In contemporary Norwegian fiction, Tomas Espedal’s work stands out as uniquely bound up with the author’s personal experiences. His first book, Tramp, introduced us to the wanderer Tomas; Against Art told us how a boy approaches art and eventually becomes a writer; Against Nature examined love’s labor—the job of writing; and in Bergerners, he is torn between his love for his home town and what lies beyond. Now, in The Year, we encounter the author’s struggle to reconcile his inner life with the external world, and the myriad forms of love, hate, loss, and death—both personal and literary—with the immutable pattern of time and the seasons. It is the journal of a year, a diary like no other. And suffusing it all are questions Petrarch asked: How do you live when the one you love is gone? And when your life force shifts from spring to autumn, how do you find the good death?
 
Written as a long poem, The Year is Espedal’s riveting stream of consciousness—profound, edgy, sometimes manic, but always intensely intimate.
 

When her husband dumps her for an old girlfriend and sets all of Peachland, South Carolina, gossiping, Janey Daniels has to get away—far away—for a "sabbatical" year. She flees to Burlington, Vermont, home of Aunt May, her mother's only living relative. There she adopts Beulah, a Labrador puppy in training to become a companion dog for the blind. Not for a moment does Janey suspect that this "year of the dog" will change her life forever.

Shelby Hearon is an acknowledged master at illuminating the nuances of relationships. In Year of the Dog, she explores the surprising ways that the heart heals after a betrayal. While Janey is training Beulah, Beulah leads Janey to a new love, James Maarten, a smart, "fidgety" teacher they meet at the dog park. As Janey soon discovers, James has suffered a betrayal of his own that makes it hard for him to open up and trust her with even the smallest details of his past. While Janey tries to help James, she also reaches out to her enigmatic Aunt May, a retired librarian reputed to be the friend, perhaps even the lover, of popular mystery writer Bert Greenwood. When Janey attempts to solve the twin mysteries of why her great aunt has distanced herself from the family—and what her true relationship is with Bert Greenwood—Beulah provides the clues that lead Janey to uncover the secrets of her aunt's life. By the time Beulah's stay with Janey comes to an end, the people whose lives she's linked will discover that healing and reconciliation can come in the most unexpected ways.

Nan and her four-year-old granddaughter Jane are taking their first airplane trip together, flying from Seattle to the East Coast. But this is no ordinary excursion. Nan is abducting Jane.

Nan's own daughter, Alex, believes Jane's father has been sexually abusing her, and she's asked Nan to take her away, to hide her. But when she and Jane arrive in Providence, Rhode Island, things begin to go wrong. The old friend whom Nan expected to stay with has vanished. Her son-in-law is on her trail. And Alex disappears.

"I'm too old for this!" Nan thinks, in furious, self-pitying despair. She wasn't a good wife; she wasn't a good mother. Now she's stranded in a strange city, without friends or money or even her own identity, in sole charge of a very unhappy little girl. When her new life offers new friends, new work, and even a new lover, she must decide whom to trust.

The Year She Disappeared explores the possibility—and the price—of late blooming love. Will the trials Nan faces during her year on the lam break her? Or will she discover who she really is?

In 1914, most of the world is focused on The Great War, but a much quieter story is taking place in a remote mountain region in northern California and western Nevada with the tale of two twelve-year-old boys and a legendary, wild horse from the desert. The stallion, Meshuga—part mustang and part giant Percheron draft —is a stallion so strong that he becomes a mythical, inspirational fable. Meshuga is destined to compete in a long-distance race through the mountains and valleys against the nation’s best Arabian horses.

Jim, an orphan, has moved to the West to live on his Uncle Martin and Aunt Hanna’s ranch in the small, post-Gold Rush town of Taylorsville where the Sierra Nevada meets the Cascades. Mostly, Jim doesn’t miss his family farm in Missouri, and when he’s not doing ranch chores, he spends his time fly-fishing on nearby Indian Creek. This is where he first encounters York, a local boy from the Maidu tribe, and the two become fast friends. Jim and York soon meet up with Blind Charlie, a famous Maidu elder storyteller, who fills their heads with ancestral myths and legends.

After the untimely death of York, Meshuga’s caretaker, Jim is suddenly moved to take responsibility for the great black mustang and become part of Blind Charlie’s prophecies. With York gone, Jim must fulfill what his friend knew all along—that he and Meshuga would learn to conquer the challenge of the race of the century. A romantic novel of the Old West imbued with rich historical details, York’s Ride is a complex and beautiful tale about family relationships and coming-of-age in early twentieth-century California.
 

Envisioned as a “nocturne,” Steve Amick’s playful, multilayered novel expansively retells Eugene Field’s famed verse “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”

In the fishing village of Scheveningen in 1889, three men build and secretly launch an unorthodox fishing vessel, departing from the long tradition of netting herring using massive boats and large crews. Collaborating in this venture are Wyn van Winkel, a cavalier joker and opium addict currently AWOL from the Aceh War in Sumatra; Ned Nodder, a seasoned fisherman trying to support his family while plagued by narcolepsy and prophetic dreams; and Luuk Blenkin, a scattered young troubadour failing at love and searching for his place in the world.

As formally innovative as the “picarooner” this mismatched trio construct, the narrative lifts off into the fantastical, flitting between reality and irreality. Sparked by lines of the “Dutch lullaby,” the inexplicable adventure unfolds—and along the way, we learn of Wyn’s romantic recklessness, his broken relationship with his father, and the tragedies of war that scarred and changed him. We witness Ned’s unconventional path toward matrimony, as well as the painful loss that made his marriage a true union. We follow Luuk’s fumblings for purpose and fulfillment beyond the disgrace that befell his family and marred both his outlook and his prospects.

In the spirit of a nocturne, Steve Amick envelops his characters in the world of night and dreams. Lyrical, historical, surprising, magical, heartwarming, and heartbreaking, You Shall See the Beautiful Things will make readers look at the stars—and herring—in a new light.