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In the winter of 1968, a young woman named Harriet disappears outside of Denver. Soon after, her father dies mysteriously. The family's three remaining sons - Wayne, Roy, and Conrad - grow increasingly distant as the specters of murder, family, and suspicion loom. As the brothers grow older, they learn that loss comes in many forms - in absence and silence, and in death. Decades later, Wayne's only child confronts the brothers, uncovering long-buried resentments that have plagued the family for generations.

In this delightful dive into the bygone world of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows staunch Mole, sociable Water Rat, severe Badger, and troublesome and ebullient Toad of Toad Hall are joined by a young mole lady, Beryl, and her dear friend, Rabbit. Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon, World Fantasy and Nebula awards. She has taught writing and has worked at Dark Horse, Microsoft and Real Networks.

Beginner's Guide to a Head-on Collision offers the deeply moving poetic memoir of Sebastian Matthews's life in the years after the car accident that devastated him and his wife and son. The poems, which often feel like electric improvised prayer-songs, intimately evoke the terrors and wonders of catastrophic physical injury and of life re-booted. They are disturbing, eerie poems that embody the paradoxes of being The Dead Man at the crossing.

Ben Loory returns with a second collection of timeless tales, inviting us to enter his worlds of whimsical fantasy, deep empathy, and playful humor, in the signature voice that drew listeners to his highly praised first collection. In stories that eschew literary realism, Loory's characters demonstrate richly imagined and surprising perspectives, whether they be dragons or swordsmen, star-crossed lovers or long-lost twins, restaurateurs dreaming of Paris or cephalopods fixated on space travel.

An "unleashed love song" to her late grandmother, Nickole Brown's collection brings her brassy, bawdy, tough-as-new-rope grandmother to life. With hair teased to Jesus, mile-long false eyelashes, and a white Cadillac Eldorado with atomic-red leather seats, Fanny is not your typical granny rocking in a chair. Instead, think of a character that looks a lot like Eva Gabor in Green Acres, but darkened with a shadow of Flannery O'Connor.

An Unferth story lures you in with a voice that seems amiable and lighthearted, but it swerves in sudden and surprising ways that reveal, in terrifying clarity, the rage, despair, and profound mournfulness that have taken up residence at the heart of the American dream. These stories often take place in an exaggerated or heightened reality, a quality that is reminiscent of the work of Donald Barthelme, Lorrie Moore, and George Saunders, but in Unferth's unforgettable collection she carves out territory that is entirely her own.

Darcie Wilder's Literally Show Me a Healthy Person is a careful confession soaking in saltwater, a size B control top jet black pantyhose dragged over a skinned knee and slipped into unlaced doc martens. Blurring the lines of the written word, Literally Show Me a Healthy Person is a portrait of a young girl, or woman, or something; grappling with the immediate and seemingly endless urge to document and describe herself and the world around her.

These reflections by male inmates, recorded by a prison psychologist, are brief, sometimes only a few lines, but they offer profound insights into the realities of prison life. Some of the inmates are still bewildered that they gave up good opportunities and turned to crime; some fear that they may really like being in prison; others hope they will never return after being released, although they have not kept that vow in the past. Some come from families that abused or neglected them, and others had their every whim indulged.

In Viking Economics - perhaps the most fun economics audiobook you've ever listened to - George Lakey dispels these myths. He explores the inner-workings of the Nordic economies that boast the world's happiest, most productive workers, and explains how, if we can enact some of the changes the Scandinavians fought for, surprisingly recently, we too can embrace equality in our economic policy.

A "Proustian minimalist on the order of Lydia Davis" ( Kirkus Reviews), Sarah Manguso is one of the finest literary artists at work today. To hear her work is to witness acrobatic acts of compression in the service of extraordinary psychological and spiritual insight. 300 Arguments, a foray into the frontier of contemporary nonfiction writing, is at first glance a group of unrelated aphorisms.