Elegant, exuberant, and idiosyncratic, Acting My Age is a memoir and meditation by one of America’s most playful and inventive writers. In the words of Mary Mackey (The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams), “in Acting My Age, Thomas Farber gives us an unflinching, luminous, cleverly conceived meditation on his own mortality as well as on the extinction of the coral reefs, snow leopards, dolphins, and, ultimately the human species. Couching his observations in a series ...

In the past year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. Now, in a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.In prose that Jonatha...

PARTITA - THE HEARTRENDING NEW NOVEL FROM BARBARA KINGSOLVER - COMING OCTOBER 2026TWICE WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONFROM THE WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONTHE MULTI-MILLION COPY SELLING AUTHORWith the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Barbara Kingsolver explores her trademark themes of family, community and the natural world. Defiant, funny and courageo...

The acclaimed author's memoir of life with an African grey parrot offers "a thoughtful and generous celebration of minds and bodies different from our own" ( Times Literary Supplement, UK).For thirty years, Brian Brett shared his office and his life with Tuco, a remarkable parrot given to asking questions such as "Whaddya know?" and announcing "Party time!" when guests showed up at Brett's farm. Although Brett bought Tuco on a whim, he gradually realized t...

Gifts come in many guises. One summer, Rebecca Solnit was bequeathed three boxes of ripening apricots, which lay, mountainous, on her bedroom floor - a windfall, a riddle, an emergency to be dealt with. The fruit came from a neglected tree that her mother, gradually succumbing to memory loss, could no longer tend to. From this unexpected inheritance came stories spun like those of Scheherazade, who used her gifts as a storyteller to change her fate and her listener's heart.As she l...

A collection of the year's best essays selected by André Aciman, author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name."An essay is the child of uncertainty," André Aciman contends in his introduction to The Best American Essays 2020. "The struggle to write what one hopes is entirely true, and the long incubation every piece of writing requires of a writer who is thinking difficult thoughts, are what ultimately give the writing its depth, its ma...

A guidebook for beating the monotony of the everyday by purposefully cultivating the surprising joys that come from living an off-kilter lifeIt's all too easy to get caught up in the often monotonous nature of our day to day--moving from one rote task to the next, only to rinse and repeat the next day. Weirdness, however, is an easily accessible antidote to these feelings of languishing. The quirky, eccentric, and peculiar can take us out of our normal habits of th...

Thoughts on nature, politics, love, and much more—from the environmentalist and author of such classics as Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang.Finished just two weeks before his death, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness is a collection of Edward Abbey's observations, both bitingly witty and inspirational, on a wide range of topics—from philosophy and writing to music, money, sex, and sports.Abbey chose each passage himself f...

How many lenses does a dragonfly's eye have?Which is bigger, an eagle's eye or a human's?How many eyes does a scallop have?How do lizards keep their eyes wet?Animal eyes can be really strange and wonderful. How much do you know about the eyes of your animal friends? Find out more in this book.LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices t...

Essays on the island and its history and traditions from the National Book Award–winning author of The Woman Warrior.In these eleven thought-provoking pieces, acclaimed writer and feminist Maxine Hong Kingston tells stories of Hawai'i filled with both personal experience and wider perspective.From a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and numerous other honors, the essays in this collection provide readers with a generous sampling of Kingston's...

Why do elephants bury their dead? What makes birds sing and cranes dance? Do animals appreciate art? Do they know the difference between right and wrong? Do they experience awe and wonder? In this revised second edition of his celebrated book, Reverend Gary Kowalski combines heartwarming stories with solid science to show that other creatures are not insensitive objects devoid of feeling and intellect but thinking, sentient beings with an inward, spiritual life.

* Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry *The long-awaited third poetry book by Vijay Seshadri, "one of the most respected poets working in America today" (Time Out New York)Vijay Seshadri's new poetry is assured and expert, his line as canny as ever. In an array of poetic forms from the rhyming lyric to the philosophical meditation to the prose essay, 3 Sections confronts perplexing divisions of contemporary life—a w...