Elves and centaurs, nymphs and fauns inhabit this new collection of magical, erotic poems about a girl yearning for and searching for love in present-day Los Angeles.

    Biography, memoir, narrative history, reportage, the travel account: all these forms now have their interesting and original practitioners in India. In this Granta issue they tackle questions ranging from rape in village India to scandal in Mumbai clubs. And there is room, as always, for the best of India's fiction.

    The book winds through the streets of New Orleans toward a deeper understanding of just what this great, wounded city means to the United States. Many of the essays in this collection were composed by writers trying to piece their lives together in the aftermath of the hurricane. Written in places like Baton Rouge, Houston, and Lafayette, these stories create a bridge back to the old New Orleans. And as the battle for this city rages on, this book becomes a razor-sharp weapon in the fight against corporate and governmental attempts to neuter a unique American city. The structure of the book parallels a New Orleans jazz funeral, mournful on the approach and celebratory on the return. Woven throughout the book is a series of interviews with New Orleans residents from all walks of life-jazz pianists, grain traders, tour guides, and others who make up this city. Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? takes intimate looks at old New Orleans staples such as Cajun food and Zydeco music as well as some unexpected views on race, economics and living in exile.Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? is the second book from Chin Music Press. Chin Music released Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan in the spring of 2005 and immediately established itself as a publisher focused on meticulous design and collaboration among artists and writers.

    Put simply, this group, which was founded in Paris in 1960, approaches creative writing in a way that still has yet to make its impact in the United States and its creative writing programs. Rather than inspiration, rather than experience, rather than self-expression, the Oulipians viewed imaginative writing as an exercise dominated by what they called "constraints." Quite commonly, they would attempt to write stories, for instance, in which strict rules had to be imposed and followed (for example, Georges Perec's notorious novel A Void, which was written without the use of the letter "e"). While a major contribution to literary theory, Oulipo is perhaps most distinguished as an indispensable guide to writers. "This reader is truly impressed by Motte's capacity to present, in a clear fashion, material that is still new and 'difficult' to most of his readership." (Jean-Jacques Thomas, South Atlantic Review 5-88)

    In settings ranging from the Buenos Aires subway to a luxurious Martinique resort, stories by an Argentinian master blend unsettling suspense, intellectual play, clever fantasy, and intense emotional conflict

    Hector is very good at treating patients in need of his help. But he can't do much for those who are simply dissatisfied with life, and that is beginning to depress him. When a patient tells him he looks in need of a vacation, Hector takes a trip around the world to learn what makes people happy—and sad. As he travels from Paris to China to Africa to the United States, he lists his observations about the people he meets. Is there a secret to happiness, and will Hector find it? Combining the winsome appeal of The Little Prince with the inspiring philosophy of The Alchemist, Hector's journey ventures around the globe and into the human soul. Lelord's writing inspires us to consider life's great questions. Uplifting, empowering, and optimistic, this is a fable for our times and all time.

    "It must be established as a law that adventure in itself does not exist," Mac Orlan stipulates. "Adventure is in the mind of the one who pursues it, and no sooner is he able to touch it with his finger than it vanishes, to reappear much farther off in another form, at the limits of the imagination." This handbook outlines two classes of adventurer: the active adventurer (sailors, soldiers, criminals) and the passive adventurer (sedentary parasites who draw sustenance from the exploits of the former). Roaming from battlefields to pirate ships to port-town taverns, and offering advice on reading, traveling and eroticism, Mac Orlan's "Handbook" is ultimately a how-to manual for the imagination, and a formulation of the stark choice all would-be adventurers must face: to live or write.Generally known as the author of "Le Quai des brumes" (the basis for Marcel Carne's film of the same name), Pierre Mac Orlan (1882-1970) was a prolific writer of absurdist tales, adventure novels, flagellation erotica and essays, as well as the composer of a trove of songs made famous by the likes of Juliette Greco. A member of both the Academie Goncourt and the College de 'Pataphysique, Mac Orlan was admired by everyone from Raymond Queneau and Boris Vian to Andre Malraux and Guy Debord.

    The Falcon of Siam: An action-adventure thriller that weaves historical fiction, epic storytelling and high drama into an unforgettable journey where a young Greek stowaway on a British East India Company ship finds his destiny in opulent 17th-century Thailand.

    When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The year is 1915 and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide. There Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo and travels south into Egypt to join the British army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost. Fast forward to the present day, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents' ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed "The Ottoman Annex," Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura's grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family's history that reveals love, loss - and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

    But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance--"I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life," he tells Hayes early on--is captured in vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015).

    It is published here with the short story The Retreat of Monsieur Bougran. M. Folantin is a government employee who is overwhelmed by the quotidian misery of life. The story follows his quixotic quest for enjoyment as he goes to a restaurant, to the cinema, and to a prostitute—but ultimately finds that nothing can relieve him of his disgust and boredom with the business of living. Joris–Karl Huysmans, art critic and author of Against Nature, is a leading figure in France’s Decadent Movement.

    She is a girl looking to be rescued from her own insecurities and bad decisions. Unable to afford rent in New York City proper, she is craving a life of luxury that isn’t hers, while subsisting on bagels and coffee. In desperate need of support - emotional and otherwise -, she clings to potential saviors, never bothering to question if the attachments she forms really fit her. In a parallel storyline, her mother, Maria, is trying to reject all offers of help, especially those of her estranged husband, whose unexpected generosity forces her to revisit past mistakes she hasn't come to terms with. Enmeshed in her own drama, she doesn’t notice her daughter’s troubles until it’s too late. Desperate to keep Liliana from making a mistake that will alter the course of her life, Maria reveals her best-kept secret, a story so shocking it might have the power to jerk Liliana back to reality. It could, on the other hand, alienate her forever. DOGS WITH BAGELS is a story about the American dream gone bad. It is also a story about mothers and daughters, about female friendships, the struggle to survive in one of the world’s most expensive cities, and women’s secret desire to have wild passionate sex with their exes. A cross between Bridgett Jones’ Diary and Sex and the City - with an accent! -, DOGS WITH BAGELS is as addictive as a trashy tabloid you can't seem to put down.

    Charting the rugged and uneven terrain of a writer's formative years - from tax problems to probation to American tours, football to family to running away to Iceland - Simon Armitage explores growing up and being Northern. It's about humour, language, writing, film, houses, homes, time wasters, one loose tyre, you, me and all points in-between.

    These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

    Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?", Milton's "On His Blindness," Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us," many more by Spenser, Sidney, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Longfellow, Yeats, Frost, Poe, etc. Includes 2 selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.