FICTION
Released: Jan. 11, 2011
"The uncanny power of Baxter's work derives from his knowledge of our secret selves as well as our surface ones."
This is the fifth story collection from novelist Baxter (
The Soul Thief, 2008, etc.); its 23 stories (seven of them new) range from mediocre to memorable to mesmerizing.
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FICTION
Released: Sept. 1, 2009
"A fresh, chaotic and sexy updating of the cross-cultural experience."
Wildly profane and funny riffs on folklore, chronicling the adventures of two very modern Chinese-American sisters.
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ADULT
Released: April 27, 2000
"Whether writing about the natural creatures of the world or about myth and personal history, Collier offers delight for both ear and mind."
FICTION
Released: July 1, 2010
"Doerr (Four Seasons in Rome, 2007, etc.) moves the reader gracefully from place to place (the stories span four continents), from incident to incident, and from memorable character to memorable character by focusing on small acts that have larger resonances. "
A collection of six stories--at least one long enough to be considered a novella--that illustrate Doerr's sparse style, command of language and mastery of characterization.
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ADULT
Released: April 1, 1998
"Hoagland's dumb optimism carries some of his poems beyond their sloppy diction and countercultural correctness."
Winner of a new award in James Laughlin's honor, this second book by the New Mexico State writing professor is an uncomplicated series of autobiographical poems about being a guy, from backslapping tales of sexual exploits to the dark and dirty truths of male animalism.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2010
"Only the title story, an anti-elegy for a World Trade Center victim, demonstrates explicitly how apt Hughes's title is, for the mourners' happiness is so rare and fleeting that they're doubly happy to feel happy."
Everything about this slender collection of 11 stories from Hughes (
Wavemaker II, 2001) rings true except for its ironic title.
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FICTION
Released: March 29, 1999
"Despite himself, a tighter poet than his hero Whitman: Jones lacks the room to roam and yawp, though he's always eminently readable."
FICTION
Released: Feb. 1, 2008
"A considerably more ambitious and searching work than its predecessors."
An idealistic commitment to political and social change resonates throughout three decades in the Anglo-Indian author's vivid third novel.
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ADULT
Released: April 1, 1998
"A mixed bag, to be sure."
Liu's third collection of mostly imagistic verse discovers the sacred in earthly things, the poet having lost his faith long ago, as he reveals in "Apostasy," which finds Christianity "a monolith/that grew too heavy."
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FICTION
Released: May 1, 2009
"Definitely out of the ordinary, and not the ideal book to digest in one sitting, but a mature step forward for this unsettling postmodernist."
Purposefully fragmented, often beguiling novel about a Chicago family's slow disintegration as its disgruntled members search in vain for the ethereal things they believe will set them free.
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FICTION
Released: Sept. 1, 1998
"When he eschews cleverness for its own sake, Muldoon enlists his considerable technical skill in undermining his own conceits: he's clearly a major young poet in any case."
The Irish-born Princeton professor dazzles the ear with his eighth book of verse; full of inventive rhyme and repetitions, and seamless meters, Muldoon's work resembles the monk of his poem —Anonymous—: 'sharp-witted, swift, and sure.— A linguistic voluptuary, Muldoon sometimes leaves readers behind with his gestures to Apollinaire, and his dense Joycean patter; but his best poems ground his visionary sensibility in everyday observation: —The Mudroom— and two poems titled —The Bangle,— in particular, rely on a collage of imagery and idiom, from Yiddish slang, Asian clarity, and classical allusion to the common items found in a mudroom (hubcap, extra fridge, soft drinks).
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FICTION
Released: Sept. 16, 2010
"Class, not cure, is Nunez's preoccupation, and she handles it with fine-tuned irony and no small measure of profundity."
An adolescent orphan finds a home with an evangelical Christian community after his parents perish in an influenza pandemic, in the latest from Nunez (The Last of Her Kind, 2005, etc.).
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ADULT
Released: Dec. 31, 1998
"Lighter verses, with suitable forms, praise the sublimity of New York City water or begrudge a friend her superior voice, but most of these resonant poems are God-centered, clear, and profound."
Selected by Molly Peacock for the 1997 Marianne Moore Prize, this impressive debut volume introduces a poet of remarkable versatility and intelligence: Seyburn's gentle wit and winning persona find inspiration in family history; her narratives and lyrics, with their varying lines, draw on her sense of Jewish identity and difference, whether as an assimilated midwestern girl, or in the voices of some lost women from the Bible.
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FICTION
Released: Feb. 1, 2006
"A hauntingly beautiful story written with tenderness and endowed with true insights into the frailty of relationships."
NONFICTION
Released: Feb. 1, 2011
"A dryly humorous memoir of love, travel and wide-eyed idealism."
Chronicle of the chaotic year during which two-time Pushcart Prize–winning author Unferth (English/Wesleyan Univ.;
Vacation, 2008, etc.) and her then-boyfriend went from being college coeds to aspiring communist revolutionaries in Central America.
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