Book picks similar to
Living in the Open by Marge Piercy


poetry
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Sunshine


Melissa Lee-Houghton - 2016
    A writer of startling confession, her poems inhabit the lonely hotel rooms, psych wards and deserted lanes of austerity Britain.Sunshine combines acute social observation with a dark, surreal humour born of first-hand experience. Abuse, addiction and mental health are all subject to Lee-Houghton’s poetic eye. But these are also poems of extravagance, hope and desire, that stake new ground for the Romantic lyric in an age of social media and internet porn. In this new book of poems, Melissa Lee-Houghton shines a light on human ecstasy and sadness with blinding precision.Includes ‘i am very precious’ – Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2016.

Uptalk


Kimmy Walters - 2015
    By turns sassy and serious, the poems can seem to sprint in two directions at once, managing to make the reader laugh at the same time they are struck by the emotional strength of the work. "Charming, inviting, beguiling and delightful poems in the language of someone who seems alive speaking refreshing riddles to herself." SHEILA HETI"Uptalk is a book of transcribed whale songs. Some scientists gave a whale a microphone and she took it home and stayed up all night under the covers talking to herself about faces and word-parts. I am delighted that Kimmy took it upon herself to transcribe this unique document of marine biology, and my heart goes out to the brilliant, charming whale author, wherever she may be." SARA WOODS

Beauty / Beauty


Rebecca Perry - 2015
    Beauty/Beauty is a book with tenderness running through its veins, exploring salvation, reparation, and the fullness of being alive; the difficulty of defining what love is, the heartbreak, the faraway friends, the overwhelming abundance of things in museums. It is alive with memories, with old loves hanging around in the corners of dark rooms, ghost mouths hidden inside the mouth you are kissing, and eulogies to dearly departed pets. Each poem creates its own tiny world to be lived in and explored; a stegosaurus is adored, a million silver spiders play dead, a list of flowers is not really a list of flowers, adorable dogs want to be friends, the flightless grow wings, and the stars turn green.

If They Come for Us


Fatimah Asghar - 2018
    After being orphaned as a young girl, Asghar grapples with coming-of-age as a woman without the guidance of a mother, questions of sexuality and race, and navigating a world that put a target on her back. Asghar's poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests in our relationships with friends and family, and in our own understanding of identity. Using experimental forms and a mix of lyrical and brash language, Asghar confronts her own understanding of identity and place and belonging.

Going My Way?


Samantha Chase - 2016
    Being the lone mechanic in Sapphire Falls hasn’t left him with a whole lot of free time and up until now, he hasn’t minded. But now that the business is finally solid, he decides to take a weekend just for himself to try and figure out what his next big thing in life should be. He never expected the answer to be found on the side of the highway…All Chloe Holland wanted was the chance to live the life she wanted without dealing with other people’s expectations. That’s what had spurred her last-minute cross-country trip. If only her car had cooperated. Stranded on the side of the road left her feeling as if her great adventure was over before it had even began. Little did she know, it was really just the beginning of her greatest adventure yet.

The Dream of a Common Language


Adrienne Rich - 1978
    . . . No one is writing better or more needed verse than this."--Boston Evening Globe

Citizen: An American Lyric


Claudia Rankine - 2014
    Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.

The Jake Grafton Collection: The Intruders, The Minotaur, Under Siege, and The Red Horseman


Stephen Coonts - 2018
      Navy pilot Jake Grafton took the fight to the enemy in the Vietnam War, winning the Congressional Medal of Honor and becoming a legend in the military community. But now he must navigate life both in the cockpit and in the halls of power as he finds himself on the front lines of a new kind of war . . .  The Intruders: In this sequel to Flight of the Intruder, Grafton is stationed in the South Pacific on the USS Columbia, where his new mission is to educate an unruly group of Marines in the art of flying from an aircraft carrier. They better be fast learners, because they’ll have to work together to survive against an enemy unlike any they’ve ever faced.   “In the realm of today’s military fiction, Mr. Coonts’s The Intruders is as good as they come.” —The Dallas Morning News  The Minotaur: Grafton is heading up a top-secret stealth bomber program at the Pentagon when a series of mysterious deaths occurs, leading him on a manhunt within the US government for a Soviet mole code-named the “Minotaur.” If he can’t find the traitor, Grafton could lose far more than just his career . . .   “Wildly inventive.” —Ocala Star-Banner  Under Siege: In this New York Times bestseller, when a vicious drug lord is captured and brought to Washington, DC, for trial, his fanatically loyal private army prepares to launch an attack on the United States—and its president. The only man who can stop the bloodshed and take down the assassins is Jake Grafton.   “Will keep you glued to your seat on a roller-coaster ride of adventure.” —USA Today  The Red Horseman: As the USSR falls, newly appointed intelligence chief Jake Grafton knows that even as one threat falls, several more are waiting to get their hands on the former Soviet nuclear arsenal. And as he tries to stop a possible Armageddon, someone who is supposed to be on Grafton’s side is working to make sure he fails.   “Quick-firing excitement, plot, and action . . . Coonts at his best.” —The Dallas Morning News

Dark Sparkler


Amber Tamblyn - 2015
    As such she is deeply fascinated-and intimately familiar—with the toll exacted from young women whose lives are offered in sacrifice as starlets. The stories of these actresses, both famous and obscure-tragic stories of suicide, murder, obscurity, and other forms of death—inspired this empathic and emotionally charged collection of new poetic work. Featuring subjects from Marilyn Monroe and Frances Farmer to Dana Plato and Brittany Murphy—and paired with original artwork commissioned for the book by luminaries including David Lynch, Adrian Tome, Marilyn Manson, and Marcel Dzama—Dark Sparkler is a surprising and provocative collection from a young artist of wide-ranging talent, culminating in an extended, confessional epilogue of astonishing candor and poetic command. Actresses featured in Dark Sparkler include:Marilyn MonroeBrittany MurphyDana PlatoJayne MansfieldJean HarlowDominique DunneSharon TateHeather O’RourkeBridgette AndersenShannon Michelle WilseyJudith BarsiPeg EntwistleCarole LandisAnissa JonesSusan PetersBarbara La MarrLucy GordonSirkka SariLi ToblerThelma ToddSamantha SmithLupe ValezTaruni SachdevRebecca Shaeffer

Useless Magic


Florence Welch - 2018
    Or a prediction comes true and I couldn't do anything to stop it, so it seems like a kind of useless magic."

Rikas Marauders: The Complete Series (Aeon 14: Rika Collections Book 1)


M.D. Cooper - 2019
    Its goal to augment humans into cyborg fighting machines; mechanized warriors sent to hold the front lines against an enemy that was storming a hundred worlds.Yet few wished to undergo the brutal process, and so criminals were used, their minds enslaved by control chips and obedience enforced through Discipline.The Genevians spent their mechs against the Nietzscheans with little care, eventually struggling to find enough bodies to convert into fighting machines. Quotas were set in the courts, prosecutors and judges paid off to ensure that even the most benign offenses would see the perpetrator end up in a mech factory, rights and mind stripped as much as body.Rika is one such victim.Forged into a second generation scout mech, she is sent to the front lines where she serves with distinction, crushing countless enemies beneath her clawed feet.But, despite giving everything she had, Genevia still loses the war, and Rika is abandoned.Now she slings cargo on Dekar, little more than a human loading machine, struggling to keep ahead of the slow breakdown of her mechanized body.Until someone makes her an offer she cannot refuse. An offer that will see her rejoin the fight—whether she wants to or not. Rika will have to summon a strength she never knew she had to bring about the victory that she once thought was lost.Get Rika’s Marauders today and follow the ultimate rags-to-riches story, where one woman rises up and saves not only herself, but her people.This omnibus volume contains all 7 books in the Rika’s Marauders series, as well as two novellas: Rika Mechanized and Rika Crucible.

Burning


Rebecca Fernfield - 2017
     Civil society has collapsed and in the place of government, wannabe warlords and criminal gangs are taking control. Among the few survivors, Edie and Robin live within a tiny community at the edges of a dying town, struggling to survive, desperate to stay hidden from prying eyes. Edie’s determination to provide for her family takes her deep inside the forbidden parts of town where disease still lingers and the Snatchers sit in wait. What she discovers there is a threat far worse. One that will rob her of freedom and the man she loves. If you like to lose yourself in dangerous new worlds with thrilling suspense and heart-rending emotion then you’ll love Burning, the first book in Rebecca Fernfield’s new dystopian series Dark Powers Rising. Buy Burning and join Edie and Robin in their terrifying struggle to survive!

Rifleman: A LitRPG / LitFPS Adventure (Battlegrounds Online, #1)


Troy Osgood - 2021
    It's time to move on to something more... obscure. Battlegrounds Online is the only game of its kind. A VRMMOFPS. A military warfare game so realistic that it scares away most players daring enough to try it. Realistic in the combat but not in the setting, the game is based around a toy property from the 1980s—a property that Eric's Grandfather was a fan of, passing that love down to Eric.Now, as a soldier codenamed Zag, Eric gets to play in that near-future world full of colorful and insane terrorists. He gets to be one of the characters he heard his grandfather rave about.But Eric will find that not all games are created equal. Some are more real. So real, they can affect you both in and out of the game. Experience this high-adrenaline LitRPG / LitFPS adventure from the Amazon Bestselling author behind Sky Realms Online. An action-packed thrill-ride that puts you right in the crosshairs.

And Her Soul Out Of Nothing


Olena Kalytiak Davis - 1997
    Both contemporary and other-worldly, Davis's lyrical poetry is a fearless expression of the spirit which defines the very essence of our beings.

Where the Words End and My Body Begins


Amber Dawn - 2015
    By doing so, Dawn delves deeper into the themes of trauma, memory, and unblushing sexuality that define her work.Amber Dawn is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novel Sub Rosa and the memoir How Poetry Saved My Life (winner of the Vancouver Book Award). Her other awards include the Writers' Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize.