In the little city of Flint, MI, the good die young and the people left standing are the grimiest of characters. With reign over the city's drug trade, Benjamin Atkins made sure that his precious daughter, Raven, was secluded from the grit that the city had to offer. But when Raven's young heart gets claimed by Mizan, a stick-up kid in search of a come-up, there's nothing Benjamin can do about losing her to the streets. She chooses love over loyalty and runs off with Mizan, but her new role as wifey soon proves to be more than she can handle. Puppy love always feels right, but things turn stale, and she soon finds that everyone she loves has disappeared. All she has is Mizan, but when hugs and kisses turn to bloody lips and black eyes, she realizes that Mizan is not who she thought he was. Raven becomes desperate for a way out, but this time, Daddy can't save her. Every time she finds the courage to leave, fear convinces her to stay. Like a moth to a flame, Raven is drawn to Mizan, even though she knows he'll be the death of her. When the hood life she chose becomes unbearable and the only way out is in a coffin, what will she do?

After the international success of his collection of World War II newspaper articles, German Autumn—a book that solidified his status as the most promising and exciting writer in Sweden—Stig Dagerman was sent to France with an assignment to produce more in this journalistic style. But he could not write the much-awaited follow-up. Instead, he holed up in a small French village and in the summer of 1948 created what would be his most personal, poignant, and shocking novel: A Burnt Child. Set in a working-class neighborhood in Stockholm, the story revolves around a young man named Bengt who falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers his father had a mistress. But as Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother’s memory, he also finds himself drawn into a fevered and conflicted relationship with this woman—a turn that causes him to question his previous faith in morality, virtue, and fidelity. Written in a taut and beautifully naturalistic tone, Dagerman illuminates the rich atmospheres of Bengt’s life, both internal and eternal: from his heartache and fury to the moody streets of Stockholm and the Hitchcockian shadows of tension and threat in the woods and waters of Sweden’s remote islands. A Burnt Child remains Dagerman’s most widely read novel, both in Sweden and worldwide, and is one of the crowning works of his short but celebrated career.

'A startling novel of ferocious psychological acumen, which, to my mind, deserves a large, international readership... very much a book for our times' Siri Hustvedt, from the introduction 'A literary giant in Sweden, Dagerman conjures a Strindbergian atmosphere of shadowy menace in his brief, intense novel, A Moth to a Flame... This moody, death-haunted novel is well worth reading' Evening Standard In 1940s Stockholm, a young man named Bengt falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers that his father had a mistress. Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother's memory, but he soon finds himself drawn into a fevered and forbidden affair with the very woman he set out to destroy . . . Written in a taut, restrained style, A Moth to a Flame is an intense exploration of heartache and fury, desperation and illicit passion. Set against a backdrop of the moody streets of Stockholm and the Hitchcockian shadows in the woods and waters of Sweden's remote islands, this is a psychological masterpiece by one of Sweden's greatest writers. 'Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion' Graham Greene 'Dagerman can evoke such emotion in a single sentence' Colm Tóibín 'There are some writers (Kafka and Lorca immediately spring to mind) who come to enjoy the status of saint; their lives and deaths constitute statements about existence and its proper priorities. A saint of this type is the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman' Times Literary Supplement 'This searing tale of bereavement and loathing feels all too relevant today' Guardian

It started as playful, if barbed, banter before rising to a fateful wager with a most notorious rake—the Captain of the Guard, Jalal al-Khoury—who may have finally met his match in a lovely, if haughty, handmaiden, Despina. But she, too, seems to have met her match in the handsome Jalal. What begins as a tempestuous battle of will and wit in short order becomes a passionate affair spurred on by tragedy of the worst kind.

“I see now that no person who has ever loved has ever been spared from tears. Tears of joy and tears of sorrow. Of the most intimate union and of letting go.” Poignant, timeless and true. This book is a personal collection of poems about love and letting go. Whether it be a newfound love, a love that endures a lifetime, or a love that will soon be saying goodbye, one can find in these pages something like a mirror that tells the story of one’s own heart. Are you in sorrow because of a broken heart? Are you in grief because your are mourning the death of a loved one? Dying is painful, but so is the loss of a love that broke your heart. Yet in all these, if one has loved true, one has found meaning in life. Healing is never far away for as long as hope is kept alive in one’s heart. Let these poems of love comfort you, inspire you and remind you of the beauty of love. To love is to be rapt in bliss, to be torn asunder and to be healed and made whole again.