This unforgettable memoir, by one of our most gifted writers, introduces us to the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move, yet they develop an extraordinarily close, almost telepathic relationship. As Toby fights for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, his experiences are at once poignant and comical, and Wolff does a masterful job of re-creating the frustrations and cruelties of adolescence. His various schemes—running away to Alaska, forging checks, and stealing cars—lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility.

This collection of stories—twenty-one classics followed by ten potent new stories—displays Tobias Wolff's exquisite gifts over a quarter century.

Greg Williamson's verbal wizardry is again on display in these funny and darkly serious poems. As Richard Wilbur said of his first collection, The Silent Partner, Williamson "is concerned . . . with the fugitive nature of all orderings."

And here, in the latest title in the Sewanee Writers' Series, the doublings and hidden dangers in life and language ricochet wildly, as in the quadruple look at people's relationship to nature and metaphor in "The Dark Days" or in the group of twenty-six "Double Exposures" where each poem has to be read three times. These obsessive themes lead to a final section about the difficulties of any artistic quest in these disordered times. We hear from a sesquipedalian security mirror and a disapproving muse, join in progress a medieval romance in a shopping mall, despair with Wile E. Coyote, and see the poet's frustrated efforts at a life in art in the title poem, a meditation on modern times—times filled with computer glitches, phone trees, and talk radio.

There's an extraordinary amount of wit and wordplay—outrageous puns, fractured homilies, garbled quotations, double entendres—in this short book. A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck recalls those planetarium shows that, in their vertiginous final minutes, whirl the audience through the cosmos.To say that Williamson is one of the three or four contemporary American masters of light verse may be a less grand pronouncement than it sounds, given how few serious poets these days would aspire to the title. Williamson's rhymes are likewise dexterous, with a number of unexpected combinations, and here and there he comes up with something so neatly preposterous that Byron might have been proud to claim it. The book holds up so well, richly repaying rereading, because there's a somber, eerie iciness at its core.

That Claude Wilkinson is bonded to the southern landscape and deeply in love with it is evident in the forty-four poems that make up Reading the Earth. These poems demonstrate a rare sensitivity to the natural world and its significance to human lives. Observers of the most mundane aspect of nature, the author not only reports but immerses the reader into full participation in his Eden.

Joy in the Morning alludes to Psalm 30:5: Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

These poems ultimately point to the inherent rewards of continuation and survival, as the Scripture suggests, while they also pun on the words morning/mourning to reveal ways in which joy can be found even amid suffering. The sure joy Claude Wilkinson offers readers is this: nature's delicate details and memory's refining power. Tender, astonishing depictions—of an iridescent beetle, a jazz funeral, rural poverty transformed by a mother's love—carry the theme in lyrical form. Joy in the Morning are poems of strong emotion and exquisite artistry.

A New Zealand author's first novel. Brett Healey is 30 years old and trying to work out just what are the ties and motivations in his life. Travelling to and from his grandfather's funeral, he reflects on his past, finding patterns as he meets again the people who have meant most to him.

Covers the lives of two young people from New Zealand, Adrian and Emily, who continue to cross paths with each other and are drawn together time after time by a series of different situations.

In the tradition of Joan Didion and Paul Theroux, this highly acclaimed writer/reporter offers a vivid portrait of today's Haiti—where during the day the streets are filled with bustling markets while at night they are filled with gunfire. A re-issue of a modern classic wiith a new introduction, "After the Earthquake."

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, this is a brilliant writer’s account of a long, painful, ecstatic—and unreciprocated—affair with a country that has long fascinated the world. A foreign correspondent on a simple story becomes, over time and in the pages of this book, a lover of Haiti, pursuing the heart of this beautiful and confounding land into its darkest corners and brightest clearings. Farewell, Fred Voodoo is a journey into the depths of the human soul as well as a vivid portrayal of the nation’s extraordinary people and their uncanny resilience. Haiti has found in Amy Wilentz an author of astonishing wit, sympathy, and eloquence.