A Winner of the 2016 Alex AwardsNightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements. An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move. Mysterious, smooth-talking power players who lurk behind the scenes. A young woman from the trailer park. And her very smelly cat. Together, they will decide the future of mankind.Get ready for a world in which anyone can have the powers of a god or the fame of a pop star, in which human achievement soars to new heights while its depravity plunges to the blackest depths. A world in which at least one cat smells like a seafood shop's dumpster on a hot summer day. This is the world in which Zoey Ashe finds herself, navigating a futuristic city in which one can find elements of the fantastic, nightmarish and ridiculous on any street corner. Her only trusted advisor is the aforementioned cat, but even in the future, cats cannot give advice. At least not any that you'd want to follow.Will Zoey figure it all out in time? Or maybe the better question is, will you? After all, the future is coming sooner than you think.

    But I have a much more pleasurable position in mind for her. Several in fact. Her wide-set doe eyes and that sexy AF gap between her two front teeth have me picturing the many ways I'd like to introduce her to my world of dark pleasure.They call me "El Diablo" and Jessie Montgomery is about to find out exactly why. I stop at nothing to get what I want. No price is too high... no boundaries bind me. In my world, there are no safe words and nowhere to run where I won't capture little birds trying to flee their masters.ENRAPTUREDI'm lost.No longer the golden girl from California seeking adventure. He pulled me into his dark underworld. I might have escaped, but he still has me enslaved, craving his dark, devilish touch and the pleasures of the lifestyle he introduced me to.But he broke more than my boundaries.He broke me.I hate him... loathe him... can't stop dreaming about my master-- half wishing he'd find me and punish me like only he can. ChristosMy little dove ran.But I will find her. No one escapes EL DIABLO. And when I do find my little dove, she will learn just how far I'll go to keep her forever.ENTWINEDThe story to their bad romance has been written. Will they soar off into the stars or crash and burn into the ground?She changed me.I'm no longer a dark, broken man but the sins of my past haunt me.I destroyed lives while breaking countless woman who thought they could reach my black heart.They all failed.All but one.HER.But I'm not a man worthy of my dove. Not yet anyway. But I vow I will be someday. I hope she'll still fly for me then.JessieFreedom.It's all I've ever wanted.I know we can fly together.He left me, a broken shell of who I was. But who I am now is perhaps who-- I was always destined to be. I see that clearly. I know deep in my heart--Christos and I belong together forever. His handsome face is on the cover of every magazine. The internet is full of pictures of him giving his millions away to countless children's charities. My dark one is now the golden one, and I won't let him leave me behind.He won't shine for anyone but me.I gave him light.I deserve his bright future.But first I need to prove to him just how strong I've become. Together we can rule the world, chart our own course and soar higher than the stars.

    Perhaps it even moved you. Now here's your chance for a fresh perspective, an opportunity to understand cheese from the bottom up.

    Playful, erotic, at times mysterious, his work describes the immanent value of everyday experience. Straightforward language and simple narratives become gateways to the most powerful formulations of beauty, wisdom, and divine love.

    Although Kathleen Norris’s best-selling Dakota: A Spiritual Geography has brought her to the attention of many thousands of readers, she is first and last a poet.  Like Robert Frost, another poet identified with a particular landscape, she can reveal the miraculous in the ordinary, and she writes with clarity, humor, and deep sympathy for her subjects.

    The poet who drew such unusual attention has a surprising background: for many years he has worked for Brooks Brothers, a fact that lends particular nuance to the title of his collection. The Clerk's Tale pays homage not only to Chaucer but to the clerks' brotherhood of service in the mall, where "the light is bright and artificial, / yet not dissimilar to that found in a Gothic cathedral." The fifty poems in The Clerk's Tale are exquisitely restrained, shot through with a longing for permanence, from the quasi-monastic life of two salesmen at Brooks Brothers to the poignant lingering light of a Miami dusk to the weight of geography on an empty Minnesota farm. Gluck describes them as having "an effect I have never quite seen before, half cocktail party, half passion play . . . We do not expect virtuosity as the outward form of soul-making, nor do we associate generosity and humanity with such sophistication of means, such polished intelligence . . . Much life has gone into the making of this art, much patient craft."

    It's real, relatable, and totally raw.

    With the recent death of their father, the girls must marry quickly in order to inherit their late father?s fortune.Even when Tristan finds out the three women are Mormons, a religious group he knows nothing about, he is positive he can lure Rachel into marriage?if he can convince her he?s a member of her church. Tristan soon finds himself fascinated by much more than just Rachel?s money. After a life of doing whatever?s necessary to close the deal, Tristan wonders if a fledgling testimony of the gospel can give him the strength to come clean to the woman he loves, even though it could mean losing her forever.This fresh, romantic tale is anything but your typical boy-meets-girl love story. Told with equal parts wit and heart, The Counterfeit Convert will keep you laughing while reminding you that facing consequences is the best way to conquer them.

    Whether tender or hard-hitting, McGriff juxtaposes natural images of deep forests, creeks, coyotes, and crows against the harsher oil-grease realities of blue-collar life, creating poems that read like folk tales about the people working in grain mills, forests, and factories."New Civilian"The new law says you can abandon your childin an emergency room,no questions asked. The young fathercarries the sleeping boythrough the hospital doors.Later, alone, parked at the boat basin,he takes a knife from his pocket,cuts an unfiltered cigarette in two,lights the longer half in his mouth.He was a medic in the war.In his basement are five bronze eaglesthat once adorned the wallsof a dictator's palace.Michael McGriff attended the University of Oregon; the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in creative writing; and Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow. He is the co-founding editor and publisher of Tavern Books and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

    Graham Foust's third book offers agile poems of dread and humor. Robert Creeley writes, "These poems move in close to luxuriant circles, round and round each particular syllable, neither hurrying nor dragging behind--just there. At times there seems an almost physical presence to them, a third dimension, which is substance." Foust is also the author of AS IN EVERY DEAFNESS and LEAVE THE ROOM TO ITSELF, available from SPD. He teaches Creative Writing at Saint Mary's College of California.

    He begins with a group of light but haunting fables, populated by figures like the King, a tiny creature in ermine who has lost his desire to rule, and by the poet’s own alter ego, who recounts the fetching mystery of the title poem: “I sat on the porch having a smoke / when out of the blue a man and a camel / happened by.” The poet has Arctic adventures and encounters with the bearded figure of Death; in his controlled tone, he creates his bold visions and shows us, like a magician, how they vanish in a blink. Gradually, his fancies give way to powerful scenes of loss, as in “The Mirror,” where the face of a beautiful woman stares past him into a place I could only imagine . . . as if just then I were steppingfrom the depths of the mirror into that white room, breathless and eager,only to discover too latethat she is not there.Man and Camel concludes with a small masterpiece of meditations crafted around the Seven Last Words of Christ. Here, this secular poet finds resonance in the bedrock of Christ’s language, the actual words that have governed so many generations of thought and belief. As always with Mark Strand, the discovery of meaning in the sound of language itself is an act of faith that enlightens us and carries us beyond the bounds of the rational.

    Mosquito blends autobiography and poetry, bearing witness to a young man’s journey through serious illness and his emergence into a world where eroticism, hope, and wisdom allow him to see life in a wholly new way. Mosquito is a resilient meditation that is as much Zen as it is explosive, as clinical as it is philosophical and lyrical.

    Fern, married and the mother of three boys takes us into her modern middle-class suburban Long Island world where one day she gets the "Big Idea" to learn the Chinese tile game called mah jongg. Weekly games provide the setting for deep-seeded friendships to form around the mah jongg table. These Monday gatherings become a source of support and strength for Fern as her husband is diagnosed with cancer. Fear, insecurity and potential heart-wrenching loss become challenges she must overcome. The author weaves the themes of destiny, faith, friendship, time and love throughout the story. Fern takes us on her journey around the mah jongg table, eastward to the seaport town of Greenport and through her husband's battle with cancer as she relies on faith, friendship and her personal relationship with God. Read this heartwarming story about the wonderful things that can happen when five women are destined to come together to play an old Chinese game, sitting around a table with 152 tiles, dice and a mah jongg card. Love always; love all ways, for time has no guarantees.

    “The collection of poems speaks like a journey through each formative moment we’d forgotten we had: the monster under the bed and the intricate rules about how to overcome its powers; the ability to talk to girls or boys we liked; the fear of being bullied; our first experience with real anguish.” – Litlive.ca Please note: This is not a young adult title. Some works include language not suitable for some readers.