New & Noteworthy Books

New Books from Independent &
University Presses

See full list of noteworthy books by category below

Posted on October 30, 2008

The Islands of Divine Music

Novel by John Addiego

Unbridled Books, October 2008

ISBN-10: 1932961542

ISBN-13: 978-1932961546

Hardcover: 256pp; $24.95

At the dawn of the 1900s, in Naples, precocious 11-year-old Rosari is sweet-talked into writing a ransom note for an illiterate gangster. That small moment sets in motion a chain of events that alters the course of her life. Forced to flee Italy, her family ends up in San Francisco, where Rosari meets Giuseppe Verbicaro, a ferociously determined laborer who will eventually become her husband. Their story, and the stories of their children and grandchildren make up Corvallis writer John Addiego's sprawling first novel.

 

A Fixed, Formal Arrangement

Prose by Allison Carter

Les Figues Press, 2008

ISBN-10: 193425407X

ISBN-13: 978-1934254073

Paperback: 109pp; $15.00

In A Fixed, Formal Arrangement Carter uses the short prose form to render the liminal space of between-ness. What exactly is “spare” time? Is a comma as servile as they say? Is a garage located inside or outside? What is the world, and why/how does it exist around you? These are the best questions of literature that Carter explores.

 

Letters to Poets:

Conversations about Poetics,
Politics, and Community

Ed. Jennifer Firestone, Dana Teen Lomax

Saturnalia Books, November 2008

ISBN-10: 0975499084

ISBN-13: 978-0975499085

Paperback: 340pp; $24.00

Letters to Poets honors and commemorates the hundredth anniversary of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet by partnering a selection of 14 of the country's leading contemporary poets with 14 emerging poets and documenting their correspondences. These poets challenge the hierarchies and pitfalls endemic to the mentoring process, and ask some of the day's toughest, most vital questions concerning race, class, and gender. Spanning a range of not only generations but cultural, aesthetic, and economic backgrounds, these diverse pairings both challenge and support each other artistically and politically.

 

It's Bedtime, Cucuy!

Fiction by Claudia Galindo

Pinata Books, October 2008

ISBN-10: 1558854916

ISBN-13: 978-1558854918

Hardcover: 32pp; $15.95

Like many human children, Cucuy, the little monster, doesn't like to go to bed. "I'm not sleepy," he says. "All I want to do is jump around and play!" He tries to run and hide, but Mama manages to get him into his pajamas. Every night he kicks and screams, wiggles and jiggles, mumbles and grumbles. He's hungry, he's thirsty. He needs to go to the bathroom. But Mama won't give in. "Tomorrow you will have a whole new day to jump around and play," she tells her little monster, until finally he... drifts... off... to... sleep.

 

Oranges in No Man's Land

Novel by Elizabeth Laird

Haymarket Books, May 2008

ISBN-10: 1931859566

ISBN-13: 978-1931859561

Paperback: 128pp; $9.95

Oranges in No Man's Land tells the riveting story of ten-year-old Ayesha's terrifying journey across no man's land to reach a doctor in hostile territory in search of medicine for her dying grandmother.

 

A Sequence / A Series

Poetry by Dirk Stratton

NeO Pepper Press, September 2008

Chapbook: 33pp; $10.00

A small chapbook of poetry that can be read two ways. Read it right-side-up first and then turn it upside down for more by Stratton.

 

Shimming the Glass House

Poetry by Helen Pruitt Wallace

Ashland Poetry Press, October 2008

ISBN-10: 091259263X

ISBN-13: 978-0912592633

Paperback: 80pp; $14.95

"In her first book, Helen Wallace explores a range of subjects with lush language and a formal deftness. If there is a presiding theme here, it is the tension between our ‘struggle for precision’ and the poignant fact of the imperfection all around and within us."
- Enid Shomer