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That Little Something is the superb eighteenth collection from one of America's most vital and honored poets. Over the course of his singular career, Charles Simic has won nearly every accolade, including the Pulitzer Prize, and he served as the poet laureate of the United States from 2007 to 2008.His wry humor and darkly illuminating vision are on full display here as he moves close to the dark ironies of history and human experience. Simic understands the strange interplay between the ordinary and the odd, between reality and imagination. That Little Something is a stunning collection from "not only one of the most prolific poets but also one of the most distinctive, accessible, and enjoyable" (New York Times Book Review).

Women have been among the most dynamic and successful ministers in all Protestant denominations; but in divinity school, Sarah Sentilles discovered that some of the best and brightest were having trouble and even leaving the church altogether. What was happening? To find out, she entered the lives of female ministers ? women of various ages, races, and denominations ? and emerged with the first real portrait of what it's like to lead as a woman of faith today.Filled with humor, heartbreak, and triumph, the women's stories take us from calls to the pulpit through ordinations and service. Despite many churches' resistance ? conscious or not ? to re-imagining what it means to be a minister, many of these women are achieving remarkable transformations in their congregations. In their inspiring determination to perform the creative, life-giving work to which they are called, these women illuminate a way that the church can revitalize itself. What's at stake is nothing less than the future of the church itself.

It's the end of junior year, and summer is about to begin. The Summer of Passion, to be exact, when Jory Michaels plans to explore all the possibilities of the future-and, with any luck, score a boyfriend in the process. But Jory has a problem. A big problem. A curvy, honking, bumpy, problem in the form of her Super Schnozz, the one thing standing between Jory and happiness. And now, with the Summer of Passion stretched before her like an open road, she's determined for Super Schnozz to disappear. Jory takes a job delivering wedding cakes to save up for a nose job at the end of the summer; she even keeps a book filled with magazine cutouts of perfect noses to show the doctor. But nothing is ever easy for accident-prone Jory-and before she knows it, her Summer of Passion falls apart faster than the delivery van she crashes. In this hilarious and heartbreaking novel, Sydney Salter delivers a story about broadening your horizons, accepting yourself, and finding love right under your nose.

Sixteen-year-old Penelope Yeager only wants a few things in life: get out of high school, get her driver's license, fall in love, forget what happened ten years ago, and see her mother happy. She s figured out how to get out of school a year early. If she can figure out the rest, maybe she ll actually be happy. Unfortunately, the rest isn t nearly as easy.

Spark the interest of that special someone as you share the intimacies of the latest title in the best-selling 100 Words series.100Words for Lovers provides both would-be and experienced lovers with the right words to get in the mood and set the tone.These are words used by famous lovers themselves and by famous writers describing the most torrid affairs of the heart.What kinds of words? Amorous and alluring, beguiling and bewitching.They show lovers showering attention, idolizing each other, and meeting in secret trysts.They show lovers who are tortured by infatuation, star-crossed, inflamed, and full of ardor, as they pine and yearn for an embrace with their heartthrob and succumb to the bliss of erotic passion.Anyone with the least inclination for romance will be entranced by the quotations that illustrate the words in this book.They come from poetry, fiction, and movie and television scripts, as well as private letters.The authors range from Elizabethan poets such asWilliam Shakespeare and John Donne, to modernists such as VirginiaWoolf and D.H.Lawrence, to contemporaries such as Michael Ondaatje and Kiran Desai.You’ll swoon when you read this book, and if you’re playing it smart, you won’t be reading alone.

During the long farewell of her mother's dying, Patricia Hampl revisits her midwestern girlhood.Daughter of a debonair Czech father, whose floral work gave him entrée to St. Paul society, and a distrustful Irishwoman with an uncanny ability to tell a tale,Hampl remained, primarily and passionately, a daughter well into adulthood. She traces the arc of faithfulness and struggle that comes with that role?from the postwar years past the turbulent sixties. At the heart of The Florist's Daughter is the humble passion of people who struggled out of the Depression into a better chance, not only for themselves but for the common good.Widely recognized as one of our most masterly memoirists, Patricia Hampl has written an extraordinary memoir that is her most intimate, yet most universal, work to date.This transporting work will resonate with readers of Francine du Plessix Gray's Them: A Memoir of Parents and JeannetteWall's The Glass Castle.

One of the finest poets writing today, Grace Schulman finds order in art and nature that enables her to stand fast in a threatened world. The title refers to Itzhak Perlman's performance of a violin concerto with a snapped string, which inspires a celebration of life despite limitations. For her, song imparts endurance: Thelonious Monk evokes Creation; John Coltrane's improvisations embody her own heart's desire to ?get it right on the first take?; the wind plays a harp-shaped oak; and her immigrant ancestors remember their past by singing prayers on a ship bound for New York. In the words of Wallace Shawn, ?When I read her, she makes me want to live to be four hundred years old, because she makes me feel that there is so much out there, and it's unbearable to miss any of it.?

The time is 1950. The place is a small town in the Midwest. The girl is Claire, and she has a new black friend. But in an all-white town, how open can the girls be about their friendship?Now Claire faces being the ?new girl? in school. A year later, she is confronting betrayal . . . and sin. Finally, she is fifteen and in love. But it is not a love that can be spoken of, least of all by Claire.In five interrelated stories, Claire grows into a young woman, learning about racism, sex, and love along the way. Most of all, she learns about truth.

Untitled and unpunctuated, the seventy poems in this acclaimed collection seem to cascade from one page to another. Maurice Manning extolls the virtues of nature and its many gifts, and finds deep gratitude for the mysterious hand that created it all.that bare branch that branch made blackby the rain the silver raindrophanging from the black branchBoss I like that black branchI like that shiny raindrop Bosstell me if I'm wrong but it makesme think you're looking rightat me now isn't that a lark for meto think you look that wayupside down like a tree frogBoss I'm not surprised at allI wouldn't doubt it fora minute you're always upto something I'll say one thingyou're all right all right you areeven when you're hanging Boss

In these essays, Dirda introduces nearly 90 of the world's most entertaining books. Writing with affection and authority, he covers masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as epics, history, essay and children's literature.

November 1944: Their B-24 bomber shot down on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast, a scattered crew of Army airmen cut themselves loose from their parachutes only to be met by loincloth-wearing natives silently materializing out of the mountainous jungle. Would these Dayak tribesmen turn the starving airmen over to the hostile Japanese occupiers? Or would the Dayaks risk vicious reprisals to get the airmen safely home in a desperate game of hide-and-seek?

Join cult favorite Tony Vigorito in his acclaimed, surreal whirlwind of a novel exploring chaos theory. A prisoner spins a playing card into a somersault, stirring a wind that becomes a tornado that takes off the roof of a church in nearby Normal, Illinois. Elizabeth Wildhack is born in that church and someday she will meet that prisoner, a man named Diablo, on the streets of New Orleans--where a hurricane-like Great White Spot hovers off the coast. But how is it all interconnected? And what does it have to do with a time-traveling serf and a secret society whose motto is "Walk away?""Linguistic gymnastics abound... Vigorito demonstrates once again that he's a wild stylist... startlingly original... an entertaining anarchist..." --The Chicago Sun-Times

When Ted's five-year-old sister, Vicki, invents an imaginary friend, no one is too concerned . . . except that Vicki's friend has the never-popular name of Marella, and unlike most imaginary friends, Marella can move things. Ted might think Marella is a ghost, but why would a ghost haunt Vicki, of all people? And why would she suddenly move into a house Ted's family has lived in for ages? And why is Marella terrified of another ghost, a dark figure who seems to be hunting Ted? Hilarious, haunting, and unexpectedly moving, There's a Dead Person Following My Sister Around is Vivian Vande Velde at her frightening best.

[shared copy] The Starbuck family is anything but ordinary. There are two sets of Starbuck twins: preteens Liberty and July, and their little sisters Charly and Molly. But even more extraordinary is the fact that all four children have the ability to teleflash-they can talk to each other without saying a word! It's a power that comes in handy whenever these adventurous kids are on the trail of a villian. Before the Starbuck family embarks on a trip to New Mexico, a whisper comes through the wind to Liberty. It leads her and her twin, July, to an ancient hillside dwelling that was the site of a tragedy. In their quest to rectify the wrongs of the past, the twins encounter a group of thieves who will stop at nothing to steal the artifacts in the ancient home.

[shared copy] The Starbuck family is anything but ordinary. There are two sets of Starbuck twins: preteens Liberty and July, and their little sisters Charly and Molly. But even more extraordinary is the fact that all four children have the ability to teleflash-they can talk to each other without saying a word! It's a power that comes in handy whenever these adventurous kids are on the trail of a villian. When twins Liberty and July accompany their father on a business trip to London, a mysterious voice starts speaking through their teleflashing channels. Who is trying to contact them, and why? Using the detective skills of their hero, Sherlock Holmes, the twins set out to solve a puzzle that takes them on an exciting journey through the streets of London.

[shared copy] The Starbuck family is anything but ordinary. There are two sets of Starbuck twins: preteens Liberty and July, and their little sisters Charly and Molly. But even more extraordinary is the fact that all four children have the ability to teleflash-they can talk to each other without saying a word! It's a power that comes in handy whenever these adventurous kids are on the trail of a villian. When the Starbuck family moves to a houseboat in the Florida Keys, Liberty and July discover they share a wonderful telepathic link with the dolphins in the area. When they find that someone is poisoning the water with toxic waste, and that the creatures of the Keys are dying, the twins must stop the culprits before it's too late.

Wifeshopping centers on the ultimate human quest: the search for companionship, love, and understanding. These captivating stories feature American men, love-starved and striving, who try and often fail to connect with the women they imagine could be their wives. Some of the women are fiancées, some are new girlfriends, some are strangers who cross the men's paths for only a few hours or moments. In ?Beaching It,? an artist traveling on the summer circuit begins an affair with a rich, married local. In ?Me and Paul,? a lonely traveler adopts an alter ego to help him impress a single mother. In ?Bill,? a trip to a flea market highlights the essential differences between a man and his fiancée. Throughout this thoroughly entertaining read, Wingate's sympathetic characterizations reveal both the hopefulness and the heartache behind our earnest but sometimes misguided attempts at intimacy.

A key grip, Dustin Beall Smith explains in this award-winning memoir, is the person on a film set who supervises the rigging of lights, set wall construction, dolly shots, stunt preparation, and more. Smith worked in the film industry throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. For him, "fame by association"-with iconic stars including Sly Stallone, Susan Sarandon, and Robert De Niro-was just one of the seductive drugs fueling his high-octane days on the set. The intertwined stories in Key Grip resurrect memories of how his father's impossibly ordered life became a goad for Smith's own reckless journey to manhood. Its trajectory includes a stint as a pioneering sport-parachuting instructor in the late 1950s-a young man's dream job that taught Smith how to hide sheer animal fear behind male bravado. Much later, as a committed writer and unredeemed seeker in his fifties, Smith lights out cross-country for what turns out to be a brave, existentially failed-and very funny-attempt at a Lakota vision quest. Beautifully told, reminiscent of both Robert Bly and Ian Frazier, Key Grip is a fascinating record of the fault lines of one man's life. Dustin Beall Smith's Key Grip won the 2007 Bakeless Prize for nonfiction, awarded by the Middlebury College Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and judged by Terry Tempest Williams. Smith has lived in New York City for over forty years and teaches writing at Gettysburg College.

?I want yesterday.? That's all seventeen-year-old Maud can say when she gets the news about her sister: Lucy's dead, killed in a bomb blast. Without even a body to bury, Maud is left with only questions: How? Why? Maud's search for answers leads her down the same path her sister took. But all she finds are empty words and more questions. Jeff struggles down a separate but parallel path. His brother, a Marine, has been called up to Vietnam. To the world, Jeff looks the part of a conservative preppy, but inside, he questions the war. But does questioning the war mean he doesn't support his brother?It's 1969, and life in America has become an angry jumble of patriotism and rebellion, cynicism and hope. Jeff and Maud are caught up in the confusion. All they want is stability. What they get is each other. Hopefully, it'll be enough.

When Grace Stanley's older brother, Matt, died in a car accident, she wanted to die, too. But she's slowly finding her way again, with the help of her mysterious new friend, Philomena--who always seems to show up when Grace needs her most. If only Jackson, Matt's best friend, had a Philomena of his own. He's fallen into some very bad habits--at the same time that Grace is falling for him. The second book in the Saving Grace series explores the themes of faith, hope, and learning to live (maybe even love) in the wake of a tragedy.

In this prize-winning collection, a debut poet evokes his childhood as the son of missionaries in Papua New Guinea.Mission Work is an arresting collection of poems based on Aaron Baker's experiences as a child of missionaries living among the Kuman people in the remote Chimbu Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Rich with Christian and Kuman myths and stories, the poems explore Western and tribal ways of looking at the world -- an interface of vastly different cultures and notions of spirituality, illuminated by the poet's own struggles as he comes of age in this unique environment.The images conjured in Mission Work are viscerally stirring: native people slaughter pigs for a Chimbu wedding ceremony; a papery flight of cicadas cuts through a cloud forest; hands sting as they beat a drum made of dried snakeskin. Quieter moments are shot through with the unfamiliar as well. In ?Bird of Paradise,? a father angles his son's head toward the canopy of the jungle so the boy can catch sight of an elusive bird. Stanley Plumly, this year's guest judge, writes, ?How rare to find precision and immersion so alive in the same poetry. Aaron Baker's pressure on his language not only intensifies and elevates his memories of Papuan 'mission work,' it transforms it back into something very like his original childhood experience. Throughout this remarkably written and felt first book, the reader, like the author himself, 'can't tell if this is white or black magic,' Christian, tribal, or both at once.?

In Senior Year, Dan Shaughnessy focuses his acclaimed sports writing talents on his son Sam's senior year of high school, a turning point in any young life and certainly in the relationship between father and son. Using that experience, Shaughnessy circles back to his own boyhood and calls on the many sports greats he's known over the years -- Ted Williams, Roger Clemens, Larry Bird -- to capture that uniquely American rite of passage that is sports.Growing up, Dan Shaughnessy was so baseball-obsessed that he played games by himself and didn?ft even let himself win. His son, Sam Shaughnessy, came by his own love of sports naturally and was a natural hitter who quickly ascended the ranks of youth sports. Now nicknamed the 3-2 Kid for his astonishing ability to hover between success and failure in everything he does, Sam is finally a senior, and it's all on the line: what college to attend; how to keep his grades up and his head down until graduation; and whether his final high school baseball season, which features foul weather, a hitting slump, and a surprising clash with a longtime coach, will end in disappointment or triumph.All along the way, Dad is there, chronicling that universal experience of putting your child out on the field -- and in the world -- and hoping for the best. With gleaming insight, wicked humor, and, at times, the searching soul of an unsure father, Shaughnessy illuminates how sports connect generations and how they help us grow up -- and let go.

If you had to pick the top ten iconic sporting events, what would they be? Jim Gorant asked himself this question, and the answer resulted in a yearlong journey into the heart of sports. From the Kentucky Derby to the Super Bowl, from a day game at Wrigley Field to a fortnight at Wimbledon, from the NCAA Final Four to the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field, Gorant takes us along for the ride, evoking the best (and sometimes the worst) sports has to offer. He enters the inner sanctum of NASCAR, witnesses Jack Nicklaus teeing off for the last time at the Masters, and takes part in one of college football's biggest rivalries -- Ohio State versus Michigan.Part adventure, part pilgrimage, Fanatic is a rollicking story of the ultimate sports road trip. Through this transformative journey Jim Gorant learned a little more about what it means to be a fan and a lot more about himself.

For her acclaimed collection of stories, Red Ant House, Joyce Carol Oates hailed Ann Cummins as "a master storyteller." The San Francisco Chronicle called her "startlingly original." Now, in her debut novel, Cummins stakes claim to rich new literary territory with a story of straddling cultures and cheating fate in the American Southwest. Yellowcake introduces us to two unforgettable families-one Navajo, one Anglo-some thirty years after the closing of the uranium mill near which they once made their homes. When little Becky Atcitty shows up on the Mahoneys' doorstep all grown up, the past comes crashing in on Ryland and his lively brood. Becky, the daughter of one of the Navajo mill workers Ryland had supervised, is now involved in a group seeking damages for those harmed by the radioactive dust that contaminated their world. But Ryland wants no part of dredging up their past-or acknowledging his future. When his wife joins the cause, the messy, modern lives of this eclectic cast of characters collide once again, testing their mettle, stretching their faith, and reconnecting past and present in unexpected new ways. Finely crafted, deeply felt, and bursting with heartache and hilarity, Yellowcake is a moving story of how everyday people sort their way through life, with all its hidden hazards.

In a world dominated by fast food and fake food, establishing healthy eating habits in children is one of the greatest concerns for parents -- and potentially one of the greatest challenges. Fortunately, the renowned physician Dr. David Ludwig developed a proven lifestyle plan that has benefited thousands of families. Here he shares his nine-week program, offering the tools -- including tasty recipes, motivational tips, and activities -- that can help families prevent the kitchen table from becoming a battleground.

We treat disease as our enemy. Germs and infections are things we battle. But what if we've been giving them a bum rap? From the earliest days of life on earth, disease has evolved alongside us. And its presence isn't just natural but is also essential to our health. Drawing on the latest research, Zuk answers a fascinating range of questions about disease: Why do men die younger than women? Why are we attracted to our mates? Why does the average male bird not have a penis? Why do we--as well as insects, birds, pigs, cows, goats, and even plants--get STDs? Why do we have sex at all, rather than simply splitting off copies of ourselves like certain geckos? And how is our obsession with cleanliness making us sicker? In this witty, engaging book, evolutionary biologist Zuk makes us rethink our instincts as she argues that disease is our partner, not our foe. Reconsider the fearsome parasite!