Marianne Boruch indulges in the joy of the short leap between poetry and the essay

Rini and V.B. Price in Death Self harmoniously combine their artistic and creative talents. In doing so they evoke a potpourri of emotions that touch the human spirit not like a black feather but a white dove of peace, tranquility, and reconciliation in their personal brush with mortality. In their respective worlds of lyricism and aesthetics, death is envisaged as the supreme liberator of fear and the creator of something noble and metaphysical in the freedom of the self.

Henry Rios is introduced as a troubled San Francisco public defender, burnt out and battling alcoholism. While investigating the murder of an old friend, he traces clues back to the man's own wealthy family. It is here that we first encounter Rios's disenchantment with a legal system caught between justice and corruption.

This book celebrates the great stripping process of aging, dying and spiritual awakening. Beautiful, poignant, at times humorous, transcendent, messy, down to earth, refreshingly honest--the book explores death, and more importantly, being alive, through a rich mix of personal stories and spiritual reflections. Joan writes about her mother's final years and about being with friends and teachers at the end of their lives. She shares her own journey with aging, anal cancer, and other life challenges. She explores what it means to be alive in what may be the collapse of civilization and the possible extinction of life on earth due to climate change. Pointing beyond deficiency stories, future fantasies, and oppressive self-improvement projects, Joan invites an awakening to the immediacy of this moment and the wonder of ordinary life. She demonstrates a pathless path of genuine transformation, seeing all of life as sacred and worthy of devotion, and finding joy in the full range of our human experience.

A series of traumatic accidents and losses is the starting-point for this unique memoir of a woman's journey to spiritual awakening. Confronted by her mortality, and seeking a way to accept both death and living with death, Ona Kiser presents this deep exploration of modern spiritual practices, narrated with equal measures of humor and passion. Re-visiting the lessons of her years as an initiate of Santeria, she discovers and puts to work techniques from Buddhist meditation and Western Magick, enlisting - along the way - the guidance of a maverick guru. The result is a richly detailed map of the joys and pitfalls of the quest for enlightenment. Like a modern-day St. Teresa of Avila, Ona skilfully navigates the waves of agony and ecstasy, the heights of mystical insight and visions, as well as the depths of confusion and despair, always in undaunted pursuit of her goal. "It was an end, but also a beginning, a rebirth into a new world that had always existed, hidden in plain sight."

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Ibn Arabi’s Small Death is a sweeping and inventive work of historical fiction that chronicles the life of the great Sufi master and philosopher Ibn Arabi. Known in the West as “Rumi’s teacher,” he was a poet and mystic who proclaimed that love was his religion. Born in twelfth-century Spain during the Golden Age of Islam, Ibn Arabi traveled thousands of miles from Andalusia to distant Azerbaijan, passing through Morocco, Egypt, the Hijaz, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey on a journey of discovery both physical and spiritual. Witness to the wonders and cruelties of his age, exposed to the political rule of four empires, Ibn Arabi wrote masterworks on mysticism that profoundly influenced the world. Alwan’s fictionalized first-person narrative, written from the perspective of Ibn Arabi himself, breathes vivid life into a celebrated and polarizing figure.