"Sometimes we have questions that seem to defy answers or even suppositions but then we find Love and Strange Horses to help us map out a course to continue loving life. A really wonderful, thoughtful read by an intriguing new voice." —Nikki Giovanni

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley draws upon her first-hand knowledge to examine the horse on all levels - practical, theoretical and emotional. Drawing on the wisdom of trainers, vets, jockeys and a real-life horse whisperer, Smiley adds an element of drama and suspense as two of her own horses begin their careers at the racetrack. As the horses get closer to the winner's circle, we are enchanted, enthralled and informed about what it's really like to own, train and root for a racehorse.

With an elegant sweetness and a pitch-perfect sense of western life reminiscent of Annie Dillard, Glosss breakout novel is a remarkable story about the connections between people and animals and how they touch one another in the most unexpected and profound ways.

Who can you trust when nothing's as it seems?

From migrations to pop culture, loss to la dérive, Life in a Country Album is a soundtrack of the global cultural landscape—borders and citizenship, hybrid identities and home, freedom and pleasure. It’s a vast and moving look at the world, at what home means, and the ways we coexist in an increasingly divided world. These poems are about the dialects of the heart—those we are incapable of parting from, and those that are largely forgotten. Life in a Country Album is a vital book for our times. With this beautiful, epic collection, Nathalie Handal affirms herself as one of our most diverse and important contemporary poets.

The co-winner of the inaugural Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize. A frenetic tour of a splayed self writing through an equine obsession. Presented in lyrical prose, diagrams, photos, and conceptual excerpts from imagined texts, Autobiography of Horse pieces together a true story spurred by a tormented, pathological, and redemptive imagination.

On January's coldest day of the year in a small community in the Northwest Territories, a stranger to horses searches among family and friends for answers to an important question. It's forty below in the little town of Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories of Canada -- so cold that the ravens refuse to fly and author Richard Van Camp can't go outside. He belongs to the Dogrib tribe, whose people traditionally haven't used horses. To help pass the time, he decides to pose the question, "What's the most beautiful thing you know about horses?" to family members, friends, and artist George Littlechild, who is Plains Cree and knows a lot about horses. The answers range from zany to profound: Horses can run sideways; they have secrets; they can always find their way home. In this delightful new book, Littlechild's fanciful paintings perfectly capture Van Camp's gentle world-view. Together, they inspire readers to see the world in entirely new ways.

Sharply observant, laugh-out-loud funny comics from The Believer cartoonist and New York Times illustrator My Dirty Dumb Eyes is the highly anticipated debut collection from award-winning cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt. In a few short years, Hanawalt has made a name for herself: her intricately detailed, absurdly funny comics have appeared in venues as wide and varied as The Hairpin, VanityFair.com, Lucky Peach, Saveur, The New York Times, and The Believer. My Dirty Dumb Eyes intermingles drawings, paintings, single-panel gag jokes, funny lists, and anthropomorphized animals, all in the service of satirical, startlingly observant commentary on pop culture, contemporary society, and human idiosyncrasies. Her wild sense of humor contrasts strikingly with the carefully rendered lines and flawless draftsmanship that are Hanawalt trademarks. Whether she’s revealing the secret lives of celebrity chefs or explaining that what dogs really want is a tennis-ball bride, My Dirty Dumb Eyes will have readers rolling in the aisles, as Hanawalt’s insights into human (and animal) behavior startle and delight time and again.

Equine Angelsis a celebration of the journey of horses and foals saved from slaughter. Accompanied by 200 stunning full-color photographs, it tells the surprising and moving stories of how these foals have changed the lives of the human families who adopt them—for the rescuers are often the ones redeemed when opening their hearts to an unwanted foal. The book focuses on the tens of thousands of foals born annually only so that their mothers can provide pharmaceutical companies with the hormones their bodies create during pregnancy. These foals—known as “PMU foals” (PMU being short for “pregnant mare urine,” a key ingredient of the drug Premarin)—are in effect, are unwanted byproducts. Normally they are taken from their mothers and sent to slaughter. There are more than 250 farms in North America—most of them in Canada—housing tens of thousands of mares, in agonizing conditions, for this purpose. Those photos grouped into the chapters “Birth” and “Rescue” are especially dramatic. Given their semi-wild conditions, these horses have a ruggedly beautiful, ungroomed appearance. In later chapters, we see the transformation of once-wild creatures into loving and intelligent companions for their human families. Included are stories of successes great and small: foals growing up to be successful national competitors, therapy horses, and other productive members of horse society. These foals give back more than they take. Heartwarming and beautiful to look at, Equine Angels will inspire and delight. Inside you will find: 200 amazing color photos showing horses with a rare rugged beauty Tells the story of how these foals have changed the lives of the people who adopt them Shows the transformation of once-wild creatures into loving and intelligent companions Addresses an issue that frequently captures headlines Tens of thousands of “PMU” foals are slaughtered in North America each year because they are unwanted byproducts of a process to extract hormones for human hormone-replacement therapy From the introduction: The human participants of Equine Angels Rescue Sanctuary could not sit idly by while these magnificent horses were killed. If it was just a matter of those lives saved, that would be enough, but fortunately, we have come to know the greater potential of these angelic equines. Each of the horses from EARS has touched and uplifted several human lives along the rescue path.

In The Ghost Horse, Joe Layden tells the inspiring true tale of a one-eyed, club-footed thoroughbred racehorse and a journeyman trainer, Tim Snyder, who scraped together every penny he had to purchase the broken and unwanted filly. Snyder helped the horse overcome its deficiencies, eventually naming her in part after his deceased wife, Lisa, the great and only love of his life—a bright and sweet-tempered woman whose gentle demeanor seemed eerily reflected in the horse. The trainer (and now owner) was by nature a crusty and combative sort, the yin to his wife's yang, a racetrack lifer not easily moved by new-age mysticism or sentiment. And yet in those final days back in 2003, when Lisa Snyder lay in bed, her body ravaged by cancer, she reassured her family with a weak smile. "It's okay," she'd say. "I'll see you again. I'm coming back as a horse." Tim Snyder did not then believe in reincarnation. But he acknowledged the strangeness of this journey, the series of coincidences that brought them together, and the undeniable similarities between the horse and his late wife. And so did those who knew the couple well, and who could now only marvel at the story of the filly, Lisa's Booby Trap, and the down-on-his-luck trainer who apparently had been given a new lease on life. The Ghost Horse is a powerful horseracing story of underdogs and second chances.