This Sunday afternoon I nestled in with a cup of coffee, my own mechanical typewriter resting quietly nearby, and hopped on a call with Fernando A. Flores, author of Tears of the Trufflepig, a novel birthed from the keys of an Olivetti Underwood Lettera 32 in Austin, Tx. Hammered out in a four month fever dream, Flores wrote Trufflepig in late 2014, but his mythical depiction of the Texas-Mexican border is filled with details and insight that read like prophecy.
Talking crows. Troublesome earth spirits. The worlds Max Porter weaves in his fiction are fantastical ones, where myth bleeds constantly into reality. Yet the concerns of his prose--even as he reinvents the concept with his poetic and formal experimentation--are always completely human. Dead parents. Missing children. The need for an explanation. The need to place blame. With Lanny (out 5/14 from Graywolf Press), these concerns come to a head when an odd child meets an implacable and timeless force.
I have been a huge fan of Rosanne Parry’s work since her first middle-grade novel, HEART OF A SHEPHERD, arrived back in 2009, when she and I were both debut children’s authors and occasionally appearing together at book events. Rosanne’s books are frequently set in her home state of Oregon and are heart-warming, lovely, and honest. Rosanne beautifully evokes both character journeys and the landscape in which they take place. They’re perfect middle grade novels! A WOLF CALLED WANDER is just out and it’s based on the real story of the journey of wolf named OR7.
Emmalea Russo’s G is doing several things at once.
By employing a hemispheric division, creating borders reminiscent of a hem, the poems’ form resembles, on one side, a raised garden bed. On the facing side, the prose-poem rests on the bottom of the page, creating a ground. As in a painting, the ground creates, not a negative space of whiteness, but a full sky. The poem becomes a landscape.
We’re big fans of Emily Duncan’s debut YA Slavic folklore-inspired fantasy, WICKED SAINTS here. Laura G has a blurb for it featured in the current kids’ issue of INDIE NEXT. And I found it such a fun page-turner that I begged Emily’s publicists for an interview and was delighted when they said yes! WICKED SAINTS is the story of warring kingdoms, blood magic, unlikely heroes, and a girl who hears the voices of any number of gods, all of whom provide her with guidance and magic. And oh yes, a healthy dose of forbidden love, because really what is a YA fantasy novel without a bit of that?
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Published: Riverhead Books - July 11th, 2017
This is a complete and utter escape en par with a certain other Irish writer's stream-of-consciousness masterpiece. Contemplative, rich, and an absolute delight - pure natural aesthetic pleasure!
Filled with rich, jewel-toned comic pages as well as luscious, dizzyingly detailed spreads, Alvarez brings the imagination to life in her latest graphic novel! Filled with nature-inspired imagery, this book is a gorgeous work of art for people of all ages!
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 12th, 2019
This book by primatologist, atheist and philosopher De Waal will break your heart and fill it with wonder. Using the life of chimpanzee matriarch Mama as a case study, his ever empathetic and brilliant mind explores the complex emotional life of our animal cousins.
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - April 2nd, 2019
Out in paperback 4/2! A masterpiece. This dizzying tale draws together several strangers and the natural world that is fading around them in an epic struggle for the future of American forests. Engaging and timely without being didactic, THE OVERSTORY is Powers at his best.
Richard Powers will be with Tayari Jones for an event with Inprint on 4/22!
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Published: Penguin Books - May 27th, 2014
Mooallem dives deep into our conflicted relationship with animals, and the extreme lengths we will go to save endangered species. A beautiful, tender book that reveals much more about us than it does about the creatures we are trying to save.
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Published: University of Chicago Press - April 14th, 2014
Artist and scientist Rachel Sussman set out to photograph the old living things in the world. This stunning coffee table book reminds us how fleeting and precious a single human life is against the backdrop of mosses, lichen, and tree systems that have lived for centuries.
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Published: G.P. Putnam's Sons - August 14th, 2018
This latest pick for Reese Witherspoon's Book Club is part coming of age story and part murder mystery, set against the backdrop of the lonely North Carolina marsh lands, so vividly depicted they serve as their own sort of fully-realized and mesmerizing character.
Published: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books - March 12th, 2019
Set in Houston both past and present, ANGEL THIEVES intertwines the stories of a father and son eeking out a living stealing cemetery angels, an escaped slave and her daughters, an ocelot, a marble carver, a teenage girl, and the ever-present, ever-moving Buffalo Bayou, which sees them all in Newbery Award winner and National Book Award nominee Appelt's lyrical, gorgeous new YA novel. We are hosting Kathi Appelt on 4/24! Join us!
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Published: Two Dollar Radio - September 18th, 2018
Each character in this novel are extremely flawed, facts become blurred as the Louisiana humidity and swamps take over a mother with mental illness and her two daughters are left to understand what has happened. A story of family and the dark cloud our past and the choices our family make that effect our past present and future.
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Published: Avery Hill Publishing - October 15th, 2018
A story that shifts between the surreal and the everyday as a woman looks back on her childhood and growing up, ultimately about discovering who we are and want to be in life while not having just one coming-of-age, but multiple in a lifetime. A beautiful reminder that who we are in this moment does not define who we can become.
Green thumb or not this book will inspire you to create a garden of your own no matter where you live. Full of gorgeous photos and inspiration for all types of spaces.
Our very own Habes has the jungle down pat in his exploratory, lucid adventure story. Life, death, renewal, past, present — all is represented in this obsessive and philosophically driven novella. Out this fall. Sorry, you'll have to wait for this one!
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Published: Pushkin Press - November 7th, 2017
Taro is one of the last residents in a 12-apartment complex slated for demolition, each home named after a zodiac symbol. He becomes friends with a woman in his complex who is obsessed with the beautiful and unusual house next door. This book beautifully encompasses themes of growth, rebirth, and nostalgia.
Published: New Directions Publishing Corporation - February 26th, 2019
This incredible feminist writer just passed away, and her works have been woefully under-worshipped. In BINSTEAD’S SAFARI, a woman finds agency during a trip to Africa with her husband. As they travel, she transforms from a rather bland woman to a fabulous social butterfly who is able to find satisfaction wholly separately from her self-indulgent husband. Tongue-in-cheek and utterly pleasing, this book engages the mystique of the local fauna (it is Rachel Ingalls, after all... hint, hint).
Published: Liveright Publishing Corporation - March 14th, 2017
Take a deep dive into the Gulf of Mexico with this Pulitzer Prize-winning work of ecological history. Davis weaves a rich narrative that looks closely at the people, industries, and wildlife that call this sea home.
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Published: Mariner Books - May 28th, 2003
Celie's story is like a blooming flower: out of traumas imposed by men, and the violence of the Jim Crow South, she comes into the love that can exist between people who care for one another. All of this pivots on her lover Shug's theology of nature, rooted in the sensuality of fields of flowers, rain, wind and the sky.
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks - April 3rd, 2018
Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, Ukrainian author Svetlana Alexievich is an utterly original voice in modern writing. Her books are described as "oral histories" where Alexievich interviews people from every facet of society: farmers to government officials to soldiers. Her books look bravely into the abyss of the 20th and 21st century, seeing the brutal reality of events like the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, war and its aftermath. There's very little in modern writing as visceral and urgent as her books; they're as important as they are moving.
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Published: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers - September 11th, 2018
Written and Illustrated by two women this picture book is not only beautiful but full of amazing powerful women from around the world. From artists to activists, this book guarantees to teach you about an important woman in history you maybe don't know.
A drunken heroine meets a dark and mysterious stranger, who whisks her away to an isolated island estate overrun with near-feral children. What unfolds is a haunting and utterly odd take on the modern fairy tale from one of America's greatest living writers.
This translated book cuts to the heart of what it is to occupy a female body - the fear, the joy, and the rage. Twelve speculative stories demonstrate a vast range of emotion - at times they are uplifting and peaceful before diving back into the narrative's constantly present, violent underbelly. Haunting, visceral, and so important.
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Published: Deep Vellum Publishing - January 24th, 2017
RECITATION charts the travels of a mysterious traveler and voice actress after she arrives at an empty train station in Europe. As the book’s pages creep by, the lone woman’s narrative becomes ever more tangled in her personal identity, family past, and the imagined collective past of city dwellers in general. Bae Suah weaves a lyrical exploration of self-discovery through the eyes of what could be any number of female identities. This is a remarkable book that manages both experimentation and nonlinearity and thoughtful, deliberate plot.
I first came across Crown of Feathers back in October and let me tell you, it has been so difficult to wait for it to hit shelves! I read the book in one day, completely engrossed in the world building and characters. I am so thrilled I was able to interview the author, Nicki Pau Preto, about her gorgeous story of sisterhood, deception, and betrayal.
