This memoir of being raised on a commune in the late 1960s and early 1970s is "a fascinating, evenhanded view of counterculture life" ( Booklist).Sandra Eugster's idealistic, headstrong mother created a commune in rural Virginia that came to be known as Nethers, and it was here that Sandra spent much of her childhood. This unique, honest memoir strives to accurately depict communal living in all its complexities. An array of colorful characters drifted into...

Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins.With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.Like the present book’s title, Collins’s poems are filled with mischief, humor, and irony, “Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address / only those in my own time zone”–but also with quiet observation, int...

The New York Times called Susanna Sonnenberg “immensely gifted,” and Vogue, “scrupulously unsentimental.” Entertainment Weekly described Sonnenberg’s Her Last Death as “a bracing memoir about growing up rich and glamorous with a savagely inappropriate mother.” Now, Sonnenberg, with her unflinching eye and uncanny wisdom, has written a compulsively readable book about female friendship.T he best friend who broke up with you. The o...

Fifty leading writers retell myths from around the world in this dazzling follow-up to the bestselling My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.Icarus flies once more. Aztec jaguar gods again stalk the earth. An American soldier designs a new kind of Trojan horse—his cremains in a bullet. Here, in beguiling guise, are your favorite mythological figures alongside characters from Indian, Punjabi, Inuit, and other traditions.Aimee Bender

“In twenty-nine separate but ingenious ways, these stories seek permanent residence within a reader. They strive to become an emotional or intellectual cargo that might accompany us wherever, or however, we go. . . . If we are made by what we read, if language truly builds people into what they are, how they think, the depth with which they feel, then these stories are, to me, premium material for that construction project. You could build a civilization with them.” —Ben Marcus, from the I...

Cats do the funniest -- and wisest -- things!From being brazenly courageous to delightfully optimistic, remaining sweetly loyal to having a fierce sense of honor, cats demonstrate that they have traits most people only hope for. Whiskers, Wit, and Wisdom is a book for anyone who has a special bond with a furry friend and loves the lessons their pet can teach.Enjoy these special elements:Purr-rayer offers a prayer to reinfor...

"Lara Williams makes a bold debut with this razor-sharp, magnificently humane story collection." — Entertainment WeeklyShe finds herself single, twenty-nine, partially-employed, and about a half a stone overweight. Roller dexter of eligible friends rattling thin. Thirties breathing down her neck like an inappropriate uncle. She jogs. Looks good in turquoise. Finds herself punctuating gas "better out than in!" patting her stomach like a department store ...

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Night Watch: the reputation-making debut short story collection that paved the way for a new generation of writers. • “Brilliant … Phillips is a virtuoso.” —The Chicago TribuneJayne Anne Phillips's reputation-making debut collection paved the way for a new generation of writers. Raved about by reviewers and embraced by the likes of Raymond Carver, Frank Conroy, Annie Dillard, and Nadine Gordimer, B...

For the first time all of Carol Shields’ remarkable short stories – some previously unpublished – are gathered together in one volume.‘Carol Shields’ stories have given me happiness, not just pleasure’ Alice MunroIn the Collected Stories we bring together Carol Shields’ original short-story volumes, Various Miracles, The Orange Fish and Dressing Up for the Carnival, as well as many stories not previously published in the UK, including ‘Segue’, her last work.In these...

A man falls from a roof whilst spying on his beautiful widowed neighbour. A newly married couple seeking enlightenment take a three year vow of silence and move to a yurt in the Arizona desert. A handsome young man works in real-estate by day, but has a far more sinister profession by night. An elderly woman is determined to return to her home in the countryside, despite the knowledge that in doing so she may be signing her own death warrant. Giant men are kept in cages to ensure their nig...

"Ruthlessly frank. . . . Recalls Holden Caulfield by way of John Hughes."— The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)In these stories, a teacher obsesses over a student who comes to class with scratch marks on his face; a Catholic girl graduating high school finds a warped kind of redemption in her school's contrived class rituals; and a woman looking to rent a house is sucked into a strangely inappropriate correspondence with one of the landlords. T...

The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines. One man loves his wife’s twin, and several men love the imagined bliss of their pasts; one woman takes an impotent l...