Search results for ""atlantic monthly press""

March Book is a wonder and a revelation. A shockingly assured first collection from young poet Jesse Ball, its elegant lines and penetrating voice present a poetic symphony instead of a simple succession of individual, barely-linked poems. Craftsmanship defines this collection; it is full of perfect line-breaks, tenderly selected words, and inventive pairings. Just as impressive is the breadth and ingenuity of its recurring themes, which crescendo as Ball leads us through his fantastic world, quietly opening doors. In five separate sections we meet beekeepers and parsons, a young woman named Anna in a thin, linen dress and an old scribe transferring the eponymous March Book. We witness a Willy Loman-esque worker who "ran out in the noon street / shirt sleeves rolled, and hurried after / that which might have passed" only to be told that there's nothing between him and "the suddenness of age." While these images achingly inform us of our delicate place in the physical world, others remind us why we still yearn to awake in it every day and "make pillows with the down / of stolen geese," "build / rooms in terms of the hours of the day." Like a patient Virgil, insistent and confident, Ball escorts us through his mind, and we're lucky to follow.

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This new collection from Michael Knight—PEN/Hemingway citation recipient and B&N Discover Award finalist whom Esquire praises as “a writer of the first rank”—thrills and pierces with stories of men and women of breathtaking conviction, pathos, and humor. The stories in Goodnight, Nobody demonstrate Michael Knights’ exquisite and “rare power to make a setting breathe, to invest it with a vitality that seems as authentic and intense as the pulsebeats of his characters.” (The New York Times Book Review) This luminous collection astutely explores rediscovered love, reconciliation, and peace amid the trials of everyday life. The denizens of Goodnight, Nobody are, like so many of us, bewildered by the circumstances in which they find themselves. The unexpected twists of their lives—rendered with expert humor and pathos in Knight’s dark-light style—test the limits of the personalities they have known as their own. In “Birdland,” published in The New Yorker, a beautiful Northerner visits a small Alabama town to research the bizarre migration habits of a flock of African parrots from Rhode Island. “Feeling Lucky” finds a desperate man kidnapping his own daughter. In the most daring and haunting of these stories, “Killing Stonewall Jackson,” which was published in Story, a hardened band of Confederate soldiers resorts to surprising measures to survive on the battlefield. “The End of Everything,” published in GQ, weaves together a tender love story and an edge-of-your-seat urban legend, while “The Mesmerist,” published in Esquire, is an eerie fairy tale about a man who hypnotizes a stranger and makes her his wife. In “Keeper of Secrets, Teller of Lies,” published in Virginia Quarterly Review, a man causes more havoc the harder he tries to help a young mother and her son. In “Mitchell’s Girls,” a stay-at-home dad battles the disrespect of youth and a paralyzing bad back. “Ellen’s Book” hilariously describes the yearning a man feels for his estranged wife. In “Blackout,” a suburban neighborhood’s pent-up jealousies and fears explode under the cover of darkness. Knight’s sensibility is potent and unique, stirring tenderness in equal parts with violence. While the settings, chronologies, and characters vary widely throughout the collection, they remain bound by Knight’s simple, elegant prose, his graceful sense of humor, and an unfailing empathy with the self-destructed.

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Jimmy Santiago Baca's brilliantly received memoir, A Place to Stand, earned him the prestigious International Prize and offered a keyhole view into the brutal personal history that shaped -- and continues to inform -- his raw, incisive voice. In C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans, he trains his hallmark lyrical intensity on the dark underbelly of addiction and takes us on an unforgettable guided tour of the darkest corners of a brutal, unjust world. C-Train is a heartstopping series of episodes from the life of Dream-boy, a young man who finds himself seduced, and later enslaved, by the siren song of cocaine. Part paean to the delicious power of intoxication, part lament for those helplessly under its power, C-Train is a ride its hero, and the reader, struggle to get off. In Thirteen Mexicans, Baca writes of the Chicano community and the gulf between the American dream and American reality. In searing, elegiac vignettes he portrays the raw beauty of life in the barrio and the surreal, stomach-turning moment when people of color must confront how they are reflected in the distorted mirror of white society. Giving voice to the dispossessed and the disenfranchised, Baca illuminates the most unforgiving landscapes; yet his is a vision tempered by a searching hopefulness that brings these collections inching toward redemption. Baca's latest achievement will confirm his place as one of the nation's leading poets, a poet whose words "heal, inspire, and elicit the earthly response of love" (Garrett Hongo). "[Baca] writes with ... an intense lyricism and that transformative vision which perceives the mythic and archetypal significance of life-events." -- Denise Levertov

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Winner of the prestigious Pegasus Prize for Literature, And the War Is Over is a taut novel set in and around an Indonesian village as news of Japan's surrender gradually makes its way to her far-flung army. War has transformed the quiet Sumatran village of Teratakbuluh, bringing with it the officious, often incomprehensible members of the Japanese army and a camp where Dutch internees are put to hard labor. Some of the Dutch are plotting escape, and the Sumatrans in the village are divided on whether to help or to avoid involvement. The Japanese officer Lieutenant Ose struggles with his conscience -- how to handle the love he feels both for his Javanese servant and his wife, who has betrayed him for a powerful general, and how to cope with the impending end of a war he never wanted to be involved in. As the Dutch escape and the news of surrender loom nearer, tensions between the Japanese and the Sumatrans, within the Dutch camp and within the life of the village, explode into a final, heartbreaking act of violence. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, "has the dramatic intensity of a kick in the guts.... [Marahimin's] mastery of the universe he's created is flawless." "What is remarkable ... is that we finally get the familiar war from an unfamiliar, non-combatant, Asian point of view." -- Bharati Mukherjee, The Washington Post Book World "[A] deep and complex novel. The author is searching for redemption for all humans." -- Abigail F. Davis, Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

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Craig Nova's classic novel Trombone is a powerful and poignant portrait of the complexities between an arsonist father and his good son. Dean Gollancz is an easygoing man of modest means. He longs for the Big Time, and when his job at the Print Shop doesn't pay the bills, he commits arson for a Chinese gangster in Los Angeles. His son Ray feels deep love and loyalty for his father, but when he wins an Ivy League scholarship, Ray must decide how much of his own life to sacrifice for Dean's respect. The destructive nature of their relationship is brought to the fore when Iris, a classmate of Ray's, becomes his father's lover. Longing for Iris and knowing he can never be like Dean, Ray must decide whether he even wants to be, and whether it is right to be that way at all. "[Nova's novels] deserve to be ranked among the best American fiction of the past two decades." -- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post "Trombone is a novel of crime, passion, adventure ... by one of our most acclaimed and prolific fiction writers." -- Howard Frank Mosher

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Now in paperback, Douglas Galbraith's The Rising Sun is an extraordinary tour de force of historical fiction in the tradition of Caleb Carr's The Alienist and David Liss's A Conspiracy of Paper. A widespread critical favorite in hardcover, it was hailed by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best novels of the past decade, and established its author as a major new talent. In 1698, five vessels led by the flagship Rising Sun embarked on a perilous voyage for the northern coast of what is now Panama, where passengers intended to found a colony at Darien. With them went the hopes and fortunes of the nation of Scotland, which sought to build an overseas empire so that it could at last compete on the world stage with its rival, England. The Rising Sun is the story of this mission and its tragic outcome, as recorded by the ship's superintendent of cargoes, Roderick Mackenzie. A young man of promise and ambition, Mackenzie is quickly caught up in the intrigues of his fellow colonists -- rivalries that will prove overwhelming as nationalist optimism gives way to the brutal realities of their hardscrabble life and rain, mud slides, and disease assault the Scottish encampment. A dramatic, pitch-perfect story of the adventures and betrayals of men under duress in a strange, exotic land, The Rising Sun establishes Douglas Galbraith as a writer of uncommon resonance and skill. "Galbraith's powers of description are immense ... it succeeds absolutely." -- Geoff Nicholson, The New York Times Book Review "The writing throughout is beautifully wrought.... ...the tale unfolds like a vast exotic panorama demanding further examination ... fascinating." -- Bernadette Murphy, Los Angeles Times "[A] remarkable novelistic debut." -- Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

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What It Takes to Get to Vegas has been described by The Arizona Republic as "a juicy tale of ambition, passion and grit that is as much fun to read as a good trash talk session with your best friend." Growing up among the championship hopefuls and alleyway gladiators of East L.A., Rita Zapata sees in boxing a ticket to something better. At eighteen, she's earned the title "Queen of the Streetfighters." Then she meets Billy, an enigmatic, intense fighter from Mexico, who begins systematically clawing his way to the top. Their passionate connection gives Rita two things she's never had: real love, and respect in the neighborhood. From the alleys off Cesar Chavez Avenue to the carpeted suites of Caesars Palace, Rita learns exactly what it takes to get to Vegas, as Billy turns out to be the best thing that has ever happened to her -- and the worst. In exuberant prose sparkling with wicked wit, Yxta Maya Murray has given us a sass-talking, big-hearted heroine with a story we will not soon forget. "Frenetic, bittersweet, and often hilarious ... Rita Zapata is who Holden Caulfield would want to be if he were alive in 1999." -- The Boston Globe; "From the get-go, [Yxta Maya Murray] pulls you into her latest book with its flowing Spanglish and bittersweet observations." -- Seventeen; "Somewhere between a telenovela and the passion of St. Theresa de Avila ... precise, hilarious, and swinging ... Rita's world dance[s] around beside us after we put the book down." -- New Times LA; "Murray's elegant prose beckons those who fear this land of urban blight to venture into it, to stay a while and meet its citizens ... Stellar." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

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Tells the tale of Chauncey "Chance" Gardiner, who appears out of nowhere to become the heir to the empire of a Wall Street tycoon, a presidential policy adviser, and a media mogul.

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“The passion, playfulness, and regret in these wonderful poems will make many women think this book was written just for them.” — Susan Cheever “Susan Kinsolving’s poems skate with a dark elegance on the thin ice between the upper air and a deepening sorrow, between the day’s figures and memory’s pattern. But she’s headed towards love: the distant shore, the beckoning warmth; and by the end of Dailies & Rushes she has gotten herself — and, to our delight and gratitude, brought us as well—triumphantly there.” — J. D. McClatchy “What rings with authenticity in Susan Kinsolving’s poems is a lovely severity. . . . Sorrow and courage and pleasure register themselves in lucid distillations, like the purities of winter air.” — Anthony Hecht “‘Things just are,’ Susan Kinsolving writes, in a matter-of-fact tone that belies a fiery intensity. In her poetry, commonplace things are imbued with a magical aura. Her wry wit clarifies as it deepens a tragic vision.” — Grace Schulman “In her first major collection Susan Kinsolving shows herself to be a poet of ravenous amplitudes, of wit schooled by feeling, of observations had owed by memory, and of landscape rising to what she calls ‘an oblique sublimity’ which is also the hallmark of her art.” — Edward Hirsch

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On the central and north coast of British Columbia, the Great Bear Rainforest is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, containing more organic matter than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. The area plays host to a wide range of species, from thousand-year-old western cedars to humpback whales to iconic white Spirit bears.According to local residents, another giant is said to live in these woods. For centuries people have reported encounters with the Sasquatch—a species of hairy bipedal man-apes said to inhabit the deepest recesses of this pristine wilderness. Driven by his own childhood obsession with the creatures, John Zada decides to seek out the diverse inhabitants of this rugged and far-flung coast, where nearly everyone has a story to tell, from a scientist who dedicated his life to researching the Sasquatch, to members of the area’s First Nations, to a former grizzly bear hunter-turned-nature tour guide. With each tale, Zada discovers that his search for the Sasquatch is a quest for something infinitely more complex, cutting across questions of human perception, scientific inquiry, indigenous traditions, the environment, and the power and desire of the human imagination to believe in—or reject—something largely unseen. Teeming with gorgeous nature writing and a driving narrative that takes us through the forests and into the valleys of a remote and seldom visited region, In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond sheds light on what our decades-long pursuit of the Sasquatch can tell us about ourselves and invites us to welcome wonder for the unknown back into our lives.

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Leo Maxwell is no ordinary attorney. He spends as much time tracking corrupt politicians and gangland leaders across the Bay area to piece together the facts of a crime as he does crafting courtroom rhetoric. But Leo has never quite recovered from discovering his mother’s murdered corpse as a child, or from growing up in the shadow of his brilliant older brother. In Wolf’s Revenge, the fifth novel in Lachlan Smith’s Shamus Award-winning series, attorney-detective Leo Maxwell seeks an exit strategy from his family’s deepening entanglement with a ruthless prison-based gang. Caught between the criminals and the FBI, Leo charts his own path in defending a young woman who was manipulated into brazenly murdering a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. When the consequences strike heartbreakingly close to home, Leo, his brother Teddy, and the rest of the family are forced into a winner-takes-all confrontation with men who don’t care how many innocents they harm in achieving their goals. As Leo’s world collapses, long-held secrets are revealed, transforming his perspective on the aftermath of the tragedy that derailed his childhood and fractured his family twenty-one years ago. Leo comes to realize there’s no such thing as fair play in the battle against a prison gang that’s already being punished to the full extent of the law. The question then becomes who will get revenge first—the Maxwells or the sadistic gang leader who pursues them?

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In the eighteenth novel in Donna Leon's bestselling mystery series, Commissario Guido Brunetti is faced with a toxic situation that puts Italy's environment--and his own family--at risk

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A New York Times Editors’ Choice“The spirit of Eudora Welty broods over these adroitly crafted stories set in and around coastal Alabama, evoking a world coiled tight as a conch shell.” —O Magazine“Impressive...Knight pays careful, writerly attention to the details of desperation.”—New York Times Book Review An instant regional bestseller, Eveningland is Alabama-born Michael Knight’s powerful short story cycle whose seven stellar tales illuminate the everyday beauty and heartache of life along the shores of serene, history-haunted Mobile Bay, in the years preceding a devastating hurricane. "A thought-provoking and deeply satisfying reading experience, Eveningland evokes the Old South without sentimentalizing its loss." —Washington Independent Review of Books

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A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction The first battle book from Mark Bowden since his #1 New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down, Hue 1968 is the story of the centerpiece of the Tet Offensive and a turning point in the American War in Vietnam. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched over one hundred attacks across South Vietnam in what would become known as the Tet Offensive. The lynchpin of Tet was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital, by 10,000 National Liberation Front troops who descended from hidden camps and surged across the city of 140,000. Within hours the entire city was in their hands save for two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the Front’s presence, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city, block by block and building by building, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the U.S. and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. Hue 1968 is a gripping and moving account of this pivotal moment.

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“Michael Knight is more than a master of the short story. He knows the true pace of life and does not cheat it, all the while offering whopping entertainment.”—Barry HannahLong considered a master of the form and an essential voice in American fiction, Michael Knight’s stories have been lauded by writers such Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Hannah, and Richard Bausch. Now, with Eveningland he returns to the form that launched his career, delivering an arresting collection of interlinked stories set among the “right kind of Mobile family” in the years preceding a devastating hurricane.Grappling with dramas both epic and personal, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the “unspeakable misgivings of contentment,” Eveningland captures with crystalline poeticism and perfect authenticity of place the ways in which ordinary life astounds us with its complexity. A teenaged girl with a taste for violence holds a burglar hostage in her house on New Year’s Eve; a middle aged couple examines the intricacies of their marriage as they prepare to throw a party; and a real estate mogul in the throes of grief buys up all the property on an island only to be accused of madness by his daughters. These stories, told with economy and precision, infused with humor and pathos, excavate brilliantly the latent desires and motivations that drive life forward.Eveningland is a luminous collection from “a writer of the first rank.”(Esquire)

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