View as grid list

ADDED

The Shyster’s Daughter by Paula Priamos

The mysterious death of a high-profile defense lawyer propels his daughter into an investigation of the shady deals and characters that led to his disbarment. This searing, detective noir memoir paints a vivid portrait of a Greek American family caught up in the scandal-obsessed, drug-addicted culture of California in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

“In her gripping, big-hearted, and sometimes harrowing memoir, Paula Priamos searches for meaning in the life—and mysterious death—of her beloved, larger-than-life father. Along the way, Priamos proves herself to be not only a keen observer of the ways we love and bear loss, but also a first rate storyteller. The Shyster’s Daughter will be with me for a long time.” —Will Allison, author of the New York Times Bestseller Long Drive Home and What You Have Left
ADDED

The Subtle Bodies by James McCorkle

The Subtle Bodies tenses between the lush descriptions of the landscapes and the violences both within those landscapes and imposed upon them. These are poems that seek to make contact with the world as it ebbs into a digitized silence. Whether drawing upon the meditative works of Joan Mitchell or finding in the gestural paintings of Cy Twomby models for his own sprawling and contracting lines, or listening to the Sung Dynasty poet Lu Yu comment on war and aging, these poems construct speculations, meditations, dialogues, monostitches, autobiographical narratives, or lyric excursions that resist the encroachments and erosions of our times. These are elemental poems, “no language but hunger . . . no choice but the traverse of light to dark.”
ADDED

The White Horse: A Colombian Journey by Diane Thiel

From the white horse appearing like an apparition, to the massive skeleton of a whale on the coast, Diane Thiel’s The White Horse: A Colombian Journey takes us on a magically real journey into the Pacific Coast rain forest of Colombia. Equal parts travel narrative, ecological essay, history, and memoir, this book allows us to experience a reality stranger than fiction. Thiel’s writing beckons us deeper into the heart of the forest, reawakens our consciousness about the natural world, and evokes the spirit of adventure.

“What a beautiful book. I knew it was going to be poetic, but I was knocked over twice by its compelling narrative drive and quiet sense of humor.”—Sherman Alexie
ADDED

The Widening by Carol Moldaw

The Widening is a poetic novel, presenting from the inside a portrait of a young woman’s volatile mix of passivity and wildness. Preoccupied with issues of female sexuality and alienation, and by turns picaresque, dark, and edgily erotic, it takes an unnamed girl in the mid-1970s from high school in California through travels in Spain and into college. The Widening is Moldaw’s first novel.

“In an age when literature often hinges on authorial self-construction, Moldaw’s work is a fascinating act of exploration. The world she discovers is dazzling and scary, haunted and generous, ‘flagrant with expectancy.’”—Dennis Nurkse
ADDED

Topographies by Stephen Benz

A wild ride on the madcap streets of Guatemala City. A twilight walk through old Havana with a Cuban mailman. A canoe trip in search of a lost grave in the Everglades. A late-night visit to a border-town casino. These are some of the experiences Stephen Benz describes in this witty, insightful, and evocative collection of personal essays and literary journalism.

Benz takes readers to locales both familiar and remote, introducing unusual characters and recounting little-known historical anecdotes. Along the way, he contemplates the meaning of road signs, describes the hardships of daily life in the former Soviet Union, reflects on the lives and deaths of forgotten people, and listens to a bolero during a Havana blackout.
ADDED

Toucans in the Arctic by Scott Coffel

Toucans in the Arctic is an inspired truant from any number of poetical schools. In this lyric case study of tumult and tranquility, the poet, tour pamphlet in hand, wanders through the national park of the psyche, noting surfeits of beauty and ruin as he scrambles across the eerie landscapes of identity and marriage.

“In this long-awaited first collection, Toucans in the Arctic, Scott Coffel writes, ‘When I see a woman at the Cottage Bakery/immersed in Ulysses or The Brothers Karamzov/my desires align themselves in neat rows/for the march into liberated Paris…’ Of wide reference and deep thought, of language taut and somehow new, these are 21st Century poems of joy, rage, erudition, wry humor, monumental tenderness. You will remember the day you discovered this book.”—Suzanne Cleary

Awards

2010 —Poetry Society The Norma Farber First Book Award
ADDED

Venison by Thorpe Moeckel

Food doesn’t get any more local, cosmic, primitive, tasty, or disturbing than in this book-length, lyrical-meditative poem. At stake are no less than the origins and mysteries of flesh and touch.

“Thorpe Moeckel’s Venison is civilized and wild, like a life lived well, a barbaric yawp of pain and joy and true wonder at the brilliant ordinariness of a life lived close to the earth and close to the bone. Moeckel’s fine poetic is whetted on the visceral and cannily transcendental. Read it.”—Christopher Camuto

“This wonderfully layered poem shows us ‘how to come to know the woods such that you dream them through the eyes of the deer. This is the praise song of the hunter and the world he hunts.”—Michael Chitwood
ADDED

Wattle & daub by: Brian Coughlan

The world of Wattle & daub is inhabited by mysterious and peculiar creatures. A woman who fears the living thing in her apartment walls. An office-based streaker with an axe to grind. Automatons that finally recognize their creator. A terminally ill man resorting to hypnotism to quit smoking. The couple who conceive an alarm clock. A dying brain unspooling receding memories of a funfair…
With ear-dizzying force, the stories in this debut collection meld and stretch into truly new directions. Every page is mined with humor, sympathy, and blistering language that mark Brian Coughlan as a unique fabricator of short tales.

Award

2018 Finalist – Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award
ADDED

What We Ask of Flesh by Remica L. Bingham

Blending biblical characters into a deeply personal history, What We Ask of Flesh tells of women through time, their spirits borne through broken flesh, through wombs and memories. The body becomes an instrument as words explore the mystical connection between what was and is.

“A tour de force and a story where nothing—no regret or rationalization can stanch the reality of what can happen to us, made of flesh. This is a surging book …”—Grace Cavalieri, The Washington Independent Review of Books

“What We Ask of Flesh, like the flesh itself, is full of honey and fire. It’s impossible not to feel called by these poems, summoned by their rich sound and vatic voice.”—Amy Gerstler

2014 Finalist – Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry
ADDED

White Vespa by Kevin Oderman

An American expatriate hopes to quell his grief for a long lost son in the stillness of his photographs of the Dodecanese Islands. But soon friendship and then love for a woman wounded in her own family-born grief propel him toward life again, where stillness is set into motion and identity might be recovered, against odds, in a foreign place.

“. . . Oderman has a knack for keeping things moving and bringing the vibrant colors of the island to life.”—Publishers Weekly

“In language as clear and beautiful as the Aegean Sea itself, Oderman seamlessly weaves the tales of three Americans, each fleeing to a remote Greek island to escape the past that haunts them. White Vespa takes the reader on a journey of the senses: the smells and tastes of the Greek isles; the thrumming heat; the languid stroll of life; the sometimes painful stabs of memory when all you want to do is forget.”—Jeff Talarigo, author of The Pearl Diver