Presenting itself as an investigation into the suicide of a close friend—perhaps real, perhaps fictional—more than twenty years earlier, Levé gives us, little by little, a striking portrait of a man, with all his talents and flaws, who chose to reject his life, and all the people who loved him, in favor of oblivion. Gradually, through Levé’s casually obsessive, pointillist, beautiful ruminations, we come to know a stoic, sensible, thoughtful man who bears more than a slight psychological resemblance to Levé himself. But Suicide is more than just a compendium of memories of an old friend; it is a near-exhaustive catalog of the ramifications and effects of the act of suicide, and a unique and melancholy farewell to life.

    In Life of the Party, she weaves together her own coming of age with an investigation into our culture's romanticization of violence against women. In precise, searing language—at times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant—she explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. How does one grow from a girl to a woman in a world wracked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim? What is the meaning of bravery? Visceral and haunting, this multifaceted collection illustrates that what happens to our bodies makes us who we are.

    6 and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics (1899), as well as several lesser-known works, no less masterful in their composition. David Plante is a Professor of Writing at Columbia University. He is the author of many novels, including The Ghost of Henry James, The Family (nominated for the National Book Award), and The Woods. He has been a contributor to The New Yorker, Esquire, and Vogue, and a reviewer and features writer for the New York Times Book Review. The cook's wedding --The witch --A dead body --Easter Eve --On the road --The dependents --Grisha --The kiss --Typhus --The pipe --The princess --Neighbours --The grasshopper --In exile --Ward No. 6 --Rothschild's fiddle --The student --The darling --A doctor's visit --Gooseberries --The Lady with the dog --In the ravine --The bishop.

    Through photographs, poetry, prose, and a short story, Orion Carloto invites readers to remember the forgotten and reach into the past, find comfort in the present, and make sense of the intangible future. Film photography isn’t just eye candy; it’s timeless and romantic—the ideal complement to Carloto’s writing. In Film for Her, much like a visual diary, word and image are intertwined in a book perfect for both gift and self-purchase.

    Some are the recipients of numerous awards, while others, who are making their first appearance, are quickly making significant contributions to twenty-first-century poetry.The poets include Rick Barot, Joshua Beckman, David Berman, Nick Flynn, Matthea Harvey, Terrance Hayes, Major Jackson, James Kimbrell, D.A. Powell, Spencer Reece, Matthew Rohrer, Rebecca Wolff, Kevin Young, Matthew Zapruder, Andrew Zawacki, and many others.

    The struggle of the self to remain intact has moved in her work from civil war, into the family, into the couple, into the individual, and finally into the theatre of phychosis: the mind itself. This play was written in 1999 shortly before the playwright took her own life at age 28. On the page, the piece looks like a poem. No characters are named, and even their number is unspecified. It could be a journey through one person's mind, or an interview between a doctor and his patient.

    A Handbook of Disappointed Fate highlights a decade of Anne Boyer’s interrogative writing on poetry, death, love, lambs, and other impossible questions.

    First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery. As Febos tentatively reconnects, she sees how both these lineages manifest in her own life, marked by compulsion and an instinct for self-erasure. Meanwhile, she remains closely tied to the sea captain who raised her, his parenting ardent but intermittent as his work took him away for months at a time. Woven throughout is the hypnotic story of an all-consuming, long-distance love affair with a woman, marked equally by worship and withdrawal. In visceral, erotic prose, Febos captures their mutual abandonment to passion and obsession -- and the terror and exhilaration of losing herself in another.At once a fearlessly vulnerable memoir and an incisive investigation of art, love, and identity, Abandon Me draws on childhood stories, religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture, and the intimacies of one writer's life to reveal intellectual and emotional truths that feel startlingly universal.

    But she has reckoned without floppy-eared, tail-wagging Mouse, who comes nosing to her window. Followed shortly by his owner, Alice. As Beth’s year of solitude rolls out, Alice gently steals her way first into Beth’s house and later into her heart. And by the time New Year’s Eve comes round again – who knows?A tender and delicate love story in verse, The Space Between is a tale of how warmth, support and friendship can overcome mental anguish.

    8 pages of illustrations.

    Homes and Susan StraightPhotography by: Edward Burtynsky, Don McCullin and Gus PalmerPoetry: Will Harris, Nathaniel Mackey and Chelsea Minnis

    The author of the critically acclaimed collections The Frost Fairs and Spacecraft, Brighton-based John McCullough pulls no punches in this latest - and his most powerful -collection. These are poems of skill, joy and quiet musicality that reflect the conflict and complexity of being.

    She makes the decision to cut her mother out of her life, and over the next several years goes on to create a body of work as a successful television and film actor. Then, after fifteen years of estrangement, Joanne learns that her mother is dying. Compelled to reconnect, she visits with her, unearthing a trove of devastating secrets.Joanne relates her journey from child performer to Emmy Award-winning actor, from hiding in the closet to embracing her own sexuality, from conflicted daughter and sibling to independent woman. All We Knew But Couldn’t Say is a testament to survival, love, and Joanne’s fundamental belief that it is possible to love the broken and to love fully, even with a broken heart.

    Collapser DJ Liam James finds himself in a cosmic conflict beyond his wildest dreams.There's a voice in the head of Liam James questioning everything he does--from his job at the nursing home to keeping his relationship with his girlfriend afloat. Liam suffers from anxiety, and the only thing that quiets it is music, which makes a weekly DJ gig his one saving grace. But Liam's life changes forever when he receives a black hole in the mail (yes, you read that right), one that takes up residence in his chest, grants him insane superpowers, turns him into a celebrity and draws him into a cosmic conflict beyond his wildest imagination. Liam finds himself in an intergalactic arms race that centers around him!

    Combining memoir with artistic and philosophical musings, the poet and National Book Critics Circle Award winner (for My Alexandria) begins by confessing his obsession with the 17th-century Dutch still life that serves as the title of this book. As he analyzes the items depicted in the painting, he skillfully introduces his thoughts on our intimate relationships to objects and subsequently explains how they are often inextricably bound to the people and places of an individual lifetime. Further defined by imperfections attained from use, each object from an aging oak table to a chipped blue and white china platter forms a springboard for reflection. Doty intersperses personal reminiscences throughout, but he always returns to the subject of still-life painting and its silent eloquence. Doty's observations on balance, grief, beauty, space, love, and time are imparted with wisdom and poetic grace.Books like this, that address the sources of creation and the sources of our humanness, come along once in a decade. -Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times"This small book is as wise, sensitive, intense, and affecting as anything I have read in recent years." -Doris Grumbach, author of Fifty Days of Solitude"A gem." -Library Journal"Mark Doty's prose is insistently exploratory, yet every aside, every detour, turns into pertinence, and it all seems effortless, as though the author were wondering, and marveling, aloud." -Bernard Cooper, author of Truth Serum"A dazzling accomplishment, its radiance bred of lucid attention and acute insight. The subject is the profoundly personal act of perception translated into description. Doty succeeds in rendering this most contemplative of arts-the still life-into a riveting drama." -Patricia Hampl, author of I Could Tell You Stories