. . . It’s a place of reflection and contemplation, a temporary reprieve from the world’s chaos and a reach for a vision of paradise." —The Los Angeles Review of Books“. . .the poems [in Mezzanines] have doors that open and invite you inside. The rooms of the house may be odd, and the stairwells may lead in strange directions, but you, as the reader, remain beckoned. [Olzmann] hasn’t invited you in just to leave you. He’s got stories to tell, and they’re good.” —The Huffington Post BlogThere is no place Matthew Olzmann doesn’t visit in his poignant debut. From underwater to outer space, Mezzanines is a contained universe, constantly shifting through multiple perceptions of the surreal and the real. A lyrical conversation with mortality, Olzmann explores identity, faith, and our sense of place, with an acute awareness of our minute existence.From "NASA Video Transmission Picked Up By Baby Monitor":How many shadows are there left to name?Logophobia is the fear of words. Keraunothnetophobiais the fear of falling man-made satellites.Imagine this last one:you walk outside and look to heavenexpecting a sky lab plunging down on you—wireseverywhere, bolts loosening, metal body in flames.Instead, you see only blue, endless blue,the color of a baby’s new blanket, cloaking everything.Matthew Olzmann is a graduate of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Inch, Gulf Coast, Rattle, and elsewhere. He’s received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kresge Arts Foundation. Currently, he is a writer-in-residence for the InsideOut Literary Arts Project and the poetry editor of The Collagist.

    The resonance of this image grows through each section of the book as Hahn skillfully employs theme and variation, counterpoint and mirroring techniques. The ibis first appears as part of an illusion, the disappearing object in a magician’s trick, which then evokes the greatest disappearing act of all—death—where there are no tricks to bring about a reappearance. The rich complexity multiplies as the second section focuses on a disappearing lady and a dramatic final section brings together the bird and the lady in their common plight—both caged by their mortality, their assigned time and role.  All of the illusions fall away during this brilliant denouement as the two voices share a dialogue on the power of metaphor as the very essence of poetry. bird trick iv It’s all about disappearance. About a bird in a cagewith a mirror, a simple twiston the handle at the sidethat makes it come and go at the magician’s insistence. It’s all about innocence.It’s all about acceptance.It’s all about compliance.It’s all about deference.It’s all about silence. It’s all about disappearance.

    As elliptical and demanding as Emily Dickinson, Valentine consistently rewards the reader."—Library JournalIn her eleventh collection, National Book Award–winning poet Jean Valentine characteristically weds a moral imperative to imaginative and linguistic leaps and bounds. Whether writing elegies, meditations on aging, or an extended homage to ancient remains, Valentine searches out ideas and explores the unexplainable. As Adrienne Rich has said of Valentine's work, "This is a poetry of the highest order, because it lets us into spaces and meanings we couldn't approach in any other way."From "If a Person Visits Someone in a Dream, in Some Cultures the Dreamer Thanks Them":At a hotel in another star. The rooms were cold anddamp, we were both at the desk at midnight asking ifthey had any heaters. They had one heater. You areill, please you take it. Thank you for visiting my dream.*Can you breathe all right?Break the glass shoutbreak the glass force the roombreak the thread Openthe music behind the glass . . .Jean Valentine is the state poet of New York. She has earned many honors, including the National Book Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, and the Shelley Memorial Prize. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

    His last poem, 'Pale Fire', is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should be.Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.

    There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the "Mayan astronomer" calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement fire; a nun staging a White House vigil to protest her torture; a man on death row mourning the loss of his books; and even Carmen Miranda.

    EarthCent's diplomats are learning on the job - but the galaxy doesn't come with instructions. Get a running start on the funny and heartwarming Union Station series with a three book bundle at the special introductory price. Kelly Frank is EarthCent's top diplomat on Union Station, but her job description has always been a bit vague. The pay is horrible and she's in hock up to her ears for her furniture, which is likely to end up in a corridor because she's behind on rent for her room. Sometimes she has to wonder if the career she has put ahead of her personal life for fifteen years is worth it. When Kelly receives a gift subscription to the dating service that's rumored to be powered by the same benevolent artificial intelligence that runs the huge station, she decides to swallow her pride and give it a shot. But as her dates go from bad to worse, she can only hope that the supposedly omniscient AI is planning a happy ending.

    I am sure you’ve seen at least one, if not more of the 26 films made on fictional British spy 007. You may’ve also seen TV shows like The Americans, Blindspot, Chuck, Covert Affairs, Homeland, Nikita, Quantico, The Blacklist, and/or The Night Manager. I wrote this book after I realised that the average person may not know even one-sixth of what I know about spies and spying. Almost each of the Top 50 nations (by GDP, population or military power) has a spy agency/service. Many countries have more than one ‘secret service’ or ‘intelligence agency’. USA has 16. Some countries’ spy agencies are more powerful than entire smaller nations, with annual budgets larger than their GDPs. This books attempts to tell the story of 20 of the world’s largest and most powerful spy agencies, details their important missions, reveals their darkest secrets, and gives you an inside perspective of the often quite gory but thrilling ‘world of spies’. It gives you a 360º view of those spy agencies you only read about or see in a movie or TV show. With one chapter per agency, you can read only chapters you may be interested in. The life of most spies is not as glamorous as it is made out to be. You may think it is all about high-tech and guns and car chases and ‘hot’ women, but that’s not the case. In the real spy world, the techniques boil down to the interpretation of basic human psychology. Even though a spy learns several action techniques on how to get out of a dangerous situation, including how to withstand torture, if he/she is resorting to car chases, it means they’re doing something wrong. Spies don’t get paid very well. Gambling at a casino or flying on a private jet may be part of the job, but a spy doesn’t get to spend this kind of money on personal expenses. Spies cannot disclose the nature of their work to their family and friends, to maintain secrecy. Many have to live away from home for weeks, months, even years. Married life is a mess, as the spouse starts suspecting the spy of having an affair. Who can become a spy? Do you need a law enforcement (police) or military background? Not really. Spies have degrees as diverse as law, political science, finance, economics – even professional athletes have become successful spies.

    There, to his amazement, he is re-united with the man once known as "the snake man," and hears the remarkable story of his faked death--and the rebirth it made possible. A happily married man, the father of two children, he has discovered the secret to life and is finally free of the demons that had driven him headlong through the American night. Now an enticing question arises: Would destiny smile upon the re-launch of one of the most influential rock and roll bands in history? ". . . a narrative that ends with a moment of authentic surprise and heart-tugging poignancy."--Los Angeles Times

    Each piece brings consciousness to parts of a woman that ought to be glorified, qualities men sometimes neglect in relationships; while making both men and women aware that who they become has a direct correlation with who they’ve been with. Pierre allows readers to see where he missed it before in a way that is uplifting not only to the reader but also the women of his past. This literary piece is filled with hope and will salivate the soul of those waiting on love.

    The day Buddy spots a wounded deer in those woods, he is wholly unprepared for a chance meeting with a stranger who will shape the course of his life.Jake—fisherman, ex-convict, former tent preacher—and Buddy form an unlikely bond that transcends age and race. Forged by their many conversations about life and faith, their friendship endures sorrows, celebrations, and transitions, ultimately revealing the power to heal them both.

    She was one of Rome's most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape Artemisia faced another terrible choice: a life of silence or a life of truth, no matter the cost.He will not consumemy every thought.I am a painter.I will paint.I will show youwhat a woman can do.

    Olio is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them.So, while I lead this choir, I still find thatI'm being led…I'm a missionarymending my faith in the midst of this flock…I toil in their fields of praise. When folks seethese freedmen stand and sing, they hear their Godspeak in tongues. These nine dark mouths sing shelter;they echo a hymn's haven from slavery's weather.Detroit native Tyehimba Jess' first book of poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU Alumni, has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Jess is also a veteran of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team. He exhibited his poetry at the 2011 TEDxNashville Conference. Jess is an Associate Professor of English at College of Staten Island.

    Oceanic is both a title and an ethos of radical inclusion, inviting in the grief of an elephant, the icy eyes of a scallop, “the ribs / of a silver silo,” and the bright flash of painted fingernails. With unmatched sincerity, Oceanic speaks to each reader as a cooperative part of the natural world—the extraordinary neighborhood to which we all belong. This is a poet ecstatically, emphatically, naming what it means to love a world in peril.

    Falling in love with him while saving the world is . . . complicated.An eighteen-year-old covert agent is pulled out of training before graduation by Black X, a espionage group so secret even the President of the United States doesn't know it exists.For her first mission, she must go undercover as the long-lost daughter of a recently deceased billionaire, infiltrate high society, and protect the Prince of Montrovia from assassination.But Prince Lorenzo is known as the Playboy Prince for a reason and his sensuality and charisma add a whole other level of complication to her mission.She knows that her every move is being watched, but what she doesn't know is that the Prince is just a chess piece in a bigger game that will have world-wide ramifications. And that Blackwood Academy, the place she has called home for the past six years has secrets of its own.

    Where chivalrous rouges, daring lords, and smart spirited ladies overcome the dastardly schemes that stand in the way of true love! 3 Full Length Regency Romance Novels now in a captivating Boxset. Join the Ladies of Bath as they struggle with love and loss in their search for happily ever after. The Duke’s Daughter A High Society Lady and a Navy Commander… Joined by a tragic accident, a secret cypher, and a clandestine engagement. Two people have never been so mismatched, but when Amelia’s father dies under mysterious circumstances, and Samuel’s elder brother is poisoned within a mere day of the Duke’s death, both Lady Amelia and Commander Beresford find themselves forced to work together in a desperate search for the culprit. Neither could imagine falling in love … now it seems they cannot imagine loving anyone else. The Baron in Bath Surrounded by Rumor…Betrothed to a Rake…Miss Julia Bellevue has been made an object of ridicule amongst the Ton for years and would wish to be left out of their cruel games. But Julia’s late father has secretly betrothed her to Godwin Gruger, the devilishly handsome Baron Fawkland, a scandalous gentleman with a terrible reputation. She would much prefer his equally dashing younger brother, but if Julia refuses to marry the Baron she is to lose her inheritance! Caught in a whirlwind of rumors, picnics, parties and balls where no one is who they pretend to be Julia must decide what she really wants… The Baron or his brother… and if she can truly trust either man with her heart? The Deceptive Earl Lady Charity is the last of her friends to marry, and this summer holiday, she finds Bath lonely…That is until she matches wits with the dashing Earl of Wentwell. Lady Charity thinks Neville is a rogue and a scoundrel who has ruined more than one lady. She wants nothing but to give him the cut. Lord Wentwell thinks Lady Charity is outrageous; a woman on the prowl for a husband, and he will have none of it. He has been hurt before and he will not play by her rules, or the Ton's. Can love flourish amidst the problems of Neville's war shaken brother and Charity's elderly ailing father? Once Charity has seen the gentleman behind Lord Wentwell's devil may care exterior, nothing can keep her from him, not war, nor disease, not even her overbearing mother or his! 3 Full Length Sweet and Wholesome Clean Read Regency Romances Don't miss the glamor and excitement of Regency Romance by Isabella Thorne Follow Isabella Thorne on Amazon, Facebook and Bookbub. SIGN UP for her newsletter to be notified of the debut of Isabella Thorne's next novel.