★ A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY EDITOR’S PICK ★“A single haiku is a portal to the past. But finding enlightenment might cost him his future.”For Zen student Stephen Maine, a simple poem is not just poetry—it is a gateway. In a breath, the walls of his modern life dissolve, hurling him across the centuries into the heart of thirteenth-century China. Here, the legendary Chan masters are not myths, and the ancient koans are not riddles—they are lived reality. B...

Three kids rob a diner in Greenfield where everyone knows them. A boy goes to the Big E in West Springfield and runs away with the circus. An animal control officer has to shoot a moose in Sheffield. A ghost still roams the flooded and sunken town of Enfield. A prep school teacher in Old Deerfield reenacts the raid of 1704 with his students, to disastrous results. These deceptively simple stories share two commonalities—first, each one ends in the name of a town that ends in "field"--Ashfi...

Maya Marinovich has lost her husband and baby daughter in a freak car crash. Whydid she survive? Should she even exist? Maya travels from Boston to San Francisco,embarking on a personal pilgrimage, desperate for a way forward. First Maya getsinvolved brie y, but passionately, with the leader of a Japanese cult movementcalled The Lost Tribe. Next Maya lands a job as an assistant property manager forThe Bon Vivants, a group of artists, dancers, writers, and...