When the renowned poet Fiona Skinner is asked about the inspiration behind her iconic work, The Love Poem, she tells her audience a story about her family and a betrayal that reverberates through time.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past-toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields...

Malte Laurids Brigge is an impoverished Danish poet and nobleman leading a solidary existence in Paris at the turn fo the century. In his notebook he records both his impressions of the city and his reminiscences of his childhood. Fascinated by squalor, he observes the misfits and outcasts of society - victims of fate like himself. He is obsessed by the idea of death and his own search for spiritual understanding.

"Everyone knows something's off, but nobody can agree on just what it is. Maybe it's the weather; maybe everyone's just so damn sensitive these days. Or maybe it's because the animals of the world have finally had enough, besieging towns and cities and terrorizing their human residents. Jenlena and her best friend Daphne are two humanities grads in their early 20s, trying to find their way in a society that has just eradicated all animals for the...

"A perfect storm of comedic proportions erupts in a DC bookstore over the course of one soggy summer week, punctuated by political turmoil, a celestial event, and a perpetually broken vacuum cleaner"-- Provided by publisher.

"Cadenza is the City of Words, a city run by poets, its skyline dominated by the steepled towers of its libraries ... Carlo Mazzoni, a young wordsmith, arrives at the city gates intent on making his name as the bells ring out with the news of the death of the city's poet-leader. Instead, he finds himself embroiled with the intrigues of a city in turmoil ... A war that threatens not only to destroy Cadenza but remove it from history altogether"-- Provided...

"A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied society's expectations to find her voice and her destiny. "Remember the flight, for the bird is mortal." All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel, gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled...

Marty Frye, a seven-year-old who likes to read poetry and talk in rhymes, solves three separate mysteries for a classmate, a toy store owner, and his younger sister.

Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. What is actual when our experiences are mediated by language, technology, medication, and the arts? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections? Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam's "research" becomes a meditation...

A celebration of Langston Hughes and African American authors he inspired, told through the lens of the party held at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 1991.