For Ellen Wilder, editor of the local newspaper, the gruesome killing is as disturbing as the irrational fears that have suddenly woven themselves into her mind and left her doubting her own sanity. For state police detective Michael Chandler, whose haunting near-death experience has left him with an uncanny way of sensing things, the murder is only a hint of what is to come.But nothing could have prepared either of them for the return of Franny Corbett. A hulking child of a man and the blackest sheep in a family of black sheep, his eerie presence may have ushered in all of these bizarre and frightening events. Soon the town of Wiltshire will be shaken again. For in a car sunk beneath the surface of a glimmering blue lake, floats another body. And the killing has just begun....

    The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The diary was falling apart--water-stained and illegible in places--but magnetic to Scanlan nonetheless.After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the composition that became Aug 9--Fog (she chose the title from a note that was tucked into the diary). "Sure grand out," the diarist writes. "That puzzle a humdinger," she says, followed by, "A letter from Lloyd saying John died the 16th." An entire state of mourning reveals itself in "2 canned hams." The result of Scanlan's collaging is an utterly compelling, deeply moving meditation on life and death.In Aug 9--Fog, Scanlan's spare, minimalist approach has a maximal emotional effect, remaining with the reader long after the book ends. It is an unclassifiable work from a visionary young writer and artist--a singular portrait of a life revealed by revision and restraint.

    With a mix of traditional, literary prose and bold – some might even say irresponsible – experimentation, Ben Greenman explores the ins and outs of modern romance. Expect tears, nudity, and recrimination.Both familiar in their humanness and wholly original, these imaginative stories take us all over the map in time, place, and circumstance. From the halfhearted summer affair between a part-time bartender and a married doctor in a Miami hotel to the cryptic pseudo-erotic love letters to a friend who is “more than a friend,” we experience the love of pop songs, the love of cohabitation in Chicago, and love that is so transporting it takes us to the moon–literally.

    Paul Muldoon, the distinguished poet and international literary eminence, has selected -- from a pool of several thousand published candidates -- the top seventy-five poems of the year. With insightful comments from the poets illuminating their work, and series editor David Lehman's perspicacious foreword, The Best American Poetry 2005 is indispensable for every poetry enthusiast.

    The farmer and his land, marriage and the family, form the central images. The long title poem, perhaps the finest single work in the book, is a grave, moving, and beauti- fully wrought love poem. The shorter lyrics have an equal beauty and perfection of phrase. And there is humor, too, notably in several new poems about 'Mad Farmer, ' who first made his appearance in Farming: A Hand Book, and who advises us here to 'every day do something that won't compute.'

     The true story of how mildly successful guitarist and New York Times writer Dan Crane relinquished his instrument and became Björn Türoque (pronounced "b-yorn too-RAWK"), the second greatest air guitarist in the nation. This exploration of the international air guitar sub-culture addresses the issue of dedicating oneself to an invisible art in order to achieve the ultimate goal of "airness"-that is, when air guitar transcends the "real" art that it imitates and becomes an art form in and of itself.

    The search for Ellen's errant husband leads Elvis into the seamier side of Hollywood. He soon learns that Mort Lang is a down-on-his-luck talent agent who associates with a schlocky movie producer, and the last place he was spotted was at a party thrown by a famous and very well-connected ex-Matador. But no one has seen him since - including his B-movie girlfriend. At the same time the police find Mort in his parked car with four gunshots in his chest - and no kid in sight - Ellen disappears. Now nothing is what it seems, and the heat is on. It's up to Elvis Cole and his partner Joe Pike to find the connection between sleazy Hollywood players and an ex-Matador. FREE FALL Read by James Daniels (Sandra Burr, Jill Sovis) Elvis Cole is just a detective who can't say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies: Her fiance, Mark Thurman, is a decorated LA cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer's sure he's in trouble - the kind of serious trouble that only Elvis Cole can help him out of. Five minutes after his new client leaves his office, Elvis and his partner, the enigmatic Joe Pike, are hip-deep in a deadly situation as they plummet into a world of South Central gangs, corrupt cops, and conspiracies of silence. And before the case is through, every cop in the LAPD will be gunning for a pair of escaped armed-and-dangerous killers - Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. LULLABY TOWN Read by James Daniels (Joyce Bean, Russell Byers) Hollywood's newest wunderkind is Peter Alan Nelson, the brilliant, erratic director known as the King of Adventure. His films make billions, but his manners make enemies. What the boy king wants, he gets, and what Nelson wants is for Elvis to comb the country for the airhead wife and infant child the film-school flunkout dumped en route to becoming the third biggest filmmaker in America. It's the kind of case Cole can handle in his sleep - until it turns out to be a nightmare. For when Cole finds Nelson's wife in a small Conneticut town, she's nothing like what he expects. The lady has some unwanted - and very nasty - mob connections, which means Elvis could be opening the East Coast branch of his P.I. office . . .at the bottom of the Hudson River.

    With her children gone and her husband John in the army, Rene Morgan misses her family terribly. When she learnsthat John has become a prisoner of war, she has to take on the highly dangerous job of firewatcher. Meanwhile, Hazel and Peter are desperate to go backhome. Returning to the city, they are overjoyed to be reunited with their mother and Gran. But their father is still far away and the worst of the waris yet to come. As the air raids increase, the Morgans must face the terror of the Blitz together...

    Now imagine something worse. Could you survive? After the earth shook, there was only darkness. After the fear, there was only violence. After the chaos, only disease. After the attacks, only survivors. The catastrophic event was just the beginning. 
 When Logan and his family move from Dakota to the small town of Moab, Utah, he could have never imagined the devastating chain of events that would unfold and the unspoken danger lurking in the shadows. In a matter of days his family and the rest of the world are thrust into the darkness of a post-apocalyptic world full of terrifying threats at every turn. 
 Fear everyone, trust no one. 
 Now, in a town on the brink of collapse, Logan tries to grapple with the mystery surrounding the event that’s brought the country to its knees, and the arrival of a hidden threat that kills and spreads like wildfire. Joined with a ragtag group of survivors, their only hope is to run, fight and find out how to stop it before it’s too late. 
 Will humanity have what it takes to deal with the unexpected? 
 With real people in deadly circumstances, fighting for survival, Darkest Hour is a pulse-pounding story for fans of post-apocalyptic survival thrillers.

    Charles Bernstein here proves them alive and well in poems elegiac, defiant, and resilient to the point of approaching song. Heir to the democratic and poetic sensibilities of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, Bernstein has always crafted verse that responds to its historical moment, but no previous collection of his poems so specifically addresses the events of its time as Girly Man, whichfeatures works written on the evening of September 11, 2001, and in response to the war in Iraq. Here, Bernstein speaks out, combining self-deprecating humor with incisive philosophical and political thinking. Composed of works of very different forms and moods—etchings from moments of acute crisis, comic excursions, formal excavations, confrontations with the cultural illogics of contemporary political consciousness—the poems work as an ensemble, each part contributing something necessary to an unrealizable and unrepresentable whole. Indeed, representation—and related claims to truth and moral certainty—is an active concern throughout the book. The poems of Girly Man may be oblique, satiric, or elusive, but their sense is emphatic. Indeed, Bernstein’s poetry performsits ideas so that they can be experienced as well as understood. A passionate defense of contingency, resistance, and multiplicity, Girly Man is a provocative and aesthetically challenging collection of radical verse from one of America’s most controversial poets.

       With outrageous and uncensored profiles of everyone from William Shakespeare to Thomas Pynchon, Secret Lives of Great Authors tackles all the tough questions your high school teachers were afraid to ask: What’s the deal with Lewis Carroll and little girls? Is it true that J. D. Salinger drank his own urine? How many women?and men?did Lord Byron actually sleep with? And why was Ayn Rand such a big fan of Charlie’s Angels? Classic literature was never this much fun in school!

    Chapters range from Blank Canvas: It's Your World, which illuminates how to approach each day, to Bravery Tests: Challenging Yourself, which draws upon your inner strength, to Happy Little Accidents: Creating Success from Failure, which affirms the power of positive thinking.Bob Ross's lessons gently encourage everyone to live their best Bob Ross life--an aspiration more important now than ever before.

    The Weather Channel, now America's most watched programming, has in recent years shown us a relentless series of hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and eruptions killing thousands, turning millions into refugees, and leaving whole cities in shocked, shattered ruins.Of nature's weapons, tornadoes are among the most unforgiving, and here's an unforgettable portrait of these storms and one extraordinary man who challenged them—and produced the first-ever photographs snatched from a rampaging twister's black heart. Tornado chaser Tim Samaras, working with master storyteller Stefan Bechtel, author of Roar of the Heavens, has created a page-turner with narrative force and scientific substance.In the first of five you-are-there accounts, Tornado Hunter opens with a moment-by-moment description of the 2003 catastrophe that engulfed Manchester, South Dakota. The authors evoke the doomed town and its people; the dark menacing funnel; and Samaras's fearless advance into the whirlwind’s core to deploy the ingenious equipment he devised. They interweave the tornado chaser's passion, the fascinating science of the storms themselves, and six decades of progress in predicting and recording their onslaught—an art beholden to Samaras's own groundbreaking inventions.Tim Samaras's 2004 article in National Geographic became one of the most widely read in the magazine’s history. This powerful book is destined to blast its way onto bestseller lists everywhere.

    From her training for the Olympic trials as a teenager to enjoying pools and beaches around the world as an adult, Leanne Shapton offers a fascinating glimpse into the private, often solitary, realm of swimming. Her spare and elegant writing reveals an intimate narrative of suburban adolescence, spent underwater in a discipline that continues to inspire Shapton's work as an artist and author. Her illustrations throughout the book offer an intuitive perspective on the landscapes and imagery of the sport. Shapton's emphasis is on the smaller moments of athletic pursuit rather than its triumphs. For the accomplished athlete, aspiring amateur, or habitual practicer, this remarkable work of written and visual sketches propels the reader through a beautifully personal and universally appealing exercise in reflection.

    This is coal and steel country. The sort of place where an inch of soot on the windowsill means a regular paycheck--and two inches means a fat one. And what's the best make-out spot in town? Next to the burning slag heap. In seventeen beguiling, linked stories, spanning fourty-five years, Monk brings a corner of America alive as never before. Her world bursts with indelible characters: Mrs. Szilborski, who bakes great cake, but sprays her neighbors' dogs with mace; and Mrs. Wojic, who believes her husband was reincarnated--as one of those dogs. Then there is the younger generation: Annie Kusiak, who wants to write, and Theresa Gojuk, who dreams of stardom. Cokesville is their Yoknapatawpha; they ache to escape it and the ghosts of their ancestors and the regret of their parents. What ghosts--and what regrets! When Theresa's father Bruno falls into a vat of molten steel, the mill gives the family an ingot roughly his weight to bury. As deliciously wry as Allegra Goodman in "The Family Markowitz," and with the matter-of-fact humanity of Grace Paley, Bathsheba Monk leads us into a world that is at once totally surprising and recognizable. These stories glow like molten steel.