In his second collection Luc Sante pays homage to Patti Smith, Rene Ricard, and Georges Simenon; traces the history of tabloids; surveys the landscape that gave birth to the Beastie Boys; explores the back alleys of vernacular photography; sounds a threnody for the forgotten dead of New York City. Autobiography is the glue that holds the collection together: every item carries deep personal significance, and most are rooted in Sante’s experience growing up in NYC’s Lower East Side in the fertile 1970s and '80s. As he traces his deep engagement with music, his experience of the city, his progression as an artist and observer, and his love life and ambitions, memoir flows into essay, fiction into critical writing, and humor into poetry. The collection shows Sante at his most lyrical, impassioned, and imaginative, a writer for whom every assignment brings the challenge of inventing a new form.

The second novel in The Comet Cycle, a grippingly original sci-fi series in which a passing comet has caused irreversible change to the growth of fungi, spawning a dangerous, invasive species in the Pacific Northwest that threatens to control the lives of humans and animals alike.

The illuminated medieval manuscripts known as Books of Hours have been used to guide contemplation and prayer for centuries, with their intricate designs and exquisite coloring. Devotional poet and priest Spencer Reece has revived the tradition with a collection of vibrant watercolors inspired by his life journeys and reflections on faith. The evocative images and accompanying texts in All the Beauty Still Left are sure to provoke contemplation and reflection for readers of all faiths.

Taking inspiration from medieval sea charts—portulans—these poems bring a fresh variation to the ancient metaphor of life as a journey. Portulans guided mariners from port to port weaving paths at the threshold of the open sea. Similarly, the course of these poems navigates familiar mysteries and perennial questions through times of unbelief, asking whether consciousness is anchored in the transcendent, and if the universe can be accounted for by physics alone.

David Talbot and Margaret Talbot illuminate “America’s second revolutionary generation” in this gripping history of the political landscape of the 1960s and 70s, one of the most dynamic eras of the twentieth century, brought to life through seven defining radical moments that offer vibrant parallels and lessons for today.

The stories in Said Sayrafiezadeh’s new collection are set in a contemporary America full of people contending with internal struggles—a son’s fractured relationship with his father, death of a mother, loss of a job, drug addiction—even as they are battered by larger, invisible economic and political forces. Searing, intimate, slyly funny, and marked by a deep imaginative sympathy, American Estrangement is a testament to our addled times.