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Pushcart Prize L

"The annual international gathering of the best Fiction, Poetry, Essays and Memoirs from small independent literary presses, including more than 60 selections from 50 presses chosen with the advice of 160 distinguished Contribution Editors."-- Provided by publisher

The Wounded Generation

"In The Wounded Generation, historian David Nasaw offers a powerful reexamination of post-World War II America, focusing on the unseen struggles veterans faced upon returning home. While victory was celebrated, many veterans battled undiagnosed trauma, inadequate medical care, housing shortages, and social upheaval. Drawing on personal accounts and historical records, Nasaw reveals how the war's psychological and societal aftershocks reshaped both individual lives and the nation--particularly for Black veterans who were often denied GI Bill benefits. This is a compelling portrait of a generation marked not only by heroism, but by lasting wounds." -- Adapted from publisher

The West

"How did 'the West' come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did 'Westerners' begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. 'The West' was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders. It gradually emerged as of the 1820s and was then, Varouxakis shows, decisively promoted in the 1840s by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (whose political project, incidentally, was passionately anti-imperialist). The need for the use of the term 'the West' emerged to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of 'Europe.' The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to differentiate from certain 'others' within Europe as well as to include the Americas. After examining the origins, Varouxakis traces the many and often astonishingly surprising changes in the ways in which the West has been understood, and the different intentions and consequences related to a series of these contested definitions. While other theories of the West consider only particular aspects of the concept and its history (if only in order to take aim at its reputation), Varouxakis's analysis offers a comprehensive account that reaches to the present day, exploring the multiplicity of current, and not least, prospective future meanings. He concludes with an examination of how, since 2022, definitions and membership of the West have been reworked to consider Ukraine, as the evolution and redefinitions continue."--from the inside front and back flaps

The Genius of Trees

"For a supposedly stationary life-form, trees have demonstrated an astonishing mastery over the environment around them. In The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and unseen biochemistry across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful station, not as victims of our negligence but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. Trees manipulate fundamental elements, plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and even humankind to achieve their ends, as seen with oaks in Devon, England, shaping ecosystems through root networks and fungi, and in Amedi, Iraq, changing sexes as they age; laurel rainforests in the Canary Islands regulating water cycles; and metasequoias in California influencing microclimates. Some tree species have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller and less useful mammals. Others can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch. And new discoveries are constantly coming to light: research has shown that trees have an even greater role in preventing global warming than we thought--trees, at one time thought to produce methane actually consume it. We share one world with trees and one need for survival. This eye-opening journey into the inner lives of nature's most powerful plant is a profoundly new and original way of understanding both the miracles trees perform and the glories of our natural world." -- Amazon

Flat Earth

Avery is a grad student in New York working on a collection of cultural reports and flailing financially and emotionally. She dates older men for money, and others for the oblivion their egos offer. In an act of desperation, Avery takes a job at a right-wing dating app. The "white-paper" she is tasked to write for the startup eventually merges with her dissertation, resulting in a metafictional text that reveals itself over the course of the novel. Meanwhile, her best friend, Frances, an effortlessly chic emerging filmmaker from a wealthy Southern family, drops out of grad school, gets married, and somehow still manages to finish her first feature documentary. Frances's triumphant return to New York as the toast of the art world sends Avery into a final tailspin, pushing her to make a series of devastating decisions. In this generational portrait, attention spans are at an all-time low and dopamine tolerance is at an all-time high. Flat Earth is a story of coming of age in America, a novel about commodification, conspiracy theories, mimetic desire, and the difficulties of female friendship that's as sharp and sardonic as it is heartbreaking. -- Provided by publisher

Eye of the Monkey

"Eye of the Monkey begins in the wake of a devastating civil war that led to the formation of the United Regency, an autocracy in an unnamed European country. The ravages of war are sweeping, and the populace has been divided into segregated zones, where the well-off are under mass surveillance and the poor are phantom presences, confined and ghettoized. On the verge of a nervous breakdown after being followed by a young man for weeks, Giselle, a history professor at the New University, seeks the help of Dr. Mihály Kreutzer, a psychiatrist who is navigating divorce and the recent death of his mother. They soon begin a torrid love affair, but everything is not what it seems. As Giselle begins to unpack her family history and the possible root of her psychological crisis, Dr. Kreutzer, who has ties to some of the most powerful people in the country, possesses ulterior motives of his own. In Tóth's deftly woven, polyphonic, and dystopian novel-full of twists, turns, and treachery-we plumb the depths of a fractured, disturbed, and isolated society, as well as the underbelly of social perversions such a society produces. In this intricate web, stories within stories reveal the complicated lives of women and men who struggle to negotiate the networks of power and poverty that have shaped their lives and their relationships to one another." -- Provided by publisher

Bread of Angels

In Bread of Angels, Patti Smith reflects on her journey as an artist, tracing her life from a post-World War II childhood marked by hardship and imagination through her emergence as a poet and musician. She recounts formative influences such as Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan, her creative and domestic life with her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith, and the enduring role of art in navigating love, loss, and renewal. Blending memory and reflection, Smith explores how imagination, devotion, and artistic expression transform ordinary experience into beauty and meaning.

The Seeds

"The Seeds confronts the ecological paradox of homemaking in an environment domesticity rejects-one of mess, disease, and everyday violence-to explore the equal distress and delight entangled in caring for a family, a new home, and the earth that sustains them. Cecily Parks draws on literary sources ranging from nursery rhymes to The Odyssey to examine how we form relationships with the natural world. The lessons of these poems are in processes that underscore humanity's power to alter nature and powerlessness to control it: an epiphyte's fall from a live oak, an urban creek's response to drought, or a roof rat's nest-building in the attic of the poet's home. Motherhood positions the speaker to revisit her girlhood relation to the earth; as her two young daughters exemplify the ease with which children can become nature's intimates, the speaker must confront the ecological disturbances that arise from her own attempts to prevent upset to the garden through aggression by weeds, animals, and weather. The Seeds deconstructs what it means to love nature, especially when the natural world challenges our desires for beauty, abundance, and safety. Looking to more-than-human guides with an open mind and heart, Parks' third book is a collection of unconventional contemporary environmental histories, in which places become biological and emotional primers for those who will inherit them."-- Provided by publisher

Next of Kin

"The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents' charisma and non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings' mischievousness and flair. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum. Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother's sudden death and another's suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. She began investigating her family's devout independence and individualism with a nearly forensic rigor, soon discovering a sobering warning in their long-held self-satisfaction. By the time she was called to care for her declining mother-the mother she'd seen only twice in thirty years-Hamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family. Hamilton's gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one family's disintegration, Next of Kin is also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side." -- Provided by publisher

The New Economy

"A series of cisterns undulating through love, grief, and time. A world of "Miss You" poems opening a portal to all those we've lost and would love to visit for a while. A devotional to the ungendered vessel as it ages, dreams, and survives. In Gabrielle Calvocoressi's latest collection, The New Economy, poems are haunted by the ghosts of loved ones and childhood memories, by changing landscapes and bodies. Calvocoressi's own figure is examined--investigating the desire to protect the body one is born with and the longing to have been born in another. Lyrical and unafraid, The New Economy invites us to name our fears and sorrows, to write to who or what has left us, to create practices that can hold both the darkness and light of this (in)finite life."-- Provided by publisher

King Sorrow

"Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll--and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot--is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library. Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others--brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen--don't hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world. But there's nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year--or become his next meal."-- Provided by publisher

Injustice

"Throughout his first administration, Donald Trump did more than any other president to politicize the nation's top law enforcement agency, pressuring appointees to shield him, to target his enemies, and even to help him cling to power after his 2020 election defeat. The Department, pressed into a defensive crouch, has never fully recovered. Injustice exposes not only the Trump administration's efforts to undermine the Department at every turn but also how delays in investigating Trump's effort to overturn the will of voters under Attorney General Merrick Garland helped prevent the country from holding Trump accountable and enabled his return to power. Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis take readers inside as prosecutors convulsed over Trump's disdain for the rule of law, and FBI agents, the department's storied investigators, at times retreated in fear. They take you to the rooms where Special Counsel Jack Smith's team set off on an all-but-impossible race to investigate Trump for absconding with classified documents and waging an assault on democracy--and inside his prosecution's heroic and fateful choices that ultimately backfired. With a plethora of sources deeply embedded in the ranks of three presidencies, Leonnig and Davis reveal the daily war secretly waged for the soul of the department, how it has been shredded by propaganda and partisanship, and how--if the United States hopes to live on with its same form of government--Trump's war with the Justice Department will mark a turning point from which it will be hard to recover." -- Dust jacket

A Hollywood Ending

"NBA journalist Yaron Weitzman lays out the high stakes drama happening inside the Lakers' organization at a crucial juncture in their history, as they try to juggle the warring priorities between LeBron James and the Buss family. When LeBron James signed with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018, the match looked like one made in heaven. Here was a living legend, the preeminent athlete of his generation, joining forces with one of the most iconic teams in all of sports. The Lakers, in the midst of their worst stretch in franchise history and reeling from the death of their legendary owner Dr. Jerry Buss, needed a savior. LeBron, fresh off ending Cleveland's 50-year title drought, needed a new challenge to help further burnish his legacy. The script wrote itself. A little over two years later, LeBron and Dr. Buss' daughter, Jeanie, were standing shoulder to shoulder, hoisting the NBA finals trophy into the air. Having won their record-tying 17th NBA title, the Lakers had reclaimed their accustomed perch on top of the basketball world and seemed destined to dominate the NBA for years to come. Traditionally, the Lakers' didn't celebrate championships, they celebrated dynasties. But this was a different Lakers' organization, one beset by infighting. A single title wouldn't be enough to cement LeBron James status as a Lakers' legend or help him surpass the ghost of Michael Jordan. Both parties needed sustained success, but for that to happen they needed to be on the same page. Sadly, the 2020 title would represent the pinnacle of their pairing, and the beginning of a precipitous decline. Drawing from over 250 interviews, Yaron Weitzman takes readers on a riveting, behind the scenes journey of this fraught partnership. From the Succession-like power struggle between the Buss children, to the rise of LeBron's landscape-altering talent agency and its attempts to assert its own power within the Lakers' walls, to the evolution of LeBron's priorities and political voice, "A Hollywood Ending" is the definitive story of an American icon's final years on stage, one portraying him, a fabled NBA franchise, and the world of modern professional sports in a light never seen before." -- Provided by publisher

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye

"A woman confronts the afterlife of intimacy, in a deeply tender novel by one of our most acclaimed and inventive fiction writers The things that hold life in place have been lifted off and put away. Uprooted by circumstance from city to deep countryside, a woman lives in temporary limbo, visited by memories of all she's left behind. The most insistent are those of Xavier, who has always been certain he knows her better than anyone, better than she knows herself. Xavier, whom she still loves but no longer desires, a displacement he has been unable to accept. An unexpected letter from an old acquaintance brings back a torrent of others she's loved or wanted. Each has been a match and a mismatch, a liberation and a threat to her very sense of self. The ephemera left by their passage -a spilled coffee, an unwanted bouquet, a mind-blowing kiss-make up a cabinet of curiosity she inventories, trying to divine the essence of intimacy. What does it mean to connect with another person? What impels us to touch someone, to be touched by them, to stay in touch? How do we let them go? In yet another tour de force of fiction, Claire-Louise Bennett explores the mystery of how people come into and go out of our lives, leaving us forever in their grasp." -- Provided by publisher

The Age of Extraction

"A concise yet century-spanning exploration of the power of platforms, what the future of capitalism will look like, and how to build economies that provide equality and lasting prosperity."-- Provided by publisher

Two Paths to Prosperity

"An exploration of the different economic trajectories of Europe and China in history based on differences in social organization."-- Provided by publisher

What to Eat Now

"An updated classic on nutrition and food, Marion Nestle's What to Eat Now is a straightforward and comprehensive guide to cutting through the marketing and half truths in order to make healthy, delicious, and sustainable food choices at the grocery store." -- Provided by publisher

What about the Bodies

"Three desperate lives are about to collide in Locksburg, Pennsylvania, a hard-edged, Rust Belt town. There, Carla, a single mom poised to finally break free from her cycle of poverty, must join with her son to hide the body of a classmate who died while with him. At the same time, Reed, an autistic young man, sets out on a journey to keep a deathbed promise. Along the way he'll encounter both kindhearted residents and a cold-blooded nemesis. And Liz, an aspiring musician on the cusp of a breakthrough, needs to quickly come up with the cash she owes a brutal ex-con. If she can't pay him, both her dream and her life will be in grave danger. In What About the Bodies, Edgar Award nominee Ken Jaworowski cements himself as a master of the small-town thriller. As these three compelling characters intersect, the novel ignites into a story filled with explosive twists, hair-raising chills, and boundless love." -- Provided by publisher

What a Time to Be Alive

"Some people move to the big city hoping to find themselves, but young Sickan Hermansson isn't leaving it up to chance. Twenty-one, friendless, without money but not without hope, Sickan's arrival at Stockholm University represents a new start. Her lonely childhood in a small southern town has left her utterly unprepared for intimacy: for friends, for sex, for love even. But Sickan is determined to build a new version of herself from the ground up, to make up for lost time. To simply be normal. Just as Sickan seems to be finding her first ever friends, in whose company she finally feels safe, she meets Abbe: beautiful, charming--and by some miracle he wants her too. Unlike Sickan, Abbe seems completely at ease in his own skin. A solid foundation then, on which to build a relationship? Maybe?" -- Provided by publisher

We Did Ok, Kid

In his powerful memoir We Did OK, Kid, Sir Anthony Hopkins reflects on his extraordinary life and career with honesty and heart. Growing up in a tough Welsh steel town, he struggled in school and was told he'd never succeed--until seeing Hamlet sparked a lifelong passion for acting. Hopkins recounts his journey from those humble beginnings to becoming one of the world's most celebrated actors, sharing behind-the-scenes stories from his iconic roles and encounters with legends like Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton. He also opens up about his battles with alcoholism, his path to sobriety, and the emotional struggles that shaped him. Filled with personal photos and deep insight, this memoir is a candid portrait of resilience, creativity, and redemption.

The Unveiling

"From the award-winning poet, playwright, and author of We Ride Upon Sticks and When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East, a genre-bending novel of literary horror set in Antarctica that explores abandonment, guilt, and survival in the shadow of America's racial legacy. Striker isn't entirely sure she should be on this luxury Antarctic cruise. A Black film scout, her mission is to photograph potential locations for a big-budget movie about Ernest Shackleton's doomed expedition. Along the way, she finds private if cautious amusement in the behavior of both the native wildlife and the group of wealthy, mostly white tourists who have chosen to spend Christmas on the Weddell Sea. But when a kayaking excursion goes horribly wrong, Striker and a group of survivors become stranded on a remote island along the Antarctic Peninsula, a desolate setting complete with boiling geothermal vents and vicious birds. Soon the hostile environment will show each survivor their true face, and as the polar ice thaws in the unseasonable warmth, the group's secrets, prejudices, and inner demons will also emerge, including revelations from Striker's past that could irrevocably shatter her world. With her signature lyricism and humor, Quan Barry offers neither comfort nor closure as she questions the limits of the human bonds that connect us to one another, affirming there are no such things as haunted places, only haunted people. Gripping, lucid, and imaginative, The Unveiling is an astonishing ghost story about the masks we wear and the truths we hide even from ourselves." -- Provided by publisher

Splendid Liberators

"A new history of the Spanish-American War, spanning the US adventures and misadventures in Cuba and the Philippines, and paying particular attention to unsung characters such as Frederick Funston and David Fagen." -- Provided by publisher

Positive Tipping Points

"This book identifies the positive tipping points that can help us avoid the worst from damaging tipping points. It takes the reader on a journey through understanding how tipping points happen, showing how tipping points have transformed human societies in the past, and facing up to the profound risks that climate tipping points pose to us all now. Then, it offers hope and empowerment in a series of uplifting examples of social and technological changes that started small but are already spreading rapidly to transform our societies to a more sustainable state. It identifies the positive tipping points that are still needed, the forces that are opposing them, and the actions that can trigger them, showing how we can all play a part in triggering positive tipping points that accelerate us out of the climate crisis."-- Publisher's website

Pick a Color

Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa follows Ning, a retired boxer working under the name Susan at a nail salon. Over the course of a single day, the novel depicts her interactions with coworkers and clients while exploring themes of identity, labor, memory, and social class. As Ning reflects on her past and navigates the dynamics among the other workers, the story examines the contrast between her inner life and the expectations placed upon her.