Books

Tempered

Kate Kort

Once Murray understands he can control his violent impulses, he’s left with a far more unsettling question: does he even want to?

Tempered, the sequel to Glass, explores the deadly pull of anger and how we are shaped by—and shape—the ones we love.


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Breathing Lake Superior

Ron Rindo

A novel steeped in the air and water and people of the rural Midwest

Overcome with grief following the death of his youngest child, Cal Franklin uproots his wife and teenaged children to a ramshackle subsistence farm in far northern Wisconsin. Withdrawn and estranged from all they know, JJ and her stepbrother, John, struggle to adapt to life off the grid and to Cal’s increasingly erratic behavior.


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Bad Indian

J.C. Mehta

J.C. Mehta details the adversity of mixed ancestry, of what it means to be called a “Pretendian” by fellow Natives, and what a lifetime of being told “you look something” by everyone else brings to fruition—the realization of not fully belonging anywhere.


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If the Girl Never Learns

Sue William Silverman

You are The Girl, and The Girl is a Badass.

From the opening lines, it’s clear The Girl at the center of these poems is damaged—which is another way to say she’s a survivor. If the Girl Never Learns moves from the personal to the mythic to the apocalyptic, because The Girl would do anything, even go to hell, to save her soul. The Girl is, above all else, a badass.


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Circus

Deonte Osayande

What happens when love becomes a show?

Circus puts love on display for the whole world to gawk at. Life is a bizarre circus, from personal relationships to the political sphere. It is beautiful, and tragic, and chaotic, made up of a million silent moments. Deonte Osayande brings the rhythm and intensity of his slam poetry to his second full-length collection. His poetry addresses love and loss, race and family, politics and life in America.


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Lilli Chernofsky

Nina Vida

Europe is in flames, Nazis are at the gates of the city, and the Chernofsky family's only chance for escape rests firmly on the slim shoulders of seventeen-year-old Lilli.

Lilli Chernofsky provides a portal to history, a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people in tragic circumstances. The mystery of who people really are, what they will do in adversity—survive honorably or by betraying others—is at the novel’s heart, but it is young Lilli’s startling metamorphosis from sheltered teen to unwavering heroine that is its cri de coeur.


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Laika

Kate Kort

Laika desperately wishes for a new life. At fourteen, she’s hardened and independent, living on the streets of Southern California. She’s finally free of her volatile home but yearns for true stability.

Laika brings to light the often-shrouded world of paranoid schizophrenia. It also examines the socially stigmatized issues of homelessness, addiction, and PTSD, in the hopes of fostering greater awareness and compassion.


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Beulah's House of Prayer

Cynthia A. Graham

In 1934 the tiny town of Barmy, Oklahoma, is in desperate need of a miracle. A stunning Depression-era literary novel with a touch of magical realism, Beulah's House of Prayer captivates until the very end.


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We Dare Not Whisper

Jan Netolicky

Based in rural Wisconsin, We Dare Not Whisper explores the toxic legacy of a self-destructive family. With hauntingly beautiful prose, Jan Netolicky illuminates the suffering of individuals with bipolar disorder and the unthinkable challenges facing those closest to them.


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Glass

Kate Kort

Set in Cleveland in the late 1980s, Glass tests traditional ideas of interpersonal responsibility and what it means to struggle with mental illness.


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Odd Beauty, Strange Fruit

Susan Swartwout

Southern gothic loves its poetic hells and grotesqueries in both freak shows and everyday life. In these poems, such strange fruit becomes a mirror to our own hearts' hidden desires.


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