"I was living in a fairy story--the kind with sinister overtones and not always a happy ending--in which a young man loves a beautiful maiden who returns his love but is always disappearing into some unknown and mysterious world, about which she will reveal nothing." So John Bayley describes his life with his wife, Iris Murdoch, one of the greatest contemporary writers in the English-speaking world, revered for her works of philosophy and beloved for her incandescent novels. In Elegy for Iris, Bayley attempts to uncover the real Iris, whose mysterious world took on darker shades as she descended into Alzheimer's disease. Elegy for Iris is a luminous memoir about the beauty of youth and aging, and a celebration of a brilliant life and an undying love.

"Radio Iris has a lovely, eerie, anxious quality to it. Iris's observations are funny, and the story has a dramatic otherworldly payoff that is unexpected and triumphant." —Deb Olin Unferth, The New York Times Book Review "A noirish nod to the monotony of work." —O: The Oprah Magazine "Kinney is a Southern California Camus." —Los Angeles Magazine "'The Office' as scripted by Kafka." —Minneapolis Star-Tribune "[An] astute evocation of office weirdness and malaise." —The Wall Street Journal Radio Iris follows Iris Finch, a twentysomething socially awkward daydreamer and receptionist at Larmax, Inc., a company whose true function she doesn’t understand (though she’s heard her boss refer to himself as “a businessman”). Gradually, her boss’ erratic behavior becomes even more erratic, her coworkers begin disappearing, the phone stops ringing, making her role at Larmax moot, and a mysterious man appears to be living in the office suite next door. Radio Iris is an ambient, eerie dream of a novel, written with remarkable precision and grace that could also serve as an appropriate allegory for our modern recession. Anne-Marie Kinney’s short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Black Clock, Keyhole, and Satellite Fiction.

A story about love and friendship and Marxism Many years ago Gerard Hernshaw and his friends “commissioned” one of their number to write a political book. Time passes and opinions change. “Why should we go on supporting a book which we detest?” Rose Curtland asks. “The brotherhood of Western intellectuals versus the book of history,” Jenkin Riderhood suggests. The theft of a wife further embroils the situation. Moral indignation must be separated from political disagreement. Tamar Hernshaw has a different trouble and a terrible secret. Can one die of shame? In another quarter a suicide pact seems the solution. Duncan Cambus thinks that since it is a tragedy, someone must die. Someone dies. Rose, who has gone on loving without hope, at least deserves a reward.

Iris Chang's mysterious suicide in 2004, at age thirty-six, didn't seem to make any sense. She had more to live for than anyone, including fame, fortune, beauty, a husband, and child. Some even wondered if the controversial author of the Rape of Nanking had been murdered. Long-time friend Paula Kamen was among those left wondering what had gone so wrong. Seeking to reconcile the suicide with the image of Chang's “perfect” life, Kamen searched her own memory and scoured Chang's letters, diaries, and archival material to fill in the gaps of Chang's personal transformation-from awkward teen to homecoming princess in college, from “ex-shy person” to world-class speaker and international human rights pioneer-and later decline into mental illness and paranoia. A literary investigation of an important writer's journey, Finding Iris is a tribute to a lost heroine, a portrait of the real and vulnerable woman who inspired so many around the world.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Winner of the Pulitzer Prize From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück, a stunningly beautiful collection of poems that encompasses the natural, human, and spiritual realms Bound together by the universal themes of time and mortality and with clarity and sureness of craft, Louise Glück's poetry questions, explores, and finally celebrates the ordeal of being alive.

Can Buddhists Wear Mascara? features narrative poems deeply informed by the author's life. Through an unapologetic exploration of her own contradictions, Anderson highlights dualities that live in all of us. Her humor (and occasional irreverence) softens the edges of truths that otherwise cut too close to bone. In the abundance of poems exploring the human condition, her voice is both singular and compelling.