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