The Scorns of Time traces the life of Elsinora Dean Harding, an actress who, during the Golden Age of cinema, commanded both stage and screen with a singular artistic intelligence, luminous beauty, and self-possessed elegance. Her ascent to renown surprises no one who witnessed her work, which only deepens the enigma of her sudden withdrawal from performance and public view at the height of her career. Now an older, still formidable woman, Elsinora searches to uncover a mystery in her past.
Spanning continents and decades—from World War II–era middle America to European battlefields to Hollywood and Broadway during their heyday—The Scorns of Time is at once a novel of suspense, a meditation on mortality, and a psychologically exacting exploration of memory, regret, and retribution. Inventively structured, wittily told, and peopled with sharply realized, unforgettable characters, The Scorns of Time is a work of lasting distinction.
“With unflinching honesty and grace, This Strong Mercy confronts the stark reality of global tipping points and the perils of ecological collapse while providing a poetic map for navigating a world at its breaking point. These poems offer a necessary lament, glimmers of hope, and a powerful call to reimagine a more sustainable future.”
—Thomas J. Elpel, author of Green Prosperity and Roadmap to Realit
In This Strong Mercy, Linda Welsh delves into Earth’s critical tipping points—melting ice sheets, permafrost thaw, deforestation, coral reef decline, and more—to transform our understanding of complex ecological systems through accessible and evocative poetry.
This Strong Mercy challenges us to reimagine our relationship with our world. It’s a poetic declaration of what’s at stake and a compelling argument to try to save what we can.
“A taut, well-written tale of the tragic, innocent victims of technological advancement.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“An extraordinarily intense debut novel. Its subject matter—the true story of the ‘training’ forced on chimpanzees to become astronauts—is all the more deeply affecting for the matter-of-fact tone of its telling…It deserves a wide audience.”
—Don LePan, author of Animals and Lucy and Bonbon
As the U.S. space program races toward the future, their extraordinary bond is tested in perilous experiments, culminating in Ham’s harrowing journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere. He becomes a living symbol of human ambition, and its staggering cost.
Ham’s Heaven is a testament to the bonds that define us—and the quest for progress that so often divides us.
“Robert Wilson’s energetic, funny, sad, extremely relatable book about transitioning into adulthood is played against the serious backdrop of Vietnam and its aftereffects.”
—Ann Beattie, author of The New Yorker Stories and Chilly Scenes of Winter
“A memorable and provocative exploration of life’s timeless moral dilemmas…”
—Jill McCorkle, author, most recently, of Old Crimes: and Other Stories and Life After Life
The Love You Take follows Andy and a small circle of clever, idiosyncratic, and highly engaging friends as they journey from youth to adulthood against the unsettling social and political landscape of the 1970s.
With vivid characters, a keen sense of place, and warm humor, The Love You Take explores the lasting impact of our choices, and the moments—both comic and profound—that shape us on the passage to adulthood.
Cover and eight interior illustrations by Chitra Ganesh.
“In her groundbreaking work of science-fiction, ‘Sultana’s Dream,’ the pioneering Bengali writer, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, imagines a world where gender roles are reversed, and women hold leadership positions. With its emphasis on education, technological advancements, and the power of women’s leadership, Hossain’s work remains vitally relevant today. Kudos to Ben Baer for his fine translations of these important texts.”
—Amitav Ghosh, author, most recently, of Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories
Pioneering Indian Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain wrote speculative fiction, manifestoes, radical reportage, and incisive essays that transformed her experience of enforced segregation into unique interventions against gender oppression everywhere.
Alongside her pathbreaking feminist science fiction story “Sultana’s Dream,” this volume features fresh and exciting new translations of Rokeya Hossain’s key Bengali writings and a superbly informative introduction to her life and work.
“The photo criticism of Shelley Rice evolved in the space that was once called New Journalism and is now a venerable and still exciting, hybrid place of the objective (for want of a better word) and the personal. In Image Making: Essays on Visual Culture, 1978–2018, Rice’s wide-ranging observations about the art of creating photographs and its relationship to her own life are vivid, original, and profound.
—Kenneth E. Silver, Silver Professor of Art History Emeritus, New York University
Image Making chronicles Shelley Rice’s skillful navigation of two pivotal moments when the art world opened its previously narrow confines to include the true diversity of image production: the pluralism of New York in the 1970s and the global outreach of digital networks in the 2010s. Rice’s work is indispensable reading for anyone interested in contemporary art, the role of criticism, and the deep interdependence of images and social, cultural, and political forces.
“A surprisingly engaging grafting of Nietzsche’s philosophy onto the modern world.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“An indispensable, thrilling guide to understanding Nietzsche’s philosophical impact in our time.”
— Amir Eshel, Stanford University
For readers both acquainted with and new to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche NOW! frames and explains Nietzsche’s thinking on topics of immediate contemporary concern and relevance. Throughout, Wallis includes ample extracts from Nietzsche himself.
“A love song about Life. As intimate and open as footprints in the desert with its thorns and yucca blossoms.”
—Jan Elpel, author of Society of Poets
“Welsh uses nature’s changing expressions to breathe acceptance into the deeply intimate process of death and dying.”
—Cyndi Fonda, author of Body of Secrets: Finding My Voice Inside a Famous Family
An innovative fusion shaped from direct experience in the care of the dying, surrender to the transformative forces of life, and reverence for the living world, Facing the Mountain is a lyrical exploration of grief, aloneness, renewal, awakening, and longing.
“A spectacularly inventive novel…Reading it is like walking the half-deserted streets of Eliot’s famous poem. It is an unforgettable experience.”
—Patrick R. Query, author of Ritual and the Idea of Europe in Interwar Writing
“Ashley’s delightfully playful novel reminds us that we are still learning to read the poem that made Eliot famous. She offers us fun, but smartfun.”
—Michael Coyle, Colgate University
To Murder and Create is an extraordinarily creative and engaging historical novel loosely structured around T. S. Eliot’s paradigm-bending modernist poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Set in Boston of 1915, an array of eccentric and eminently charming tenants inhabit a boardinghouse sternly governed by a rule-bound yet likable landlady…a captivating glimpse of an authentically rendered bygone world brimming with timeless questions of the heart and mind.
“I think of you always, and love you always, but chasms of moonless nights divide us. We cannot cross it without hideous and nameless peril.”
—Wilde to Bosie, June 17, 1897
“Bring also some perfume and nice things from the sellers of the dust of roses. Also bring yourself.”
—Wilde to Bosie, June 16, 1897
This edition of surviving letters that Wilde wrote to his “own dear darling boy” is a testament to the enduring power and radical force of love. Included are the introductory essays by legendary bookseller A. S. W. Rosenbach and philanthropist William Clark, who first published these letters in 1924, and a little-known letter from Douglas to Wilde.
“Sparkling storytelling, colorful cast of characters, and a voyage of discovery: if you love Oscar Wilde you will love this book.”
—Marilyn Bisch and Joan Navarre, The Oscar Wilde Society of America
“[The Return of the Century] is a treasure chest!”
—Renato Miracco, author of Oscar Wilde’s Italian Dream 1875–1900
In 1900, penniless and disgraced, Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest playwrights of all time, dies in a hotel in Paris. Or so everyone believes.
Ardythe Ashley’s meticulously researched and imaginative novel honors Wilde’s life and unparalleled command of the English language by giving voice to a writer who continues to charm and fascinate readers and audiences to this day.
Contemplations
a Warbler Press series
GREAT MINDS ON WHAT MATTERS
For the book lover in your life, a limited edition boxed set of the titles on love from the Warbler Press Contemplations series: Nietzsche, Dickinson, Rilke, Wilde, and Shakespeare on Love. More details here.
