The stories in William Lychack's dazzling new collection, The Architect of Flowers, explore the dear and inevitable distance between people in loving relationships and find hope in dark situations. With tiny, precise details, Lychack observes the overlooked moments of everyday life—the small failings between parents and children, the long-held secrets in married life.A small-town policeman brings himself to shoot a family's injured dog; an old woman secretly trains a crow to steal f...

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life.The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes revisits the turning points that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes explores the power of landscape, the ide...

This timeless classic now features a foreword written by New York Times bestselling author Judy Blume, as well as an exclusive interview with Beverly Cleary herself!In the first novel from Newbery Medal–winning author Beverly Cleary, boys and girls alike will be charmed instantly by an average boy whose life is turned upside down when he meets a lovable puppy with a nose for mischief.Just as Henry Huggins is complaining that nothing exciting ever happens, a friendly dog sit...

From the New York Times columnist, a portrait of a family and the cycles of joy and grief that mark the natural world: "Has the makings of an American classic." —Ann PatchettGrowing up in Alabama, Margaret Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father...

This classic story of a boy, a dog, and small-town America is "a rich experience all around.... Skip turns out to be a dog worth writing about.... I'd take him home in a shot" (The New York Times Book Review).In 1943 in a sleepy town on the banks of the Yazoo River, a boy fell in love with a puppy with a lively gait and an intelligent way of listening. The two grew up together having the most wonderful adventures. My Dog Skip belongs on the same s...

NBCC Award Winner: "The narrative lyrics in this remarkable collection . . . could stand as compressed stories about anxiety and the body." — The New York TimesVulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—"What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry ...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The first volume of collected short fiction from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain, featuring sixty-eight “varied, clever, and delightful” (The Chicago Tribune) short stories, including seven never-before-published tales“Each [story hops] with manic energy . . . at his vaulting, imaginative best Boyle suggests the bastard child of Flannery O’Connor and Monty Python.”—The Miami Her...

"A deeply beautiful book, with the fierce galloping pace of a great novel."—Liz Rosenberg Boston GlobeInformed by the death of a beloved brother, here are the stories of childhood, its thicket of sex and sorrow and joy, boys and girls growing into men and women, stories of a brother who in his dying could teach how to be most alive. What the Living Do reflects "a new form of confessional poetry, one shared to some degree by other women poets such ...

Jim Harrison's first novel—a walk on the wild side from "a force of nature in American letters" ( The Seattle Times).The *New York Times–*bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth—Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. Praised as "a raunchy, funny, swaggering, angry, cocksure b...

The writing of this book is for several reasons: one of which is an attempt to clarify to young Hutterites and also non-Hutterites how different we lived seventy-five years ago. I had an eventful childhood, which the readers may compare with their own. To compile a detailed account of colony life and history would be an extensive undertaking. So the reader will have to be content with the few details Ive presented which are relevant to my growing-up experience. Most events which include ot...

What happens when a city woman takes up rural roots and becomes a shepherd? Journalist and broadcaster Marsha Boulton made the leap that so many urbanites only fanatize about? That is exactly what Letters from the Country: From High Heels to Wellington Boots. A Memoir and Survial Guide answers.More and more people today are choosing country life over city life and Marsha's experiences propel the reader into her world with hilarious consequences that also serve as an instruc...

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry“Kooser documents the dignities, habits and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance.”—Poetry"[Kooser] brushes poems over ordinary objects, revealing metaphysical themes that way an investigator dusts for fingerprints. His language is so controlled and convincing that one can't help but feel significant truths behind his lines." —The Philadelphia Inquirer"Del...