Narrative theme: Sense of place Books

Ravage: An Astonishment of Fire draws together MacGillivray's extensive research into the life and work of Norwegian-Shetlandic poet Kristjn Norge, who vanished from Eilean a' Bhis in the Outer Hebrides in 1961. Comprising two previously unpublished...

New York Times Best Thriller of 2023New York Times Editors' Pick 2023For seventeen years, small-town public defender Andy Hughes has been underpaid to look after the poor, the addicted, and the unfortunate souls who constantly cycle through the courts,...

From church barn to apple orchard, from snow-covered pasture to secret moonshine cabin, Manning's Snakedoctor reinvigorates the Kentucky pastoral through poems that find light in shadow, good in evil, love in a father's stinging blow.Maurice Manning...

"The novel is a quiet but strong tour de force."~Marly Swick, author of Evening News: A Novel1992. Tyler Manning- high school teacher, part-time farmer, bachelor of 38-is planning his first day of summer vacation when a strange car approaches his Kansas...

Perfect for fans of Emily Giffin and Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Palace at Dusk explores the complexity of love in an illicit office romance.Harvard-educated corporate attorney Jasmine "Jae" Phillips promised herself that she wouldn't date anyone at the...

What came first in this Gothic Western, the ghosts orThe Black Tree Atop the Hill?Set in an alternate American old-west that is hauntingly familiar yet strangely off-putting, Marisol is the first to see the tree on the hill, but that's only to be...

Bad Foundationsis a comedic absurdist novel about a home foundation inspector whose own home life is falling apart.Cook does not have an ordinary job. He spends his days inspecting people's crawl spaces, cataloging their filth and photographing the decay...

As labyrinthine as its namesake, Dorothea Lasky'sThe Shiningis an ekphrastic horror lyric that shapes an entirely unique feminist psychological landscape.Here, Lasky guides us through the familiar rooms of the Overlook Hotel,both realized and imagined,...

I Could Read the Sky is a collaboration, in the shape of a lyrical novel, between writer Timothy O'Grady and photographer Steve Pyke.It tells the story of a man coming of age in the middle of this century. Now at its end, he finds himself alone,...

Written by Germany's #1 bestselling author Juli Zeh, About People takes place in the middle of lockdown in spring 2020 and subtly describes the social and very private consequences of the pandemic.Fleeing stay-at-home orders in the big city,...

Burmese poet Maung Day's ninth book of poems but his first full-length collection written in English, Death in Summer is a haunting, surreal series of prose poems and original ink drawings that delivers defiant social commentary on the atrocities of...

Navigating the uncertainty of a divided China wracked by warfare and corruption, Tao Yuanming's poetry-expertly translated by Red Pine-chooses the path walked by China's ancient sages, finding joy in living a simple life. The latest work in Red Pine's...

With the Spanish flu pandemic on the rise, a former gold rush town- once the largest city in the Pacific Northwest- is threatened with extinction via eminent domain should their population fall below 125 citizens. To save their homes, former madam Maude...

"... Take the leap: fall in love with Jazz, with Serena, with Fletch, with Rocky maybe even with a ball python or a dusky pygmy rattler." ~ Laura McBride, author of We Are Called to Rise and In the Midnight RoomThe theft of Trina Leigh Dean's beloved...

The novels O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My ntonia made Willa Cather's reputation and, though published separately, are nowstudied together as Willa Cather's Great Plains Trilogy. These three novels, set in Nebraska and Colorado, cemented...

In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow,...

Daniel Zimmer will do almost anything to end his pain-except for the one thing that might work.Growing up in 1970s Brooklyn under the shadow of his tyrannical father and against the backdrop of the Son of Sam murders, the Karen Ann Quinlan tragedy, and...

In a small Kentucky college town in 1953, two married women desperately fall in love with each other, until a moment of indiscretion threatens to destroy both their lives.In her new adult novel, award-winning author Julia Watts creates a compelling,...

The Bronx. It's America at its most vibrant and chaotic; it's also where one foster care caseworker-awould-be white savior from New England, a twentysomething kid prematurely jaded by the system-takes it upon himself to reunify a troubled birthmother...

Pacific Light is a book of transformations, history, love, endurance, and unfathomable beauty by a poet 'at the height of his powers'.David Mason was born in Washington State, forty-odd degrees north latitude, and now lives on the...

At times scorching, at times brimming with awe and desire, this debut book of poems resonates with a brilliant new voice.When Justine Chan worked as a park ranger at Zion National Park, she chose to retell a Southern Paiute folktale for her weekly...

In her loving Foreword to this expanded anniversary edition, Naomi Shihab Nye writes "Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is one of the dearest, most appealing books ever published. These poems are tiny delicious American haiku affectionately...

Jane Clarke's third collection is far-reaching and yet precisely rooted in time and place. In luminous language her poems explore how people, landscape and culture shape us. Voices of the past and present reverberate with courage and resilience in the...

Ghost River invites readers to stare down blue-mouthed crevasses, venture into old growth forests, and peer beneath the floorboards of ancestral homesteads.In this lyrical and intimate portrait of America's Pacific Northwest, wilderness and home are...

Winner of The Laurel Prize 2023 Best UK First Collection, Burning Season is a book about fire and survival, climate change and nature's defiance.The book combines poems with nature diaries and lyric essays to trace an intriguing family history. This...

Danny is a Polack with a heart of gold. He grew up in New City, home of what was once the world's largest slaughterhouse, the Chicago Stockyards. After Danny's wife's infidelity, he stepped out of what the US calls the "white man's" world. Standing over...

Rae Kelliher is a veteran environmental activist and pioneer in the death-with-dignity movement. Her husband Reggie calls her "party in a box" and "a weaver of people and movements." Facing a diagnosis of terminal illness, Rae engages in a shocking...

"Beautifully written and satisfyingly creepy, this is one of the most poignant and original ghost stories I've ever read." -Mark Haskell Smith, author of BlownIn a small, secluded town that thrives on gossip and superstition, Dottie offers plenty of both...

Finalist, Governor General's Literary Award in the Translation CategoryA Quebec bestseller based on the life of Michel Jean's great-grandmother that delivers an empathetic portrait of drastic change in an Innu community.Kukum recounts the story of...

An epic, multi-perspective debut novel bringing the streets of Cairo to life.Sherif 'Sheero' Abdallah is an NYU student revelling in independence, free from the judgemental gaze of his conservative family in Egypt to indulge in all...

In her extraordinary graphic novel - which masterfully incorporates poetry and elements of memoir - Lauren Haldeman layers the warfare of soccer over the battlefields now called Bull Run Regional Park, where, growing up, her soccer team would practice...

Independent Press Award Distinguished Favorite recipient for fiction. Benjamin Franklin Silver Award, audio version for fiction. Angela Hanson grew up poor in a world of despair. Toughened by rejection and disappointment, she vows to hide her fears...

Agatha Christie meets How We Roll in this entertaining new series.Murder sees double when former pro bowler Billy Gills finds himself summoned to the Partridgeberry County morgue to identify the body of his identical twin brother Bo. Billy is the...

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICEAn incomparable storyteller serves up an enchanting concoction of art, love, and longingIn fifteen masterful stories, Frederic Tuten entertains questions of existential magnitude, pervasive yearning, and the creative impulse...

WINNER OF THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION"A significant new voice in fiction, Norris has written what may be one of the defining novels of the era..." -BuzzFeedOne of Publishers Weekly's Best Novels of the Summer One of The Millions' Most...

Now in paperback-bestselling author and humorist Garrison Keillor returns to one of America's most beloved mythical towns, beset by a contagion of alarming candor.A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via...

"some ekphrastic evening, this'll be both criticism and poetry and failing that fall somewhere that seem like in between."So writes poet, critic, theorist, and MacArthur fellow Fred Moten in his latest poetry collection perennial fashion presence falling...

In Michael Earl Craig's sixth book, poems resonate with an inscrutable logic that feels excitedly otherworldly and unsettlingly familiar.Whether he be writing about the cadaver that Hans Holbein the Younger used as a model, Montana as the "Italy of God,"...

In her latest book,New Life, Lambda Awardwinning poet Ana Boievi writes, "For my birthday I want a cake/revealing the color of my soul." Never saccharine, these poems are by turns cheeky and heartfelt, grounded and wistful, and above all-surprising. New...

Winner of the 2023 CLMP Firecracker Award in Creative NonfictionWinner of the Pegasus Award for Poetry CriticismOptic Subwoof is a collection of talks that poet and National Book Award finalist Douglas Kearney presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture...

In her new collection, renowned publisher and poet Rebecca Wolff voyages in the myopia of American consumer consciousness-erotic regard, spiritual FOMO, gentrification, branding-without destination.Labyrinthine in their paradoxical musings and incisive...

Former United States Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith wrote in the New York Times, "CAConrad's poems invite the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery, to step outside of passivity and propriety and to become susceptible to the illogical and...

2022 WINNER OF THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR POETRY Eschewing series and performative typography, Douglas Kearney's Sho aims to hit crooked licks with straight-seeming sticks. Navigating the complex penetrability of...

A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2021 An NPR Best Book of 2021 An Electric Literature Best Poetry Book of 2021 A Dennis Cooper Best Book of 2021In Hoardersreality television as a medium, Durbin conjures an uncanny space of attachments that reflects our...

New illustrations by Tim Foley and a new foreword by author Robert Wheeler catapult this timeless classic by Ernest Hemingway into the twenty-first century with vigour.For nearly a century, The Sun Also Rises has endured as one of Hemingway's...

2023 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Long List2023 Book of the Year, Southern Literary ReviewNamed a 2023 Great Group read, Women's National Book AssociationA South Carolina family endures one life-shattering day in 1961 in a town that lies in the shadow...

There are not a plethora of novels set in Northeastern Arkansas and the bootheel of Missouri, but Pope's debut novel explores this beautiful and sparsely populated country, full of cotton fields and tiny towns-and is all the richer for the author's...

"With her debut novel,Till We Become Monsters, Amanda Headlee raises the genre to a chilling new level. I recommend reading this one with all the lights on."-Phil Giunta, author ofLike Mother, Like DaughtersMonsters existand Korin Perrin knew this as...