The Crooked Inheritance

The Crooked Inheritance
Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2013-08-28
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0307494667

An “exquisite . . . spot on” (The Hudson Review) collection of poems from one of our best-loved and best-selling poets that is both personal, with poetry about love, nature and reflections on the stages of life, and political, ranging from the war in Iraq and Katrina to concerns such as women’s rights and the poet’s childhood in Detroit.

Colors Passing Through Us

Colors Passing Through Us
Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2013-08-28
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0307517942

In Colors Passing Through Us, Marge Piercy is at the height of her powers, writing about what matters to her most: the lives of women, nature, Jewish ritual, love between men and women, and politics, sexual and otherwise. Feisty and funny as always, she turns a sharp eye on the world around her, bidding an exhausted farewell to the twentieth century and singing an "electronic breakdown blues" for the twenty-first. She memorializes movingly those who, like los desaparecidos and the victims of 9/11, disappear suddenly and without a trace. She writes an elegy for her mother, a woman who struggled with a deadening round o fhousework, washin gon Monday, ironing on Tuesday, and so on, "until stroke broke/her open." She remembers the scraps of lace, the touch of velvet, that were part of her maternal inheritance and fist aroused her sensual curiosity. Here are paeans to the pleasures of the natural world (rosy ripe tomatoes, a mating dance of hawks) as the poet confronts her own mortality in the cycle of seasons and the eternity of the cosmos: "iam hurrying, I am running hard / toward I don't know what, / but I mean to arrive before dark." Other poems--about her grandmother's passage from Russia to the New World, or the interrupting of a Passover seder to watch a comet pass--expand on Piercy's appreciation of Jewish life that won her so much acclaim in The Art of Blessing the Day. Colors Passing Through Us is a moving celebration of the endurance of love an dof the phenomenon of life itself--a book to treasure.

Circles on the Water

Circles on the Water
Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-08-07
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 030776219X

More than 150 poems from her seven books of poetry written between 1963 and 1982.

The Uncommoners #1: The Crooked Sixpence

The Uncommoners #1: The Crooked Sixpence
Author: Jennifer Bell
Publisher: Crown Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2017-01-31
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0553498436

Anyone with a Hogwarts-shaped hole in their lives can’t miss this fantasy series opener. Dive into a secret underground city below London where ordinary objects are capable of extraordinary magic! "Part Tim Burton, part J.K. Rowling! A terrific debut." —Soman Chainani, New York Times Bestselling Author of the School for Good and Evil series Welcome to a world where nothing is quite as it seems… When their grandmother Sylvie is rushed to the hospital, Ivy Sparrow and her annoying big brother Seb cannot imagine what adventure lies in store. Soon their house is ransacked by unknown intruders, and a very strange policeman turns up on the scene, determined to apprehend them . . . with a toilet brush. Ivy and Seb make their escape only to find themselves in a completely uncommon world, a secret underground city called Lundinor where ordinary objects have amazing powers. There are belts that enable the wearer to fly, yo-yos that turn into weapons, buttons with healing properties, and other enchanted objects capable of very unusual feats. But the forces of evil are closing in fast, and when Ivy and Seb learn that their family is connected to one of the greatest uncommon treasures of all time, they must race to unearth the treasure and get to the bottom of a family secret . . . before it’s too late. Debut novelist Jennifer Bell delivers a world of wonder and whimsy in the start of a richly uncommon series. "An auspicious trilogy opener." -Kirkus Reviews

The Crooked Mask (sequel to The Twisted Tree)

The Crooked Mask (sequel to The Twisted Tree)
Author: Rachel Burge
Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre Ltd.
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2020-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1471409198

Part ghost story, part murder mystery - a creepy and magical tale steeped in Norse myth, perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman. Welcome to the Circus of Myth & Mayhem - where performers re-enact tales of the Norse gods wearing masks which mysteriously change expression, the creepy jester isn't quite human, and the big top is full of the dead. Martha arrives at the circus, deep in the forests of Northern Norway, determined to learn how Nina died. Did she fall from the trapeze as Stig said, or was there more to her 'accident?' Drawn into a dangerous game of the gods, Martha must look behind the mask and see the truth . . . before it's too late. Following the events of THE TWISTED TREE, THE CROOKED MASK continues the story of Martha and Stig as she comes to terms with her magical inheritance. Praise for The Twisted Tree A creepy and evocative fantasy likely to make readers wary of the shadows in the corner of an eye, The Sunday Times Rattles along with proper page-turning pace, The Daily Express Creepy and amazing, MTV UK Creates an atmosphere of Stephen King intensity, The Irish Examiner A terrific read - twisty and scary and instantly gripping, Waterstones (Exeter Roman Gate) A ghost story that will get under the skin of the most hardened reader, Starburst Magazine The perfect book for cold and wintry nights, prepare to be chilled to your very bones, Culturefly

What Are Big Girls Made Of?

What Are Big Girls Made Of?
Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 176
Release: 1997-03-04
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0679765948

Opening with a powerful cycle of elegies for her long-distant, half-brother, this major new collection by one of our bestselling poets then goes on to include both serious and funny poems about women and poems about the precarious balance of nature, ending with the beautiful, life-affirming "The Art of Blessing the Day." 160 pp.

The Art of Blessing the Day

The Art of Blessing the Day
Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2000-09-19
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0375704310

Winner of the 2000 Paterson Poetry Prize About Marge Piercy's collection of her old and new poems that celebrate the Jewish experience, the poet Lyn Lifshin writes: "The Art of Blessing the Day is an exquisite book. The whole collection is strong, passionate, and poignant, but the mother and daughter poems, fierce and emotional, with their intense ambivalence, pain and joy, themes of separation and reconnecting, are among the very strongest about that difficult relationship. "These striking, original, beautifully sensuous poems do just that. Ordinary moments--a sunset, a walk, a private religious ritual--are so alive in poems like 'Shabbat moment' and 'Rosh Hodesh.' In the same way that she celebrates ordinary moments, small things become charged with memories and feelings: paper snowflakes, buttons, one bird, a bottle-cap flower made from a ginger ale top and crystal beads. "She celebrates the body in rollicking, gusto-filled poems like 'Belly good' and 'The chuppah,' where 'our bodies open their portals wide.' So much that is richly sensuous: 'hands that caressed you, . . . untied the knot of pleasure and loosened your flesh till it fluttered,' and lush praise for 'life in our spines, our throats, our knees, our genitals, our brains, our tongues.' "I love the humor in poems like 'Eat fruit,' the nostalgia and joy in 'The rabbi's granddaughter and the Christmas tree,' the fresh, beautiful images of nature--'In winter . . .the sun hangs its wizened rosehip in the oaks.' "I admire Piercy's sense of the past alive in the present, in personal and social history. The poems are memorials, like the yahrtzeit candle in a glass. 'We lose and we go on losing,' but the poems are never far from harsh joy, the joy that is 'the wine of life.' "Growing up haunted by Holocaust ghosts is an echo throughout the book, and some of the strongest poems are about the Holocaust, poems that become the voices of those who had no voice: 'What you carry in your blood is us, the books we did not write, music we could not make, a world gone from gristle to smoke, only as real now as words can make it.' "Marge Piercy's words make such a moving variety of experiences beautifully and forcefully real."

The High Cost of Living

The High Cost of Living
Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2016-04-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504033418

Passions flare in a most unlikely love triangle between three remarkable characters facing arduous life challenges in this engrossing novel by bestselling author Marge Piercy Heartbroken after her girlfriend leaves her for another woman, Leslie, a history grad student, follows her thesis advisor from Grand Rapids to Detroit for a fresh start. There she befriends seventeen-year-old Honor, who sparks a familiar passion within her. Feeling that she can’t act on her desire, she sleeps with Honor’s older friend, Bernard, a gay former street hustler who resents his past and, to make matters more complicated, also lusts for Honor. As the three grapple with issues of sexuality and identity, author Marge Piercy manages to be both intimately attuned to her characters’ emotions and aware of their role in a larger social and economic context. Leslie, Honor, and Bernard struggle financially in a city that doesn’t offer many opportunities, and they discover that expressing their sexuality and finding love may be privileges they cannot afford. “A novel as ambiguous and fascinating as life itself.” —The New York Times “Piercy goes over her subjects with a fine-tooth comb and provides food for thought about some of our directions, feelings and values.” —Publishers Weekly

Made in Detroit

Made in Detroit
Author: Marge Piercy
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2015-03-31
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0385353898

A treasure trove of new poems by one of our most sought-after poets: poems that range from descriptions of the Detroit of her childhood to her current life on Cape Cod, from deep appreciations of the natural world to elegies for lost friends and relationships, from a vision of her Jewish heritage to a hard-hitting take on today’s political ironies. In her trademark style, combining the sublime with the gritty, Marge Piercy describes the night she was born: “the sky burned red / over Detroit and sirens sharpened their knives. / The elms made tents of solace over grimy / streets and alley cats purred me to sleep.” She writes in graphic, unflinching language about the poor, banished now by politicians because they are no longer “real people like corporations.” There are elegies for her peer group of poets, gone now, whose work she cherishes but from whom she cannot help but want more. There are laments for the suicide of dolphins and for her beloved cats, as she remembers “exactly how I loved each.” She continues to celebrate Jewish holidays in compellingly original ways and sings praises of her marriage and the small pleasures of daily life. This is a stunning collection that will please those who already know Marge Piercy’s work and offer a splendid introduction to it for those who don’t.