“[Krivak’s] sentences are polished stones of wonder. . . . The elegiac tone reflects what is lost and what will be lost, an enchantment as if Wendell Berry had reimagined Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.”

“Olstein is a poet, which is clear in the quality of her language. [Pain Studies] is rich, absorbing, and suggestive.”

“Dazzling, puzzling, ornate, arcane, and deeply intelligent.”

“Like an artist’s drawings of a bird or a human hand, Olstein’s studies show us pain from dozens of angles so that we eventually see its whole shape.”

“Unexpectedly bright and punchy. . . . [Olstein] drops the heavy mantles of pain writing and dips, like a swimmer, into the ways that pain infiltrates and orients a bodymind, into the ways that it arranges a life.”

“Pain Studies is an excavation—no mere poking around!—of pain and transcends the restraints of either prose or poetic forms. . . . Olstein achieves a gorgeous mosaic . . . to produce remarkable work.”

“Deft, ingenious. . . . This is raw physicality in words. . . . Take the journey, read it. It’s brain, blood, pain, life, and death; poetry in prose, a book that must be read and lived.”

“Engagingly different. . . . Unfolds in graceful, luminous prose.”

“Lock’s latest entry in his superb American Novels series again features his remarkable eye for historical detail and fine-tuned felicity with the language of the period. At times, the sparkling prose is nearly indistinguishable from that of the authors Lock so clearly admires, Melville, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. . . . The mellifluous language, literary allusions, and some subtle Moby-Dick parallels, such as Melville using a harpoon to kill rats in the hulls of ships, will delight fans of classic American literature.”

“Compellingly weird.”

“[Olstein] lays down shimmering prose that subtly unhinges the reader, conveying what it’s like to see the world from a migraine’s point-of-view. . . . Pain Studies is all the more powerful because its content is echoed by its form. It builds in fragments and bursts of prose. Its colors are vivid and brilliant.”

“A moving post-apocalyptic fable for grown-ups. . . . Ursula K. Le Guin would approve.”

“With artistry and grace . . . Krivak delivers a transcendent journey into a world where all living things—humans, animals, trees—coexist in magical balance, forever telling each other’s unique stories. This beautiful and elegant novel is a gem.”

“In the spirit of Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. . . . Think of Pain Studies as a kind of travel literature, a Gulliver’s Travels-like guidebook for those visiting the land of pain.”

“Beautiful. . . . A powerful allegory about the struggles and graces of life.”

“Olstein succeeds marvelously when directly reflecting on her own pain and her attempts to treat it. An accomplished poet, she often uses language beautifully and inventively.”

“These spectacular sentences chart a thrilling investigation into pain, language, and Lisa Olstein’s own exile from what Woolf called ‘the army of the upright.’ On a search path through art, science, poetry, and prime-time television, Olstein aims her knife-bright compassion at the very thing we’re all running from. Pain Studies is a masterpiece.”

“A strange, delightful, weird little book!”

“[A] thoughtful, meditative exploration of humanity’s place in the world.”

“Stellar. . . . The powerful impact of this slim, exquisite novel reveal[s] the wisdom of the natural world.”

“There’s a transcendence in Krivak’s prose.”

“Draws you in immediately.”

“Defies categorizing. . . . Immense in its truths.”

“Lisa Olstein’s remarkable Pain Studies is a book built of brain and nerve and blood and heart, about what it means to live with pain. Irreverent and astute, synthesizing the personal and the historical, popular culture and poetry and visual art, Pain Studies will change how you think about living with a body in our beautiful and doomed world.”

“A lyrical fable for fans of soft apocalypse. . . . You’ll find yourself wanting to read sentences aloud for the full affect.”

“Transfixing. . . . This historically authentic novel raises potent questions about sexuality during an unsettling era in American history past and is another impressive entry in Lock’s dissection of America’s past.”

“I had a blast reading this book!”

“A beautiful, gripping, thought-provoking exploration of human rewilding and nature’s dominion.”

“Lisa Olstein’s luminous meditation on pain winds around a beautifully curated series of artifacts. Bits of poetry, ancient medicine, brain science, television episodes, excerpts from the trial of Joan of Arc, and works of art support the spiderweb on which her insights hang like condensed mist. A fascinating, totally seductive read!”

“[A] tender apocalyptic fable . . . endowed with such fullness of meaning that you have to assign this short, touching book its own category: the post-apocalypse utopia.”

“This spectacular work will delight and awe readers with Lock’s magisterial wordsmithing.”

“A penetrating parable of suburban family life. . . . Millás tells a compelling story of human connection in a way that is sometimes crude but also darkly funny, insightful and ultimately surprising.”

“Spectacularly bizarre. . . . A Kafkaesque story about transformation and our collective human desire to connect with one another.”

“Riveting. . . . One of those novels that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book itself is finished.”

“Arresting, exquisite. . . . The Bear is more than a parable for our times, it’s a call to listen to the world around us before it’s too late.”

“Fascinating yet sad. . . . Utterly compelling to read.”

“[A] moving novel. . . . O’Connor’s bleak, powerful story serves as an affecting homage to a girl whose community failed to protect her.”

“Beautiful. . . . So loving and vivid that you can feel the lake water and smell the sea. . . . A perfect fable for the age of solastalgia.”

“O’Connor’s poignant tale addresses numerous relevant and timely issues, from cultural anxiety to female empowerment or the lack thereof, and the painful and often tragic condition of eating disorders.”

“A moving, masterful story. . . . O’Connor’s recreation of this world and its people is haunted and haunting, with marvelous poetry and human sorrow resonating in every line.”

“Lyrical. . . . Gorgeous. . . . Krivak’s serene and contemplative novel invites us to consider a vision of time as circular, of existence as grand and eternal.”

“Feast Day of the Cannibals is the first of [Lock’s American Novels] to explore the lives of 19^th-century men who felt a sexual attraction to each other. . . . [His] recreation of a past time and place is impressive, but his signal achievement in this novel is the voice of its narrator, Shelby Ross. . . . Lock does not merely imitate 19^th-century prose; he makes it his own, with verbal flourishes worthy of Melville.”

“A compelling stew of comedy, philosophy, and even tragedy, From the Shadows maintains a light touch, even as sinister undertones bubble underneath.”

“The real miracle lies in the capacity of Sarah’s singular, dark fate to illuminate the socioeconomic, religious, scientific, philosophic, and political cultures and conflicts of [the] time. . . . A transcendent historical novel.”

“O’Connor takes the story of Sarah Jacob, one of history’s most noteworthy fasting girls, and turns this 150-year-old tale into a freshly poignant commentary on family dynamics and the treatment of women.”

“This fable about seeking harmony with nature by Earth’s last human inhabitants—a father and daughter—has lessons of love, loss, family and survival.”

“The Bear is a luminous book of a standard one sees perhaps once every generation. . . . As [it] tenderly breaks your heart, piece by piece, it fills that void with something powerful and timeless. Written with precision, clarity, and gentle fluidity, The Bear reminds us that all we need to know awaits us in the wild.”

“At the center of Varley O’Connor’s novel The Welsh Fasting Girl is a single, horrifying question: what happens when an idea becomes more important than a person—and what happens when that person is a girl? . . . A searing critique. . . . It is one of the only places I have been reassured, in literature or otherwise, that when our morbid wonder towards eating problems ends, our understanding of the individual’s pain might begin.”

“Part surreal comedy, part dark parable, Millás’s wild work brings readers face to face with the mundane facets of middle-class suburban life. . . . A page-turner of the strangest order, Millás’s debut stuns and entrances. It’s impossible to put down.”

“A fable of survival in a consumerist society.”

“An entertainingly presented look at social isolation and dependency.”

“I became enthralled as the mystery of a young girl’s death by starvation unfolds, revealing layers of secrets about family life amid religious and cultural conflicts. Varley O’Connor is a splendid storyteller.”

“Incredibly strange, truly bizarre—one of the most original stories. . . . Impossible to put down.”

“Equal parts psychotic, suspenseful, and tenderly funny. . . . This novel forever changed how I feel when I’m home alone.”

“Hilarious and unique.”

“The compact, surreal story . . . is uproarious and unnerving in equal measure, and is far too riveting to put down.”

“A seductive narrator, brisk dialogue, and a unique claustrophobic setting contribute to a distinctive blend of Kafka’s surrealism and Pirandello’s absurdism. . . . A quick, riveting read.”

“Spectacularly surreal and cerebral. . . . [From the Shadows] carves a labyrinthine path through a mind withstanding both physical and mental confinements, and the language, rife with darkness and comedy, traces the fine walls of worlds both real and imagined with Kafkaesque soliloquy.”

“In this richly textured and compelling novel, Varley O’Connor proves to us that human desire is never simple and that our noblest wishes sometimes provoke our darkest deeds.”

“Begins as entertaining slapstick, subtly metamorphoses into fable. . . . As [the narrator’s] vivid imaginary world fuses with reality this deceptively ethereal novel advances toward a dark and startling finale.”

“Varley O’Connor’s beautiful and brilliant novel takes us deep into the mysteries of virtue’s conspiracy with evil and the human spirit’s war against itself. With spot-on historical detail and scintillating language, the novel fascinates and moves us, and uses the story of a nineteenth-century Welsh farm girl to deliver cogent insights into contemporary issues regarding gender and family.”

“It’s a strange and winsome feeling I have, reading Tacoma Stories, the blue sensation that Richard Wiley has made me homesick for a place I’ve never been, mourning the loss of friends I never had, in a life where each and every one of us is loved, however imperfectly. Think Sherwood Anderson inhabiting Raymond Carver’s Northwest and you’ll have a clear picture of Wiley’s accomplishment.”

“Richard Wiley is one of our best writers. These stories satisfy in the way that brilliant short fiction always satisfies; one feels as if one has absorbed the expansive vision and drama of a novel. Read slowly, and I bet you’ll want to read again.”

“Murmur by Will Eaves is a really extraordinary book, unlike any other. He’s in a class of his own.”

“Will Eaves’s Murmur is masterful—compassionate, principled, and moving. It is deeply wise, with the aching loneliness of both human indignity and dignity, despair and courage.”

“Vivid and as varied as you can get. . . . Amusing, chilling, and sometimes downright bizarre, readers of short story collections with a unified theme will enjoy this.”

“Tender and funny, Murmur takes the tragic story of Turing’s life and punishment and ingeniously transforms it into something glittering, subversive, and even triumphant. Eaves has built a magnificently challenging memorial to one of the great twentieth-century martyrs.”

“Very highly recommended. . . . While the narratives are all strong individual stories, presented together as a whole they create a masterful collection and reflection on life over the decades.”

“Murmur is a profound meditation on what machine consciousness might mean, the implications of AI, where it will all lead. It’s one of the big stories of our time, though no one else has treated it with such depth and originality.”

“It takes a certain literary brilliance to convey the conscious and unconscious mind of one of history’s greatest intellects. Will Eaves eloquently probes the boundaries between dreams, perception, and reality, prompting the reader to examine the recesses of their own labyrinthine psyche. A seamless dialogue between art and science, and fact and fiction.”

“An extraordinarily entertaining read from cover to cover.”

“There is science, there is art and there is Jungian symbolism. . . . For all its challenges, Murmur is also beautiful [in its] willingness to embrace opacity, its portrayal of the labyrinthine paths along which thought proceeds, and its exhilarating ambition to test Alec’s belief that ‘[a] mind can’t prove or step outside itself’ by inviting us to step out from ours, and into his.”

“Murmur is boldly different from anything else written about Turing.”

“Eaves has achieved one of the pinnacles of novelistic endeavour: he has given deep thought to human experience, and in doing so brought to life the ‘self-conscious wonder’ of thought itself.”

“Wiley shines in the short form, absorbing the reader in slices of one town and its inhabitants while rendering them universal.”

“Exceptionally poised and elegant. . . . Murmur is a poignant meditation on the irrepressible complexity of human nature and sexuality, and a powerful indictment of the cowardice and groupthink that sustain state-sanctioned barbarism. It also poses timely questions about the digital world Turing’s pioneering work helped bring about.”

“Compelling. . . . The genius of [Tacoma Stories] is that the relationships between characters and their backstories add depth to each entry, but the individual tales are still strong enough to stand on their own.”

“This linked set of seriocomic stories that hopscotches across a half-century . . . emphasizes unlikely transformations over time—and, as the title suggests, the role of place in those transformations. And though Wiley juggles plenty of characters, he has a light touch that’s fitting for a book rooted in the free-wheeling ’60s.”

“Captures beautifully the pith and precision of Turing’s own prose. . . . One of Eaves’s great accomplishments is to make the aesthetic questions raised by [Murmur] as significant as the ethical ones.”

“The Flip lucidly lays out a way of thinking about the enfolding of mind and reality that is at once empirically scientific and at the same time consistent with all we know from some of our most sophisticated philosophical and spiritual traditions. Jeffrey J. Kripal provides a practical guide to a deeper and more effective understanding of ourselves and our world. Read this book if you want to actively contribute to the development of a worldview that will be of extraordinary benefit to humankind and our planet.”

“An extraordinary exploration of dreams, consciousness, science and the future.”

“Wiley’s antic, wrenching collection of 14 interlocking stories reveals the subtle connections among a dozen characters whose unpredictable lives evolve through the decades in the title city. . . . [It] provides a tentatively affirmative answer to the question raised by a fictional version of the daughter of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth: ‘Do you think a town can act as a hedge against the unabated loneliness of the human heart?’”

“Tacoma is underrepresented in literature, so this book presents a tremendous opportunity.”

“Read[s] well as a literary version of a concept album with a unified theme.”

“Jeffrey J. Kripal is one of the most important voices pushing the academy to broaden its perspective beyond the secular: to take seriously the idea that reality is more complex. He is slowly winning the argument and changing the terrain of debate without making an argument for any one religion. This is a remarkable achievement. The Flip is worthy of a wide readership.”

“In The Flip, Jeffrey J. Kripal reflects deeply on non-ordinary experiences that transform people’s way of understanding themselves and the world. Kripal uses an imaginative transdisciplinary method that weaves together contemporary thought in ecology, quantum physics, evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind, comparative mysticism, and first-person experiential accounts. The result is an eminently readable manifesto for the role of the humanities in integrating emergent thought in these many domains. Prophetically, the larger goal is nothing less than transforming humanity toward a greater wisdom community that can move beyond many of our most intractable problems and dysfunctions.”

“A marvelous mixture of humor and contemplative nostalgia, Tacoma Stories shows us that cities are more than just a collection of buildings, landmarks and roads. They’re a delicate web of lives and stories, each one connected in ways we might never expect.”

“[Wiley] is able to articulate a familiar and endearing world of Tacoma, humanizing the city to a reader who may not have even heard of the ‘City of Destiny.’”

“One reads in the hope of delight. And that’s what [Tacoma Stories] provides. The linked stories that make up the collection are deeply pleasureful reads.”

“Wiley’s characters are far from absurdist; it might even be accurate to say that they are mid-to-late 20th-century approximations of Chaucer’s pilgrims . . . all starting out together from Tacoma on a journey through adulthood. . . . Across the pilgrimage of their lives, we see a slow burnishing of their hopes and dreams, but also of their failures. Tacoma itself, like Dublin in James Joyce’s Dubliners, also asserts its own force of character. . . . Wiley has finally given his city the loving touch it deserves.”

“Makes the baffling notions of quantum mechanics and neuroscience digestible. In this respect, The Flip is similar to The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas. . . . The research incorporated into the book is well thought out, and ranges from writer Philip K. Dick to mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Kripal even discusses how Joni Mitchell came up with the idea that ‘we are stardust’ ten years before Carl Sagan popularized it. . . . The Flip did open my mind to the fact that there are leading experts in both the field of science and religion (Kripal himself) who are pushing toward unification and the extinction of out-dated knowledge.”

“Offers plenty of points to ponder.”

“[The Flip] will ignite conversations about the limits of science and the potential for dramatic shifts in perspective.”

“Murmur is a restrained and elegant exploration of cause and effect, and the meaning of life and love.”

“Murmur is a fully achieved literary experiment, digging deep into all the dimensions of human consciousness.”

“Eaves’ playful, fiercely intelligent interpretation of aspects of the life of a character who closely resembles the brilliant, multifaceted Alan Turing is a dreamlike wonder of memory and consciousness. Its ways are mysterious, its effect deepens with every reading.”

“I can’t say enough great things about Eduardo Halfon’s novels. His newest, Mourning, translated by the incredible Lisa Dillman & Daniel Hahn is no exception.”

“Wonderfully rich. . . . Reading this book is an embodied experience; it is yoga for the mind. The Flip is an important book that deserves a broad readership both inside and outside the academy.”

“Halfon’s magnificent prose and abundant storytelling prowess work in tandem to create an irresistible style. . . . As with the ghostly, evocative trails of smoke that have adorned each of Halfon’s English edition covers, Mourning is possessed by traces of the ethereal, the mysterious, and the shadowy. . . . [It] functions wonderfully as the third volume in Halfon’s bittersweet, doleful inquest into family folklore, remembrance, and indelible generational anguish.”

“[Murmur will] grip your mind in the very first pages, break your heart halfway through, and in the end, strangely, unexpectedly, restore your faith in human beings and their endless capacity for resilience.”

“A warmly vivid account of various science-minded people who have experienced the ‘Flip’. . . . Passionate and often funny.”

“Halfon’s writing hits a virtual ecstasy.”

“[The Flip] synthesizes some of the most recent speculations about the nature of the cosmos and the human, proposing a renewed mutual engagement of the sciences and humanities. . . . With its visionary notions and revisionary potential, The Flip merits a wide readership, across the academy and outside of it.”

“Scrupulous, humane . . . [Murmur] is as bracingly intelligent as it is brave. . . . [Eaves] knows that Turing’s theories of consciousness have implications for fiction, and that fiction can operate at the frontiers of what we know about the workings of our minds.”

“One of the most provocative new books of the year, and, for me, mindblowing.”

“A deftly crafted read from beginning to end. . . . Extraordinary and unreservedly recommended.”

“Complex and erudite. . . . [Murmur] bears reading twice.”

“[Halfon] clarif[ies] in fluid, accessible language that however slippery, memory is essential to who we are.”

“Exquisite. . . . This novel will submerge readers in contemplation and dazzling prose as it captures the essence of mind and matter.”

“Halfon spins a bewitching tale. . . . Careful, arresting prose brings everything together in a moving, evocative story of the narrator’s bloodline.”

“An unforgettable exploration of one family’s fluid, collective memory.”

“Gripping. . . . A wildly inventive and moving exploration of the human mind.”

“With his slender but deceptively weighty books, which are at once breezy and melancholic, bemused and bitter, [Halfon] opens up worlds to readers in return.”

“Beautiful and hallucinatory. . . . From extreme isolation and suffering springs a vision of universal connectedness.”

“Part Jorge Luis Borges, part Sholom Aleichem. . . . Halfon is the sort of traveler who admits he knows nothing, yet finds enlightenment everywhere. Mourning emits some little illumination of human nature on every page.”

“Evocative. . . . Mourning is a mystery, a drama and a fictional memoir. It is a book that manages to be both melancholy in tone yet triumphant in spirit.”

“Powerful, gorgeous. . . . Halfon gives an unforgettable, haunting voice to lesser-known populations of the Jewish diaspora, including Latin American and Lebanese Jews. Mourning shows how the weaving together of diasporic families across cultures and places creates ripples through generations.”

“A careful, precise story that explores the many facets of loss and healing.”

“Brimming with subtle mystery, inquisitiveness, oddity, coincidence, and melancholy. . . . A highly entertaining tragedy, a fascinating page-turner.”

“Elegant and meditative.”

“Halfon is a master.”

“A feat of literary acrobatics.”

“Weissmann’s project is to show how science and culture aren’t as distant as often thought, and the best of the essays are wonderfully stimulating and exciting in how they make this point. . . . Admirers will be captivated anew.”

“Expertly hopscotch[es] across all sorts of topics. . . . Weissmann’s humanist, sometimes sardonic, voice binds together disparate strands to show how all human endeavor is linked. . . . Weissmann clearly sees how history obfuscates the work of women, people of color and immigrants, and tries to alter that. . . . Anyone with an interest in American scientific or literary history will enjoy this collection.”

“Highly accessible, entertaining. . . . Every current theme, including buzz about free radicals and the 2014 Ebola outbreak, is tempered with a historical anecdote. Here, too, are cautionary concerns about henna tattoos, reminders to beware of ‘alternative science,’ and lots of humor. Weissmann’s science writing is juicy and conversational.”

“Essays that brim with knowledge and bubble with attitude.”

“A rich layering of past, present, science, and literature to present diverse takes on the issue at hand. . . . Weissmann not only endeavors to connect the realms of literature and medicine, but also to create community among readers in light of class, race, religion, and age.”

“This beautifully written novel provides a new perspective on the 19^th century and it’s charming to imagine the character of Emily Dickinson as Norman Lock has written her.”

“Amnesty International UK endorses Alpha because it provides insight into the realities of migration and the desperate search for a better life.”

“[A] consistently excellent series. . . . Lock has an impressive ear for the musicality of language, and his characteristic lush prose brings vitality and poetic authenticity to the dialogue.”

“The lively passages of Emily’s letters are so evocative of her poetry that it becomes easy to see why Robert finds her so captivating. The book also expands and deepens themes of moral hypocrisy around racism and slavery. . . . Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock’s thought-provoking series continues to impress.”

“The emotion of Barroux’s simple art and layouts pulled me along on Alpha’s journey. This book stands out, along with Don Brown’s The Unwanted, from other graphic novels about the current refugee crisis.”

“Lock deftly tells a visceral story of belief and conflict, with abundant moments of tragedy and transcendence along the way.”

“In [Charyn’s] enchanting writing, the glory is in the details.”

“A searing tale of our time. . . . Once you read this deeply troubling book, passing by, looking away, is no longer an option.”

“Perceptive and contemplative. . . . Bring[s] the 1840–60s to life with shimmering prose.”

“[Charyn] is a writer of great passion, lyric and empathy. . . . These essays flow from the page with realism and from an author who knows the truth.”

“A valuable collection, both an effective primer for readers new to Charyn’s work and an intriguing read for those already familiar, showing off his skills as a memoirist and a culture writer in equal measure.”

“Takes us to the human soul of the migrant crisis and the exploitation they face.”

“Groundbreaking. . . . Stunning text.”

“Deeply personal. . . . Readers will delight in encountering Charyn’s New York City. . . . From his ruminations on seeing classic studio-era films during his South Bronx childhood in the 1940s and ’50s to an account of a day spent with Mayor Ed Koch in the mid-’80s, Charyn’s prose enchants. . . . Longtime fans and those new to Charyn’s work alike will enjoy this distinctive glimpse into one author’s influences.”

“Artistically presented. . . . Interesting in technique and storytelling. Lock quotes Emily Dickinson: She dealt her pretty words like Blades —. Lock does much the same in this novel.”

“Lively essays. . . . A very personal view of the past artfully brought to vivid life.”

“Powerful. . . . Charyn composes an autobiography of essays, sharing lessons learned from a lifetime of love for leading ladies, literature and language.”

“A powerful graphic novel that is also suitable for young adults. . . . [Alpha’s] first-person account of his ‘adventures’ devolves into a living nightmare as the journey drags on with a constantly changing group of companions. The prose is simple, and the story is told without embellishment. . . . The illustrations set a mood of haste and simplicity, appearing to be marker sketches—almost as if they could have been made on the journey. . . . It will be difficult to look upon the plight of any refugees without reflecting on Alpha’s journey.”

“[Alpha’s] tale of smugglers, fake passports, wasted bribes, and desperate migration is happening today. . . . Great graphic novels, like great novels, can spread the gift of empathy.”

“[A] unique work in comics. . . . The fate of the immigrant is in crisis across the globe, including in the United States of America. Books like Alpha help to educate the public and help to build toward a safer and more merciful world.”

“Accessible and brimming with erudition. . . . Charyn writes with passionate precision about writers, films and filmmakers, about New York’s marginalized classes, and all manner of cultural icons. . . . [He] deftly blends the stories of his own life with the stories of those whose ordeals, failures, and victories hold special meaning for him as symptomatic of the American experience. . . . Wherever he takes us, Charyn’s mind is always agile, and his prose is stunningly electric.”

“[Alpha] breaks from the traditional dynamic graphic novel format of panels and speech bubbles. Rather, Bessora’s expressive words serve as captions to the half-page illustrations. . . . Subtle elements of collage are incorporated; small photographs, often of young children, peek into the fore- or background of certain scenes. . . . This stark, poetic story personalizes immigration. For all libraries.”

“With his customary linguistic verve and pulsing imagination, Jerome Charyn serves up here some of the tastiest essay writing available. He knows and loves New York past and present, and he draws on a lifetime of raucous experience and dedicated reading for a rich, heady, satisfying brew.”

“Intense, atmospheric, and suspenseful.”

“The Wreckage of Eden is a huge and dark fresco of an army chaplain’s journey through very difficult and troubling periods of American history (normally denied us in school), and all the while this fine angle of approach is like a slow cinematic zoom and track onto an elusive Emily Dickinson ensconced in her Amherst.”

“A migrant’s harrowing journey to follow his wife and son to Paris from Côte d’Ivoire unfolds in an illustrated narrative that . . . movingly depicts Alpha’s challenging passage.”

“Lays forth the many forms of devastation suffered by lives adrift while introducing memorable characters.”

“A compelling tale. . . . Heartbreaking and timely.”

“The plight of the refugee is brought to brutally vivid life in this visual diary. . . . By homing in on the experience of one symbolic individual, Alpha humanizes the too-often faceless tragedy.”

“To those who say that ‘illegal’ migrants are line-jumpers, [Alpha] . . . is a vivid retort.”

“The text is blunt, matter of fact, but also painfully deep and poetic. . . . [The illustrations] effortlessly complement the text. . . . The washes of greys and blacks stain the page much like tears. This powerful book is an important one. It needs to be in the hands of every citizen of the world, so they can, for a moment, peer into the plight of others and, perhaps, reshape how refugees are viewed.”

“Alpha is the story of everyone who bravely risks all they know for the hope of a better future. . . . Honest and direct rather than inspiring and romantic, Alpha gives a name and face to the multitudes in refugee camps all over the world. An important story for all of us to know.”

“Gives readers a deep sense of what it takes to survive and the terrible toll war and loneliness extracts not only on those who go to war but also those waiting at home.”

“As political debates and news reports on immigration proliferate, rare is empathetic reportage of the actual experiences and desperation these migrants face. . . . Alpha is that compassionate link. . . . ‘You can’t wash away the dust,’ Bessora writes. ‘It’s not just in the streets—the dust has settled in people’s hearts.’ Alpha: Abidjan to Paris draws a refugee with empathy and compassion, in an effort to lift the dust in people’s hearts.”

“Intimately told. . . . Masterfully composed. While immigration may be a contentious political issue, Alpha reminds us of the people behind the headlines: those who inhabit the smugglers’ compartments in rickety trucks, pay for fake passports, and trust their lives to boats that are barely seaworthy, all in search of a better future for themselves and their families.”

“Wolf Season takes contemporary war-and-mil-writing preoccupation with dogs to its fantastical-yet-logical extension. . . . Rin and Naema are compellingly drawn, as are Rin’s daughter Juney and Naema’s son Tariq and the three wolves, Gray, Silver, and Ebony. Most striking, however, are two male characters, Louis Martin and Todd Wycombe, both veterans struggling to be men worthy of respect.”

“[Benedict is] at the top of her game here. . . . The wolves indeed have the last word in Wolf Season, much as do the dogs in David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Benedict’s final chapter is appropriately titled ‘Howl,’ which brings to mind Allen Ginsberg and his poem of the same name—with its line ‘monstrous bombs!’ in canto II. Yet perhaps Ginsberg’s line from one of his other poems, ‘America,’ best sums it all up: ‘America when will we end the human war?’ Helen Benedict’s Wolf Season certainly gives us ample reasons to consider doing so.”

“A powerful picture of the limits of compassion and the knee-jerk nature of emotions: prejudice directed against immigrants and the fear of wolves.”

“Compelling. . . . Benedict doesn’t shy away from her characters’ very different faults as they grasp for courage and resilience during their dark times.”

“Gripping. . . . A low level of dread builds slowly, drawing readers toward the inevitable climactic clash, though Benedict’s memorable and complicated characterization is the true highlight.”

“Glassley and his fellow geologists went on six expeditions to one of the world’s most remote lands to study ancient evidence related to plate tectonics. In evocative prose, he describes their research and the startling beauty of Greenland, and speculates on the nature of perception and the wonder inspired by wilderness.”

“Affecting. . . . The ‘very long reach of war’ transcends generations.”

“Unflinching. . . . In a book that deserves the widest attention, Benedict ‘follows the war home,’ engaging readers with an insightful story right up until the gut-wrenching conclusion.”

“The best way to make moral choices is to understand the experiences of others. And fictional literature like Wolf Season can take us to a heightened level of understanding about the experience of war.”

“To say Wolf Season is merely a portrait of the war at home . . . would be misleading. Benedict’s ambitions are far more sweeping, for the fears and prejudices that motivate her characters mirror the dilemmas in the ongoing war on terror.”

“Like other great art, Wolf Season . . . show[s] us how deeply moved we can be by lives and experiences that bear little resemblance to our own.”

“Cuts right into the current tenor of American culture, with characters who are haunted by the violence of war.”

“Extraordinary insight and sensitivity . . . offering a unique and multi-dimensional perspective on women as veterans today in the U.S.”

“The novel moves between striking passages that speak war’s truth and heartfelt stories about how women—and mothers—experience war and its aftermath. While there are male soldiers in Wolf Season, women’s experience is at the forefront. . . . Told with honesty and empathy, Wolf Season is a contemporary tale about how the war always comes home.”

“The international refugee crisis is given a singular expression in this affecting work.”

“Wolf Season is honest about suffering, trauma, and the difficulty of healing after war. . . . [The novel] reminds us that we do what’s best for our family—our pack—even if it’s the thing that hurts the most.”

“This Walden-esque reflection on wilderness and humanity’s relationship to it will have you shivering along with Glassley and his colleagues in their tents, and wondering at the awe-inspiring age of the rocks they study and what it teaches us about the ancient history of our planet.”

“A fascinating gem of a book about a geological exploration of Greenland that leads to a scientific breakthrough.”

“We’re a bit swoony-eyed about A Wilder Time. . . . Glassley joins the ranks of naturalist writers who make talking about rocks and lichens sexy with this witty and engrossing memoir of time spent wandering about on Greenland. . . . His enthusiasm is infectious and his wonder at this wild place is inspiring.”

“As geologists, we may be rational scientists, but expeditions to remote places touch something deep in us that moves us to also be poets. Glassley has turned his experiences in Greenland into searingly beautiful descriptions of a wild landscape and the ways in which that landscape moves and changes him. Every sentence is evocative, connoting curiosity, awe, and respect in equal measure. A Wilder Time is a paean on the importance of wilderness to the human spirit and a saddening reminder of what we lose when we divorce ourselves from contact with wild places. Glassley’s voice will stay with me the way the works of Loren Eiseley, Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, and Aldo Leopold have stayed with me over the decades.”

“In this extraordinary narrative, Glassley, a geologist, describes his intimate relationship with Greenland’s ancient rocks in such a fashion that the reader who knows nothing about geology is hooked; that reader feels like he’s not only been transported to the rockribbed coast of West Greenland, but is also bent down and studying its rocks right along with Glassley. At the same time, the book reminds us of the degree to which climate change is damaging the planet. . . . Urgently recommended!”

“While conducting research probing deep time and the origin of continents, Glassley discovered a further source of fascination: the Arctic wilderness of Greenland. In A Wilder Time, he shares his encounters with unvarnished nature still free—for now—from the corruptions and constructs of human settlement. With openness, clarity, and a keen eye for detail, he weaves adventure, research, astonished awe, and thoughtful reflection into an absorbing account of his sojourns.”

“Glassley’s A Wilder Time is a wonderful mix of science and poetry. It delves into the kind of spiritual effect that wilderness has on those privileged to work in it and how it changes the way we experience and understand our surroundings and our lives. The science, including the geological controversy at the heart of the book, is lucidly explained, and readers will be absorbed by the story Glassley tells as well as his many vividly described encounters with nature. Next time someone asks me why I am a geologist, I will just hand them this book.”

“[Benedict] has such a compassionate and yet clear-eyed understanding of the myriad costs of war. Blew my mind.”

“Brilliant and unforgettable, DeSanders’s autobiographical fiction takes us deep within the human psyche and the human heart, and delivers us to a uniquely strange and ambivalent grace.”

“While conveying the geological hypotheses, techniques of data collection, and adventures of his expeditions to Greenland with his two Danish colleagues, Glassley also brings startling sensory precision to his descriptions. The velvety feeling of moss, the taste of lichen, the alternating rhythms of terror and fluidity in schools of fish through which a predatory sculpin cruises—such experiences bring what might have seemed a stark world of rock and ice alive. This delicacy of perception is the vehicle through which not only the scientific quest but also the profound mystery of our living Earth saturates this memorable book.”

“No one writes with more authority or cool-eyed compassion about the experience of women in war both on and off the battlefield than Helen Benedict. In Wolf Season, she shows us the complicated ways in which the lives of those who serve and those who don’t intertwine and how—regardless of whether you are a soldier, the family of a soldier, or a refugee—the war follows you and your children for generations. Wolf Season is more than a novel for our times; it should be required reading.”

“Benedict masterfully summons characters who don’t share her biography: she’s a civilian getting sympathetically, and accurately, inside the minds of soldiers; a Westerner intimately addressing the concerns of Middle Eastern refugees; someone with the vivid power of sight imagining the equally vivid experience of the sightless; an adult bringing child characters to life.”

“Rollicking, tilted, and transporting. As the young narrator tries to manage her fraying family—war-wounded father, suffering mother, misbehaving relatives galore—DeSanders takes us deeper, always with such tenderness and beautiful observation into the ways we shape a narrative that keeps us whole.”

“The Iraq War. Disability. Women on and off the battlefield. AND WOLVES! . . . [An] extraordinary new novel.”

“Glassley exhibits an uncanny ability to put us in the midst of Greenland’s vast silence, where he takes us deep into the planet’s soul. It is an important and well-told adventure that opens us to life’s grand expanse and begs us to follow in spite of the brevity of our existence.”

“Fierce and vivid and full of hope, this story of trauma and resilience, of love and family, of mutual aid and solidarity in the aftermath of a brutal war is nothing short of magic. Helen Benedict is the voice of an American conscience that has all too often been silenced. To read these pages is to be transported to a world beyond hype and propaganda to see the human cost of war up close. This is not a novel that allows you to walk away unchanged.”

“DeSanders’s genius lies in her ability to capture the intimate interiority of a very particular childhood while at the same time interrogating larger questions of class, race, and religion. Hap and Hazard and the End of the World is a gorgeous, profoundly original novel.”

“A novel of love, loss, and survival, Wolf Season delves into the complexities and murk of the after-war with blazing clarity. You will come to treasure these characters for their strengths and foibles alike. Helen Benedict has delivered yet again, and contemporary war literature is much the better for it.”

“Bessora’s prose and Barroux’s illustrations join to illuminate the heart-wrenching journey of a West African refugee. . . . The reader is drawn into the refugee’s experience and shares his agonizing odyssey via the graphic novel’s blunt yet poetic language.”

“[Benedict] has emerged as one of our most thoughtful and provocative writers of war literature.”

“Diane DeSanders writes the sort of prose that gives that telltale tingle down the spine, prose that paints vivid pictures in the mind and presents an entire, unique world: the Lone Star State, the state of America, the state of childhood, the state of a traumatized father, and the state of being a girl, of being wonderfully and truly alive.”

“Very few people have spent as much time as William E. Glassley in such deep wilderness. So it would behoove us to pay attention even if he had not brought back such a fascinating, lovely, and useful set of observations. This is a remarkable book.”

“Very highly recommended. . . . A Wilder Time is a celebration of wilderness, written in poetic prose that can be appreciated by anyone who enjoys good nature writing. It is also a call to save the wilderness areas we have left.”

“A Wilder Time is nature writing at its informative and inspirational best and unreservedly recommended.”

“A poetic, metaphysical and philosophical treatise on the wildness of life on earth. . . . [Glassley’s] enthusiasm for geology is palpable. His love of the wild is tangible, and his way with words beautiful.”

“Thoughtful. . . . Evincing humility in the midst of the great ‘unshaped wild,’ Glassley exudes a palpable and infectious sense of wonder.”

“Delectable. . . . Autopsy of a Father provides commentary on France’s societal attitudes on race and immigration. This will lead to hours of discussion in itself. I highly recommend this captivating novel.”

“Poetic, enthusiastic. . . . Combining the strengths of travel writing and lyrical memoir, Glassley translates his own ‘incandescent experience of place’ into a conservation message: ‘We must share and celebrate the wild so that it might be saved.’”

“Impressive. . . . This deftly crafted and inherently fascinating book is unreservedly recommended.”

“[A] deftly translated . . . deftly crafted and inherently fascinating read by an impressively talented novelist. . . . Unreservedly recommended.”

“A weighty book full of conversations that are still topical.”

“DeSanders achieves a heartbreaking, lyrical, and laser-focused evocation of a child’s perception of the mysteries of the adult world; the perfectly rendered setting is 1940s Dallas, just when its harsh rural beauties were becoming sanitized into suburban conformity.”

“[Kramer’s body of work is] precise and sumptuous . . . a song of emotion, but with a great lucidity about the humanity of simple people.”

“Incisive, insightful, and discomfiting. . . . Autopsy of a Father belongs on the shelf next to works by authors like Nadine Gordimer and Magda Szabo. Its psychological investigation of a crumbling intelligentsia and a family fallen from grace is absolutely riveting. Robert Bononno’s translation does great justice to this quiet and unsettling thriller.”

“Smart and subtle. . . . [A] moving example of a family trying to make life work.”

“Perfectly captures life near Dallas after World War II, as seen through the eyes of a child. . . . Funny and nostalgic and occasionally unsettling, this child’s view of her own small world also provides a picture of the wider world at that time.”

“[A] captivating debut novel. . . . Drawing on her own family letters, diaries, and oral histories, newcomer DeSanders captures the voice and thoughts of a young girl observing her frayed family while questioning the mysterious larger world. A brave and honest work that won’t disappoint.”

“A time capsule of American awakening.”

“Paints a vivid picture of childhood in postwar America, replete with all of the joys and sorrows that are part of growing up.”

“Profound and moving. . . . A superb tool for a better understanding of the natural world and why real science matters.”

“[Autopsy of a Father] delves into anti-immigrant sentiment and the resentments that have erupted between newcomers and longtime European residents. It’s fraught, and the violence lurking beneath the surface is palpable. . . . A timely . . . look at the rise of bigotry and the ways racial and ethnic tensions play out in one French community and family.”

“Writing with the same poetic precision, artistry, and soulful receptivity as Gretel Ehrlich and Barry Lopez, with the added impact of his rigorous scientist-in-the-field expertise, Glassley is spellbinding as he chronicles his exhilarating adventures.”

“Amazing. A Wilder Time is a book for those who love nature and have that longing desire to learn the unknown, all hidden along the walls of the fjords of Greenland.”

“Restrained, powerful. . . . The novel captures the complexity of relationships with great subtlety. . . . Bononno has translated the original French into striking, flowing prose.”

“[DeSanders’] Texan bona fides are on ample display in this charming yet heart-wrenching debut about a single tumultuous, pivotal year in the life of a young girl. . . . This is not a romanticized version of childhood, though the conclusion is pitch-perfect. This is a girl discovering cause and effect, exploring boundaries, feeling for the shape of her life.”

“Gorgeously written, fiercely observed. . . . A debut that’s clearly the work of a master writer.”

“Emotionally incisive. . . . Based on a true scandal involving a French author and intellectual, Kramer’s haunting story of this disintegrating family is a timely reflection on the anti-immigrant feelings expressed in France and many other countries, including the U.S.”

“Transport[s] readers across the world and deep into the past, while suggesting a way forward into the future. For budding naturalists, armchair geologists, and anyone who loves a good expedition, this is an ideal read.”

“Mesmerizing. . . . [Glassley] is a thoroughly accessible guide whose wonder at the landscape that surrounds him is infectious.”

“Engaging. . . . A treat for geology buffs.”

“Builds a case for the necessity of wild places, both as respite from the noise and clutter of modern life and for their inherent values.”

“The novel haunts on all levels. . . . Once read, this story is not forgotten.”

“So thoroughly does Lock set the mood that it is impossible to tell which words of Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne are ones actually spoken or ones created by Lock. Though these men pondered the great questions of their age (and our own), the insertion of Samuel into the story, forces a more practical rendering of their great ideals. . . . A Fugitive in Walden Woods does not shrink from the difficult questions of our time, including racism. It succeeds in its goal of nudging us to become deeper thinkers.”

“Straddles the line effortlessly between poetic and scientific. . . . What really pushes A Wilder Time into the upper echelons of nature books is its higher-reaching aims, using this location and journey to explore time, self, and the human relationship to nature.”

“Glassley eloquently evokes a place where land feathers into Arctic sea, ice floes glide by on mirror-smooth tongues of clear, frigid water and silence reigns. . . . This story offers perspectives on deep time to boggle minds. . . . Glassley’s vivid impressions of East Greenland attempt what few scientist-writers try: to explore beyond the comfort zone of his field.”

“In this global, political and social climate, the central ideological topic of [Autopsy of a Father] feels extremely urgent. . . . Throughout, Kramer’s prose is taut and delicately observant.”

“Thoreau’s time in Walden Woods comes to life. . . . The real beauty of books like A Fugitive in Walden Woods can be best expressed in a quote Samuel Long recalls . . . : ‘Reading is our recompense for having only one life to live.’ Norman Lock has given his readers the chance to live a different life than the one they know best.”

“Glassley ponders the nature of perception and the human mind, describes the dramatic physical features of Greenland’s makeup and recounts the thrilling adventures of his extended visits there.”

“Kramer’s novel examines bigotry in the intimate space of family, allowing for a powerfully close look at societal ills.”

“A richly literary account. . . . Anchored by deep reflection and scientific knowledge, A Wilder Time is a portrait of an ancient, nearly untrammeled world that holds the secrets of our planet’s deepest past, even as it accelerates into our rapidly changing future. The book bears the literary, scientific, philosophic, and poetic qualities of a nature-writing classic, the rarest mixture of beauty and scholarship, told with the deftest touch.”

“This sui generis volume displays the author’s polymathic talents at their exhilarating best. Not content with his role as critic, autobiographist, analysand, Freud scholar, Bauhaus curator, textual sleuth, and reflective Talmudist, Weber infuses familiar territory with freshness and vitality. His journey starts at Signorelli’s Orvieto and Freud’s legendary moment of forgetting. Via Breuer, Solnit, Sartre, Klee, Zweig, Raphael, Titian, as well as his personal inamoratas, we are granted new visions from the art and psychoanalytic worlds. Breathless but still upright, the reader understands better what it means to be a child, a parent, and a living, desiring, failing, dying, struggling, and ultimately triumphant human.”

“Beautifully written, with heartbreaking tenderness and brutal savagery. . . . This period in history is given a new perspective that speaks as clearly to that time as it does to ours.”

“A deeply insightful book that will force the reader to question race, social standing, and what it means to be truly free.”

“Lock has embarked on a fascinating intellectual and artistic endeavor: engaging key American writers from the 19^th century through a series of speculative historical novels. . . . In his latest installment, the author examines the life and work of Henry David Thoreau. . . . There is no sermonizing here, just thought-provoking juxtapositions and conversations. Ultimately, what emerges is a unique and affectionate homage.”

“Norman Lock’s American Novels series engages creatively with nineteenth-century literary classics. In the fourth novel in the series, A Fugitive in Walden Woods, a runaway slave encounters Henry David Thoreau and his transcendentalist circle and ponders the meaning of physical and ideological freedom. . . . Having an ex-slave as narrator opens an unusual window into what seems like familiar history. At the same time, Lock’s is a fitting homage to Thoreau.”

“This is an ingenious and fascinating reading of Freud’s response to Signorelli’s frescoes at Orvieto. It is also a meditation on Jewish identity, and on masculinity, memory, and the power of the image. It is filled with intelligence, wit, and clear-eyed analysis not only of the paintings themselves, but how we respond to them in all their startling sexuality and invigorating beauty.”

“Freud’s Trip to Orvieto is at once profound and wonderfully diverse, and as gripping as any detective story. Nicholas Fox Weber mixes psychoanalysis, art history, and the personal with an intricacy and spiritedness that Freud himself would have admired.”

“Powerful . . . both in keeping with the work of some of the literary figures invoked in its pages and in terms of larger questions of race and privilege in America. Precisely structured and abounding with memorable characters, this novel invokes the past while feeling decidedly relevant to contemporary issues and debates.”

“Is [Jerzy Kosinski] really who and what he claims to be? . . . Author Jerome Charyn, who revealed the inner lives of iconic Americans in his previous novels, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson and I Am Abraham, uncovers the hidden layers of an enigmatic personality.”

“Gripping. . . . Charyn will expertly guide you through the shadowy life of this most enigmatic of artists in this imaginative and provocative novel.”

“Demonstrates Lock’s uncanny ability to inhabit historical figures and meticulously capture the vernacular of the time like a transcendentalist ventriloquist. . . . The text interweaves dialogue known to be spoken or written by Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne with that made up by Lock and attributed to these giants of American literature. Lock’s remarkable achievement is that the reader cannot tell the difference. The real power of the story, however, comes from Samuel, who more than holds his own among these geniuses. His experiences of brutality offer profound insights that sharpen our understanding of American history.”

“Unflinching, penetrative, and bravely earnest. . . . With melodic prose that marvelously captures [the narrator’s] searing insights and rich observations, Lock’s imaginative novel is a stunning meditation on idealism and the cost of humanity.”

“Stunning photographs transport us to a previously unseen world. . . . [They] also invoke within us a new set of emotions as individual as each of its viewers. What a pleasure.”

“A fast-paced, minimalist exploration of one of 20th century’s most elusive literary figures.”

“Reveals the existence of a multitude of territories inside of us.”

“Norman Lock has done his homework about Henry David Thoreau and slavery, capturing the essence of both in his sublime novel.”

“Beautiful.”

“Lock’s novels all use a classic work of American literature as a leaping-off point. . . . His newest leverages Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in the story of Sam Long, an escaped slave who makes his way to New England in the 1840s, where he falls in with a group of abolitionist intellectuals, Thoreau among them. Long captures the distinct personalities of these famous thinkers with uncanny ease, and never loses sight of the gulf that yawns between Long and the people who supposedly regard him as an equal.”

“An extraordinary take on an otherwise mundane human response.”

“Charyn peels back the layers of myth and artifice built up by chameleon-like Polish-American novelist Jerzy Kosinski. . . . [His] clever novel underscores the sense that Kosinski was a man impossible to nail down, given to wild changes in personality and appearance depending on his own wealth, desires, and mood. Through triangulating voices and stories, Charyn manages to get close to the truth, and does so with beautiful, spare prose.”

“Lock’s writing is smooth and precise, braiding the worldly and the spiritual together in a lucid, elegant balance. . . . The principal characters are brimming with desires, doubts, and hypocrisies, and are capable of generosity, small-mindedness, genius, and naïveté. They feel at once sharply captured and mysterious—like ordinary mortals who were capable of changing the world.”

“A seminal study that is as informed and informative as it is thoughtful and thought-provoking.”

“Timely in the sense we should have already been talking about it, but thank God someone is talking about it now; McWhorter tackles the idea that African American Vernacular is grammatically incorrect. Decades of associating Black English with error has fed into our nation’s history of racism and vice versa. It is imperative, especially in today’s political landscape that we tackle our hidden prejudice and examine what makes it so. Easy to read in an evening; McWhorter explains not only the grammatical aspects of AAV, but examines cultural backgrounds and the political landscape of race as well. Do yourself a favor, read this book, then take a hard look in the mirror. I know I will.”

“Perfect for amateur linguists looking for a new angle on current discussions of diversity. John McWhorter doesn’t get too technical as he discusses the mechanics of AAVE, but draws attention to the subtle aspects of the dialect.”

“This witty, art-savvy project meanders in all manner of delightful directions.”

“With an amalgam of relevant history, stunning art, and deft psychology, Weber brings new insights on the life and work of a cultural dynamo.”

“[McWhorter] presents a broader, reframed argument with the sociocultural context necessary [for Black English] to be accepted more broadly. . . . . I was hooked on this book at the dedication: saying of his daughter, ‘I hope she will read this as soon as she is old enough to take it in, to make sure she never for a second thinks black people’s speech is full of mistakes.’”

“[Weber] captivates the reader with this wonderful psychological mystery. . . . Sometimes a molehill is just a molehill, but the process of making it into a mountain is both enthralling and illuminating in Weber’s hands.”

“[McWhorter] explains tricky grammatical and linguistic concepts with humor and energy, making this a fun and informative read.”

“[Weber’s] vivid analysis brings faraway frescoes and lesser-known paintings into vigorous reality, and his idea that Freud suppressed Signorelli’s name because of his reaction to the work’s homoeroticism makes perfect sense when you explore the paintings with him.”

“John McWhorter does an excellent job making the case for Black English as a fully fledged dialect of English. He also does an excellent job of presenting the linguistic arguments in a way that is easy to digest.”

“With deep sincerity and accessibility, McWhorter addresses why Black English is a dialect and should be treated as a valid way of speaking in the US. This book is so smart and thoughtful.”

“A moving depiction of the micro and macro aspects of our emotional lives, and a beautiful means of integrating the often separate realms of science and art.”

“McWhorter examines not only the vexed past [of Black English], but also the dynamic and difficult present of this vibrant force in cultures around the world.”

“The rise and fall of novelist Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991) emerges in an offbeat way . . . through Charyn’s resourceful imagination and always-colorful, punchy, provocative prose.”

“Bursts with intellectual energy, with moral urgency, and with human feeling. . . . [A Fugitive in Walden Woods] achieves the alchemy of good fiction through which philosophy takes on all the flaws and ennoblements of real, embodied life.”

“In Talking Back, Talking Black, John McWhorter, the maestro at communicating linguistics to the public, succeeds in helping the reader to ‘actually hear Black English in a new way,’ while hipping linguists to some features of this vibrant variety they might not have considered before.”

“A scholarly, in-depth analysis of Black English. . . . Fascinating.”

“A poignant memoir of Weber’s childhood, a revealing portrait of his intellectual development and a incisive study on masculinity and Judaism. . . . [Freud’s Trip to Orvieto] pulls together a series of elegant portraits, freely combining art history with memoir and psychoanalysis. . . . It strikes one as truthful, clear and revealing.”

“Linguistics fans will be enthralled by McWhorter’s fascinating and logically presented study.”

“Well suited for those who have an interest in black studies, education, history, language, or cultural studies.”

“A dramatic and compelling biographical narrative.”

“Daringly imaginative and profoundly insightful.”

“Portraying the traumatic psychological aftershock not of war but of slavery provides a convincing and complex narrative of new hardships faced by escaped slave Samuel Long in Norman Lock’s bold and enlightening novel A Fugitive in Walden Woods. It’s an important novel that creates a vivid social context for the masterpieces of such writers as Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne and also offers valuable insights about our current conscious and unconscious racism.”

“Deftly written. . . . Very highly recommended.”

“Charyn presents a mighty Kosinski in a few dimensions. . . . Perhaps there is even no true Jerzy but merely a myth of many sizes, and one, as Charyn’s novel demonstrates a half-century after the publication of The Painted Bird, we keep on recreating to our mind’s delight.”

“For Charyn, Kosinski is that larger-than-life enigmatic Citizen Kane. . . . What Charyn’s novel can do, with its brilliant satirical bite, is compel readers to learn more about Jerzy Kosinski, one of the great writers of the 20th century. . . . It’s not a simple story, as Charyn’s novel attests. Truth is stranger than fiction and fiction seeks a greater truth.”

“[Sleeping Mask] features characters exploring their circumstances, expectations, and regrets and ruminating on artistry, literature, and mere existence. . . . LaSalle’s dozen multifaceted tales challenge the reader to look beyond a linear narrative, as characters are propelled toward an unraveling, bewildering void.”

“[Charyn] matches his faultless ear with a correspondingly artful imagination. . . . Jerzy is where the juju of The Big Apple meets the consummate probing skepticism of native New Yorkers.”

“Engaging. . . . LaSalle, a literary descendent of Borges and Nabokov, writes with the inventiveness of his predecessors.”

“Stylistically daring. . . . An entertaining, assured sampling from an endlessly inventive writer.”

“Looking at [Fisher’s] photographs feels like staring out a plane window at the passing landscape below.”

“A Fugitive in Walden Woods manages that special magic of making Thoreau’s time in Walden Woods seem fresh and surprising and necessary right now. Norman Lock tells the story of Samuel Long, an escaped slave who encounters Thoreau, with insight and some welcome humor. This is a patient and perceptive novel, a pleasure to read even as it grapples with issues that affect the United States to this day.”

“[An] unusual meditation on sex, death, art, and Jewishness. . . . Weber weaves in musings on his own sexual and religious experiences, creating a freewheeling psychoanalytic document whose approach would surely delight the doctor, even if its conclusions might surprise him.”

“Haunting and evocative. . . . LaSalle’s prose is lyrical, at times rhapsodic, and his characters memorable.”

“A vibrant separation of an African-American vernacular tradition from the thickets of contemporary racial debate.”

“Drawing on research, popular culture, and his own expertise as a linguist and black American, McWhorter conveys the roots and richness of the dialect that has come out of the experiences of black Americans. . . . [Talking Back, Talking Black] is an engaging look at the English language as spoken by many black Americans as well as the long history of stereotyping that has prevented an objective analysis of a rich language tradition.”

“McWhorter considers complex issues and leaves the reader with a more clear understanding of language and the implicit assumptions surrounding it. . . . In this time of great anxiety and injustice, [Talking Back, Talking Black] provides insight into a cultural issue that has long been written off and snubbed by many. And as such, his book is proving itself to be about so much more than just language.”

“A fascinating exploration—and celebration—of Black English in America.”

“A stark, engrossing novel about the rise and fall of celebrated author Jerzy Kozinski whose life was deeply affected by World War II, the Holocaust, the Soviet Union, literary awards, fame and by the film, Being There, that he wrote and that starred Peter Sellers.”

“LaSalle’s narrative voice hypnotizes, and his enticingly evasive way of concluding each story leaves a dreamlike impression. The twelve stories in Sleeping Mask are nuanced tales of enduring subjects: desire, despair, the arts, and war.”

“Talking Back, Talking Black is [McWhorter’s] case for the acceptance of black English as a legitimate American dialect. . . . He ably and enthusiastically breaks down the mechanics.”

“Addresses a studious urge to understand more closely the liquid expression of human emotion.”

“Hilarious and provocative. . . . Charyn edges towards the truth of this chameleon character in prose that is beautiful and spare.”

“Brilliantly fascinating, weirdly original.”

“A fascinating world in miniature. . . . An excellent study in self-examination through art.”

“As full of surprises as Jerzy Kosinski was himself. . . . The book whets the reader’s appetite to learn even more about a man who is simultaneously reviled and respected.”

“Extraordinary stories which, when one begins to savor their prose, plunge one into oceanic depths of language where the mirror of the sea reflects the myth of the self in dreamy distortions that shock one as revelations of truth.”

“In [Talking Back, Talking Black], McWhorter offers an explanation, a defense, and, most heartening, a celebration of the dialect that has become, he argues, an American lingua franca. . . . [He] demonstrates the ‘legitimacy’ of Black English by uncovering its complexity and sophistication, as well as the still unfolding journey that has led to its creation. . . . [His] intelligent breeziness is the source of the book’s considerable charm.”

“In seeing . . . The Topography of Tears, I am floored by our physical connectedness of the natural world. . . . The photographs in this series are delicate, fragile and quietly complex, not unlike the emotions that come with tears.”

“Intriguing. . . . Lively. . . . Perhaps Kosinski lied and dissembled more than was strictly necessary, but as Charyn’s puzzle-box novel demonstrates, it’s hard to argue with the results.”

“The sheer strangeness, variety and beauty of [Fisher’s] ‘photomicrographs’ are stunning. . . . The photos also manage to convey a beautifully wide spectrum of human emotion.”

“Jerzy is a novel with a light touch that’s still capable of lifting heavy subjects. Charyn knows what he wants to do and knows how to do it. His prose has some of the rapid-fire but carefully controlled energy of Thomas Pynchon’s early novella The Crying of Lot 49. Part of Charyn’s point is to make the real and the imagined sound equally implausible. . . . Charyn’s other point seems much broader: to show that all forms of power are pretty much alike, or at least connected—Hollywood, Capitol Hill, Kensington Palace, the Kremlin. Because Kosinski is a figure who proves (if we still need to learn it) that the craziness of American life may have more in common with the craziness of Russia and Europe than we like to think.”

“There are elements of Fisher’s images [in The Topography of Tears] that can’t be explained by science, and the great poet Ann Lauterbach also wrote an essay for the book, drawing on work from William Blake and Janis Joplin to define the many meanings of tears. It’s only in the afterword that Fisher reveals the personal inspiration behind the work. . . . In those final pages of text, we’re surprised to remember the ordinariness of the many epic ‘landscapes’ that came before. Suddenly, they don’t seem so alien anymore.”

“A moving attempt to trace the connections between Kosinski’s wartime struggles and postwar fictions.”

“Incredible. . . . Lingers long in the mind.”

“Enthralling. . . . Fisher uses the technological tools of science to probe the poetic, immaterial dimensions of a universal human behavior radiating infinite emotional hues.”

“[A] delicate, intimate book. . . . In The Topography of Tears photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher shows us a place where language strains to express grief, longing, pride, frustration, joy, the confrontation with something beautiful, the confrontation with an onion.”

“This ingenious novel features a charming psychiatric patient possibly inhabited by Robert Louis Stevenson, a Noh mask, Mark Twain cosplay, and many loveable, quirky characters, including some from Tacoma!”

“I love books that start out with someone making a colossal mistake. This starts with a great one—Dr. Ruby Okada unknowingly falls in love with a man escaping from her psychiatric hospital. The beauty of this slim novel is the way in which the ‘how’ and ‘why’ is all tangled into a quirky puzzle with the ‘so, what happens next?’ I had SO much fun de-tangling.”

“When you first view Rose-Lynn Fisher’s photographs, you might think you’re looking down at the world from an airplane, at dunes, skyscrapers or shorelines. In fact, you’re looking at her tears. . . . [There’s] poetry in the idea that our emotional terrain bears visual resemblance to the physical world; that our tears can look like the vistas we see out an airplane window. Fisher’s images are the only remaining trace of these places, which exist during a moment of intense feeling—and then vanish.”

“Clever. . . . Wiley skillfully balances the psychological explanations for Archie’s strange behavior with the more fanciful notion that he has been possessed by Stevenson’s spirit, one of those ‘metaphysical rovers’ seeking out corporeal forms. It’s an elegant conceit around which to craft a tale about the ambiguities of character.”

“Haunted—in a good way—by the ghost of Robert Louis Stevenson. . . . A romantic comedy with just enough of a philosophical edge.”

“If you have any interest in the fight against totalitarian theocracy, then you must read A Road Unforeseen. I found it to be a thorough, well organized primer on Kurdistan, ISIS, and the self governing region known as Rojava. Meredith Tax is a phenomenal researcher, and makes this deeply complicated topic very readable. Still not convinced? THIS IS ABOUT WOMEN FIGHTING AN INSANE DEATH CULT.”

“An indefatigable political thinker and activist takes us on a forensic journey into the gendering of geopolitical conflict and resistance.”

“This book lifts the lid on one of the best-kept secrets of our times, the birth of a revolution in the Middle East driven by gender equality and direct democracy. Meredith Tax makes a well-researched, cogent, and passionate case for why we should all get behind this experiment, at once fragile and gutsy, in Rojava, northern Syria, and Turkey.”

“At last we have a book that tells us what we crave to know each day as we open the newspaper to read about IS, Islamists, shifting alliances, enslaved women, fleeing immigrants, and shocking cruelties. Meredith Tax shows us how the Kurds of Rojava are trying to put in place a system of equality between men and women and take local, democratic control of their lives, which would be remarkable anywhere, let alone in a war zone. As Tax so clearly demonstrates here, putting women at the center of a struggle for freedom changes everything. It’s time to learn about the extraordinary Rojava and the hope it offers that another world is possible.”

“We in the West are so unused to thinking of Middle Eastern and Muslim women as liberated, let alone as feminist revolutionaries, that Meredith Tax’s remarkable book, A Road Unforeseen, comes as a welcome correction. By tracing the historical and political evolution of a group of Kurdish feminist guerrillas, Tax shows us what revolution looks like with feminism at its center, even in the midst of the repressive and violent attacks on women and Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. This powerful and persuasive book is a must-read for anyone who takes the plight of women seriously.”

“Meredith Tax tells the tangled and amazing history of Kurdish politics—from family feuds to terrorism to radical democracy and feminism—with just the right mixture of admiration and concern.”

“A Road Unforeseen is essential reading to understand the extraordinary democratic revolution led by the Kurds in Syria. This is compelling history but also a clarion call to the US and the international community to support this fragile project that elevates and celebrates human rights, democracy, and equality for all genders, races, and religions.”

“Through a clever use of dissociative identity disorder, [Bob Stevenson] provides an exploration of the workings of the human mind, its pathology, and its machination to make up stories. . . . This novel of identities within identities, selves within selves ends on a note of the unknowns and uncertainties of life. The question of identity and the self prevails as the key matter in the novel, whether based on a figment of a pathological mind or on a membership to a genealogy.”

“Wiley takes Treasure Island off the dusty shelf of the late 19^th century and translates its transgressive pirate allure in daring and illuminating ways for 21^st-century readers.”

“Impressively well researched, written, organized and presented, A Road Unforeseen: Women Fight the Islamic State is a seminal study. . . . Consistently compelling, informed and informative, A Road Unforeseen is very highly recommended.”

“A witty, roller-coaster ride of uncertain identity set against the gritty certainties of New York City. In compelling, unadorned prose, Richard Wiley gives us a bewitching and ultimately moving tale.”

“An important look at an unfolding situation little understood in the West.”

“Tax approaches the Syrian conflict from a unique perspective as she focuses on the role of Kurdish women combatants. . . . Extensively researched, this is an immensely relevant primer on a complex people whose past and future are critical to the success of peace in their region.”

“Zeroes in on a contemporary example of unanticipated moxie: The successful, if little-known, resistance to Muslim fundamentalism that has developed along the Syrian-Turkish border.”

“Thorough and well-documented. . . . Readers interested in geopolitical issues and history will no doubt be grateful for [Tax’s] lucid explanation of events involving countries like Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran and for illuminating the plight of the Kurdish people in the Middle East.”

“[A Road Unforeseen] is an on-the-fly intervention in an ongoing conflict. It smoothly shows many things at once, and [Tax] does a commendable job in creating a concise and readable account of this tangled situation.”

“We’re fortunate to have the patient, politically astute voice of Meredith Tax [and her] remarkable book to explain the history and meaning of these amazing events.”

“A book of revelations about life during wartime in Rojava. . . A Road Unforeseen celebrates those women who are ripping the guts out of ISIS and explains how they came to be at the center of the Kurdish struggle for freedom.”

“Openly enthusiastic. . . . Traces the development of Rojava’s militant feminism to roots in Turkey’s Kurdish rebel movement.”

“With her combined expertise on fundamentalism, feminism, and human rights, Tax . . . shows what it means to view aspects of the Middle East through these basic prisms. . . . [A Road Unforeseen] is a welcome addition to the growing literature in English on the Kurds and will be mined for its perspectives and insights for years to come. ‘Any movement for real transformation,’ she insists, ‘must make the demands of women central.’ This superb book will be an essential resource for this question in the years to come.”

“Exceptional. . . . Not only informative but heart-wrenching. . . . It is the analysis that situates what is otherwise described as a struggle against terrorism or a struggle for national freedom as a more complicated struggle for the emancipation of women, and thereby the emancipation of society, that gripped me as a reader and activist.”

“Swift, intense and forensic. . . . [Tax] brings the habit ‘optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect’ to [A Road Unforeseen]. The journey takes her deep to the history of Middle East and the fate of Kurds [where] now [women] are improvising a new model of living in an enclave that is not an ethnic state but a confederation of half a dozen ethnicities, organizing co-operative economy in an egalitarian borderland called Rojava. Meredith Tax wonders whether they can survive. But she is inspired. And reading her book, you will be, too.”

“This is the book I’ve been waiting for—only it’s richer, deeper, and more intriguing than I could have imagined. A Road Unforeseen is a major contribution to our understanding of feminism and Islam, of women and the world, and gives me fresh hope for change.”

“Brian Booker is a realist the way Kafka or Ishiguro are realists—he works at the seams of our experience, in those anxious moments where we cannot be sure of our senses, our memories, or our selves. In these extraordinary and uncanny stories, anxiety, neurosis, disease, and hallucination overtake his characters and haunt the worlds they inhabit. Are You Here For What I’m Here For? teems with unsettling wisdom about all those things our minds and hearts contain that we wish they did not.”

“An unforgettable collection of people trying to learn how—and whether—to trust their own minds. Booker’s theme, like that of Kafka and W.G. Sebald, is dislocation, as much from the physical world as from the world of others and of thought. The writing brims with intelligent detail, but always in the service of its characters—people striving for ‘new, uncharted places,’ reachable nowhere else but in these singular stories.”

“Reading Brian Booker’s stories is like lolling on your sofa, or strolling the streets of your town, when you look around and it dawns on you that everything you thought you recognized is suddenly . . . different. The unnerving newspaper headline, those weird jars in the fridge, the off-kilter conversation with that too friendly stranger—the quotidian and the unremarkable are rendered strange and new, and the effect is, to quote the author, ‘a little like nectar and a little like poison.’ These are terrific stories, and Booker is a terrific writer.”

“Brian Booker’s stories are contagiously readable. Like many of the maladies they so vividly describe, they seem at once believable and otherworldly, casting the spell of an uncanny fever dream. But while the characters in these tales may languish, their reader—braced by Booker’s delightfully unsettling imagination—emerges always invigorated.”

“Brian Booker’s stories contain a phantasmagorical hilarity, along with a headlong momentum that only accelerates as the stories’ events grow more dire. You can open this book to any page and will find there amazing events related in a deeply unsettling style. I don’t know of any writing quite like his. Are You Here For What I’m Here For? is a brilliant debut.”

“Shivery-good.”

“Beautiful prose about not so beautiful thoughts.”

“Engrossing.”

“Solid. . . . Effective.”

“The Measure of Darkness seems, at first, to be about the mysterious odyssey and follies of a man with a rare neurological syndrome in which the victim cannot perceive half of the world, and worse, doesn’t know he can’t perceive it. Yet, as Liam Durcan’s acutely observed, powerfully poetic prose—which can be sensitive or steely—builds to a gut-wrenching finale, we realize that this man is a metaphor for each of us and we are all haunted by the things we don’t know we don’t know.”

“An intriguing and layered medical mystery.”

“[A] worthy volume in Lock’s American Novels series, and readers will find him to be an ideal guide for a trip into the past.”

“With smaller print runs and often an intimate relationship with readers, these smaller houses are able to take bigger risks than their larger counterparts and are finding truly excellent writers outside the mainstream. Don’t miss works from Open Letter, Deep Vellum, Bellevue Literary Press, Catapult, Restless Books, Two Dollar Radio and Los Angeles’ Unnamed Press; like more established independents Graywolf and McSweeney’s, they are delivering so much genuinely exciting fiction that they make it look easy.”

“Raises thought-provoking questions about the sometimes conflicting roles ambition, work, and loved ones play in a complex and fulfilled life.”

“A deft exploration of the heart and mind that offers the pathos of a Sam Shepard play nested within the unreliable storytelling of Christopher Nolan’s Memento.”

“A very highly recommended exceptional collection of seven stories. With an acute eye for detail, intelligent presentations, and an accomplished style, Booker delivers thoughtful selections that will be appreciated by short story aficionados.”

“In this beautifully written work, readers experience Martin’s caught-breath panic and, as suspense mounts, anxious concern about what Martin was really doing on the road when he was injured.”

“Move over Howard Roark! . . . A lifelong obsession with a Soviet architect, a lovable McGill professor, references to Montreal firms, and sharp descriptions of New York, Montreal, Expo 67, the Eastern Townships, and Detroit-in-decline will satiate [architecture] readers.”

“Durcan cleverly uses the neurological condition that he clearly knows a lot about to demonstrate that everybody tends to neglect certain aspects of their lives, and yet they are unaware of their actions and unaware of the effect that this neglect has on other people.”

“Encompass[es] many great issues—neglect of family relationships, aging, compassion, reconciliation, vision, aesthetics, even the stifled career of a Soviet architect—but most of all, [The Measure of Darkness is] a meditation on the limits of personal power. Slowly, quietly, inexorably, Durcan makes clear just how profound those limits are and that they are imposed both from within and without.”

“Vividly rendered prose. . . . The Measure of Darkness strives to be more than an examination of what it is to have one’s ambition thwarted, and ultimately succeeds on many levels in its characterization of what it is like to not just understand, but to actually experience that subjectivity—that reality itself, is determined by nothing more than the tenuous and delicate physical tissues of one’s brain.”

“An evocative reminder that we are each the architects of our own lives.”

“This chilling and layered story of obsession succeeds both as a moody period piece and as an effective and memorable homage to the works of Edgar Allan Poe.”

“As lyrical and alluring as Poe’s own original work, The Port-Wine Stain captures the magic, mystery, and madness of the great American author while weaving an eerie and original tale in homage to him.”

“With a keen eye for detail, Booker announces himself as a premier storyteller whose work crosses genre boundaries, appealing to fans of mystery, suspense, and literary fiction.”

“Powerfully complex. . . . The Port-Wine Stain fits perfectly with the previous two [American Novels books]: The Boy in His Winter and American Meteor. By picking a moment in U.S. history and inhabiting it with the real-life characters that defined the age, Lock allows his readers to explore the development of national identity.”

“An enthralling and believable picture of the descent into madness, told in chillingly beautiful prose that Poe might envy.”

“[Durcan’s] work at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital brings him into regular contact with neglect-afflicted patients, and in his second novel he puts what he has observed to great literary use, creating a complex, maddening and memorable protagonist whose struggle resonates well beyond his specific circumstance.”

“Durcan is masterly in portraying hemispatial brain injury from a patient’s perspective. . . . [His] wry observations about the medical world are penetratingly accurate. . . . It’s a pleasure to read this sophisticated novel and mull its scalpel-sharp perceptions about what causes us to make the life decisions we do.”

“The Port-Wine Stain is quite simply beautifully worded and would appeal to the average reader or an aficionado of Poe’s particular brand of deliciously expressed horror.”

“It’s hard to find [a story] so original, so dead-on in its prose, so engaging, I sped my way through its thirty-something pages, completely entranced by Booker’s writing, imagination, and execution.”

“Recurring phrases and motifs—like “prepare for the worst,” the mysterious sleeping sickness, or the moral implications of certain diseases—turn [Booker’s] collection into an echo chamber where a sense of impending doom ricochets off the walls. Like a strange collection of symptoms that defies all neat diagnostic categories, these motifs suggest meaning but refuse to be placed in a single coherent framework. The reader is thus forced into the role of a literary hypochondriac and left to wonder: what is imagined? What is real?”

“Lock deftly evokes time and place in The Port-Wine Stain, avoiding the pitfalls of historical fiction as a genre. His novel is wrapped in the art, science, and culture of mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia but truly captivates in the storytelling.”

“The title of the collection perfectly captures the anxiety of constant searching for: understanding, solutions, or a safe space. . . . The inner monologues are relatable and juicy. Our narrators aren’t smoke and dagger types, rather they are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, ordinary people just moving through life. . . . None of these personas are superheroes or mad scientists, though their limitations are illuminating.”

“Durcan’s scientific background is evident in the precision of his descriptions and the depth of his analysis of the novel’s characters. And yet, the soul of a writer shines through on every page. Durcan’s evocative imagery, talents for showing the multiple facets of human struggle, and seamless narrative structure are the marks of a true artist. Rarely does a modern novel resonate so well on so many levels.”

“Elegant and inventive. . . . Ambiguity fuels Booker’s work, and it’s what makes his short stories worth reading over and over again. Every time I open this book, I find something new.”

“Excellent. . . . Booker has a way of catching the nuances of the American psyche. The writing is crisp; the characters are believable.”

“Outstanding. . . . Are You Here For What I’m Here For? rings with memorable characters, scenes, and settings. Brian Booker’s magical realism reminds me of “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez—rich with melancholic truths and mystery.”

“[Booker] has a markedly arresting storytelling style in this debut collection.”

“Lock’s novel engages not merely with [Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Dent Mütter] but with decadent fin de siècle art and modernist literature that raised philosophical and moral questions about the metaphysical relations among art, science and human consciousness. The reader is just as spellbound by Lock’s story as [his novel’s narrator] is by Poe’s. . . . Echoes of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Freud’s theory of the uncanny abound in this mesmerizingly twisted, richly layered homage to a pioneer of American Gothic fiction.”

“Unrelenting in its exploration of what we can know about ourselves, Are You Here For What I’m Here For? is an enchanting journey that lingers with its reader long after the last page.”

“Straddling the line between a page-turning mystery and a forensic examination of the relationship between brain and self, The Measure of Darkness marks Durcan as a writer to watch.”

“Delivers seven compelling vignettes that tell different stories but are seamlessly threaded by a common factor: illness. Each individually titled vignette showcases the lyrical and phantasmagorical voice that Booker uses to colorfully display each character and their sometimes real and sometimes imagined affliction.”

“An intelligently human book about politics, struggle, love and frustration.”

“[A] carefully crafted story, written in a lucid and refined language. . . . The Attempt examines the perennial questions of social order, sacrifice and self-sacrifice, freedom, and acceptability of violence as the conditions for change. These questions catch us by surprise in our post-utopian times, especially when an East European author of Platzová’s generation raises them. But [she] succeeds in her attempt to bring these questions to life and show their relevance; she does it without ideology and with urgency, which make the novel a pleasure to read.”

“Booker’s writing is raw, haunting, and otherworldly in the pursuit of his characters’ emotional lives. . . . I loved the diversity of this collection—there is a hypochondriac, a paranoid academic, a teenager coming into his sexuality, and a boy who finds a mermaid on the beach. I’m here for Booker’s beautiful, brilliant debut.”

“Platzová’s lively prose keeps readers on tenterhooks while tracing the troubled history of an industrialist’s family and fortune and the rise and fall of anarchism.”

“In her resonant and lucid tale, elegantly translated by Alex Zucker, Platzová weaves together the story of her hero’s search and an imaginary reconstruction of the passionate history that haunts him, and suggests the enduring power of ideals even after they have been shattered.”

“Between this and 2014’s Aaron’s Leap, Platzová is on a roll, telling rich stories of European history and the 20th century’s cumbrous fallout.”

“Masterful . . . in the tradition of Prus, Kundera, and Vonnegut. . . . [Platzová’s] writing style is varied, sparing, insightful, and at times nothing short of poetic. Enthusiastically recommended.”

“Fascinating.”

“A powerfully distilled meditation on the meaning of freedom, a ferocious complexity lurking beneath its smooth and hypnotically readable surface.”

“A lively story. . . . Platzová demonstrates an understanding of anarchy and has a remarkable ability to explain it without dumbing it down.”

“This intriguing story of a present-day Czech immigrant who imagines himself as the great grandson of a Russian anarchist is beautifully written.”

“The Attempt is historical fiction at its best. Through its narrator’s archival approach to his material, the book explores the intimate lives of a pair of fervent idealists, as well as a robber baron and his family. The result is a vivid, poignant narrative about political upheaval, both in the past and the present.”

“A new literary biography of one of America’s most-loved and most mysterious poets. Charyn reveals a woman quite different from the lonely spinster we are all used to: a sexual woman engaged with herself and the world in a deeply philosophical way.”

“In A Loaded Gun, Jerome Charyn penetrates to the heart of Emily Dickinson, commonly thought to be a gifted but withdrawn spinster. He explores the ‘demon’ in her, the ‘predator,’ and should make readers go back to her poetry with a new understanding of why she still works her spell in our time.”

“Jerome Charyn’s A Loaded Gun is a staggeringly brilliant meditation on Emily Dickinson’s life and work, one that will shatter forever the myth of ‘the virgin recluse.’ His shrewd and provocative reading of her life, her loves, and her times allows us to understand in new ways just how Dickinson reinvented the language of poetry itself. One of the great and most original storytellers of our time, Charyn takes us deep inside the mysterious power and glory of Dickinson’s poetry, and into the strange, bold fearlessness of her outlaw life.”

“Provocative, sexy, pulsing with energy, and sometimes outrageous, Jerome Charyn’s A Loaded Gun revisits the subject he ‘couldn’t let go’ after completing his novel, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson. Tunneling into the poems, letters, biographies, and works of art inspired by Dickinson, Charyn presents the poet as ‘a Satanic, catlike sibyl,’ adept with masks, tricks, and outlaw escapes from convention. Keeping the subjects of the poet’s family, religion, sexuality, and poetic ‘tradecraft’ whirling in the air, he shows us Emily Dickinson as a ‘target who never sits still.’”

“Remarkable insight . . . [a] unique meditation/investigation. . . . Jerome Charyn the unpredictable, elusive, and enigmatic is a natural match for Emily Dickinson, the quintessence of these.”

“An intense work of literary scholarship. . . . [H]ighly recommended.”

“A celebrated master of literary voice, Charyn inhabits Dickinson from the first page. . . . [A Loaded Gun] is a gratifying nut of poetic analysis, historical psychology, and the passionate homage of a lifelong disciple of the beloved Belle of Amherst.”

“Outsiders and creeps, obsessives and masochists circle through dark corners in Robert Lopez’s short story collection. Master of the vandalized psyche, Lopez’s poetics combine high-octane sonic loops with desperate delusions, to form one of the most stylish and urgent books of 2016.”

“Charyn explores how the gaps in knowledge about Dickinson’s biography and writings contribute to her ever-expanding mystique. . . . [His] inviting prose allows readers with any degree of expertise on the life and work of Dickinson an entryway into her innovative, marvelous poetry.”

“A writer obsessed with the Belle of Amherst imagines her rich, sensual inner life. . . . Charyn’s ardent sleuthing yields a daring portrait of the elusive ‘enchantress’ and her world.”

“A postmodernism-flavored study of Emily Dickinson’s life and work. . . . [A] lively reassessment [with] vivid commentary.”

“In his reexamination of Dickinson as a sensitive recluse, Charyn does the influential poetess justice by admitting her ambition. Dickinson’s irreverence for grammatical and societal convention made her a revolutionary figure. Charyn gives the writer due credit for engineering her reputation and role, and not being a victim to it.”

“Charyn has followed Dickinson as assiduously as Alice down the rabbit hole. . . . Is Dickinson gay? Read Charyn’s fascinating thesis and decide.”

“Charyn is intrigued by the hermeneutics of biography and literary criticism. He is steeped in the work of Dickinson scholars and readers. . . . For Charyn the poems are Emily Dickinson, the vital part of herself that as a woman in nineteenth-century Massachusetts she could only fully express by keeping to herself—not as someone shy of society so much as one who knew society simply could not reciprocate what she had to offer. In other words, Charyn’s Dickinson is not agoraphobic, not a neurotic, but a writer in charge of her destiny.”

“Reading Jerome Charyn sometimes evokes the sensation of seeing Dickinson arise from her poems. . . . [H]e is about the work of enlarging the universe of her person and her poetry while he shows how much more there is still to do in fathoming her depths and contours.”

“Robert Lopez is the master of deadpan dread, of the elliptical koan, of the sudden turn of language that reveals life to be so wonderfully absurd. Always with Lopez, the voice is all his—enchanting, surprising, at times devastating.”

“A Loaded Gun is a fascinating meditation on an individual’s relationship to language and her place in the world, and Charyn’s quest will appeal not only to poetry lovers and Dickinson fans, but to anyone who understands the joy of immersing oneself in a puzzle to which no definitive ‘answer’ yet exists.”

“An imaginative and unprecedented look at Emily Dickinson that is part biography, part literary criticism, and altogether fascinating.”

“Less literary criticism than threnody, a bold, loose-limbed, Whitman-like prose-poem lamenting the constrictive previous, but still prevailing, notions of Dickinson and lauding instead a wild woman of words. . . . A Loaded Gun is an invitation to meet Dickinson on the dizzyingly high ground of her imagination from a fellow writer who has done just that with his own writing.”

“Charyn is a man, a New Yorker, living in the twenty-first century, yet he understands this female rebel from New England like no one else can.”

“One of the most distinctively different critical works on Emily Dickinson. . . . Startling, inventive, and vibrant with expressive energy.”

“Ecstatic. . . . [Charyn] may be the perversely perfect critic for the poet who wandered ‘The House of Supposition — / The Glimmering Frontier that / Skirts the Acres of Perhaps—.’”

“Robert Lopez is such a master of saddening hilarities that his virtuoso turns in this crazily heartbreaking, dizzyingly original new collection will restore even the most jaded reader’s faith in the fresh possibilities of American fiction.”

“[Emily Dickinson] will blow the top of your head off, no matter what century you live in. Charyn looks at a lot of ways to see this revolutionary, subversive, explosive genius.”

“Robert Lopez’s strange, incantatory, visionary stories reveal the mysteries behind the ordinary world. You lift your head from this book and it’s as if a third eye has been opened.”

“This beautifully written book grabs the reader from the start, with personal stories from the author’s life interwoven with history, archaeology, technology, and design.”

“Soul-crushingly dark, exceptionally well-written, and brimming with bitter wisdom, Good People is an anthology of compellingly authored masterpieces of the short story format that are very highly recommended.”

“If you care about your city and your happiness, read every page of this fascinating book. Places of the Heart offers a thrilling journey through the pathways of our cities and the human mind. This is no flight of fancy. It’s an evidence-based exploration of how the places we inhabit change our minds and bodies. Colin Ellard is one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the neuroscience of urban design. Here he offers an entirely new way to understand our cities—and ourselves.”

“In A Loaded Gun, [Charyn] is again out to release Dickinson from the myths that have enclosed her. . . . With essayistic chapters on Dickinson’s mother, her dog, her servants, her photographic image, her poetic fragments—Charyn’s book is perhaps best viewed as yet another imaginative attempt to get to the source of Dickinson’s emotional intensity, and to imagine an ‘Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century.’”

“Ellard shows that simple distinctions between nature and culture tend to collapse where many modern technologies are concerned. . . . Many of the trends with which Ellard engages—such as virtual reality technology that would allow individuals to live in a curated, mediated, personalized, and highly commodified bubble—sound as if they were pulled from the pages of Ray Bradburyesque science fiction.”

“A dizzying, disturbing tour of what might be going on in the minds of ‘good people.’ . . . Those who enjoy dark humor with a dose of sado-masochistic sexual fantasy will take pleasure in [Lopez’s] spare prose and ability to spear a thought on first strike.”

“Personalities ranging from the amusingly neurotic to the borderline psychotic shape the 20 quirky stories in this collection. . . . Lopez shows uncommon skill at evoking both laughs and shudders, sometimes in the same story.”

“Aren’t architects and urban planners trained to design buildings and cities? Why should a psychologist have a say in this? Because Ellard brings tools to the design board that should help ensure more positive responses to urban environment, from a mundane alleyway to an awe-inspiring cathedral or city hall. . . . Places of the Heart should stimulate debate about how our cities are shaped and how they shape us.”

“Tightly knit. . . . Recommended for lovers of darkly humorous, strangely illuminating fiction.”

“Read [Good People] to stumble into the sunlight afterward. . . . Depressing, inventive, and marvelous—a thought-provoking path to feeling awful.”

“A magnetic nonfiction reevaluation of the mystifying, radical, perhaps bisexual, and maybe greatest-ever American poet.”

“A powerful argument for the paramount importance of our daily surroundings. . . . This book offers readers a deeper appreciation of how architectural and environmental design can affect human well-being. Ellard provides the scientific backing to affirm what we intuitively know: that designing and building better surroundings can have tangible effects on our health and happiness.”

“Lopez uses a close point of view to maximum effect, drawing the reader into each character’s mindset; despite the sense of complicity this imparts, the dark humor and discomfort of these stories provides just as much enlightenment.”

“One of Lopez’s many gifts is being able to make accessible, through humor and wit, what might otherwise frighten us. Good People makes us question our own ideas about morality and the weight of our thoughts and actions, all the while entertaining us with the plights of others.”

“Ellard breaks down psychological and neurological information in an accessible way. . . . Highly recommended.”

“Whatever you believe about what separates good people from bad ones, forget it. Robert Lopez will challenge all of those assumptions in this arresting short story collection.”

“Remarkably intimate. . . . Deliciously clever.”

“Wide-ranging and absorbing. . . . Powerfully and comprehensively written. . . . An exceptional introduction to a vital part of the human experience.”

“Lopez does amazing things with prose, tone, and sparsity.”

“[Lopez’s] style is what would happen if Al Camus and Gertrude Stein teamed up to take down Hemingway.”

“Meshing recent findings with thoughtful appraisals of their implications, Ellard looks at spaces and the awe, lust, boredom, affection or anxiety that they trigger. He is richly insightful, particularly on digital encroachments into the experience of place.”

“Dark humor finds its way into these confessional stories and throughout the collection, the diverse voices ring true. Lopez has said music played a big part in his experience growing up, and it’s apparent in Good People that his writing has found its rhythm.”

“A great read.”

“A really great book.”

“From Neolithic monuments that awe to ‘playground casinos’ that empty wallets, Ellard argues that a scientific understanding of how our surroundings affect us must be the foundation on which we build the cities and homes of tomorrow.”

“These [stories are] trance-like rants, full of strange dark bitter, bitter comedy. Nobody else does whatever the hell it is [Lopez]’s doing better than he does.”

“Lopez has the ability to give the reader whiplash with his unconventional and bewitching stories.”

“An adventure tale that practically bleeds Americana. . . . For fans of Little Big Man, this might be the book you didn’t know you were waiting for.”

“Lock creates a memorable character who sees it all while providing a shimmering eulogy for the loss of one America in order to create another.”

“In one slender book, Norman Lock has made use of all the tools in the historical fiction writer’s arsenal, telling a sweeping story of the American West.”

“American Meteor is a fascinating, prophetic contribution to recent historical fiction, and Lock is plainly an author well worth our attention.”

“American Meteor is at its heart a frontier yarn of adventure and discovery, insight and yearning [for] readers who savor the well-turned phrase and those who demand a little swash with their buckle.”

“Lovely, burnished prose.”

“Like the western sky, American Meteor stretches to the horizon in all directions. . . . A lovely panorama to behold.”

“[American Meteor] is not only a history lesson but also a reading pleasure.”

“Successfully blends beautiful language reminiscent of 19th-century prose with cynicism and bald, ugly truth.”

“Rather like Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man. . . . [Lock] writes beautifully, with many subtle, complex insights.”

“Memorably encompasses grand themes and notions of transcendence without ever losing sight of the grit and moral horrors present in the period.”

“American Meteor is, at its core, a spiritual treatise that forces its readers to examine their own role in history’s unceasing march forward [and] casts new and lyrical light on our nation’s violent past.”

“[American Meteor] feels like a campfire story, an old-fashioned yarn full of rich historical detail about hard-earned lessons and learning to do right.”

“As the railroad spread across the United States, it became part of the mythology of the American West. So too did photographs of the landscapes, documented by a number of renowned photographers. The protagonist of Norman Lock’s American Meteor, a young man seeking his fortune, comes into contact with both of these strands of the West—but where they lead him is anywhere but familiar.”

“For a young country, the United States has had a violent and complicated history, one that is brilliantly brought to life by Norman Lock’s American Meteor. An enthralling coming-of-age story that also follows the tale of Manifest Destiny, American Meteor makes history as interesting as the year’s biggest blockbusters.”

“A tall tale, with a fascinating mix of historical facts and sound teachings. . . . [American Meteor] includes history, fiction, comedy and elegy and challenges the reader to examine the American story and to search for not what is true, but for what is truth.”

“[Walt Whitman] hovers over [American Meteor], just as Mark Twain’s spirit pervaded The Boy in His Winter. . . . Like all Mr. Lock’s books, this is an ambitious work, where ideas crowd together on the page like desperate men on a battlefield.”

“Sheds brilliant light along the meteoric path of American westward expansion. . . . [A] pithy, compact beautifully conducted version of the American Dream, from its portrait of the young wounded soldier in the beginning to its powerful rendering of Crazy Horse’s prophecy for life on earth at the end.”

“I read The Surfacing in Gjoa Haven, where Franklin Expedition spirits seem to cry out on the winter winds, and Cormac James’ writing spoke through the midday twilight with the chill of a voice from the distant past. Like the High Arctic world that he masterfully conjures, his storytelling is beautifully stark and captivating. The Surfacing lures with the tundra’s promise: new life can come from death.”

“Cormac James’ writing is very assured, with a harsh poetic edge. His evocations of barren landscape, sea weather, pack ice, and frozen skies are powerful and compelling.”

“The great topic of Cormac James’ The Surfacing is the reach of human possibility. The prose is calm, vivid, hypnotic, and acutely piercing. James is attuned to the psychological moment: this is a book about fatherhood and all its attendant terrors. James recognizes the surfacing of love in the face of solitude. It’s a remarkable achievement, a stylish novel, full of music and quiet control. This is a writer that I’d like to see hurry—I’m looking forward already to the next book.”

“An extraordinary novel, combining a powerful narrative with a considered and poetic use of language in a way that is not often seen these days. Reading the book, I recalled the dramatic natural landscape of Jack London and the wild untamed seas of William Golding. Cormac James’ writing is ambitious enough to be compared with either.”

“Written as linked recollections, the stories in Monastery divulge a man who introduces himself not with who he is but through what he cares to know about someone else.”

“Prismatically expands the possibilities for interpretation. . . . Detachment and dislocation have rarely been so well depicted as this.”

“James’s sharp prose and attention to detail . . . leaves a lasting impression.”

“Much like his wispy, smoke-filled covers, Eduardo Halfon’s writing has an ephemeral quality that is both wondrous and intriguing. In Monastery, the same mysterious narrator as in Halfon’s previous work, The Polish Boxer, returns to lead us once again on nomadic travels through time and place.”

“Hypnotic . . . a slow-burning psychological study. . . . Underneath all the ice, there is real emotional depth.”

“[Monastery is] filled with the stuff of life. . . . Halfon’s talent is to take these seemingly ‘insignificant’ details and make them immensely human and make the reader think, taking the reader places he/she will not expect to go; and he does it with such grace you can’t help but be pulled along and become immersed in it.”

“[Monastery] is about family and love and confusion, about being together and alone, about identity and all that entails. It’s about having faith in who we are and in who we might be and even in who we (or others) might say we are. It’s about losing that faith or rediscovering it or worrying we’ll never have it. . . . Halfon’s writing is rich . . . beautiful and of course, True.”

“A rare blend of adventure narrative and literary fiction, survival story and philosophical musing. . . . What emerges is a pure and transcendent vision of the joy of fatherhood.”

“A stunning historical novel. . . . A chiseled, cool work of poetic brilliance. . . . A mesmerizing novel about never-ending ice, bitter cold, shipwrecks and fatherhood.”

“As much Jack London as Daniel Woodrell. . . . James cleverly fashions a tense, controlled work that is bolstered by weighty research.”

“Although [The Surfacing] initially appears to focus on the unwinnable crusade of man against nature, at its centre is a love story—not a romance between adults but between a father and the son he learns to love. . . . A moving reminder that some of the biggest journeys in life don’t involve going anywhere at all.”

“James uses the sublime appeal of the Arctic and the extreme situation of his characters as the stage for an essentially domestic psychological novel. . . . The prose matches the landscape, rigorously unadorned, returning the gaze of a reader led into a world without hiding places.”

“If I were still a bookseller, I’d happily place [Monastery] in your hands and say, ‘You’ve got to read th[is]!’”

“Explicates the difficulties of epidemiology and of turning their findings into effective, useful action in the face of political and economic resistance. . . . If you are sometimes bewildered by the current struggle for science to make a dent against ignorance, it’s all here in Keep Out of Reach of Children.”

“[A] harrowing Arctic adventure.”

“In this enigmatic follow-up to Halfon’s lovely The Polish Boxer, readers follow the same narrator as he journeys around Central America, Europe, and Israel. . . . As if slowly filling in negative space, Halfon gradually gives shape to the uneasy relationship he has with his own allegiances and heritage as well as the outsider position he occupies wherever he goes, even within his own country. A subtle work that defies easy categorization in the best way.”

“Gratifyingly defies expectations.”

“[A] sly, quietly penetrating account of life on the road. . . . One of [Halfon’s] special attributes is never forcing meaning on his experiences. . . . But he’s also great at reversing our initial impressions of people and places. . . . A rising star among Latin writers, Halfon is a lively traveling companion.”

“Far more than a story of parental interests or threats to children’s health. . . . Recommend[ed] for any concerned with public health management, research studies, aspirin and its management, or the processes of intervention, protection, and research that dictate the choices of public health as a whole.”

“Halfon gives voice to a lesser-known sector of the Jewish diaspora, reminding us in the process of the ways in which identity is both fluid and immutable.”

“Meticulous. . . . If one thing becomes clear in Largent’s narrative, it’s that the regulatory process itself is disordered.”

“An absorbing study of the interrelationships of science, business, politics, and public health. . . . Both professionals and lay readers interested in science will enjoy this work.”

“A well-researched history of Reye’s syndrome that explores how science, medicine and politics interact. . . . As Largent examines the dispute over whether to require warning labels on bottles of aspirin, he also scrutinizes the actions and interactions—some might say the machinations—of pharmaceutical companies, consumer rights groups, epidemiologists, public health officials, courts and the U.S. Congress. . . . A revealing work.”

“In this fascinating account, Reye’s syndrome–survivor Largent weaves his own tale throughout the bigger story about this puzzling medical condition. . . . This thought-provoking work certainly meets the goal of the publisher’s Pathologies Series to chart ‘the impact of disease on human individuals and populations from the biological, historical, and cultural perspectives.’”

“A fascinating history of a public health crisis. Compellingly written and insightful, Keep Out of Reach of Children traces the discovery of Reye’s syndrome, research into its causes, industry’s efforts to avoid warning labels on one suspected cause, aspirin, and the feared disease’s sudden disappearance. Largent’s empathy is with the myriad children and parents harmed by the disease, while he challenges the triumphalist view that labeling solved the crisis.”

“[The protagonist] may be the perpetual wanderer, but his meditations are focused and absorbing.”

“An enjoyable and informative contribution to the history of astrophysics. . . . [Hirshfeld] is a fine writer not only in the macro sense—his overall tale is a compelling one—but also in the micro sense—he writes terrific sentences, sometimes slyly witty, sometimes filled with interesting metaphors.”