseph Grantham, I think, ‘Ah…finally…the last living person who doesn’t judge or shout for a living.’ What sweet poems, from a sweet sweet man."—Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book

    Lewis’ magical land entered through that most important wardrobe in literary history. Beloved by generations of readers, The Chronicles of Narnia are thought, erroneously, by some to be “mere children’s stories.” In this volume, Pearce thoroughly debunks the error as he skillfully explains why there is nothing “mere” about such stories. Rather, the Narnia books contain profound insights concerning the human condition. Pearce, however, goes beyond even that and illuminates the deeper riches and profound truths found therein: the highest truths, in fact, those concerning God. Join Pearce as he explores the “grown-up” themes that are so important for a proper understanding of Lewis’ magnificent creation, including the deep and profound Christian symbolism, extensive literary allusions, and the constant theme of temptation, sin, and redemption. The author of numerous literary works and an authority on the writings of Lewis, Chesterton, and Tolkien, Pearce is uniquely qualified to examine the deeper theological, philosophical, and historical dimensions of the Chronicles. With Pearce as your guide, “return to Narnia,” and come to understand in new and profound ways that place which has so marked the imaginative landscape of so many. Rediscover your love for Narnia, because “wardrobes are for grown-ups too.”

    Now published in English for the first time as the unified masterwork Bassani intended, The Novel of Ferrara brings together Bassani’s six classics, fully revised by the author at the end of his life: Within the Walls, The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Behind the Door, The Heron, and The Smell of Hay.Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second World War, these interlocking stories present a fully rounded world of unforgettable characters: the respected doctor whose homosexuality is tolerated until he is humiliatingly exposed by an exploitative youth; a survivor of the Nazi death camps whose neighbors’ celebration of his return gradually turns to ostracism; a young man discovering the ugly, treacherous price that people will pay for a sense of belonging; the Jewish aristocrat whose social position has been erased; the indomitable schoolteacher, Celia Trotti, whose Communist idealism disturbs and challenges a postwar generation.The Novel of Ferrara memorializes not only the Ferrarese people, but the city itself, which assumes a character and a voice deeply inflected by the Jewish community to which the narrator belongs. Suffused with new life by acclaimed translator and poet Jamie McKendrick, this seminal work seals Bassani’s reputation as “a quietly insistent chronicler of our age’s various menaces to liberty” (Jonathan Keates).

    More than a year after the breakup, he's still suffering major heartbreak and a serious case of writer's block. In an attempt to help him out of his funk, Gavin's best friend and fellow writer, Bobby, sets up an account for him on the new dating app SwipeDate.After a few unsuccessful dates, Bobby challenges him to thirty more dates in thirty days. If Gavin can complete the challenge, Bobby will give him a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.Does Gavin have what it takes to complete the challenge? Or will the trials and tribulations of modern dating prove to be too much?

    This majestic translation combines all his short-story collections appearing in his lifetime and reintroduces de Assis as a literary giant who must be integrated into the world literary canon.

    Maria Romasco Moore’s eerie and incandescent novella-in-flash Ghostographs is no exception. Brief, crystalline stories combine with vintage photographs to illuminate the hidden terrain of childhood and the pain of growing up, all in one small town at the edge of an abyss where the narrator comes of age among family, friends, and phantoms. It’s a place populated with charming and unforgettable characters, where housewives send away for mail-order babies and young girls glow on front porches on hot summer nights. Where men get in staring contests with lamps and great aunts live in castles and collect haunted dogs. Where games of hide and seek refuse to end. It’s a town full of secrets, where the hardships of adulthood threaten to invade the wild and magical domain of children. Haunting and evocative, funny and strange, the world of Ghostographs may be memory or might just be a trick of the light."Each of these stories is its own ghost: startling, uncanny, gone. Each one rattles its chains, smiles its terrible smile, gestures toward the others. I feel like this book was written, specifically, for me: the me that loves vintage photographs, formal constraints, hauntings, ephemera, poetry; the me that loves campfire stories; the me that’s still a little scared of the dark." ~Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

    And a new chapter of her own life must begin. She has spent four years as her son's only support, desperately trying to understand the actions that landed him on death row and to change his fate. Now Amanda faces an even more difficult task--finding a way, and a reason, to move forward with her own life.Before the tragedy that unfolded in a South Dakota mall, Robbie was just like other people's sons or daughters. Sometimes troubled, but sweet and full of goodness too. That's the little boy Amanda remembers as she packs up his childhood treasures and progress reports, and discovers a class ring she's never seen before. Who does it belong to and why did Robbie have it in his possession? So begins a journey that will remind her not only of who Robbie used to be, but of a time when she wasn't afraid--to talk to strangers, to help those in need, to reach out. Robbie's choices can never be unmade, but there may still be time for forgiveness and trust to grow again. For a future as wide as the sky.

    It follows the groundbreaking, highly acclaimed Jesus’ Son. Written in the same luminous prose, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating old age, mortality, the ghosts of the past, and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves. Finished shortly before Johnson’s death in May 2017, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.

    It begins with an essay about being given a man's furniture while he's on trial for murder and follows with essays that question corporeal, familial, and intellectual forms of ownership. What does it mean to believe that a hand, or a child, or a country, or a story belongs to you? What happens if you realize you're wrong? Mining her own life and those of others, Sarah Viren considers the contingencies of ownership alongside the realities of loss in this debut essay collection."With wonderfully precise and evocative prose, Sarah Viren takes us deeply into her search for her very self. . . . MINE is not only moving, it is instructive and nourishing in a way that only art can deliver. This book is a gem."--Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog"Sarah Viren is a writer of extraordinary wisdom and grace. . . . I am always taken aback, in the end, when her essays--cunningly, imperceptibly--gather within themselves such stunning emotional power."--Kerry Howley, author of Thrown"Ultimately a book about belonging, this nimble, beautiful collection helps us better understand 'what we call ours but is never really ours to begin with.'"--Ryan Van Meter, author of If You Knew Then What I Know Now

    Be Eleven; and Gone Crazy in Alabama, all of which will make the perfect addition to a young reader’s growing library.Readers who enjoy Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming will find much to love in these books. Rita Williams-Garcia's books about Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern can also be read alongside nonfiction explorations of American history such as Jason Reynolds's and Ibram X. Kendi's books.“A beloved middle grade series.” —School Library Journal (starred review)“Funny, wise, poignant, and thought-provoking.” —Horn Book (starred review)“The Gaither sisters are an irresistible trio. Williams-Garcia excels at conveying defining moments of American society from their point of view.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    I’m not David Foster Wallace.David Foster Wallace’s parentswere professors.David Foster Wallace had a tiger momthat was always up his ass.My mother was high in the basementon Xanax and painkillers,watching soap operas.

    "Troy James Weaver is so good he shouldn't need any blurbs. Troy James Weaver is one monster of a writer. Troy James Weaver is our Witold Gombrowicz. Troy James Weaver works in a flower shop. Troy James Weaver is the first great writer who worked in a flower shop."- Scott McClanahan, author of THE SARAH BOOK "Troy James Weaver can write an irrational divorced drunken noise rock making bathrobe clad dad like a motherfucker. And if that isn't enough to make you buy Temporal right now than there's little hope left for any of us."- Steve Anwyll, author of WELFARE "Troy James Weaver guides us through a charred, hellish landscape full of dead people and clouds and broken brains. We should salute him for this intense and mysterious novel of devastation. For fans of Denis Johnson, My Bloody Valentine, and NyQuil."- Patty Yumi Cottrell, author of SORRY TO DISRUPT THE PEACE "Troy James Weaver is incredible. Temporal is his best work."- Bud Smith, author of WORK “Temporal is a novel painted with the blood of damaged, disaffected teenagers. Imagine S.E. Hinton if she listened to Sonic Youth. With each new book Troy James Weaver writes, he's creating more of an impressive landscape of American gloom and melancholy. But he’s also able to highlight an elusive beauty in the life struggles of his characters.”- Kevin Sampsell, author of THIS IS BETWEEN US

    Jay Gladstone was born to privilege. He is a civic leader and a generous philanthropist, as well as the owner of an NBA team. But in today’s New York, even a wealthy man’s life can spin out of control, no matter the money or influence he possesses.   Jay sees himself as a moral man, determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes. He would rather focus on his unstable second marriage and his daughter, Aviva, than worry about questions of race or privilege. However, he moves through a sensitive and aware world: that of Dag Maxwell, the black star forward, and white police officer Russell Plesko, who makes a decision that has resonating consequences—particularly for a DA whose hopes for a future in politics will rest on an explosive prosecution.   Set during Barack Obama’s presidency, this artful novel illuminates contemporary America and does not shy away from questions about our scalding social divide—why is conversation about race so fraught, to what degree is the justice system impartial, and does great wealth inoculate those who have it?—and explores the aftermath of unforgivable errors and the unpredictability of the court of public opinion. “Greenland takes a Dickensian delight in letting the plot sprawl with parallels, digressions, false leads, and twists.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A wild and funny page-turner of a novel that grabs you and doesn’t let go.” —Larry David

    Each featured novelist, playwright, or poet is introduced by a stunning portrait, followed by photography and illustrations of locations and artifacts important in their lives - along with pages from original manuscripts, first editions, and their correspondence.Trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each individual and affected their writing, revealing insights into the larger-than-life characters, plots, and evocative settings that they created. You will also uncover details each writer's most famous pieces and understand the times and cultures they lived in - see how the world influenced them and how their works influenced the world.Writers introduces key ideas, themes, and literary techniques of each figure, revealing the imaginations and personalities behind some of the world's greatest novels, short stories, poems, and plays. A diverse variety of authors are covered, from the Middle Ages to present day, providing a compelling glimpse into the lives of the people behind the page.

    Eliot’s timeless modernist masterpiece visually reimagined. This fully illustrated book explores Eliot’s themes of indecision and isolation, as well the overwhelming desire for connection, which is as an often overlooked element of the poem.

    Shy’s poems to me are so so worth it. And they are crafty – also like god.'—Eileen Myles, author of Afterglow

    His oeuvre, offering a “mimetic theory” of cultural origins and human behavior, inspired such writers as Milan Kundera and J. M. Coetzee, and earned him a place among the forty “immortals” of the Académie Française. Too often, however, his work is considered only within various academic specializations. This first-ever biographical study takes a wider view. Cynthia L. Haven traces the evolution of Girard’s thought in parallel with his life and times. She recounts his formative years in France and his arrival in a country torn by racial division, and reveals his insights into the collective delusions of our technological world and the changing nature of warfare. Drawing on interviews with Girard and his colleagues, Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard provides an essential introduction to one of the twentieth century’s most controversial and original minds.

    . . and at those whose work he explores and embraces (Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy; Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End; Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain; Stendhal's The Red and the Black). He writes (from A Temple of Texts) on the nature and value of writing ("The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words"). Here is a rich experience of Gass's short fiction: from Eyes, his masterfully crafted novella, "In Camera," about collecting, hording; about suspicions run amok . . . from Cartesian Sonata . . . and In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968), a mythical reimagining of America's heartland. And from his nimble, daredevil novels: Middle C (2013), the chronicle of an Austrian-born man who, as a child with his mother, relocates to America's Midwest (Woodbine, Ohio), grows up a low-skilled amateur piano player to become a music professor at a small Bible college; his only hobby a fantasy life as the curator of his Inhumanity Museum . . . and from The Tunnel ("The most beautiful, most complex, most disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime" --Michael Silverblatt, Los Angeles Times).

    These poems, when read devotionally, provide a unique way for Christians to deepen their spiritual insight and experience. In this collection of over 90 poems by poets such as Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, and over 30 more, literary expert Leland Ryken introduces readers to the best of the best in devotional poetry, providing commentary that helps them see and appreciate not only the literary beauty of these poems but also the spiritual truths they contain. Literary-inclined readers and first-time poetry readers alike will relish this one-of-a-kind anthology carefully compiled to help them encounter God in fresh ways.

    And it was in the great, ancient city of Delhi that Urdu grew to become one of the world’s most beautiful languages. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the Mughal Empire was in decline, Delhi became the capital of a parallel kingdom—the kingdom of Urdu poetry—producing some of the greatest, most popular poets of all time. They wrote about the pleasure and pain of love, about the splendour of God and the villainy of preachers, about the seductions of wine, and about Delhi, their beloved home.This treasure of a book documents the life and work of the finest classical Urdu poets: Sauda, Dard, Mir, Ghalib, Momin, Zafar, Zauq and Daagh. Through their biographies and poetry—including their best-known ghazals—it also paints a compelling portrait of Mughal Delhi. This is a book for anyone who has ever been touched by Urdu or Delhi, by poetry or romance.

    It will take courage to learn how to live again.‘An all-round triumph.’ John HudspithFor the families of the victims of the St Botolph and Old Billingsgate disaster, the undoing of a miscarriage of justice should be a cause for rejoicing. For more than thirteen years, the search for truth has eaten up everything. Marriages, families, health, careers and finances.Finally, the coroner has ruled that the crowd did not contribute to their own deaths. Finally, now that lies have been unravelled and hypocrisies exposed, they can all get back to their lives.If only it were that simple.Tapping into the issues of the day, Davis delivers a highly charged work of metafiction, a compelling testament to the human condition and the healing power of art. Written with immediacy, style and an overwhelming sense of empathy, Smash all the Windows will be enjoyed by readers of How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall and How to be Both by Ali Smith.

    I Think I'm Ready to See Frank Ocean builds upon historicized representations of Ocean's career in ekphrasis, carefully examining the intent of each composition as a metaphoric parallel to Black American legibility.

    During these centuries, the English language was used and written down for the first time, pagan populations were converted to Christianity, and the foundations of the kingdom of England were laid.This richly illustrated new book - which accompanies a landmark British Library exhibition - presents Anglo-Saxon England as the home of a highly sophisticated artistic and political culture, deeply connected with its continental neighbours. Leading specialists in early medieval history, literature and culture engage with the unique, original evidence from which we can piece together the story of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, examining outstanding and beautiful objects such as highlights from the Staffordshire hoard and the Sutton Hoo burial.At the heart of the book is the British Library's outstanding collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, the richest source of evidence about Old English language and literature, including Beowulf and other poetry; the Lindisfarne Gospels, one of Britain's greatest artistic and religious treasures; the St Cuthbert Gospel, the earliest intact European book; and historical manuscripts such as Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. These national treasures are discussed alongside other, internationally important literary and historical manuscripts held in major collections in Britain and Europe.This book, and the exhibition it accompanies, chart a fascinating and dynamic period in early medieval history, and will bring to life our understanding of these formative centuries.

    It can upend your seemingly pitch-perfect existence, thrusting you into a world where your inhibitions, intellect, and instincts are powerless to save you. Join Dr. Erin Stair on the journey of a lifetime. Based on a true story, Becka is on the verge of becoming a doctor, immersed in the world of physical and mental illness, while her own mental health was crumbling. Travel with her 3,000 miles away to California, where she fled from her school, her roommate and her life, finding romance and companionship with a mysterious man known only to her as “King.” King was helpful to her in many ways, but was she ignoring warning signs that disaster was right around the corner? Manic Kingdom is a frightening, sometimes humorous, essential reminder of how we can lose ourselves, how dangerous we can be to ourselves, and how fragile stability can be.

    Packing up his enormous, 35,000‑volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading. In this poignant and personal reevaluation of his life as a reader, the author illuminates the highly personal art of reading and affirms the vital role of public libraries.   Manguel’s musings range widely, from delightful reflections on the idiosyncrasies of book lovers to deeper analyses of historic and catastrophic book events, including the burning of ancient Alexandria’s library and contemporary library lootings at the hands of ISIS. With insight and passion, the author underscores the universal centrality of books and their unique importance to a democratic, civilized, and engaged society.

    In 2017 the Estate of Sir Terry Pratchett, the Salisbury Museum and illustrator Paul Kidby joined forces to present the award winning Terry Pratchett: HisWorld exhibition – taking visitors to the heart of the world of the Discworld creator.This comprehensive and fully illustrated guide is the official companion to that unique collection.With additional images and extra content including essays by Rhianna Pratchett, Rob Wilkins, Paul Kidby, Colin Smythe, Bernard Pearson, Stephen Briggs, Amy Anderson for The Josh Kirby Estate, Professor Roy Jones, Jake Keen & Nick Cowan.The exhibition won Best Temporary or Touring Exhibition in the prestigious Museum & Heritage Awards.The judges described it as “an exhibition which demonstrated great emotional connection which resulted in a marked change in visitor demographics”.This book is a perfect memento for those who made the journey to view the resoundingly popular exhibition and the perfect consolation for those who were unable to visit in person.‘Meticulously crafted HisWorld shows why Terry Pratchett was his generation’s Dickens.”The Telegraph

    Unfortunately, that was before two dudes wielding high-tech gadgets made off with both his kegs and his brother. Now Clyde has to hunt down his sibling with only his most trusted lackey along to help. Will he manage to recover both his beer and Dougie? Will they survive the night as they unveil the mysterious secret of the kidnappers? Will the Earth be destroyed thanks to their bumbling incompetence? Probably that last one, but you’ll have to read it to find out.

    This accessible, Christian introduction to Dante also serves as a primer to the Divine Comedy, helping readers appreciate the complexity and layers of meaning in Dante's spiritual masterpiece.

    Despite its short length, the text took over a period of thirty years to complete with the individual books revised and republished in different editions during this period and arranged around a cluster of concepts including the scapegoat, the quest, the return of the dead, redemption, physical suffering, mental illness. Lyacos's characters are always at a distance from society as such, fugitives, like the narrator of Z213: EXIT, outcasts in a dystopian hinterland like the characters in With the People from the Bridge, or marooned, like the protagonist of The First Death whose struggle for survival unfolds on a desert-like island. Poena Damni has been construed as an "allegory of unhappiness" and compared to works of authors such as Thomas Pynchon, Samuel Beckett and Cormac McCarthy.

    Agreeing to act as driver for Bastounis, the young man finds himself on a hectic, adventurous and always challenging tour of Greece’s wonders – an apprentice in how to live life to the fullest.As the road trip progresses, the questions arise. Is Bastounis still an addict? Who is following him and why? Is he researching his final, much-anticipated novel? Who are the people he’s meeting along the way? And how far will one young man ultimately go in the name of experience?A Collar for Cerberus is a story about time, life, pleasure and the decisions we make.

      In these masterpieces of razor-sharp reportage, the National Book Award–winning and New York Times–bestselling author proves herself one of the premier essayists of the twentieth century, “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time” (Joyce Carol Oates,  The New York Times Book Review).  Slouching Towards Bethlehem: America in the 1960s—a pivotal era of social change and generational divide. Here is Joan Didion on the “misplaced children” of Haight-Ashbury as well as John Wayne in Hollywood; folk singer Joan Baez and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes; the extremes of both Death Valley and Las Vegas. Named to Time magazine’s list of the one hundred best and most influential nonfiction books, this is “a rare display of some of the best prose written today in this country” (The New York Times Book Review).  The White Album: A New York Times bestseller, this landmark essay collection confronts the dark aftermath of the 1960s. From a jailhouse visit to Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, to a recording session with The Doors, from the culture of shopping malls to the contradictions of the women’s movement, Joan Didion captures the paranoia and absurdity of the era with irony and insight. And in the iconic title essay, she documents her uneasy state of mind during the years leading up to and following the Manson murders—a terrifying crime that, in her memory, surprised no one.  After Henry: Whether reporting on a Hollywood murder or the “sideshows” of foreign wars, Joan Didion crystalizes her reputation as a brilliant essayist. Highlights include a portrait of the White House under the Reagans, two “actors on location”; an unexpected meditation on the Patty Hearst case; and an exposé on the racial divisions and class fault lines of New York City following the rape of the Central Park jogger. An indispensable collection from a writer on whom we can rely “to get the story straight” (Los Angeles Times).

    With a voice that’s barbed at times but also full of empathy and grace, this is a powerful debut that will continue to rattle and quake in the mind. —Ada LimónIn From the Inside Quietly, Eloisa Amezcua writes, “in my own mind / I’m a mirror. // I see everything // except myself.” This book holds reflection—both the noun and verb of it—at its core, from “the bottom of the pool // opal and shimmering” to meditations on language, intimacy, and the self. These poems trouble themselves with what we know and what we don’t: what a daughter knows of her mother’s difficult childhood; what a psychiatrist knows of his patients that their own families don’t know; what we know of our lovers; and what we know of ourselves. Despite all the tricks of light and shadow a mirror can play, all the tricks of distance and shape and proportion, in this stunning collection we encounter a poet who sees, feels, and writes with aching clarity.—Maggie Smith

    A famous songwriting duo is destroyed by their creative differences, a jazz musician is consumed by his inability to speak or play, a man takes a pop song literally and charts his love onto buildings. These stories cover songs and riff on melodies. They unearth chords that bridge the gap between past and present.A playful, elegant debut collection, The Great American Songbook explores the profound hold that music has on our lives.

    L'Engle's unforgettable heroine, Meg Murry, must confront her fears and self-doubt to rescue her scientist father, who has been experimenting with mysterious tesseracts capable of bending the very fabric of space and time. Helping her are her little brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin O'Keefe, and a trio of strange supernatural visitors called Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which. But A Wrinkle in Time was only the beginning of the adventure. Seven other Kairos ("cosmic time") novels followed, collected for the first time in a deluxe two volume collector's boxed set.This first volume gathers Wrinkle with three books that chronicle the continuing adventures of Meg and her siblings. In A Wind in the Door, Meg and Calvin descend into the microverse to save Charles Wallace from the Echthroi, evil beings who are trying to unname existence. When a madman threatens nuclear war in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Charles Wallace must save the future by traveling into the past. And in Many Waters, Sandy and Dennys, Meg's twin brothers, are accidentally transported back to the time of Noah's ark. A companion volume gathers the final four Kairos Novels, the Polly O'Keefe quartet, in which Calvin and Meg's daughter takes center stage.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

    In nineteenth-century Paris, Doctor Colbert, stifled by bourgeois expectations, longs for a life purified by art, but his inept adventure with the easel leads him only into degradation and tragedy; in a village in Southeastern Europe, children drum and dance in sinister rites to propitiate a malignant, all-seeing moon; a fey and curious orphan, Valerie, is fostered in a dour and repressed English vicarage, and soon reveals to the vicar’s daughter all the ghostly secrets sequestered in the back lanes and whispering shadows of the market town.Through all these worlds of grotesquerie, enchantment and menace, Colin Insole portrays the irrepressible workings of inhuman reprisal, ever returning to dismantle, with subtle but vicious talons, the schemes of the uncomprehending human protagonists.

    Typewriter Rodeo celebrates poetry, spontaneity, and above all, the power of human connection.Both a visual feast and a reference book in the style of Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York, Typewriter Rodeo collects custom, typewritten poems from “rodeos” worldwide, portraits of recipients, and their personal stories. Typewriter Rodeo began in Austin, Texas, when four poets brought their typewriters to a maker fair and began offering spontaneous, custom-composed poems to an enthusiastic crowd. The event quickly blossomed and rodeos began popping up all over the world.

    Left to be raised by his grandparents, Bud struggles to discover himself as he pursues the dream of realizing greatness in his own life. Fortunately for Bud, he has help on his journey of discovery from the girl next door. Teresa Peterson, a precocious youth one year his junior, both acts to guide and confound Bud’s decisions. But sometimes, the ones we are closest to, are those we hurt the most. A profoundly human story about family, friendship, and love, in which Bud learns as he matures that it is taking responsibility for his own life, and making choices in conscious awareness of who he is, that will shape his destiny. Can he overcome his past mistakes, and build a real foundation for the future? --What people are saying-- “An inspiring and deeply profound masterpiece.” – Stephen R. Willis Co-Editor in Chief, Uprising Review “Thomas Torrington’s “Evergreen” is a stunning literary accomplishment. This coming-of-age story will challenge your perspectives on what it means to live a life well spent, facing your innermost monsters, and not surrendering to your circumstances. Make sure you set aside time to read it; you will not want to put it down.” – Rich Williams reader review

    Writing is like trying to make sense of an inside joke you have with yourself but haha joke’s on you ’cause the joke is more sad than funny.Are poetry readings like really weird AA meetings? How can you be upset that your short stories get rejected when you’re constantly rejecting love? Would it have been easier for Luke Skywalker to become a certified Jedi had he first gotten an MFA degree? Acclaimed author/publisher Brian Alan Ellis tries answering the tough questions in Sad Laughter, possibly the all-time greatest non-essential writers manual ever written in the history of letters, where the sacred cow that is the literary community (from academia through independent publishing) gets roasted alive via hilariously nihilistic bon mots (think The Elements of Style meets Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts) about what it takes to survive as an artist in the social media age.

    This No Fear Shakespeare ebook gives you the complete text of Much Ado About Nothingand an easy-to-understand translation.Each No Fear Shakespeare contains The complete text of the original play A line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday language A complete list of characters with descriptions Plenty of helpful commentary

    This tavern confession is told by a defrocked historian from the United States, who unwittingly, perhaps naively, brought his talents to the turmoil of the Balkans. His tales in the first chapter take us to Capodistria, Ancona, Venice, and back to the bar where we began, linked by the physical presence of a wind known as the Burja (the Italian bora), a great wind capable of lifting cars into the air. But the unnamed narrator is not simply telling random stories. As we move through the next four chapters, we realize that this book is indeed confessional, an apology of sorts, yet with a broken man’s defiance; it is a meditation not only about hats and a historian’s attempt at written redemption, but about love and politics, history and warriors who drink blood, the isolation of a stranger in a strange land and the choices that lead us to death and our inability to use language to transcend ourselves – a paradox, as the language does indeed transcend, not as poetry transcends, but as exceptionally precise prose armed with irony, with philosophical insight, transcends. But I must do better than that when trying to describe the impact of the prose! There are passages throughout that possess a Joycean verbal inventiveness, emotionally charged language and unsettling images that force the reader to capitulate to a vision of reality that resonates with a beauty we rarely glimpse, and a truth that of necessity must expand our notion of whatever reality we think we inhabit. As example: “You look at me in that aggressive quid pro Balkan way, sizing me up by what you take to be elemental mammalian factors — how much can he drink, how long can he hold a live and kicking sheep over his head, how many Turkish boys will he rape, how long can he stare into the squidless Adriatic ink with his miner’s helmet and not see himself, what fair widow could make tender his heart—but you don’t see all the dimensions available to you, you don’t see a past. An admirable blindness, I grant you, to be envied. Whereas a trained historian such as myself sits next to you and I can smell your past like the placenta from a birth of pigs rotting in the sun. I can’t look at you and avoid your past.” In short, the tales in the first chapter and those that follow, in particular an eponymous episode that captures the horror of the Balkan war through historic mayhem, with an echo of both Hamlet and Breughel, are all lost in the trail of a Burja, that great wind which is like a cleansing of the soul. And that is in the end what Skulls of Istria is – a cleansing of the soul, comparable to similar novels such as Camus’ The Fall, which it exceeds in artistry, and Antonio Lobo Antunes’ South of Nowhere, perhaps the only comparable book of its kind.

    And yet he was powerless to protect her, being crushed by the hero. But fate has more in store for him as he gets another chance to protect his master once more and try to change his destiny despite all odds.

    Srimad Bhagavad Gita is unique among the body of scriptural literature for the simple, practical and relevant style with which it presents the essence of the Hindu way of life.

    After a three-month investigation uncovered no evidence, all charges were dropped and Bosnian courts ordered their freedom. However, under intense U.S. pressure, Bosnian officials turned them over to American soldiers. They were flown blindfolded and shackled to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were held in outdoor cages for weeks as the now-infamous military prison was built around them.Guantanamo became their home for the next seven years. They endured torture and harassment and force-feedings and beatings, all the while not knowing if they would ever see their families again. They had no opportunity to argue their innocence until 2008, when the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in their case, Boumediene v. Bush, confirming Guantanamo detainees' constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court. Weeks later, the George W. Bush-appointed federal judge who heard their case, stunned by the absence of evidence against them, ordered their release. Now living in Europe and rebuilding their lives, Lakhdar and Mustafa are finally free to share a story that every American ought to know.Learn more at witnessesbook.com or donate to a crowdsourced restitution fund at GoFundMe.com/witnesses.

    Tender and joyous, it is a celebration of art's power to transform the darkest of human experience and give voice to the grandest of human hopes.

     Tales of the Continuing Time The Shepherds 2049; Leftbehind 2485 - 2489; The Shivering Bastard at Devnet 2676; A Son Enters, Stage Right 2681; Smile and Give Me a Kiss 2821 - 2873; Platformer 3021 - 3022 Other Stories Realtime; The Gray Maelstrom; Given the Game; Strings; Play Date; Sideways; What Is And Is Not True; Uncle Jack; Old Man; A Conversation in the Kitchen With Her Father; Hell, Next Five Exits; All Possible Worlds

    The language, once understood, transforms him, and transforms learning itself. One day, he looks down at the hand resting on his thigh and sees that it's just an ordinary hand. What had been composed of colored light made solid goes back to being meat and blood. His body reverts to the ordinary sloshing heaviness of a regular body. The exalted vision of his eyes becomes the filmy, blurred vision of the usual kind. He slumps back into his former self. Whirlwinds of shame close on him. With a violent, monkey-like energy he wracks his brains for a way back. Then it occurs to him, he can still write that language. He must write his way back. Told as a structural guide to impossible grammar, Michael Cisco’s Unlanguage is a brilliant, thought-provoking novel that not only pushes the boundaries of literature but of language itself.

    In these stories, characters find themselves grappling with an arachnid landlord, a friendly-but-omnipresent World Series champion, a misunderstood giant, and an anthropomorphic mass of flies. In Moffatt’s stories ideas are currency, and the wilder the better. More surprising than the outlandish cast of characters in these pages, however, is the emotional resonance drawn out of the absurd. Clicking into Place is a singular and self-assured first book by one of the funniest young voices in Canadian literature.

    From worms that live in your digital devices, to ants and crows that explode - these 75 creatures surely do not exist, but they should. Because they explain so much of what we are and where we came from.So take a breather, sit down - for you will very well need to - and jump into the world of these Creatures of Near Kingdoms.

    By combining words and visuals in a large-format hardcover, readers can get a glimpse into the artist's mind.

    This fully illustrated book brings Teasdale's exquisite words to life, following the unbroken "line of lights" that lead the narrator through an evening where everything is made magical by her romantic mood.

    Wake his kid brother Andy up, get tormented on the school bus by the cool kids, try to avoid them while in school. Except it's Field Trip Day to the Science Museum, and now he's stuck with the meanest kids in seventh grade all day! But then the bus breaks down, so he doesn't even get to do anything cool at the science museum. It's okay, because an industrial accident brings science to Todd and his friends in the form of a zombie apocalypse. When the bus driver abandons them in the middle of a zombie outbreak, Todd, his brother Andy, his best friend Tarik, and their tomboy friend Mikayla take shelter in the first place they can find - an adult novelty store. What can you find in an adult toy store to fight zombies? Well…let's just say that the field trip was pretty educational, even if the kids never made it to the museum! Shingles is the comedy horror series from the gang that brings you the Authors & Dragons podcast. Like the podcast, these books are rated Not Safe For Anything.

    In the clever [dis]guise of fiction, what The Artifact in fact foists upon its readers (hoisting us up in so doing so that ultimately we can look down on the whole situation from a higher perspective—albeit only to crash like a bluebird into the window through which we bear witness) is a veritable Germáneutic: an intriguing interpretation and lucid elucidation of what it is (and is not) to be human in the era of big data, of computation beyond the bounds of human intellection, and—spiralling-off from the latter—of intelligent machines (indeed ‘A.I.’) that can learn and discern far more than the human, perceiving—and who knows: conceiving?—in the vast void qua bind-spot of our own biological being.

    Brutal, comic, obscene, and crystalline, Stream System runs from the haunting "Land Deal," which imagines the colonization of Australia and the ultimate vengeance of its indigenous people as a series of nested dreams; to "Finger Web," which tells a quietly terrifying, fractal tale of the scars of war and the roots of misogyny; to "The Interior of Gaaldine," which finds its anxious protagonist stranded beyond the limits of fiction itself.No one else writes like Murnane, and there are few other authors alive still capable of changing how--and why--we read.Contents:When the mice failed to arrive --Stream system --Land deal --The only Adam --Stone quarry --Precious bane --Cotters come no more --There were some countries --Finger web --First love --Velvet waters --The white cattle of Uppington --In far fields --Pink lining --Boy blue --Emerald blue --The interior of Gaaldine --Invisible yet enduring lilacs --As it were a letter --The boy's name was David --Last letter to a niece.

    A sequence of visceral, essay-like long poems, du Plessis’ writing straddles the lyrical and intellectual, traversing landscapes and fine arts canvases. Ekke is a watershed debut from one of Canada’s most exciting young voices.

    She's ready to take it easy and enjoy some downtime with her family, her best friends, and her horse, Raven. But then, Zoe, Becky, and Jade notice some strange things happening at the new steeplechase race track that has the whole town abuzz with excitement. Zoe promised her mom she'd stay out of trouble for once . . . but a little investigating couldn't hurt, right?Includes an 8-page insert packed with photos from the TV show!

    These writings tell the surprising and inspiring story of how Silent Spring came to be, tracing an arc from Carson’s first inklings of the potential harms of DDT in the 1940s to her resolute public defense of her findings in the face of a concerted disinformation campaign launched by the chemical industry, even as she struggled privately with the cancer that would take her life.Silent Spring was an unlikely best seller when published in the fall of 1962, a book about the unintended consequences of pesticide use that became the talk of the nation, sparking a revolution in environmental consciousness. Seeing clearly what no one else had in a dauntingly wide-ranging body of technical and scientific evidence, Carson turned a series of discrete findings into a work of enduring literature—one that helped to change the world. In the wake of Silent Spring, public debate and protest led to laws and agencies to protect our air, land, and water, and a new appreciation for what Carson calls “the right of the citizen to be secure in his own home against the intrusions of poisons applied by other persons.”This deluxe Library of America edition presents the complete text of the first edition of Silent Spring, featuring Lois and Louis Darling’s original illustrations, in conjunction with a selection of Carson’s other writings on the environment, including fascinating correspondence with ornithologists, medical researchers, ecologists, biochemists, and other experts that shows Silent Spring taking shape piece-by-piece, like a puzzle or detective story. As she makes common cause with gardeners, concerned citizens, and grassroots activists to build awareness about environmental degradation, we see Carson emerge as a champion for unbiased science, collective action, and above all reverence for life. In speeches and editorials from the period after the her well-funded critics, exposing industry influence within scientific societies and government policy-making. Other pieces reflect her lifelong love of nature and commitment to conservation, lyrically describing her epiphanies as birdwatcher and beachcomber, her dream of preserving forest land in Maine for future generations, and the joy she took in conveying an outdoor “sense of wonder” to her young adopted son.An introduction by writer and biologist Sandra Steingraber explores Carson’s life and career, and describes some of the contemporary environmental science for which she blazed a trail. Also included are a 16-page portfolio of photographs, a detailed chronology, and helpful notes.

    What was once crudely printed and mass-mailed to random households all across the globe—Elytron Frass's confrontational novella is now bound, barcoded, and available to any daring reader.Liber Exuvia presents a hypnotic flow of morbid visions of violence and sexuality that sometimes read like Comte De Lautreamont, sometimes like 80s horror cult classics, and, most curiously, often like beautiful lyrical poems, in which the poet is not 'man speaking to men' but a conjurer of ghosts." — Johannes Göransson"Reading Frass’s work is the taking-in of a great breath and holding it, stretching it to every seam, hallucinating as you beg for air, and falling into a gentle death-lull of captivation. You will travel to another world, many of them. You will leave your body with this book in your hands. You will weep for history, weep for bodies, weep for your planet in the grand scheme of existence. What beauty and terror is conjured here with such absolute innovation of language and form! Frass tells stories, but does so from the inside out, from a dream within a dream, planting you right in the center so you can walk your way out. It is what writing should do." — Lisa Marie Basile"Erotic in the most organic and tangible ways, Frass manages to elicit such vicious imagery in so few words." — Tina Lugo

    In dazzling artwork, Nick Hayes follows Rimbaud from his youth in Ardennes to the poetry salons of Paris, from the absinthe-glazed passion of his relationship with Verlaine to his flight into the jungles of Indonesia and the deserts of Yemen and Egypt. Told entirely in Rimbaud’s own words, from a new translation of Le bateau ivre, The Drunken Sailor confirms Nick Hayes’ place as one of the most talented graphic novelists at work today.

    The fourteenth century of my novel will be mainly evoked in terms of smell and visceral feelings, and it will carry an undertone of general disgust rather than hey-nonny nostalgia’ Anthony Burgess, Paris Review, 1973.The Black Prince is a brutal historical tale of chivalry, religious belief, obsession, siege and bloody warfare. From disorientating depictions of medieval battles to court intrigues and betrayals, the campaigns of Edward II, the Black Prince, are brought to vivid life by an author in complete control of the novel as a way of making us look at history with fresh eyes, all while staying true to the linguistic pyrotechnics and narrative verve of Burgess’s best work.

    She has created a new life for herself and her daughter, Lou, in California. However, when the news of Gus’s unexpected death reaches Iris, her tenuously reconstructed life is thrown into chaos. A celebrated art and fashion photographer, Gus has left his estate to Lou, with one condition: Iris must travel to Paris and recover a missing collection of his work. Iris soon discovers that she’s not the only one after the photographs. An old enemy is staking claim to them and a notorious tabloid is threatening Iris with brutal—and very private—images of her past life. To protect her daughter from scandal, Iris needs to confront the demons that caused her to flee Paris, her career, and her life with Gus. Iris embarks on a suspenseful journey through the closed world of the fashion industry where the beautiful people do ugly things.Will she expose the industry’s dark side and shameful secrets? Can she shield her family from the consequences?Wildchilds is a work of fiction based on the truth.

    A Play by Evan Dara

    For Milena Cossutta, sexy and smart, it was selling out her dreams to marry a handsome but hot-headed made man, Vinnie DeNunzio, which left her on the run from the feds in Sicily, a stranger in a strange land. And sometimes the mistake is crazy, forbidden love like the one between Jimmy and Milena. Or could it be their salvation?Spanning three decades and two continents, soaked in passion, blood and the garish colors of the mean streets, Lowdown is a vivid, gripping romantic thriller that follows a twisting road strewn with sorrow and desire, deceit and ecstasy, shocking violence and intimate tenderness, to arrive at a surprising, bittersweet redemption.

    Women's Studies. Art. Film. Music. A 400-page collection of poems in fours sections: Nicki Minaj Songs, Bob Dylan Songs, Elliott Smith Songs, and 90s Riot Grrrls Songs.

    Fine artist Stephen O'Donnell's artworks, along with 33 stories by Pacific Northwest authors that were each inspired by one of O'Donnell's paintings.Portland fine artist Stephen O'Donnell's paintings are always narrative — touching on themes of gender, history, beauty, and longing — but the stories he paints lie just beyond the frame, through an open doorway, within an obscure look or gesture. The thirty-three authors in The Untold Gaze each chose one of his paintings to use as a prompt for a piece of original fiction. With a diverse lineup that includes Tom Spanbauer, Lidia Yuknavitch, Monica Drake, Scott Sparling, and Margaret Malone, with an introductory essay written by Bob Hicks, longtime arts writer and editor for The Oregonian, and with subjects ranging from amorous satyrs to beauty pageant queens to post-apocalyptic alien overlords, The Untold Gaze is a large format collection of O'Donnell's work — more than eighty paintings — which also explores the rich, nuanced, and often quite unexpected terrain that lies between visual art and the written story.Contributors include: Stephen Arndt, Liz Asch, Jude Brewer, Matty Byloos, Doug Chase, David Ciminello, Sean Davis, Monica Drake, Colin Farstad, Dian Greenwood, Sara Guest, Robert Hill, Lisa Kaser, Megan Kruse, Kathleen Lane, Margaret Malone, Kevin Meyer, Karen Munro, Whitney Otto, Michael Sage Ricci, Bradley K. Rosen, Sam Roxas-Chua, Stephen Rutledge, Edie Rylander, Liz Scott, Evelyn Sharenov, Tom Spanbauer, Scott Sparling, Laura Stanfill, Adam Strong, Vanessa Veselka, Suzy Vitello, Lidia Yuknavich

    Open at your own risk. Sarah and Tommy have the same kinds of problems as most any ten-year-old girl and six-year-old boy. Homework, bullies, Dad not going in to work since Mom ran off to fuck the postman. That sort of thing. But they're not going to take their problems lying down. After a quick bus ride into town to buy a gun, they think their problems are all but solved. That is, until a creepy weirdo follows them into an alley. But they aren't the only ones in that alley. What they discover will make you soil your pants in terror. It will make your skin crawl. It might even give you... Shingles.

    His one and only concern is to feed his beloved family and keep them safe in their hut beneath the banyantree. But when a huge new tyre falls from a passing truck, Ranji realises that this could change his life forever, and embarks on a quest to turn his good fortune into cold hard cash. But his growing obsession causes Ranji to neglect his beautiful wife Meena, who is struggling to resist the advances of the wealthy local brick-maker. And as Ranji’s formerly simple life fills with worries and conflict, he starts to question whether the tyre is in fact a curse rather than a blessing.

    Sayers tackles faith, doubt, human nature, and the most dramatic story ever told.For almost a century, a series of labyrinthine murder mysteries have kept fans turning pages hungrily as Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane discover whodunit, again and again.Detective novel enthusiasts may not know that for almost as many years, Christian thinkers have appreciated the same Dorothy L. Sayers for her acumen as an essayist, playwright, apologist, and preeminent translator of Dante's Divine Comedy.Now, for the first time, an anthology brings together the best of both worlds. The selections uncover the gospel themes woven throughout Sayers's popular fiction as well as her religious plays, correspondence, talks, and essays. Clues dropped throughout her detective stories reveal an attention to matters of faith that underlies all her work.Those who know Sayers from her nonfiction writings may wonder how she could also write popular genre fiction. Sayers, like her friend G. K. Chesterton, found murder mysteries a vehicle to explore the choices characters make between good and evil. Along with C. S. Lewis and the other Inklings, with whom she maintained a lively correspondence, Sayers used her popular fiction to probe deeper questions. She addressed not only matters of guilt and innocence, sin and redemption, but also the cost of war, the role of the conscience, and the place of women in society.None of these themes proved any hindrance to spinning a captivating yarn. Her murder mysteries are more reminiscent of Jane Austen than Arthur Conan Doyle, with all the tense interpersonal exploration of the modern novel.

    Since leaving his home in Detroit for Chicago during the recession, Heald teeters anxiously between despondency and bombastic sarcasm, striving to understand a country gone mad while clinging to his quixotic roots. Trying to deny the frightening course of his alcoholism, Heald struggles with his mounting paranoia, and his relationships with his concerned family and dying grandmother, all while juggling a budding office romance at the US government’s Chicago Regional Census Center. Heald’s reality soon digresses into farcical absurdity, fevered isolation, and arcane psychological revelation, hilarious though redoubtable in nature. Meanwhile the TITLE 13 secrets remain at large, haunting each character and tangling the interwoven threads of Heald’s life, as the real question looms: Is it the TITLE 13 information that Heald has lost, or his sanity?

    While her father is unknown and her mother abusive, she's found a safe place with some kindly neighbors. Sanami is content with her quiet life and with her upcoming marriage to her childhood sweetheart. But an unforeseen obstacle to the wedding sends Sanami to the capitol, to beg the immortal Emperor's help. While there she meets the onmyoji, servants and advisors to His Majesty. Part sorcerer, part medium, part fortune teller, the Sasugawa onmyoji clan is one of the most powerful and feared families in the empire. They recognize her as one of their own,­ a surprise made stranger by the fact that onmyodo powers belong almost exclusively to the males of the clan. She agrees to stay in the capitol for one year while the onmyoji try to figure out why she is what she is, and what role she is meant to play. Over the course of this year Sanami is introduced to a world of spirits and magic that she never dreamed existed. But when she discovers the purpose for which the gods have chosen her, she wonders if she will ever be strong enough to fulfill her destiny.

     The Stories included are: -The Nameless City -The Festival -The Colour Out of Space -The Call of Cthulhu -The Dunwich Horror -The Whisperer in Darkness -The Dreams in the Witch House -The Haunter of the Dark -The Shadow Over Innsmouth -Discarded Draft of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" -The Shadow Out of Time -At the Mountains of Madness -The Case of Charles Dexter Ward -Azathoth -Beyond the Wall of Sleep -Celephaïs -Cool Air -Dagon -Ex Oblivione -Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family -From Beyond -He -Herbert West-Reanimator -Hypnos -In the Vault -Memory -Nyarlathotep -Pickman's Model -The Book -The Cats of Ulthar -The Descendant -The Doom That Came to Sarnath -The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath -The Evil Clergyman -The Horror at Red Hook -The Hound -The Lurking Fear -The Moon-Bog -The Music of Erich Zann -The Other Gods -The Outsider -The Picture in the House -The Quest of Iranon -The Rats in the Walls -The Shunned House -The Silver Key -The Statement of Randolph Carter -The Strange High House in the Mist -The Street -The Temple -The Terrible Old Man -The Thing on the Doorstep -The Tomb -The Transition of Juan Romero -The Tree -The Unnamable -The White Ship -What the Moon Brings -Polaris -The Very Old Folk -Ibid -Old Bugs -Sweet Ermengarde, or, The Heart of a Country Girl -A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson -The History of the Necronomicon

    Set in 1975, it is the story of a nation, a rural county, and a small town coming to terms with turbulent change. The theft of a rancher's livestock ends in an assault that escalates into arson, and the murders of nearly a dozen people. Residents of a "hippie" commune are accused of having committed the acts that have led the small county to the brink of a range war, and of feeding the tensions between generations. Sheriff Ty Dawson, a cattle rancher himself, finds himself at the center of a battle between town residents and the "hippies" who appear to be threatening their way of life, a struggle that leads both sides to violence.Written with equal parts elegance and grit, FISTFUL OF RAIN is a fast-paced literary thriller populated by unforgettable characters, outstanding dialogue, and a setting that will have you wishing you could live in it long after the last page has been turned.

    Essay. Taking as its starting point an ultimately failed attempt to translate a Sesotho short story into English, CHRONOLOGY explores the spaces language occupies in relationships, colonial history, and our postcolonial past. It is a collage of images and documents, folding on words-that-follow-no-chronology, unveiling layers of meaning of queering love, friendship, death, and power. Traveling from Cape Town to the Schomburg Center in New York, Zahra Patterson's CHRONOLOGY reveals and revels in fragments of the past-personal and the present-political.

    Full color art book.

    His body disappears; he learns to fly. He encounters demigods and eloquent trees. He is Nettle-Eater, crooked, arrogant, self-proclaimed bastard of the moor. This is his testament. By Tom Hirons, author of Sometimes a Wild God, also available from Hedgespoken Press.First seen as a previous version in Dark Mountain III, Nettle-Eater is a short, sharp prose-howl in the direction of genuine and magical wildness and an uncompromising love-letter to the wild places of Dartmoor. Hovering over the pages is the ghost of Milarepa, the Tibetan saint who - it is said - survived on a nettle-diet for seven years, achieved a powerful enlightenment and became Tibet's best-loved bad-kid-turned-good. Nettle-Eater is written to be read aloud as a prayer to the wild earth and a reminder to us mortals that our lives are short and on fire and that there is no better time to remember our essential nature than this instant, no better time to discard the masquerade of our civilised lives than now...

    A woman peers through a hidden eyepiece into a bedroom of lavish design in ‘A Spy in the Panopticon’, the title novella. What she observes in the exquisite chamber is progressively unraveled over the course of an intricately woven narrative, the many threads of which converge upon a series of increasingly enigmatic motifs: lenses, mirrors, cameras, and prisms; illicit transmissions and invisible signals; unspeakable passwords and etheric emanations; and the infiltration of an inexplicable ministry replete with intrigues, counter-plots, and duplicitous technologies.A crucial document is laboriously authenticated beneath the ravages of the wild hunt in ‘The Notary’. ‘Paraffin’ follows the descent of a housemaid into the impossible depths of her employer’s past. Two siblings, in ‘That Holy and Formless Fire’, engage in precarious activities involving a transistor radio and a book of poetry. In ‘Imperium’, an infirmity suffered by the wife of a magistrate reveals an ingenious and well-concealed stratagem.BOOK IA Spy in the Panopticoni. The Spyholeii. The Mirroriii. The Cameraiv. The Prismv. Signal/Transmissionvi. Blackoutvii. The Spy in the PanopticonBOOK IIImperiumBOOK IIIThe Notary and other Storiesi. The Notaryii. La Fleur Infernaleiii. That Holy and Formless FireBOOK IVParaffin

    These collage-style essays experiment with stream-of-conscious musings as Vollmer opens a browser window into his own mind: letting his thoughts wander through a fast-forward montage of flying snakes, mass shootings, emojis, pop stars, stargazing, ghosts, circuses, and a hundred other things. Full of keen observations and unexpected insights, Permanent Exhibit reclaims the art of letting one's mind wander in the age of the status update.

    She is deep in the rain forest of the Congo Basin, conducting field research for her doctoral thesis in Anthropology. She leads a team of fellow students and a professor. All is going well until they come across a murderous group of poachers who hold them at gunpoint, determined to torment the group of academics before leaving them for dead. Things get ugly and all appears lost, until, a mysterious bare-chested man appears, giving the poachers more than they bargained for. They say he lost someone in one of the countless American mass shootings. They say he snapped, hoisted a NRA stooge Senator over his head, tossed him like a rag doll, and was sent to jail. They say he came to the Congo to escape humanity, and protect the last patch of paradise on Earth. They call him the Eco-Warrior. John Kregar is, the Eco-Warrior.

    Leaves fall out of coat sleeves, Gandhi swims in Burrard Inlet. The poems are like empty coats from which the inhabitants have recently escaped, leaving behind images as clues to their identity. There are leaps between logics within the poems, and it is in these illogical spaces where everything comes together, like the uplift of the conductor’s hand to begin a piece of music where, as Arvo Pärt put it, the potential of the whole exists.

    This is a story about the distances technology fails to bridge. "Matthew lifted his foot off the gas pedal, inching the car forward. The re-entry point was only a few hundred feet away, but at this pace it would take upwards of an hour. Past the border it was just another five hours until he would be home and asleep in his own bed. But for now, Matthew was an uncomfortable combination of tired and restless. His car’s self-driving functionality would be disabled until he crossed the border, so he couldn’t take a nap or disappear into a vid. He was also out of signal range, and sick of every song saved locally. So he waited in silence, crawling forward, just a few dozen cars to go. Your connection has been restored, his car spoke to him, while text flashed on the windshield to accompany it. Please verify your identity. Matthew hesitated..."