Carl Phillips, Coin of the Realm, essays: In this generous and sensual collection, with pieces ranging in subject from Plath to race, Phillips luminously argues that the currency that most holds weight, both in art and life, includes beauty, risk, and authority—values of meaning and complexity that all too often go disregarded. (Graywolf)
Charles Baxter, Saul and Patsy, a novel: Baxter’s luminous new novel reprises Saul and Patsy Bernstein, two of his short stories’ most beloved characters, as they try to establish their lives in Five Oaks, Michigan. (Pantheon)
James Carroll, Secret Father, a novel: Returning to fiction, Carroll presents the spellbinding story of a man and a woman in Berlin in 1961, trying to free their children from the East German Stasi. (Houghton Mifflin)
Stuart Dybek, I Sailed with Magellan, a novel in stories: In eleven achingly beautiful tales, Dybek captures the sweet rhythm and humor of growing up on Chicago’s South Side through Perry Katzek, a young Polish American. (FSG)
Heather McHugh, Eyeshot, poems: With her usual bravura, McHugh gives us a brooding, visionary work that meditates on the big questions—love and death—while focusing on the senses as she tries to process the surrounding world. (Wesleyan)
Gary Soto, One Kind of Faith, poems: Soto once again displays dazzling range in his twenty-sixth book, exploring the wonders of the everyday in poems about Berkeley and Fresno, along with a nervy section of “film treatments for David Lynch.” (Chronicle)
Maura Stanton, Cities in the Sea, stories: Blurring the boundaries between fairy tale and vérité, Stanton incisively taps into the mysteries of contemporary life in these magical new stories, examining the nature of narrative and dreams. (Michigan)
Gerald Stern, What I Can’t Bear Losing, essays: Tenderly touching upon a number of events, from Sundays spent in Calvinist Pittsburgh to being shot in Newark, Stern provides magnificent lessons on the awakening of an artistic consciousness. (Norton)
Tobias Wolff, Old School, a novel: A scholarship student at a New England prep school vies for a literary prize in Wolff’s marvelous first novel, and the boy ends up being seduced by the irresistible power of self-creation. (Knopf)
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