When a friend who taught creative writing at a maximum-security prison asked Bridget Kinsella to read the work of one of his best students, she readily agreed. As a publishing professional, Kinsella was used to getting manuscripts from all sorts of sources. She had no idea that her correspondence with a convicted murderer serving life without parole would lead to a relationship that would change her life forever. In this brutally honest memoir, Kinsella shares how she stumbled into a relationship with a lifer and became part of a sorority she never thought she'd join. Over the course of three years, she spends time with and ultimately befriends the wives, girlfriends, and mothers of some inmates at Pelican Bay. On this unexpected journey, she learns of the hurdles, heartbreaks, and hopes they have for their relationships as she experiences a connection with someone who helps heal her own wounds.--From publisher description.

“An elegant and deeply moving meditation on friendship, family, and life on earth. Rules for Visiting is a wonderful novel.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven The national bestseller and an Indie Next List pick Name a Best Book of the Year by O Magazine • Good Housekeeping • Real Simple • Vulture • Chicago Tribune Named a Best Book of the Summer by The Today Show • Good Morning America • Wall Street Journal • San Francisco Chronicle • Southern Living Shortlisted for the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize Long-listed for the 2020 Tournament of Books Dry, witty, and unapologetic, May Attaway loves literature and her work as a botanist for the university in her hometown. More at home with plants than people, May begins to suspect she isn’t very good at friendship and wonders if it’s possible to improve with practice. Granted some leave from her job, she sets out on a journey to spend time with four long-neglected friends. Smart, funny, and full of compassion, Rules for Visiting is the story of a search for friendship in the digital age, a singular look at the way we stay in touch. While May travels, she studies her friends’ lives and begins to confront the pain of her own. With simplicity and honesty, Jessica Francis Kane has crafted an exquisite story about a woman trying to find a new way to be in the world. This nourishing book, with its beautiful contemplation of travel, trees, family, and friendship, is the perfect antidote to our chaotic times.

"A decade in the writing, the haunting story of a son's quest to understand the mystery of his father's death--a universal memoir about the secrets families keep and the role they play in making us who we are. Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family--and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood. Finally, roughly his father's age when he died, and a seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died after visiting friends, the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael's all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity--and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father's buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he'd imagined with the one he comes to know--and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother. A stirring portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets, After visiting friends is the story of a son who goes in search of the truth and finds not only his father, but a rare window into a world of men and newspapers and fierce loyalties that no longer exists"--Provided by publisher.

A young girl and her grandmother visit the girl's father in prison.

Anthology of work by eighty poets explores the life and influence of Emily Dickinson. Poems written in traditional and experimental forms. Includes the following poets: Archibald MacLeish, John Berry man, Yvor Winters, Adrienne Rich, Richard Eberhart, Richard Wilbur, Maxine Kumin, Amy Clampitt, William Stafford, and Galway Kinnell.

The definitive story collection “by one of the most celebrated American short-story writers…. Powerful, important, compassionate, and full of dark humor. This is a book that will be reread with admiration and love many times over” (Vanity Fair). Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing as a given from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. At long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: thirty-three stories drawn from three much-lauded collections, and another thirteen appearing here for the first time in book form. Forty-six stories in all, far and away the most comprehensive volume in her long career, showcasing her crisp, elegant prose, her dark wit, and her uncanny ability to illuminate our world through characters and situations that feel at once peculiar and foreign and disturbingly familiar. Virtually all American writers have their favorite Joy Williams stories, as do many readers of all ages, and each one of them is available here.

In a culture obsessed with happiness, this wise, stirring book points the way toward a richer, more satisfying life. Too many of us believe that the search for meaning is an esoteric pursuit—that you have to travel to a distant monastery or page through dusty volumes to discover life’s secrets. The truth is, there are untapped sources of meaning all around us—right here, right now. To explore how we can craft lives of meaning, Emily Esfahani Smith synthesizes a kaleidoscopic array of sources—from psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists to figures in literature and history such as George Eliot, Viktor Frankl, Aristotle, and the Buddha. Drawing on this research, Smith shows us how cultivating connections to others, identifying and working toward a purpose, telling stories about our place in the world, and seeking out mystery can immeasurably deepen our lives. To bring what she calls the four pillars of meaning to life, Smith visits a tight-knit fishing village in the Chesapeake Bay, stargazes in West Texas, attends a dinner where young people gather to share their experiences of profound loss, and more. She also introduces us to compelling seekers of meaning—from the drug kingpin who finds his purpose in helping people get fit to the artist who draws on her Hindu upbringing to create arresting photographs. And she explores how we might begin to build a culture that leaves space for introspection and awe, cultivates a sense of community, and imbues our lives with meaning. Inspiring and story-driven, The Power of Meaning will strike a profound chord in anyone seeking a life that matters.

Poetry. Music. 100 poems by 100 poets inspired by the life and works of Bob Dylan. Contributors include Robert Bly, Charles Bukowski, Johnny Cash, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Tony Hoagland, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, Paul Muldoon, Linda Pastan, Patti Smith, and Charles Wright. "The poets included in this collection want no explanations from Dylan; they are busy, if anything, using him to explain themselves. These are the people who could hold entire conversations using only Dylan quotes and a few conjunctions. Some of them are people who first realized that the words count when they first listened to Dylan. That the way it's said is as important as what is said. They get it, and reading them makes me feel that I am in very congenial company."--Chris Smither, from the Foreword "If Bob Dylan has so many sides as to be a house of mirrors, then here are a hundred poets caught in the glass. Some worshipful, others still obsessed, or nostalgic, imitative, even rapacious, but all gathered together around a singer who shuffled words and music together to form a whole new deck. Imagine, one poet within a circle of a hundred poets!"--Billy Collins "In a pop culture of rapid, vertiginous change, when audiences are more fickle and ephemeral than any in history, Bob Dylan yet retains his stature and something of his original mystery."--Joyce Carol Oates "Here's a fine anthology of poems that rub shoulders with Bob Dylan's work in splendidly varied ways. There are renowned and unfamiliar poets here. Some have known or met him; all have heard that voice ('like a lone wolf's cry in the cold night,' says one). Some pay tribute to the immensity of his influence; some fight it; some confess. Some scatter fond and knowing allusions to his lines through theirs. Some love him; some resist. This is not hagiography in verse. It is voices celebrating voice, poetry engaging with song."--Dr. Michael Gray

"THE TIME OF MY LIVES" Lived and Written by J.M.Valente "A Life Accelerated" What you are about to read, if you so choose to, is what Im able to reveal of my expedite life. You will have to envision for yourself, what I could not reveal. My life had started out ordinary enough, but very early on, I was tasked with a life altering challenge, being very young, I was not equipped to handle alone. Had it not been overcome, by anything short of a miracle! My life would not have been intuitively accelerated and transpired the way you shall be touched by it. J.M. Valente shares the unique circumstances that define a life accelerated as he tells all on the variously exciting experiences of his life in The Time of My Lives. In a gentle-mannered yet surprisingly riveting narrative, Valente pulls out all the stops, withholding only last names to affirm his awkward beginnings, early awakenings, and various endings. Join Valente on his journey back in time as he recalls polio at the age of three, to eventually walkbut not without embarrassing, taunt-provoking Forrest Gump leg braces. Get to the page-turning stretch of the memoir, when Valente begins discussion on his early initiation with the girls, losing his virginity at thirteen and engaging in booty calls beginning at fourteen. Throughout the memoir, he would continue to divulge juicy details on his sex and romantic life. However, Valente applies a well-placed pause on that salacious topic as he inserts a somber discussion about family life and their slow loss of his only brother to drugs that eventually got him killed in a car accident. Ultimately, Valentes quiet, sincere storytelling renews readers attention page after page, keeping them glued with a clever mix of persuasion, enticement, and brave honesty. Incorporated with songs that prolong the drama of each chapter of Valentes life, The Time of My Lives promises nothing less than an absolutely thrilling, thoroughly heartwarming experience. This book is FANTASTIC! It grabbed me from the start and just kept getting better, I found it very interesting and truthful, and I would recommend everyone male and female read this book, you will definitely discuss it with friends and family. Here at work we have formed a book club called The Good Books Club we look forward to meeting and discussing this book. It is absolutely a page-turner. Pamela Clements Beth Israel Hospital "The Good Books Club"-President