Presents a collection of Gertrude Stein's works, revealing a wide range of styles that she used throughout her works.

Felines touched a vulnerable spot in the unfathomable soul of Charles Bukowski, the Dirty Old Man of American letters. On Cats brings together the acclaimed writer's reflections on the animals he so admired. Bukowski's cats are fierce and demanding -- he captures them stalking their prey, crawling across his typewritten pages; waking him up with claws across the face. But they are also affectionate and giving, sources of inspiration and gentle, insistent...

Tom Hennen gives voice to the prairie and to rural communities, celebrating--with sadness, praise, and astute observations--the land, weather, and inhabitants. In short lyrics and prose poems, he reveals the detailed strangeness of ordinary things. This volume is Hennen's long-overdue introduction to a national audience. "In Falling Snow at a Farm Auction" Straight pine chair, Comfortable, In anyone's company, Older than grandmother, It enters the...

"Ambrose Bierce wrote stories so dramatically different from those of his contemporaries that they hardly seem like they were written in the nineteenth century. These original and innovative tales, most of which appeared in the 1880s and 1890s, constitute 23 examples of his best and most characteristic short fiction: anti-war satires that underscore the barbarism and futility of bloodshed; horror stories with a keenly ironic edge; and sardonic "tall...

The demise of a respectable but unloved fiancé introduces a sudden and intoxicating freedom into Eliza Wharton's life. Two new beaus vie for her attention: Reverend Boyer, a staid and proper clergyman, and Major Sanford, a dashing libertine. Reluctant to commit to either suitor, Eliza struggles with the conflicts between duty, romance, and her new-found independence. Based on the true story of Eliza Whitman, the much-talked-about focus of America's...

In I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying Bassey Bassey Ikpi explores her life--as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist--through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her remarkable memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy. From her early...

In this powerful book, Bowden ventures through the Southwest in a tangled search for the truth behind the assassination of a murderous border-town drug dealer. Along the way he encounters high-rolling developers, ecological activists, a charismatic archaeologist-sage, and illegal aliens in a life-on-the-edge trek that brings you into a desert civilization careening out of control and decaying at its center.

Blending stark realism with the surreal and fantastic, Eve L. Ewings narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality. Ewing imagines familiar figures in magical circumstances; blues legend Koko Taylor is a tall-tale hero; LeBron James travels through time and encounters his teenage self. She identifies everyday objects: hair moisturizer, a spiral notebook as...

Among the writers to emerge during the mid-19th century transcendental movement, Henry David Thoreau is perhaps the most popular and recognizable, thanks in no small part to his book Walden. After spending two years in a self-built cabin in the woods -- on the property of fellow writer and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson -- the Massachusetts-born author, poet and philosopher put on paper his experiences among nature, listening to the sounds...

"Keenly observed and written with his insightful and deadpan sense of humor, [Rick Bragg] explores enduring Southern truths about home, place, spirit, table, and the regions' varied geographies, including his native Alabama, Cajun country, and the Gulf Coast. Everything is explored, from regional obsessions from college football and fishing, to mayonnaise and spoon bread, to the simple beauty of a fish on the hook. Collected from over a decade of...