"A child is very ill; there is a hospital. . . . The subject is as basic as a bowl and a nail, wood and a house, and a house on fire." --Fanny Howe, from the introduction

"House and Fire" is a mother's love song to her stricken young son, written over the years of his hospitalizations for an acute immune disorder. Maria Hummel is a poet of dazzling formal mastery, whose eerie, radiant lyrics and stories evoke the pediatric ward, California life, and the immortal, endangered world of childhood. This unforgettable debut was selected by Fanny Howe.

From "House and Fire":

"for thirty-three years"

"I didn't make anything"

"with my body"

"and thenyour brother"

"and thenhe sickened"

"watching him sleephooked to tubes"

"an empty envelopeinside me"

"fills each dawnwith one long love letter"

"by night"

"it's mostly apology"

A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry, Maria Hummel is the author of two novels and poetry and prose in "Poetry," "Narrative," and "The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine." She teaches at Stanford University and lives in San Francisco, California.

Fanny Howe has written many books of poetry, and her "Selected Poems" (UC Press, 2000) won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

Motherland is inspired by stories from author Maria Hummel's father and his German childhood, and letters between her grandparents that were hidden in an attic wall for fifty years. It is the author's attempt to reckon with the paradox of her father a product of her grandparents' fiercely protective love and their status as Mitlaufer, Germans who  went along" with Nazism, reaping its benefits and later paying the consequences.At the center of Motherland lies the Kappus family: Frank is a reconstructive surgeon who lost his beloved wife in childbirth and two months later marries a young woman charged with looking after the surviving baby and his two grieving sons when Frank is drafted into medical military service. Alone in the house, Liesl attempts to keep the children fed with dwindling food supplies, safe from the constant Allied air attacks and the tides of desperate refugees flooding their town. When one child begins to mentally unravel, Liesl must discover the source of the boy's infirmity or lose him forever to Hadamar, the infamous hospital for  unfit" children. The novel bears witness to the shame and courage of Third Reich families during the devastating final days of the war, as each family member's fateful choice lead the reader deeper into questions of complicity and innocence, to the novel's heartbreaking and unforgettable conclusion.

The Dionysus issue of Pantheon Magazine brings forth the resentments of the past, the madness of the present, and, finally, the future of letting go. A pair find themselves outside the city limits to nowhere, a team of researchers find mystery and beauty in the Kahllian Dome-Plains, and a man whose palate craves the most exotic cuts of meat battles the phantoms of a previous life. These stories and more in this collection inspired by Dionysus, god of wine, ecstasy, and ritual madness.

WINNER OF STYLIST BOOK WARS A SUNDAY TIMES CRIME CLUB PICK THE POOL'S BEDTIME BOOK CLUB PICK SHORTLISTED FOR AMAZON'S BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER OF THE YEAR A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK 'Thrilling' Reese Witherspoon 'Addictive' Stylist 'Vibrant' Observer 'Sensational' Guardian 'Elegant' Daily Mail 'Wonderful' Sunday Times 'Compelling' Entertainment Weekly 'Lyrical' Wall Street Journal 'Gripping' Bustle 'Stunning' LA Times 'Smart' Good Housekeeping 'Sophisticated' Grazia 'Ice-pick sharp' Louise Candlish As the party of the year gets underway, celebrities and patrons pour into the Rocque Museum to see Kim Lord - L.A.'s artist of the moment - stabbed, strangled, shot, and beaten. It's the opening night of 'Still Lives', Kim's new collection of shockingly graphic self-portraits, in which she impersonates the victims of America's most famous homicides, from Nicole Brown Simpson to the Black Dahlia. Among those gathered is Maggie Richter, a museum editor whose ex, Greg Shaw Ferguson, is in a relationship with Kim. When Kim fails to appear at the party and is declared officially missing, Greg is arrested on suspicion of murder. Suddenly, Maggie finds herself drawn into an investigation of her own, haunted by the thought that Kim has suffered the same terrible fate as the women in her paintings. 'Think a mix of Killing Eve and . . . one of those thrillers that keeps you up till 2am when you've a 6am alarm and you're close to the mark' Stylist 'An up-all-night brain-teaser of a murder mystery. I loved it' Louise Candlish, author of Our House Perfect for fans of The Girls, Gone Girl and Big Little Lies.