The Noblest Vol. II is a collection of some of the work of a small group of people from different walks of life who came together in a writing workshop given at the Noble Maritime Collection. Together, we shared our writings, we listened to each other, and we grew into a family of friends. As you read their thoughts, their ideas, their stories, you will come to glimpse them as I have been privileged to do. Their poems, stories, and memoirs speak for themselves. They have opened their heart...

Lambda Literary Award-winning editor Richard Canning brings together all new work by Edmund White, Dale Peck, James McCourt, Andrew Holleran, and others.

**Blazingly intelligent, wickedly funny, and piercingly honest, a memoir that captures the perils and pleasures of girlhood, womanhood, and life itself.“One of my favorite books of the last few years.” —Cheryl Strayed“Sentence for sentence, a more pleasure-yielding midlife memoir is hard to think of.” —The Atlantic**At mid-life, Claire Dederer developed a sudden yearning for jailbreak. In this exuberant memoir, she reflects on two periods in her life uncann...

Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins.With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.Like the present book’s title, Collins’s poems are filled with mischief, humor, and irony, “Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address / only those in my own time zone”–but also with quiet observation, int...

A touching memoir of life with an alcoholic father who secretly works with the CIA, a dark pilgrimage through the valley of depression and addiction, and finding a faith to redeem and a strength to forgive."This is a record of my life as I remember it—but more importantly, as I felt it."At the age of sixteen, Ian Morgan Cron was told by his mother that his father, a motion picture executive, worked with the CIA in Europe. This astonishing revelatio...

An intimate and darkly comic memoir of a woman who does a 180 with her body.In the opening pages of Passing for Thin, Frances Kuffel waits at the airport to be picked up by her brother, Jim. He strides past her without a glimmer of recognition because she barely resembles the woman he is expecting to see. Jim had last seen her when she was 188 pounds heavier.What follows is one of the most piercing explorations of the limits and promises of a body since Lucy Grealy’...

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he described it as a “comic weekly.” And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founder’s description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists of the modern era—among them Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, George S. Kaufman, James Thurber, S. J. Perelman, Peter De Vries, Mike Nichols, Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen, Donald Barthelme, Calvin Trillin, Geo...

The second volume of collected short fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain, featuring fifty-eight short stories that “mix brilliance with high-concept pyrotechnics” (Los Angeles Times), including fourteen never-before-published tales“Whether he’s writing about survival in a wasted environment or people and animals coming unhinged, Boyle never fails to captivate, to deliver his ideas within the ...

HOUDINI HEART harkens back to the masters of suspenseful supernatural horror: Poe, Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, but speaks with a wholly fresh voice. Once caught in its pages, there's no escaping Longfellow's terrible tale.Weeks ago, she was one of Hollywood's biggest writers, wed to one of its greatest stars. The doting mother of their golden child. But now? She's alone, tortured by a horrifying secret no woman could bear.Pursued by those she can't outrun, anguished by a gu...

**New York Times BestsellerThe creator of The New Yorker’s long running satirical column, and “one of the funniest people in America,” pays tribute to comedic geniuses both past and present, including Mark Twain, George Saunders, Nora Ephron, and more (CBS Sunday Morning).**Library of America’s collection of hilarious stories, essays, and articles is an exclusive Who’s Who of the very best American comic writing. Classic pieces of American humor appear her...

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...

Like Kofi Annan, Larry Miller is one of the most irresistible comic personalities working today. Known for years as an actor, writer, comedian, and sexual pioneer, he's gained a new following as a cultural commentator and frequent guest on political shows. Now, in Spoiled Rotten America, he fixes his gaze on what's funny about our daily lives—which includes, roughly speaking, everything. From middle-aged drinking ("When you're in your twenties, you can drink all night and bungee-jump off a...