These transcendent, lyrical essays on the West announced Gretel Ehrlich as a major American writer—“Wyoming has found its Whitman” (Annie Dillard). Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural forces—the harsh wind, bitter cold, and swiftly changing seasons—in the remote reaches of the American West. She brings depth, tenderness, and humor to her portraits of the peculiar souls who also call it home: hermits and ranchers, rodeo cowboys and schoolteachers, dreamers and realists. Together, these essays form an evocative and vibrant tribute to the life Ehrlich chose and the geography she loves. Originally written as journal entries addressed to a friend, The Solace of Open Spaces is raw, meditative, electrifying, and uncommonly wise. In prose “as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning,” Ehrlich explores the magical interplay between our interior lives and the world around us (Newsday).

Using small-town life as a springboard to explore the loftiest of ideas, Haven Kimmel’s irresistibly smart and generous first novel is at once a romance and a haunting meditation on grief and faith. Langston Braverman returns to Haddington, Indiana (pop. 3,062) after walking out on an academic career that has equipped her for little but lording it over other people. Amos Townsend is trying to minister to a congregation that would prefer simple affirmations to his esoteric brand of theology. What draws these difficult—if not impossible—people together are two wounded little girls who call themselves Immaculata and Epiphany. They are the daughters of Langston’s childhood friend and the witnesses to her murder. And their need for love is so urgent that neither Langston nor Amos can resist it, though they do their best to resist each other. Deftly walking the tightrope between tragedy and comedy, The Solace of Leaving Early is a joyous story about finding one’s better self through accepting the shortcomings of others.

Belinda McKeon’s Solace is an extraordinarily accomplished first novel—a story of a father and son thrown together by tragedy; one clinging to the old country and one plunging into the new. Set in an Ireland that catapulted into wealth at the end of the twentieth century and then suffered a swift economic decline, this is a novel about the conflicting values of the old and young generations and the stubborn, heartbreaking habits that mute the language of love. Tom and Mark Casey are a father and son on a collision course, two men who have always struggled to be at ease with each other. Tom is a farmer in the Irish midlands, the descendant of men who have farmed the same land for generations. Mark, his only son, is a doctoral student in Dublin, writing his dissertation on the nineteenth-century novelist Maria Edgeworth, who spent her life on her family’s estate, not far from the Casey farm. To his father, who needs help baling the hay and ploughing the fields, Mark’s academic pursuit is not man’s work at all, the occupation of a schoolboy. Mark’s mother negotiates a fragile peace. Then, at a party in Dublin, Mark meets Joanne Lynch, a lawyer in training whom he finds irresistible. She also happens to be the daughter of a man who once spectacularly wronged Mark’s father, and whose betrayal Tom has remembered every single day for twenty years. After the lightning strike of devastating loss, Tom and Mark are left with grief neither can share or fully acknowledge. Not even the magnitude of their mutual loss can alter the habit of silence. Solace is a beautiful and moving novel by one of the most exciting new writers to emerge from Ireland.

This book considers the experience of grief, bereavement, and despair from the perspective of our timeless life. While not denying the reality of suffering and anguish in the sphere of mortal life, the book explains why grief and sorrow have no basis for existence in the dimension of the Spirit's light

One effect of severe traumatic violence is that it cuts its victims off from connecting, even with those present in the experience. Perhaps of even greater effect, victims disconnect from themselves-from a conscious monitoring of emotion, reaction, and reality. Solace documents the testimony and memories of seven siblings who grew up as the well-behaved silent children of a well-respected religious family, and looks into the private space of their life long memories as they begin to recreate and redefine the concept of relationships and survival. Colleen Mills' masterful vignetted snap shots of shame will lead you through a maze of tenderness and pain that is difficult to shake.

Ten stories that show why the freedom of truth is worth the price of loneliness. This is the fifth volume of the collected short stories of Joe Vasicek. It includes: Love and Truth at Universe End Where have all the aliens gone? Calling Scam Likely An auto warranty scam he was sure to never forget! Prison of Dreams A boy, a girl, and a starship gone mad. Blight of Empire A dying world. A decadent empire. A discovery that can save them both. The Library of Fate He rewrote his past in the library of fate. Now, his kingdom is falling. In the Wake of Zedekiah Wight (J.M. Wight) Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil! Hunter, Lover, Cyborg, Slave A woman needs a man like an authorized cyborg assassin needs an AI familiar. The Body Tax Our government's most heinous crimes are the ones we never question. We Should Have Named You Corona Why do hard times break some men, while making others stronger? The Freedom of Second Chances Family isn't just where you came from, but where you're going too.