"In her debut poetry collection One Strange Country, Russian-American poet Stella Hayes replaces one strange country with another she calls home, mapping an origin story of identity, exile and loss. In stark and sharp language, Hayes conveys poems of witness, longing and love. With lyrical urgency, Hayes interrogates displacement and belonging, what it means to grow attached to places as much as to people. This collection takes a reader from a child's understanding of family life in the former U.S.S.R., to an understanding of what it means to come of age, marry, and give birth to children in an adopted country. "An exile's life is planned one day at a time," Hayes declares in one poem which informs her own experiences, as a daughter, sister, mother, and poet. "One Strange Country is as much a collection of maps as it is a collection of poems." (Erica Wright) Hayes has embraced what Frank Bidart would call her "radical givens," those writerly obsessions that we cannot escape"--

The New York Times–bestselling series continues with the murder of an American soldier in Venice: “This is definitely an author to watch (Kirkus Reviews). Early one morning, Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient. When something discovered in the victim’s apartment suggests the existence of a high-level conspiracy, Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody, somewhere, is taking great pains to provide a ready-made solution to the crime. Rich with atmosphere and marvelous plotting, Death in a Strange Country is a superb novel in Donna Leon’s chilling Venetian mystery series. Praise for Donna Leon and the Commissario Brunetti Mysteries “One of the best international crime writers is Donna Leon, and her Commissario Guido Brunetti tales set in Venice are at the apex of continental thrillers.” —Rocky Mountain News “Leon’s books shimmer in the grace of their setting and are warmed by the charm of her characters.” —The New York Times Book Review “Brunetti . . . long ago joined the ranks of the classic fictional detectives.” —Evening Standard “Commissario Brunetti, most charismatic current Euro-cop, uncovers deadly ants’ nest of corruption. A highly accomplished, scary read.” —The Guardian

From the acclaimed author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, A Strange Country, the sequel to The Life of Elves and described as a 'strange and poetic fantasy similar to the work of Tolkien' by the San Francisco Book Review, will transport readers to a lost world and remind them of the power of poetry and imagination. ‘Bewitching’ … ‘[an] enchanting hero’s journey’ Foreword Reviews Alejandro de Yepes and Jesús Rocamora, young officers in the Spanish regular army, are stationed alone at Castillo when a friendly redhead named Petrus appears out of nowhere. There is something magnetic and deeply mysterious about him. Alejandro and Jesús are bewitched, and, in the middle of the sixth year of the longest war humankind has ever endured, they abandon their post to follow him across a bridge that only he can see. Petrus brings them to a world of lingering fog, strange beings, poetry, music, natural wonders, harmony and extraordinary beauty. This is where the fate of the world and all its living creatures is decided. Yet this world too is under threat. A long battle against the forces of disenchantment is drawing to a climactic close. Will poetry and beauty prevail over darkness and death? And what role will Alejandro and Jesús play?

Winner of the inaugural Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, North American Stadiums is an assured debut collection about grace—the places we search for it, and the disjunction between what we seek and where we arrive. “You were supposed to find God here / the signs said.” In these poems, hinterlands demand our close attention; overlooked places of industry become sites for pilgrimage; and history large and small—of a city, of a family, of a shirt—is unearthed. Here is a factory emptying for the day, a snowy road just past border patrol, a baseball game at dusk. Mile signs point us toward Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Salt Lake City, Chicago. And god is not the God expected, but the still moment amid movement: a field “lit like the heart / of the night,” black stars stitched to the yellow sweatshirts of men in a crowd. A map “bleached / pale by time and weather,” North American Stadiums is a collection at once resolutely unsentimental yet deeply tender, illuminating the historical forces that shape the places we inhabit and how those places, in turn, shape us.

"This book is about the people I met as I crisscrossed Australia by train and plane and L-plated car: the undefeated dreamers and wild-hearted romantics, the obsessed hobbyists and beautiful failures. It is about heroes and legends, illusions, delusions and hope, and one or two men with shit for brains who ought to be locked up." As anyone who's ever read Mark Dapin's column and features in Good Weekend knows, he's an immensely funny, acute and vivid observer of Australian life. In Strange Country, he takes us on a journey through a very different Australia - a country that's eccentric, puzzling, big-hearted, small-minded, nostalgic and sometimes just plain mad. From the last travelling boxing tent to feral urban sewer rats to Vietnam Veteran bikies and the annual Parkes Elvis Festival, his writing illuminates the stranger side of Australian life in a travel book like no other.

Strange Country identifies the origin, the development, and the success of the Irish literary tradition in English as one of the first literature that is both national and colonial.