A firsthand, behind-the-scenes account of the turmoil that pervaded the New York Yankee franchise in the late 1970s, this book discusses George Steinbrenner's purchase and continual rebuilding of the team—alongside a colorful cast of players and businessmen. Not merely a look at the time spent in Yankee Stadium, this chronicle also describes the team's public arguments, practical jokes, drunken excess, self-aggrandizing publicity efforts, and the ups and downs that accompanied the Yankees ...

Set in nineteenth-century New England, this exquisite novel tests a woman's love against her husband's utopian quest.Sophy Hedge, the artistic daughter of the town's minister, falls in love with Gideon Birdsall, a driven theology student assisting her father with a Hebrew lexicon. Sophy is drawn to Gideon's intellect, passion, and spiritual nature, while Gideon glimpses in her a free soul unbound by convention. Yet Gideon's restlessness after they wed worries Sophy...

"Each of Moss's surprising, beautifully constructed, and soulful stories brilliantly illuminates the paradox of paradise." —BooklistThese eight magical stories address the Edenic spaces that people create in their lives and the serpents that subtly inhabit them. In "Rug Weaver" (selected for Best American Short Stories 2001) an Iranian rug dealer makes a paradise of his prison cell by weaving an elaborate rug in his mind. Grieving parents in the t...

Dancing Girls is Margaret Atwood’s highly praised first collection of short fiction. In it she explores the dark intricacies of the mind, the complexities of human relationships, and the clashes between cultures. In the stories, the mundane and the bizarre intersect in unexpected ways: ex-wives indulge in an odd feast at a psychiatrist’s funeral; a young student is pursued by an obsessed immigrant; an old woman stores up supplies against an impending cataclysm. The fourteen storie...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry“One of the truly imaginative writers of our time.” —Los Angles Times Book ReviewYou never know what Charles Simic is up to until you reach the end of the line or the bottom of the paragraph. Waiting for you might be a kiss. Or a bludgeon. A smile at the absurdities of society, or a wistful, grim memory of World War II.He puns, pulls pranks. He can be jazzy and streetwise. Or cloak hims...

From the Pulitzer Prize winning poet comes this “nearly perfect collection issued to celebrate his being named poet laureate of the United States” (The New York Times).Charles Simic has been widely celebrated for his slyly original poetic imagery; his social, political, and moral alertness; his uncanny ability to make the ordinary extraordinary; and, not least, his sardonic humor. Gathering much of his material from the seemingly mundane minutiae of Americ...

Exploring grief, yet neither bleak nor overwrought, this powerful short story won the 2013 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition. The judge, Carl Nixon, commended its 'seemingly effortless artistry' and its skilful and well-sustained handling of demanding narrative techniques: 'the author does not miss a beat', he said. Cleverly juxtaposing the past and present, the narrator draws the reader into her life. The judge concluded: 'Beautifully controlled use of simile and ...

Nine Horses, Billy Collins’s first book of new poems since Picnic, Lightning in 1998, is the latest curve in the phenomenal trajectory of this poet’s career. Already in his forties when he debuted with a full-length book, The Apple That Astonished Paris, Collins has become the first poet since Robert Frost to combine high critical acclaim with broad popular appeal. And, as if to crown this success, he was appointed Poet Laureate of the Uni...

In Anthony Carelli's remarkable debut, Carnations, the poems attempt to reanimate dead metaphors as blossoms: wild and lovely but also fleeting, mortal, and averse to the touch. Here, the poems are carnations, not only flowers, but also body-making words. Nodding to influences as varied as George Herbert, Francis Ponge, Fernando Pessoa, and D. H. Lawrence, Carelli asserts that the poet’s materials—words, objects, phenomena—are sacred, wilting in the moment, yet perennially renewed...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • In this radiant new collection, Franz Wright shares his regard for life in all its forms and his belief in the promise of blessing and renewal. As he watches the “Resurrection of the little apple tree outside / my window,” he shakes off his fear of mortality, concluding “what death . . . There is only / mine / or yours,– / but the world / will be filled with the living.” In prayerlike poems he invokes the one “who spoke the world / into being” and c...

Poetry from the author of Tell Me, a finalist for the National Book Award.A chestnut with a white blaze is scorching across the turf towards the finishing post.

Memory generates memory. Grief slumbers. There are membranes of regrettable sorrows. And, there is that catch-breath of love. Born in England, she was three and he was eleven when their family came to Canada. In a few years, he would be swept into the pulsing generation of peace and love. She remembers how he held her hand walking across College Street on the way to the Beatles concert. Once, he picked her up in the VW and they went to the country in search of the full moon.