Tales from the days when men were men, cars were cars, and junkyards were everywhere. Did you ever spend the day in a wrecker's yard, searching for the perfect parts for your old car? Did you reclaim and restore-on-the-cheap an old $200 junker given up for dead? Follow Gary (and Ed and Dave) as they meander through the junkyards of their memories, full of slant sixes, comaradaderie, mistakes, and achievements. Generously Illustrated with period sketches and photos.

For a brief time in mid-nineteenth century Oneida, New York, two of the most eccentric and fascinating figures in American history crossed paths when troubled soul and soon-to-be presidential assassin Charles Guiteau threw in his lot with John Humphrey Noyes's utopian community of "free love" believers. In The Substance of Things Hoped For, Tom Noyes--a distant relative of John Humphrey Noyes--renders this historical intersection by deftly imagining the dynamics and consequences of an ominous and unusual relationship. As Guiteau stumbles further into madness and eventually achieves infamy for his murder of President Garfield, John Humphrey Noyes is left to face the consequences of his own missteps and misunderstandings as he's forced to make a hasty exit from Oneida. Joining Noyes and Guiteau in their parallel narratives is a chorus of other characters--family members, lovers, rivals, notable historical figures--whose haunting voices complement, undermine, complicate, and enhance Noyes's and Guiteau's versions of events, while also homing in on the novel's most pressing questions, including those related to revelation, delusion, loyalty, and love.

From California coastal redwoods to giant sequoias in the Sierra, from practical jokes of adolescence to unexpected epiphanies marking an academic career, the many poems in Somewhere to Follow range through the life of a poet on the lookout for what comes next. In this his seventh volume of poetry, Paul Willis ascends the switchbacks of ordinary experience to cross paths with song-leading rangers, exhausted mothers, dirt-loving children, terrified immigrants, Arctic climbers, face-masked students, beatified counselors, rejected suitors, honest morticians, talking ferns, mourning crows, stinking fungi, vengeful rivers, raging fires, faithful brothers, the world's largest pinecones, and an innocent pair of twin grandsons. Also present in these pages are the Virgin Mary, Sir Philip Sidney, George Vancouver, David Douglas, John Muir, Ernest Hemingway, and the inimitable Ruth Kerr of the Kerr Canning Jar Company. Throughout this collection, one hears Willis's unique tone: quietly observant, worldly wise and yet still full of wonder, alert to the surprises and vistas that can only be found by striking out on your own. Take the path that each poem offers and find for yourself Somewhere to Follow.

In the class of the high school English teacher she has been haunting, Helen feels them: for the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, a boy who has not seemed remarkable until now. And Helen—terrified, but intrigued—is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to possess.

The “reigning master of hard-edge science fiction takes a chilling look at the plausible near-future” in this cyberpunk sequel to Queen of Angels (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). In the second half of the twenty-first century, nanotechnology has transformed every aspect of society. Humans can now change their abilities, their appearance, their very bodies on microscopic level. Advanced psychotherapy seems to have wiped away violence and illness. The world is sane and in balance. However, that balance teeters with the grisly murder of two prostitutes and a series of suicides. Soon, public defender Mary Cho’s investigation finds a dark danger lurking in the recesses of the “dataflow.” Entertainment, virtual pornography, neo-Luddite separatists, an unknown artificial intelligence—everything seems to be intertwined in a vast conspiracy. As technology fails so too does the society perched high atop it. Perfection is a high pedestal from which to fall.

Honored as one of "10 Favorite Books of 2014" —Dwight Garner, The New York Times Honored as a "Standout Book of 2014" —American Poet magazine “Belieu oscillates between dark humor, self-consciousness, and pointed satire in a fourth collection that’s equal-opportunity in its critique. In the world of these poems, no one is innocent; everyone is confined to the complexity, absurdity, and, above all, fallibility of their human condition…. Anchoring the work is a conversational, lyrical speaker willing to implicate herself as part of the political and social constructs she criticizes, as when she depicts a Southern American culture still reeling from its history of social injustice, and even the Civil War: “Don’t tell us/ history. Nobody hearts a cemetery/ like we do.” It’s a fantastic collection; Belieu desires not to dress issues up but confront them.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “A smart and nettling book of poems — about love, sex, social class and our free-floating anxieties — from a writer who is a comedian of the human spirit. Her crisp free verse has as many subcurrents as a magnetic field.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Politics, pop culture, and parenthood appear here along with reflections on our collective moments of hypocrisy and hope. '12-Step,' one of the most resonant entries, begins innocuously with a meditation about lighthouses, then the speaker gathers speed and confidence and reaches a risky but profound one-word stanza—'myself'—before ending with a haunting inversion of the Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous. Amid the quips and the elegant observations about immortality, Belieu's speakers never forget their responsibilities, or their possibilities." —Booklist "From poem to poem in the smart, savvy Slant Six, Belieu channels an updated American idiom, one of stubborn in-betweenhood. Like the plain-spoken poetry that plumbed the depths of American consciousness in the 20th century, Belieu trawls the shallows of today’s America and finds just as much caught in its oily reflections as in its murkier subcurrents. It’s '[b]etter,' she suggests, 'to forget perfection.'" —The Boston Globe “I’ve never read a poem by Erin Belieu that I didn’t want to immediately rip from its bindings so I could fold it up and carry around in my pockets and read so many times that the paper turned back into pulp. She’s just that good. That honest and brave and beautiful and wise and funny. She writes poems we need. Poems that say who I am and who you are and how and why we got to be this way. Poems that wonder if we can ever change. Poems that know us and show us and grace us. Poems that remember us and forget us and leave us dazzled in their dust. In Slant Six, she’s outdone herself. It’s a spellbinding, heart-opening beauty of a book.” —Cheryl Strayed "Erin Belieu . . . is always ready to surprise, to astonish, and, ultimately, to defy comparison."—Boston Book Review "[One] of America's finest poets."—Robert Olen Butler Erin Belieu's fourth collection, Slant Six, is an inundation of the humor and horror in contemporary American life—from the last saltine cracked in the sleeve, to the kitty-cat calendar in an office cubicle. With its prophecies of impending destruction, and a simultaneous flood of respect for Americans, Erin Belieu's poems close like Ziploc bags around a human heart. From "12-Step": I am considering lighthouses in a completely new light— their butch neutrality, their grand but modest surfaces. A lighthouse could appear here at any moment. I have been making this effort, placing myself in uncomfortable positions, only for the documented health benefits . . .