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Extra Indians
Fiction
Eric Gansworth

After a moment of kindness turns tragic, Tommy Jack McMorsey is forced to revisit his past: the horrors of Vietnam, a love affair, and the suicide of his closest friend. Exploring the ways images, stereotypes, and depictions of identity intersect...

The Nature of College
Nonfiction
James Farrell

Engaging in a deep and richly entertaining study of “campus ecology,” this fascinating, highly original book explores one day in the life of the average student. Along the way, it repurposes the great and timeless opportunity presented by college...

The Last Fair Deal Going Down
Fiction
David Rhodes

Scorned and feared by their neighbors, Reuben Sledge’s family persists on the outskirts of Des Moines, near the edge of the City—a surreal place, from which no one who enters has ever returned. But when the woman Reuben loves ventures into the...

Poetry
Ada Limón

From U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, an extraordinary collection—at once urbane and earthy—that navigates the thoroughfares and tributaries of human nature.

Cracking India
Fiction
Bapsi Sidhwa

As the young daughter of an affluent Parsee family in Lahore, Lenny is keenly observant of the city’s astonishing diversity—Muslims and Hindus, Christians and Sikhs, coexisting together. But as Lahore descends into sectarian violence, Lenny’s...

Behind the Bedroom Wall
Young Readers
Laura E. Williams

It is 1942. Korinna is an active member of the local Nazi youth group. When she discovers that her parents—who are secretly members of an underground resistance group—are sheltering a family of Jewish refugees behind her bedroom wall, she is...

Rock Island Line
Fiction
David Rhodes

Born and raised in the idyll of Sharon Center, Iowa—a life of four-leaf clovers, dogs, and fishing—July Montgomery is rocked by the tragic death of his parents, a blow that precipitates his bitter exile from Eden. After an escape to Philadelphia...

The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland
Nonfiction
Bill Holm

A Minnesotan of Icelandic ancestry, the author’s travels have taken him all over the world. Here he repairs to Brimnes, his fisherman’s cottage on the shore of a fjord in northern Iceland. Looking west from this place of seemingly endless and...

Montana 1948
Fiction
Larry Watson

In this modern classic, the charges of a young Sioux woman force David Hayden’s father, the sheriff of their small town, to confront his older brother, a charming war hero and respected doctor. This novel is an astonishing tale of love and...

Views from the Loft
Nonfiction
Daniel Slager

Founded nearly four decades ago by a group of young writers, the Loft has become our nation’s largest independent literary center. This anthology gathers the collected wisdom of that community, from practical tips and suggestions to ruminations...

Welcome to the off-kilter world of Finley, an investigator of indiscernible origins and prowess. Her assignment: the mysterious Professor Uppal and his puppets. The objective: impossible to say. Captivating and whimsical, idiosyncratic and deeply...

Seedlip and Sweet Apple
Poetry
Arra Lynn Ross

Seamlessly bridging the material and spiritual worlds, these poems take the reader into the mind of a true visionary: Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker religion in colonial America. This remarkable collection captures the ineffable...

The Keening
Young Readers
A. LaFaye

Born into an artistic and eccentric family, Lyza laments that her only talent is carving letters into wood. At least, that is, until the devastating loss of her mother during the pandemic of 1918. When her unconventional father begins to prepare...

Nissa's Place
Young Readers
A. LaFaye

Since her father remarried, Nissa feels like a stranger in her own home. Hoping to restore the life she knew, Nissa accepts an invitation from her mother and moves to Chicago—but life in the big city is overwhelming. How can Nissa fit in when...

Fancy Beasts
Poetry
Alex Lemon

California wildfires, the 2008 election, plastic surgery, Larry Craig, wildfires, Wal-Mart, and rampant commercialism—these poems take on American media culture, the obscene foil for personal legacies of violence and violation. This collection...

Thirst
Fiction
Ken Kalfus

These stories mine a vast terrain of geography and metaphor, sketching portraits of people caught in the seismic collision of cultures, be they real, hallucinated, dreamed, or desired. Witty and fantastical, hip and wise, this first collection by...

Young Readers
Natasha Friend

Isabelle Lee is a typical, wisecracking, middle-of-the-pack girl who just happens to be dealing with some big issues. Her father has died and no one—especially her mother—wants to talk about it. Meanwhile, Isabelle’s sister has messed everything...

Driftless
Fiction
David Rhodes

Home to a few hundred people yet absent from state maps, Words, Wisconsin, comes richly to life by way of an extraordinary cast of characters: a cantankerous retiree, a lifelong paraplegic, a former drifter, and many others. At once intimate and...

At once ancient and contemporary, personal and political, grounded and yet uniquely dazzling, this extraordinary collection blends Asian and Western sensibilities in a pioneering way. With wit and energy, these poems define the author’s existence...

Chain Letter of the Soul
Poetry
Bill Holm

Musician. Curmudgeon. Trailblazer. Prairie populist. Teacher. World traveler. Cultural critic. Humanitarian. Scholar. Skeptic. Insightful humorist. Charismatic speaker. Firebrand. Seer. This collection of new and selected poems paints a portrait...

Young Readers
Jessica Lee Anderson

Manz is sure of one thing: he lives on the wrong side of the tracks in dusty Rockhill, Texas. Life is tough for everyone, but especially for Manz, the mixed-race son of migrant apple pickers. When the summer heat sets in, Manz takes a job outside...

The Easter House
Fiction
David Rhodes

Brothers C and Sam left home after their father’s violent death. But upon their return to the Easter house—looming over the residents of Ontarion, Iowa—they create a lucrative business: The Associate, a group of men who perform services for a fee...

Journal of a Prairie
Nonfiction
Paul Gruchow

Charting one cycle of seasons, this book reveals countless cycles of thought: the innumerable sounds of winter snow; the fecundity of spring; the tenacity of prairie roots in a summer drought; and the mortality of fall. The result is equal parts...

The Hospital for Bad Poets
Fiction
J.C. Hallman

Lusty and literate, these tales feature characters flirting with disaster. An alienated young man discovers the meaning of love in the pages of a biology textbook. A mother and son witness a father’s backyard fling with a disturbed neighbor. And...

Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska
Nonfiction
Seth Kantner

This fascinating account of life on North America’s last frontier chronicles the transformation of the Arctic as the mainstream moves relentlessly north. Essays and photographs offer an ode to respect—that oft-forsaken, unromantic quality—for the...

Poetry
Jody Gladding

Drawn from the environments of northern Vermont and the South of France, the poems in Rooms and Their Airs explore the interface of the human and natural worlds, further eroding that distinction with each poem.

The verse here...

Water Steps
Young Readers
A. LaFaye

As a small child, a storm at sea claimed Kyna’s family, and nearly took her own life. Now, when her adoptive parents announce that they’ve rented a summer house on “magical” Lake Champlain, Kyna begs to be left home for the summer. No such luck....

The Book of Props
Poetry
Wayne Miller

A tightrope walker who travels on telephone wires; angels, scarecrows, friends, and lovers—the speakers in these poems often desire to hold time still, even as they acknowledge that to do so would actually mean the death of love, of experience....

Reading Novalis in Montana
Poetry
Melissa Kwasny

Drawing inspiration from Novalis, a poet who believed in the correspondence between inner and outer worlds, this collection divines the palpable and ineffable ways in which inherited traditions—indigenous culture, mythology, romanticism,...

Pig Magic
Young Readers
Julie Crabtree

Mattie, Ariel, and Nicki are fast friends facing the uncertainty of being thirteen. After finding a book of spells, the three girls perform a ritual that will grant each the object of her desire—but the girls’ longed-for wishes carry unintended,...

A Whaler's Dictionary
Nonfiction
Dan Beachy-Quick

Taking its inspiration—and, for that matter, its form—from Ishmael’s abandoned “Cetological Dictionary” in Moby-Dick, this extraordinary, highly original work brings meditations on myth, representation, language, nature, consciousness,...

Slant
Young Readers
Laura E. Williams

Lauren, a Korean American adoptee, is best friends with the prettiest girl in school. Julie has an endless amount of confidence. Lauren doesn’t. It’s not that she wants to look like everyone else in her suburban Connecticut school—she’d just be...

Love of Impermanent Things
Nonfiction
Mary Rose O'Reilley

At midlife, the author writes, we are called to an “archaeology of memory”—turning over a potsherd here, a fragment there—to assemble something whole out of the messiness of experience. She encourages all of us to contemplate our own deep story,...

I Am Death
Fiction
Gary Amdahl

Exploring the paranoia and bravura of the modern American male, these powerful novellas depict a realm marked by faltering blunders, misguided intentions, and the fear of failure. “I Am Death, or Bartleby the Mobster” charts the slumped career of...

The Year of the Sawdust Man
Young Readers
A. LaFaye

Eleven-year-old Nissa’s life has never been perfect. Living with her free-spirited mama in the small town of Harper, Louisiana, has led to lots of gossipy small talk and mean rumors. But now Mama is gone, leaving Nissa with her gentle father, and...

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