A broomstick horse, clay marbles, WWII tin fighter plane, Cold War dollhouse with bomb shelter, "all the toys are vanishing," says Nancy Eimers in Oz, her fourth collection of poetry. These poems offer a paradoxical, moving elegy of things we left—or that left us—behind, not just the toys that grow obsolete, but a lost cat, a name, a monarch wing, a melting glacier, all the children at Terezín—an "immensity" that "recedes so incrementally we can't— / we just can't / put a human face on it." Eimers looks closely at what we lose and how we let go of it, sorrowfully or with secret relief, or some irresoluble hope of recovery.

Poetic portrayals of a world obsessed with death.

Ehrlich explores the twin solitudes of political exile and geographic isolation in this powerful novel—the story of Japanese Americans forced into a relocation camp—set in Wyoming during World War II.

After nature writer Gretel Ehrlich was struck by lightning near her Wyoming ranch and almost died, she embarked on a painstaking and visionary journey back to the land of the living. With the help of an extraordinary cardiologist and the companionship of her beloved dog Sam, she avidly explores the natural and spiritual world to make sense of what happened to her. We follow as she combs every inch of her new home on the California coast, attends a convention of lightning-strike victims, and goes on a seal watch in Alaska. Ehrlich then turns her focus inward, exploring the tiny but equally fascinating ecosystem of the human heart, culminating in a stunningly beautiful description of open-heart surgery.

The narrator, a Black oil refinery worker in Louisiana, looks back on his life and the people and events that have shaped it.

In January 1882, Oscar Wilde arrived in New York to begin a nationwide publicity tour. Mentioned in a few newspaper articles—but barely a footnote in the history books—was the black valet who accompanied him. In a daring and richly imaginative work, Louis Edwards rescues this figure from obscurity, blurring the line between fact and fiction as he follows Wilde and his gifted confidant, Traquair, on a whirlwind tour across the country, from high-society Newport to art-conscious San Francisco to the Deep South. Edwards's brilliantly conjured Wilde astounds the New World with his eloquent lectures and larger-than-life presence, while Traquair delights in the greatest year of his youth: losing his virginity in a Washington, D. C, brothel; meeting Jefferson Davis in Mississippi; falling hopelessly in love in St. Louis; and learning about his own family's secret history. Juxtaposed with Traquair's experiences are those of his Caucasian best friend, Baxter, who travels to England and becomes enmeshed in a circle of luminaries including Lady Wilde, James Whistler, Lillie Langtry, and Wilde's future wife, Constance Lloyd.

Combining seductive, epigrammatic language and a unique perspective on class and race in late-nineteenth-century America, Oscar Wilde Discovers America builds to a surprising climax that offers a chilling forecast of the tragic destiny of Wilde and a stunning redefinition of the American spirit.

Kim Edwards’s stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century—in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago. A family drama, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets are finally uncovered.

After years abroad, Lucy returns home from Japan. She is newly haunted by her father's unresolved death a decade ago. Late one night, as she paces the hallways of her family's lakeside house, she discovers, locked in a window seat, a collection of family heirlooms which soon reveal a complex family history.

“An artist who moonlights as a dentist. A worm who's eternal. A farmer who milks his cow to death. Not to mention the guy with a belly button for an eye. Russell Edson, self-named Little Mr. Prose Poem, returns with See Jack, a book of fractured fairy tales, whose impeccable logic undermines logic itself, a book that champions what he has called elsewhere 'the dark uncomfortable metaphor.' 'What better way to die,' he writes in the final prose poem, 'than waiting for the fat lady to sing in the make-believe of theater, where nothing's real, not the fat lady, not even death . . . ' See Jack may be Edson's best book yet—proof that his imaginative powers keep growing. What a deliciously scary thought!” —Peter Johnson