Study in Perfect is an exploration of perfection. In “Moving Horizontal” a Victorian house loses its charm over time, especially when compared to a modernist contemporary filled with light. Family life is dense with pleasure, as in the perfect vacation described in “Marking Time in Door County,” and in “Neriage, or What Is the Secret of a Long Marriage,” where an ancient Japanese ceramic technique has much in common with shaping a close relationship. There is such a thing as a per...

A wry and beautifully observed memoir about coming of age in the era of conceptual art.Growing up in the suburbs—confused about his sexuality, about his consumer-oriented world, about the death of his older brother—Bernard Cooper falls in love with Pop art and sets off for the California Institute of the Arts, the center of the burgeoning field of conceptual art, in this beguiling memoir. The most famous, and infamous, artists of the time drift through the place, i...

"The best memoir I have ever read. It's sad, terrifying, and scorchingly honest . . . This book is a punch to the heart. Read it." —Stephen KingA Los Angeles Times Favorite Nonfiction Book of the YearA Washington Post Book World Best Book of the YearWhen Abigail Thomas's husband, Rich, was hit by a car, his brain shattered. Sub...

An inspiring account of one woman's quest for fulfillment, for readers of Eat, Pray, Love."Superb." —Martha StewartMargaret Roach worked at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia for over twenty years and made a name for herself through her gardening work with her hugely popular gardening blog, "A Way to Garden." But despite the financial and professional rewards of her job, Margaret felt unfulfilled. So she moved to her weekend house ups...

In this collection of short works that defy easy categorization, Margaret Atwood displays, in condensed and crystallized form, the trademark wit and viruosity of her best-selling novels, brilliant stories, and insightful poetry.Among the jewels gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got Dracula all wrong, and the five methods of making a man (suc...

“Poetry,” writes best-selling author Ellen Bass, “is the way I pay attention, appreciate, give praise, struggle, grieve, rage, and pray. It’s the way I embody my love for the world.”The Human Line, Bass’ seventh book of poems, startles with its precise detail, intimate images, and wild metaphors. Bass brings attention to life’s endearing absurdities, and many of the poems flash with a keen sense of humor. She also faces many of the crucial moral dilemmas of our time—geneti...

An astonishing book by the prize-winning, bestselling author of A Natural History of the Senses thatreveals her parallel lives as an observer of the wildlife in her garden and as a telephone crisis counselor."(Ackerman) brings a luminous and illuminating combination of sensuality, science, and speculation to whatever she considers." —San Francisco Examiner

The eagerly awaited, brilliant, and engaging new poems by Tony Hoagland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me*The parade for the slain police officergoes past the bakeryand the smell of fresh breadmakes the mourners salivate against their will.*—from "Note to Reality"Are we corrupt or innocent, fragmented or whole? Are responsibility and freedom irreconcilable? Do we value memory or succumb to our for...

The Burning Alphabet confirms and extends Barry Dempster’s reputation as one of Canada’s most respected poets. Underpinning these poems, as in his previous work, there lies an unswerving dedication to emotional and spiritual honesty, clear-eyed recognitions rendered without pomp. In one section, "Sick Days", he focuses on that "other place" of chronic illness. Other poems present arguments against suicide, and explore the tropical wonders of a woman’s closet. The closing section renders, w...

"This book talks smack. This book chews with its open mouth full of the juiciest words, the most indigestible images. This book undoes me. . . . francine j. harris brilliantly ransacks the poet's toolkit, assembling art from buckets of disaster and shreds of hope. Nothing she lays her mind's eye on escapes. You, too, will be captured by her work."—Evie ShockleyLyrically raw and dangerously unapologetic, play dead challenges us to look at our cultivated selves as products o...

Lucky Fish travels along a lush current — a confluence of leaping vocabulary and startling formal variety, with upwelling gratitude at its source: for love, motherhood, “new hope,” and the fluid and rich possibilities of words themselves. With an exuberant appetite for “my morning song, my scurry-step, my dew,” anchored in complicated human situations, this astounding young poet’s third collection of poems is her strongest yet. "Nezhukumatathil's third book is fascinated with the ...

Joyfully melding knowing humour and torqued-up wordplay, Holbrook’s second collection is a comic fusion of the experimental and the experiential, the procedural and the lyric. Punch lines become sucker punches, line breaks slip into breakdowns, the serious plays comical and the comical turns deadly serious. Holbrook's poems don’t use humour as much as they deconstruct the comic impulse, exposing its roots in the political, the psychological and the emotional life of the mind. Many of these...