Included also is "When the Towers Fell," his stunning requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.The book's title derives from Walt Whitman's "Last Invocation": "Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, / Strong is your hold O love."

    

    On Beth Healey's eighteenth birthday, she hopes that she will be able to forget the ghastly war and celebrate. But that evening, her twin brother Ned announces that he has signed up to fight. No longer able to stand working in her parents' village shop while others are doing their bit, Beth applies to join the Army Post Office's new Home Depot on the Regent's Park, and is astounded to be accepted. She will be responsible for making sure that letters and parcels get through to the troops on the front line. Beth is thrilled to be a crucial part of the war effort and soon makes friends with fellow post girls Milly and Nora, and meets the handsome James. But just as she begins to feel that her life has finally begun, everything starts falling apart, with devastating consequences for Beth and perhaps even the outcome of the war itself. Can Beth and her new friends keep it all together and find happiness at last?The Post Office Girls is perfect for fans of Johanna Bell, Daisy Styles and Nancy Revell. EADERS LOVE THE POST OFFICE GIRLS! 'A superb debut novel' - 5 STARS'Entertaining, enlightening and thoroughly enjoyable' - 5 STARS'I absolutely loved this book and I am already eagerly awaiting book two in the series' - 5 STARS'The book gave a wonderful in sight into postal-service life during the war. Well done, Poppy' - 5 STARS'An excellent WW1 book' - 5 STARS

    No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier—and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather's heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra's devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were.

    It is not a completed novel, however. According to Margerie Lowry, the author's widow, this published version is her "sorting out" of numerous drafts of chapters, paragraphs and even sentences that Lowry began to write in 1946.

    Here are the haiku that Keroauc, Saijo, and Welch jotted down in notebooks, along with a recollection of the trip written by Saijo in 1973, a section from Welch's unfinished novel that describes the trip and the return, and Welch's early 1960 letters to Keroauc that continue the bond forged during those days on the road together.Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was a principal actor in the Beat Generation, a companion of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in that great adventure. His books include On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Cody, Pomes All Sizes (City Lights), Scattered Poems (City Lights), and Scripture of the Golden Eternity (City Lights).Lew Welch (1926-1971?) was an American poet and active participant in the Beat generation literary movement. From 1965 to 1970, he taught a poetry workshop. His works, which were published by City Lights/Grey Fox, include Trip Trap: Haiku on the Road, Selected Poems, and Ring of Bone.Albert Saijo (1929-2011) was a Japanese-American poet and active participant in the Beat Generation literary movement. He and his family were imprisoned, along with many other Japanese-American families, as part of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. During this time he wrote about his internment experience for his high school newspaper. After joining the US Army and studying at University of Southern California, he became friends with Jack Keroauc and other influential Beat Generation figures. His famous works include The Backpacker (1972) and Outspeaks: A Rhapsody (1997). A collection of his works from the 80s and 90s, Woodrat Flat, was published posthumously in 2014.

    Dunn's landscape at the end of the century embraces the spectrum of urgencies and obsessions that we live with and for. It's a landscape that we share with citizens and spies, revelers and mourners, women who weep, men who keep secrets, and especially with the poet himself.

    Two lonely schoolboys at the end of childhood are forced into an unwanted companionship. One of them is terrified of what the future holds.Does music have its ghosts? Its victims? Something is stirring in the cathedral that both echoes an ancient tragedy and seems to offer a chance of future happiness. One thing is certain. Broken voices make false promises. And their lies may prove fatal.

    Sister Marie's latest novitiate is a young woman named Noele whose fiancé, René, fled to Paris only to find it overrun by the Nazis. Now back in sleepy Brassac, both René and Noele realize that decisions of love and liberation can never, truly, be avoided. Sister Marie is not unsympathetic to the emotions with which Noele battles; having gone through a similar struggle when she was young. The offbeat nuns must wrestle with how far to expand the margins of their vows, in hopes of saving their town and themselves. A Habit of Resistance is a humorous, but thought-provoking story of personal denial and redemption.

    Desperate to maintain cover, he scales the walls of the regal estate Lindenhurst and stumbles upon a frozen lake just as a beautiful woman falls through the ice. When he pulls her to safety, he learns that her name is Lillian Harold, an American blue blood betrothed to Charlie Cornelius, heir to a railroad magnate. As a gesture of thanks, Charlie’s father offers him a job. Henry is hesitant to throw in with the elites but still fearful of capture, so he accepts. Almost immediately, Henry and Lillian sense an unsettling attraction toward one another. This mutual attraction between the two continues to evolve and grow until Lillian realizes she might be in love with two men at the same time. As Henry shows a great aptitude for the business, Charlie seeks to escape his destiny by seeking out adventure in the far reaches of the world. The stubborn, rebellious, and impatient Lillian turns to Henry for company and they begin an illicit affair. Soon all begins to unravel when Charlie returns home and Henry’s past finally catches up with him. Henry eventually lands in Europe. There, amidst the harrowing chaos and carnage of World War I, he makes a promise: to live through the war, return to New York and see Lillian once more. The Ice Harvester spans the roiling conflicts of America’s gilded age to the killing fields of Europe. It is a tale of love, friendship, loyalty and betrayal as well as the American dream versus its harsh reality in a time of historic splendor and brutal savagery.

    In a time when people reveal little about themselves, their problems, and their passions, Grace takes readers into the hearts of four families during the last year of the War. Bound together by neighborhood and southern customs, yet separated by class, money and family, they are an unforgettable lot, vibrantly brought to life.As the war draws to an end, it becomes the catalyst that drives the inhabitants of Cold Springs across the boundaries that had once divided them, taking them to places both chaotic and astonishing.

    The haunting memories and shared histories of these people—their rituals and traditions—animate this land, and are celebrated in Rash’s crystalline, intensely imagined verse.With an eye for the surprising and vivid detail, Ron Rash powerfully captures the sorrows and exaltations of this wondrous world he knows intimately. Illuminating and indelible, Poems demonstrates his rich talents and confirms his legacy as a standard-bearer for the literature of the American South.