Prose poems, chants, litanies, simple songs, cadenced prayers, brief bursts of rhythmic observation, elegies to little moments that are not little at all in the least whatsoever—welcome to the melodic world of Brian Doyle’s “proems,” swirling with voices unreeling tales, souls telling stories, moments photographed with ink. Accessible, easy to read, blunt, brief, and sometimes unforgettable, “these are not poems,” says the author, “but life set to the music of poetry.” In A Shimmer of Something, Brian Doyle’s characteristic humor and sincerity combine to make this collection a delight to read. From his conviction that miracles breed ripples that do not cease, to his lack of faith about the life of an elderberry bush, to the amusing story of a friend’s experience of driving the Dalai Lama to Seattle, to the humorous experience of his second Confession, to an intimate story of love and loss, Doyle’s lean stories of spiritual substance inspire, entertain, and captivate.

A book of inquiry, Mark Irwin's Shimmer queries how the worlds of poverty, terrorism, ecology, species extinction, mortality and race interface and affect one another through electronic reproduction and transmission. Not as spectacles but as events that often seem too familiar, many are featured on YouTube: a horse still alive, dragged to be slaughtered; a homeless mother with an infant; a terrorist disguising a bomb, a Vietnam veteran attempting to commit suicide, a mother, unable to speak, who communicates by drawing different colors. Shimmer explores those places where metropolis and the natural world collide, where virtual technology attempts to convey the spirit. The incursion of electronic communication throughout society as a form of human language, has radically distorted and impacted notions of form and space in contemporary poetry, just as it has impacted the idea of what it means to be human.

From The Tale of Rabbit (1901) to Last Stop on Market Street (2015), each of the one hundred books is presented with fascinating stories of its publication history and biographies of the creators. On the facing page, a cover and inside spread will bring back memories of the time when, sitting in a classroom or on a lap, someone read you a book and opened up your world.

Porsha O's debut poetry collection soars with the power and presence of live performance. These poems dip their hands deep into the fabric of black womanhood, pulling out all of its threads. This book establishes Porsha O firmly in the lineage of black queer poetics, pulling equally from Audre Lorde and Danez Smith. This is a book of gentle breaking and inventive reconstruction. This is a book of self-care, and community-care - the pursuit of building a world that will keep you alive.

Proems, taut tales, small stories with rhythm and blues and grace and bruise and laughter between the lines. Brian Doyle’s The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be is a book of cadenced notes on the swirl of miracle and the holy of attentiveness; a book about children and birds, love and grief and everything alive, which is to say all prayers.

Lyrical and rife with utterance, Salt Body Shimmer asks of the violence we inherit: who speaks from "the threshold throat" inside "the dark's dark"? Interior driven and intimately political, the poems in this stunning debut coax and trouble form, traversing the landscape of trauma and survival with a deft musicality of time, family, and slippery memory. At the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, Foreman makes a song of the body-it's howl and jubilation-and invites us to confront our interior lives in the listening. Bold in its quest for knowledge and refuge, Salt Body Shimmer articulates a contemporary American experience, aware of the histories unsaid and unfaced, where women can inhabit their lives fully and freely, knowing safety is fragile and must be grabbed by whatever thread we can find.

Shimmer and Shine love to make everything sparkle.

The latest novel in a thrilling cozy mystery series featuring Odessa Jones—a sudden widow juggling a promising catering business, a full-time real estate gig—and a psychic gift that leads her to solve mysteries whenever they appear to her—which is often. From the award-winning creator of Newark private eye Tamara Hayle, will appeal to fans of cozy mysteries and multicultural fiction. With pandemic-fearing city dwellers fleeing to the New Jersey suburbs, Risko Realty—and Odessa Jones—are having their best year ever. Finally on solid financial footing, Odessa is debt-free and looking forward to the future. But she doesn’t need second sight to sense her new young co-worker, Anna Lee, is on edge--and straight-up terrified--in spite of her hot sales record and sunny, outgoing attitude. And when Anna is killed in a hit-and-run, Odessa sees immediately that it was no accident . . . It's soon clear that Anna was being stalked. But even with the help of family, friends—and Odessa’s feisty cat, Juniper—Odessa is coming up with more questions than clues. Why was Anna avoiding influential real-estate mogul Emily Delbarton? Why is Delbarton’s decidedly creepy brother so fixated on Anna? Did Anna make enemies through her previous job at the town’s exclusive gentlemen’s club? And can Odessa rule out her own ex-fiancé—who’s back in her life with an astounding connection to Anna—and wanting a second chance? Finding the answers will come at an increasingly deadly cost—one Odessa’s talents must somehow trap a killer to repay . . . Praise for A Glimmer of Death “There's crispness in Wesley’s plotting and sparkle in the supporting characters.” --Los Angeles Times “Wesley perfectly captures her protagonist’s emotions, including the lingering melancholy she feels for her late husband. . . . Readers will hope to see a lot more of kind, empathetic Odessa.” --Publishers Weekly

In this compelling and spirited debut novel, 16-year-old Rayna Evans has spent the last three years in a mental institution for seeing angels—intent on remaining free, she ignores signs that she may be slipping into a world she has tried to climb out of. When her hallucinations begin showing up at school, can she keep her sanity and prevent students from dying at the hands of angels she cannot admit to seeing? Psychiatry, fantasy, and realism come together here in a story of a young girl struggling with identity, secrets, and confronting her greatest fears.

Originally published in hardcover in 2021 by Aladdin.