Life Lines: Selected Poems 1990-2009 is a collection of 201 poems representing nearly two decades of work by acclaimed upstate New York poet, Charles James. A natural maverick, James learned through life's experiences that purpose and meaning are within the person, not "out there somewhere." Charlie, as he's known to friends, says "jubilation and grief are all part of living." Led to poetry by his grandfather, Charlie wrote "abominable trash" for too long. "Now I try and I do with no way of knowing how." As for his 6-1/2 years in federal courts to affirm his Ist Amendment rights, he only shrugs. He wonders what makes others ask if he'd do it again. "Impossible," he says. "Any more than I can stick my foot in the same stream twice. There is no again. Everything in life is once." James' poems express life's lessons with urgency and beauty, making his work stand with the best of contemporary free verse.

The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions, by Rick Dale, brings the wit and wisdom of the beat generation, and its titular head, Jack Kerouac, into contemporary application through one hundred daily suggestions on how to deal with everything from sex to parking your car. In the tradition of the What Would Jesus Do? books, Rick Dale reinterprets the question and applies the unique spin of beat philosophy to modern living, following the premise that in order to be a beat, one need only take one's lead from the words of the acknowledged "King of the Beats" Jack Kerouac. Inspired by Kerouac's On The Road and The Dharma Bums, Dale's The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions uses humor and whimsy to bring an old perspective on living and loving life into a fresh context. Told by a true beat aficionado, The Beat Handbook: 100 Days of Kerouactions makes what was old new again, while dispensing more than a little fun, philosophy, and Kerouacian guidance along the way.