An extraordinary Zen teacher and artist, Hakuin (1686-1769) is credited with almost single-handedly reforming and revitalizing Japanese Zen from a state of extreme spiritual decline. What made Hakuin
"These marvelously provocative essays ... shine with honesty and tenderness."---Nelson Bryant, The New York Times Book ReviewWendell Berry identifies himself as both "a farmer of sorts and an artist o
A mixture of travelogue and personal narrative, James Conaway’s smart, informative essays offer an insightful depiction of his journeys between Washington, D.C., and Big Sur, California, as he
Features the author's reminiscences of growing up on and escaping from a family farm in North Dakota, headed for a peripatetic career as a rock musician, poet, and English teacher.
A series of interconnected short stories explores the intimacies, betrayals, origins and evolution, joys, and tragedies of friendship between women. By the author of A Student of Weather. Original. 25
Two beautifully paired essays, "Tawny Grammar" and "Good, Wild, Sacred," serve to offer an autobiographical framework for Gary Snyder's long work as a poet, environmentalist, and a leader of the Buddh
"A page turner...heart-stopping and enraging...focused, justified, and without a trace of self-pity. Shot through with poignancy." ––New York Times Book ReviewOver a decade after its first publication
"Robison uses a minimalist discipline and barely ruffled surfaces, but her hidden pictures of childhood and other states of vulnerability are boundless in their emotion." —The Los Angeles Times Book R
"Sharp observations about motherhood and womanhood . . . Audacious, confident, smart, seductive." —The New York Times Book ReviewPages for Her is the story of two women, Flannery and Anne, each at a p
Following on the heels of her exciting and widely acclaimed A Monster’s Notes, and with Sheck’s characteristic brilliance of language, Island of the Mad follows the solitary, hunchbacked Ambrose A., a
A century of industrialization has left our food system riddled with problems, yet for solutions we look away from the land — to nutritionists and government agencies, scientists and chefs. In
An intense stream of consciousness - with loops, flashbacks, and multiple digressions - takes us into the mind of Akaki, a middle-aged Japanese man. Wearing a business suit and overcoat, Akaki stands
Answers to such questions as how to keep proper syntax from sounding stiff and keeping conversational language from being incorrect are offered in this guide to using and understanding language resour
A reasonably successful, fiftysomething artist and professor caught between a midlife crisis and the decay of his sixties, Elroy Nights--with his wife's agreement--elects to live separately from his w
An adventure novel upended by grief and propelled by the aberrant charm of its narrator, Hard Mouth explores what it takes to both existentially and literally survive.For ten years, Denny's father has
"Pete Fromm is a powerful, lucid writer, a perfect guide to the unpredictable rivers and people of the interior West, to their deep channels and breathtaking turns." ––Jess Walter, author of Beautiful
Winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award “Tonic for the spirit: a charming, deeply moving, unerringly human story, perfectly shaped and beautifully told.” —The Globe and MailLife in Winni
Based on popular pieces that have appeared in The New York Times, Parents, Men's Health, Real Simple and O: the Oprah Magazine, McGlynn captures the joys, terrors, moral ambiguities, and absurdities o
Humans have been practicing agriculture for only a tiny fraction of our existence?beginning to domesticate plants and animals about 10,000 years ago?and, as McWilliams sees it, our efforts have failed
Three women, early twenties, find themselves aimlessly adrift in Erika Carter’s fierce and darkly funny debut novel, Lucky You. Ellie, Chloe and Rachel are friends (sort of); waitresses at the same ti
New Zealand's preeminent writer Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections, gathered here for the first time in a single volume. From
Over the years, Wendell Berry has sought to understand and confront the financial structure of modern society and the impact of developing late capitalism on American culture. There is perhaps no mor
In 1989, Bill Porter, having spent much of his life studying and translating Chinese religious and philosophical texts, began to wonder if the Buddhist hermit tradition still existed in China. At the
In a novel rich in historical detail, acclaimed author Eliot Pattison reconsiders the founding of America and explores how disenfranchised people of any age and place struggle to find justice, how co
It's 1948: postwar Rome is giddy and chaotic. Dante Omero Sabat, a successful writer and intellectual, is attending yet another film industry soiree at Tullio Merlini's apartment off the Via del Cors
In Human Oddities, by newcomer Noria Jablonski, we meet Siamese twins, newly separated, drag queens, and seedy hospital orderlies. A corpse washed up on the beach, cancer diagnoses, and tummy tuck ope
Marion Wink is esteemed for bringing humor and wit to that most unavoidable of subjects: death.At last, Winik's critically acclaimed, cult favorites, Glen Rock Book of the Dead and Baltimore Book of t
"A darkly funny and provocative novel." —O, The Oprah MagazineFrom the beloved and award-winning author of All My Puny Sorrows comes this welcome reissue of one of Miriam Toews' most celebrated novels
Meticulously blending the concerns of her poetics into an exciting and mysterious work of fiction,The Venetian Papers of Ambrose A. is the daring new novel by celebrated poet and novelist Laurie Sheck
Chinese civilization first developed 5,000 years ago in North China along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. And the Yellow River remained the center of Chinese civilization for the nex
Linda Gray Sexton’s critically acclaimed memoir is an honest, unsparing account of the anguish and fierce love that bound a brilliant, difficult mother and the daughter she left behind. Linda S
John Miltonpoet, polemicist, public servant, and author of one of the greatest masterpieces in English literature, Paradise Lostis revered today as a great writer and a proponent of free
Jane Vandenburgh, the author of two highly acclaimed novels and a recent memoir, offers aspiring writers the tools to create powerful and unique novels filled not only with good writing but also dyna
In Only Love Can Break Your Heart, David Samuels writes with a reportorial acumen and stylistic flair that recall the pioneering New Journalism of Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion. Combining el
In Slowly, By Thy Hand Unfurled, a nineteenth century nameless and uneducated housewife records a remarkable diary of her dark, disintegrating journey. Trying to make sense of herself and to form a ju
"Kauffman has done something remarkable with The Gunners . . . There's so much generosity and spirit and humor shared by whatever characters are on the page at any given time that I was always happy t
"Reading the essays in Anna Journey's elegant, haunting new collection, An Arrangement of Skin, is like cracking open a closet door and peering in to see a tight and private collection of oddities, se
Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize, Strange Weather in Tokyo is a story of loneliness and love that defies age.Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she
As savory as any vegetable, as sweet as its fellow fruits, it inspires a cultlike devotion on all continents. The inimitable, versatile tomato has conquered the cuisines of Spain and Italy, and in Am
Lystra, North Carolina. A fictional town full of very real people who survive the attack of Hurricane Hugo and then find their bearings in the aftermath—often in wild and hilarious ways. The
