Inspired by the iconic punk scene of the late '70s, No Names blurs the lines of affection and sexuality in a haunting tale of desire, hope, and loss.Mike and Pete were "no names," two working-class boys lost in the shuffle of their stratified town, brought together by their love of music. By 1978, their punk band was blazing across the underground scene. Now, in 1993, Mike is a hermit living alone on a dot of an island in the North Atlantic. When a mysteri...

Witty, touching, introspective—Blindsight finds Hewett becoming a parent and easing toward middle age with a sense of calm and inevitability.In poems that are full of wit, touching, and introspective, as well as formally inventive, we find the poet losing his sight, becoming a parent, and occupying middle age with a sense of calm and inevitability. Hewett draws inspiration from the grand and the mundane, the abjection and joy of creating a vision out of bl...

Delve into the pervasive question: why does American society continue to condone a deadly habit claiming nearly half a million lives annually? This insightful book dissects the multifaceted impacts of smoking on our communities. Originally crafted for a college English class where it earned an exceptional grade (A+), this compelling narrative marks the dawn of a revolution, urging individuals to scrutinize their habits and opt for healthier choices. Spanning five pages, it furnishes compel...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • From the acclaimed author of Weather comes a slim, stunning portrait of a marriage—a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.“A startling feat of storytelling . . . Each line a dazzling, perfectly chiseled arrowhead aimed at your heart.” —Vanity Fair...

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism, this indispensable anthology brings together works from all genres of creative nonfiction, with pieces by fifty contemporary writers including Cheryl Strayed, David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and more.Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970...

Stephen King's book Under The Dome has become a TV show. This book gives you the story background, information on the show's characters, TV plots and interesting analysis by a fan of the show.

SWEET ROMANCE: Though Lady Luck had more spunk than skills, she was determined not only to restore the bungalow she found, but also replace the sign above the porch, that read, "Born To Lose." She promised herself, that one day, when it looked the part, she would change its name to "Lady Luck." It was what her daddy always called her. It fit too. Poor as her family was, it never stopped them from making the best out of her life. Ever since third grade—when rich kids on the hill made fun of...

Bold new essays on how to craft a thrilling read--in any genre--from the bestselling author of The Dead LandsAnyone familiar with the meteoric rise of Benjamin Percy's career will surely have noticed a certain shift: After writing two short-story collections and a literary novel, he delivered the werewolf thriller Red Moon and the postapocalyptic epic The Dead Lands. Now, in his first book of nonfiction, Percy challenges the notion that l...

The invasion of the future has begun.Literary legends including Steven Millhauser, Junot Diáz, Amiri Baraka, and Katharine Dunn have attacked the borders of the every day. Like time traveling mad-scientists, they have concocted outrageous creations from the future. They have seized upon tales of technology gone wrong and mandated that pulp fiction must finally grow up.In these wildly-speculative stories you will discover the company that controls the world from an alley in ...

Selected for the 2008 National Poetry Series by Kevin YoungThe poems in Adrian Matejka's second collection, Mixology, shapeshift through the myriad meanings of "mixing" to explore and explode ideas of race, skin politics, appropriation, and cultural identity. Whether the focus of the individual poems is musical, digital, or historical, the otherness implicit in being of more than one racial background guides Matejka's work to the inevitable conclusion that...

New writings on our fear of—and fascination with—the "other" from Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Kelly Link, Jeffrey Ford, and more.Alien is a powerful and flexible word. Aliens are "other." Aliens are the stuff of science fiction and fantasy. Aliens are traditional literary figures that cause us to see ourselves anew. Indeed, when we witness our "normal" lives through these strangers' eyes, we become the unfamiliar ones.Conjunctions:67, Other ...

In 1988 the University of Arkansas Press published Billy Collins’s The Apple That Astonished Paris, his “first real book of poems,” as he describes it in a new, delightful preface written expressly for this new printing to help celebrate both the Press’s twenty-fifth anniversary and this book, one of the Press’s all-time best sellers. In his usual witty and dry style, Collins writes, “I gathered together what I considered my best poems and threw them in the mail.” After “what seemed like a...