Poetry. The product of years of investigation and husbandry, Phil Cordelli's MANUAL OF WOODY PLANTS is a field guide to the workings of memory and perception within the creeping and ebbing of the natural world. The poems, each named for a type of North American flora, move with a light precision through the myriad intricacies and immensities that combine to form each human ecosystem and explore how these systems blend from one person to the next."

"A Door Behind a Door is loose, dreamy, and symbol-packed... The resurfacing of characters from Olga’s past in her new city speaks to the theme of immigration in the novel, of new homes and the passage from old to new—a passage that is perhaps not ever fully complete in the sense that the past cannot be shaken." —Marta Balcewicz, Ploughshares In Yelena Moskovich's spellbinding new novel, A Door Behind A Door, we meet Olga, who immigrates as part of the Soviet diaspora of ’91 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There she grows up and meets a girl and falls in love, beginning to believe that she can settle down. But a phone call from a bad man from her past brings to life a haunted childhood in an apartment building in the Soviet Union: an unexplained murder in her block, a supernatural stray dog, and the mystery of her beloved brother Moshe, who lost an eye and later vanished. We get pulled into Olga’s past as she puzzles her way through an underground Midwestern Russian mafia, in pursuit of a string of mathematical stabbings.

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. BROKEN METROPOLIS: QUEER TALES OF CITY THAT NEVER WAS (edited by dave ring) explores the edges of urban fantasy through queer narratives in the tradition of Swords of the Rainbow (Alyson Publications, 1996) and Bending the Landscape (Overlook Books, 1997). This collection contains ten of those edges, each one bright and gleaming, from Claire Rudy Foster's story of a scientist learning to accept not only herself but the very real impact of astrology on her love life, to Caspian Gray's tale of a young man looking for an urban legend in the halls of a hospital ward so that he can save the matriarch of his found family. Queer communities hold multitudes, and fantasy writing is a place to explore the magic of possibility. Come explore some of those possibilities in a city that never was.

"Ant is borderline obsessed with funerals, likening the events to weddings as gatherings he looks forward to. Yet, when a childhood friend passes, Ant’s veneer starts to crumble. Weirdly funny, Whiteout Conditions tracks Ant and his friend Vince as they make their way through Chicogoland’s suburbs, which, in Shah’s telling, are as harrowing as any arctic climate." —Wendy J. Fox, BuzzFeed '15 Small Press Books To Kick Off Your 2020 Reading Season' Ant is back in Chicago for a funeral, and he typically enjoys funerals. Since most of his family has passed away, he finds himself attracted to their endearing qualities: the hyperbolic language, the stoner altar boy, seeing friends in suits for the first time. That is, until the tragic death of Ray — Ant’s childhood friend, Vince's teenage cousin. Ray was the younger third-wheel that Ant and Vince were stuck babysitting while in high school, and his sudden death makes national news. In the depths of a brutal Midwest winter, Ant rides with Vince through the falling snow to Ray’s funeral, an event that has been accruing a sense of consequence. With a poet’s sensibility, Shah navigates the murky responsibilities of adulthood, grief, toxic masculinity, and the tragedy of revenge in this haunting Midwestern noir.

This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. contains thirteen stories, full-length and flash, that explore love-sexual, platonic, filial, and beyond-in its gritty and beguiling forms. A small-town teenager pursues an eccentric pinball wizard after her grandfather's move to her home shakes up her parents' marriage; a chronic depressive turns to a TV animal psychic in hopes of mending her relationship with her dog-loving dad; a middle-aged recovering alcoholic goes back to college and becomes fixated on his stern professor. Throughout the collection, as characters in various stages of life try to navigate love, they court obsession, madness, and transcendence.Advance Praise for This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. I love Jenny Wortman's stories! They are strange, sad, and funny. More important, Wortman is a writer wise to the perils of our fragile minds, which can be brought low by demons of mental health. Mercy and imagination are our only hope. These stories have them in spades. -Steve Almond, author of Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country Jennifer Wortman's diverse stories are absolutely electric. They explore self-consciousness with unfailing wit and candor, while revealing our most hidden hurts and desires. In substance and style, they're a literary funhouse. What an intimate, wise, nervy, and soaring collection from a remarkable writer. -Steven Schwartz, author of Madagascar: New and Selected Stories This. This. This. Is. Fabulous. I love this book! Jennifer Wortman's stories cover narrative territory such as depression, isolation, sexual relationships, and family dysfunction, pairing pain with the humor and joy of Wortman's fresh and inimitable style. This debut collection stuns and delights. I look forward to reading more from this brilliant, vibrant author.-Erika Krouse, author of Contenders and Come Up and See Me Sometime

Struggling to accept her impending blindness, the speaker in Julia B. Levine’s fifth collection of poetry, Ordinary Psalms, asks everyday life to help her learn how to see beyond appearances into fundamental truths. As she contemplates the loss of one friend to cancer and another to suicide, along with her own visual impairment, Levine holds the world “close as I needed / to see.” Imagistic, lyrical, and at times imploring divine intervention from a god she does not know or trust, these poems curse and praise the extraordinary place we live in and are in danger of losing. Lamenting that “this world is a mortal affliction / with wounds in the beautiful,” Ordinary Psalms provides a seductive and lyric rumination on radiance, loss, and grief.

Grape is in trouble again! He punched Miss Roof in the arm! Now he's suspended for two weeks, and Principal Clarkson has threatened to send him to Riverwash, a school for problem kids. But he has one last chance. Grape must spend an hour a day writing about his history of trouble, and there's a lot of trouble to choose from... Grape's best friend Lou is by his side, and even though Grape drives his parents crazy, they're pulling for him all the way. But will Grape make sense of it all? Will it be enough to keep him out of Riverwash?

This book is for authors who have: finished writing their book; given up on finding an agent; waited months for an agent to call back; longed for an editor to validate their creativity; recoiled at the thought of self-publishing.In this essential reference, writers will discover publishers for romance, women's fiction, historical fiction, sci fi, fantasy, poetry, literary fiction, history, self-help, spirituality, politics, sports, thrillers, regional guidebooks, creative nonfiction, essays, Christian fiction, horror, crafts' books, young adult fiction, and children's books. Best of all, the publishers in this book aren't vanity presses. They don't charge a fee to consider a manuscript. If they like the story, they will proofread the book, create a stunning cover, and upload the manuscript to the online bookstores. Finally, when people ask where they can buy the book, authors will have an answer.

Drama. Poetry. A one-act play in which apologies must be made to Chekhov. A one-act play in which there is a blueprint, & that blueprint is ignored entirely. A one-act play in which a decision is made, but it is unclear by or for whom. A one-act play in which the wind has the smallest hands, no, even smaller than that. Over the course of 41 one-act plays--most of them starring the characters ME and YOU--Dalton Day investigates grief, love, anxiety, and loss in this stunning collection of dramatic poetry. "Ferlinghetti's 'wild surmises of the imagination' are on full display...throughout this collection...EXIT, PURSUED will appeal to those who enjoy absurd humor, those who find poetry in the everday irrational twists of language, and those waiting for the rebirth of Dada."--John Bradley, Rain Taxi