Out of a Shakespearean-wild Midwest dust storm, a man rises. "Just a glimpse of him," says his sister; "every inch of him," says his guilt-filled lover. "Close your eyes," says his nephew. "What about it?" asks his father. The cupboard is filled with lime Jell-O, and there are aliens, deadly kissing, and a restless, alcoholic mother who carries a gun. "Every family is this normal," insists the narrator. "Whoever noticed my brother, with a family as normal as this?" the beleaguered sister asks. Against the smoky prairie horizon and despite his seizures, a brother builds a life. Imbued with melancholy cheer, Dog on Fire unfolds around a family's turmoil, past loves, and a mysterious death.

From Publishers WeeklyTold entirely through dialogue, this quirky tale of period pirate wannabes makes a jeu d'esprit of the privateer life even as it baldly de-romanticizes it. Its protagonists, two unnamed brothers (one of whom might not be male), put out to sea from their Nantucket home in 1718 bedazzled by fantasies of gold doubloons and buccaneer booty. Over the next decade, capture by pirates, shipboard slaughter, maiming and dismemberment, slavery, sodomy, shipwreck on a desert island, and getting stranded in the Arctic all follow in due course. Svoboda (The Ask) plays these travails mostly for laughs, presenting them as ongoing pratfalls in the brothers' klutzy comedy of errors. Periodic visits from a mermaid (perhaps their half-sister) and a parrot who steals the scene every time he croaks "Hanged!" add to the fun. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the AuthorTerese Svoboda: The many faces of Svoboda's luminous writing include eleven books of poetry, fiction, translation and over 100 short stories. Trailer Girl and Other Stories, her third novel, was reissued in paper last fall. “Unnerve thyself: the violent and enthralling short stories in Trailer Girl detonate on contact,” writes Vanity Fair. Her memoir Black Glasses Like Clark Kent was termed "Astounding!" by the New York Post, selected as a Japan Times "Best of Asia 2008" book, and won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Praised as a "fabulous fabulist" by Publishers Weekly for her last novel, Tin God, Vogue lauded her first, Cannibal, as a female Heart of Darkness. Svoboda is also the recipient of the Bobst Prize (for Cannibal), the Iowa Prize for poetry and the O. Henry Award for the short story. Her work has been selected for the "Writer's Choice" column in the New York Times Book Review, a SPIN magazine book of the year, and one of the Voice Literary Supplement's ten best reads. Her opera WET premiered at L.A.'s Disney Hall in 2005. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, The New School, Bennington, Davidson, University of Hawaii, U. of Miami, Fairleigh Dickinson, Williams College, San Francisco State College and the College of William and Mary and is teaching fiction this spring at Columbia’s School of the Arts.

When a copywriter is stranded on a small island in the Pacific after helping a soft drink commercial shoot, she uncovers a terrible secret that eventually drives her to the brink of insanity. Svoboda's stunning novel, frighteningly mysterious and complex, deals with many themes: a child's accidental death and the guilt a surviving parent must cope with, the inhumanity with which faraway governments often treat indigenous peoples, and the relationship between sex and reproduction in both personal and social contexts.

The first full-length biography of Lola Ridge, a trailblazer for women, poetry, and human rights far ahead of her time This rich and detailed account of the life and world of Lola Ridge, poet, artist, editor, and activist for the cause of women's rights, workers' rights, racial equality and social reform. From her childhood as a newly arrived Irish immigrant in the grim mining towns of New Zealand to her years as a budding poet and artist in Sydney, Australia, to her migration to America and the cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. At one time considered one of the most popular poets of her day, she later fell out of critical favor due to her realistic and impassioned verse that looked head on at the major social woes of society. Moreover, her work and appearances alongside the likes of Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Will Durant, and other socialists and radicals put her in the line of fire not only of the police and government, but also the literary pundits who...