How do you untangle the real you from the curated you? In this introspective yet whimsical collection, poet Grant Chemidlin takes readers into the thicket of self-discovery. **Finalist for Lambda Literary Award - Gay Poetry What We Lost in the Swamp is a lush and vibrant collection of poems that examines the many manifestations of green: nature, inexperience, jealousy, burgeoning love, and exploring sexuality. It is a slow unfurling. It is a love letter to growth, to rediscovery, to finally learning how to speak the truth. These astonishing poems ask the reader: Who do you want to be in this world? How do you want to build a life? This is not a coming out. This is a coming in to one’s truest self. Find out why this is one of TikTok's most viral poetry books.

Finalist for the 2020 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry Things We Lost In The Swamp is a lush and vibrant collection of poems that examines the many facets of green: nature, inexperience, jealousy, burgeoning love, and discovering sexuality as a gay man. It is a slow unfurling. It is a love letter to growth, to rediscovery, to finally learning how to unabashedly speak one's truest voice. These poems will make you laugh, will make you cry. They will envelop you-take you through your darkest forest, then lead you home.

"I don't realize I'm crying until he glances at me. For a moment, I see the look of anguish in his eyes, then he blinks it away and slips off into the water. I immediately think of the gator. It's still down there somewhere. . . ." A science-class field trip to the Everglades is supposed to be fun, but Sarah's new at Glades Academy, and her fellow freshmen aren’t exactly making her feel welcome. When an opportunity for an unauthorized side trip on an air boat presents itself, it seems like a perfect escape—an afternoon without feeling like a sore thumb. But one simple oversight turns a joyride into a race for survival across the river of grass. Sarah will have to count on her instincts—and a guy she barely knows—if they have any hope of making it back alive.

A captivating novel about an immigrant Vietnamese family who settles in New Orleans and struggles to remain connected to one another as their lives are inextricably reshaped. This stunning debut is "vast in scale and ambition, while luscious and inviting … in its intimacy” (The New York Times Book Review). When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father. But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh, grow up in their absent father's shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong gets involved with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity--as individuals and as a family--threatens to tear them apart, un­til disaster strikes the city they now call home and they are suddenly forced to find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.

To make a living here, one had to be capable, confident, clever and inventive, know a lot about survival, be able to fashion and repair tools, navigate a boat, fell a tree, treat a snakebite, make a meal from whatever was handy without asking too many questions about it, and get along with folks. This fascinating and instructive book is the careful and unpretentious account of a man who was artful in all the skills needed to survive and raise a family in an area where most people would be lost or helpless. Smith’s story is an important record of a way of life beginning to disappear, a loss not fully yet realized. We are lucky to have a work that is both instructive and warm-hearted and that preserves so much hard-won knowledge.

In this compelling, action-packed book, Watt Key gives us the thrilling coming-of-age story of the unique and extremely appealing Alabama Moon, the basis for the film of the same name starring Jimmy Bennett and John Goodman. For as long as ten-year-old Moon can remember, he has lived out in the forest in a shelter with his father. They keep to themselves, their only contact with other human beings an occasional trip to the nearest general store. When Moon's father dies, Moon follows his father's last instructions: to travel to Alaska to find others like themselves. But Moon is soon caught and entangled in a world he doesn't know or understand; he's become property of the government he has been avoiding all his life. As the spirited and resourceful Moon encounters constables, jails, institutions, lawyers, true friends, and true enemies, he adapts his wilderness survival skills and learns to survive in the outside world, and even, perhaps, make his home there. This title has Common Core connections. Alabama Moon is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater (the Raven Cycle series) and artist Morgan Beem unearth the primal power of memory and how it twists the bond between two brothers. Twins Alec and Walker Holland have a reputation around town. One is quiet and the other is the life of any party, but the two are inseparable. For their last summer before college, Alec and Walker leave the city to live with their rural cousins, where they find that the swamp holds far darker depths than they could have imagined. While Walker carves their names into the new social scene, laboratory, Alex recedes into a summer-school laboratory, because he brought something from home on their trip--it's an experiment that will soon consume him. This season, both brothers must confront truths, ancient and familial, and as their lives diverge, tensions increase and dormant memories claw to the surface. From #1 New York Times bestselling authorMaggie Stiefvater (the Raven Cycle series) and artist Morgan Beem comes a story of shadows, both literal and imagined--and those that take form and haunt us.

When Washington D.C. was first built, it was on top of a swamp that had to be drained. Donald Trump says it's time to drain it again. In The Swamp, bestselling author and Fox News Channel host Eric Bolling presents an infuriating, amusing, revealing, and outrageous history of American politics, past and present, Republican and Democrat. From national political scandals to tempests in a teapot that blew up; bribery, blackmail, bullying, and backroom deals that contradicted public policies; cronyism that cost taxpayers hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars; and personal conduct that can only be described as regrettable, The Swamp is a journey downriver through the bayous and marshes of Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom. The presidential election of 2016 was ugly, but it exposed a political, media, industry, and elite establishment that desperately wanted to elect a politician who received millions of dollars from terror-funding states over a businessman willing to tell the corrupt or incompetent, “You’re fired.” The book concludes with a series of recommendations for President Trump: practical, hard-headed, and concise ways to drain the swamp and force Washington to be more transparent, more accountable, and more effective in how it serves those who have elected its politicians and pay the bills for their decisions. Last year President Trump declared Wake Up America to be a "huge" book; Eric Bolling's second book is sure to build on that success. Entertaining and timely, The Swamp is the perfect book for today's political climate.