Editor's Corner

Joyce Peseroff, Eastern Mountain Time, poems: In her piercing fifth collection, Peseroff propels the reader from the pastoral to the tragic with bravura inventions of language. (Carnegie Mellon)

Margot Livesey, The House on Fortune Street, a novel: This absorbing novel opens multiple perspectives on the life of Dara MacLeod, a young London therapist, partly by paying subtle homage to literary figures and works. (Harper)

Alberto Ríos, The Theater of Night, poems: Set along the U.S.–Mexican border, Ríos’s poems charmingly follow the courtship and marriage of a couple as their lives sweetly weave into one. (Copper Canyon)

Thomas Lux, God Particles, poems: A satiric edge cuts through many of the poems in this new collection, with unexpected moments of grace instilling even the darkest moments with surprising sweetness. (Houghton Mifflin)

Dan Wakefield, The Hijacking of Jesus, nonfiction: With courage, passion, and outrage, Wakefield asks how and why the Christian faith has been appropriated and manipulated by current politics. (Nation)

Campbell McGrath, Seven Notebooks, poems: These seven poetic sequences examine—in forms ranging from haiku to prose, and in a voice veering from incantatory to deadpan—the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed. (Ecco)

Robert Boswell, The Half-Known World, essays: In this sparkling collection of essays, Boswell brings his keen critical eye to bear on craft issues facing literary writers, while simultaneously moving beyond the classroom, candidly sharing experiences that have shaped his own writing life. (Graywolf)  

Sue Miller, The Senator’s Wife, a novel: In this rich, emotionally urgent novel, two women at opposite stages of life face parallel dilemmas. (Knopf)

Donald Hall, Unpacking the Boxes, a memoir: Hall is as painstakingly honest about his low points as a poet, writer, lover, and father as he is about his successes in this self-revealing memoir-his first book since being named poet laureate in 2006. (Houghton Mifflin)