Stalker Kai always knew Death walked in his shadow. But when his search for his mentor's estranged brother brings Death to his door, Kai discovers a fierce need to live life to the fullest.

The selected poems from over fifty years by the great poet and biographer and friend of Miles Davis. Quincy Troupe writes poetry in great waves. The words are just notes. It's the music you make with them that matters. He's not a wordsmith, he's a shaman conjuring long repetitive lines, cadences of looking across the sea towards Africa and haunted by the legacy of slavery and racism, or of remembering fellow conjurers, poets and musical artists, celebrating, always celebrating, but never only that. In the fifty-page, incantatory poem, "Ghost Voices," there is a longing to be reconnected to the past, and a longing too to be free of it. In the short title poem, "Duende: For García Lorca and Miles Davis," there lies, nakedly, Troupe's credo: "...secrets, mystery infused in black magic / that enters bodies in forms of music, art/ poetry imbuing language with sovereignty / in blood spooling back through violent centuries..." The version of the great poem "Avalanche (number 3)" that appears here is different from the version of the same poem he published nearly 25 years ago--in exactly the same way that a jazz artist picks up his horn to play the same song a little differently every time. Troupe is a generous and gregarious poet in this giant offering that includes many new poems, as well as a selection chosen from across his eleven previously published volumes. What's remarkable is the constancy, the energy, and how he's always looking right at you in the here and now, and at the same time sees something over your shoulder that others don't see yet, maybe a distant storm gathering over the waters, something we're going to need to rise up and face soon enough.

Stalker and elfin outcast Kai Gracen has no hope of escaping a deadly bloodline feud.

Summer 1977. As the Son of Sam and a scorching heat wave plague New York City, Laila Levin, a Jewish sociologist from Long Island, meets Dr. Eduardo Quintana while giving a speech on the epidemic problem of teenage pregnancies. Laila is relationship-shy after a disastrous marriage, and Eduardo has never completely recovered from his high school sweetheart’s desertion. He is finishing up a residency in New York City and plans to open a family practice near his hometown in New Mexico. The unlikely pair share strong family values and an interest in helping prevent teen pregnancy. Their mutual passion is so intense it stuns them both. After a brief courtship, Eduardo persuades Laila to accompany him to his family ranch near Española, New Mexico, a rural area with one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in North America. Once in New Mexico, Laila is blatantly rejected by Sylvia, Eduardo’s controlling mama. Sylvia desperately wants Eduardo to marry Violet, his high school sweetheart. Violet has just returned to New Mexico after a failed flight attendant career, and a walk on the dark side of Hollywood. Her mama and Sylvia cook up a plan to get rid of Laila and reunite their children. The Quintanas hold a large pig roast and invite a menagerie of tattooed cousins, rodeo stars, and mariachis, where the drop-dead gorgeous Violet makes a grand entrance. In the midst of the pandemonium that results, a shocking family secret is revealed, and Laila and Eduardo’s love for each other is severely tested. Can their relationship survive the fierce clash of cultures, the murderous intentions of a Son of Sam copycat who has stalked Laila from New York City, and their own uncertainties about the upheavals that their union will cause in their lives?

Stalker Kai Gracen is caught between two worlds, the humans who raised him and the elfin Courts he was born to. When Ryder, a Sidhe lord he’s sworn to protect, needs him to rescue a group of refugees, Kai must rise to the challenge without losing a part of himself in the process.

The best and the newest from one of American poetry's most cool and lyrical rhythm masters.

When the kids are away, the monsters will play. With their kids off at summer camp, these handsome dads protect the world from other things that go bump in the night—but can they find time for romance too?