November 6 is Indie Author Day. Take a look at some books by authors who have had the courage and wherewithal to find an independent publisher and make their dream of publishing books come true. These books, except one, appeared on the 30 Impressive Indie Press Books List. Please check out our catalog and our eSource NoveList Plus to find your favorite books from Independent Publishers.
Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks by QT Luong.
Winner of the 2020 Indie Award for Non-fiction, Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks, photographer QT Luong pays tribute to the millions of acres of protected wilderness in our country's 59 national parks. Luong, who is featured in Ken Burns's and Dayton Duncan's documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea, is one the most prolific photographers working in the national parks and the only one to have made large-format photographs in each of them. In an odyssey that spanned more than 20 years and 300 visits, Luong focused his lenses on iconic landscapes and rarely seen remote views, presenting his journey in this sumptuous array of more than 500 breathtaking images.
Her Wicked Ways by Darcy Burke.
Banished from London for her reckless behavior, Lady Miranda Sinclair is robbed by a dashing highwayman en route to the country. By offering him a kiss in lieu of the jewels she had to leave behind, she commits the very type of act that caused her exile. Montgomery "Fox" Foxcroft, desperate to save his orphanage from financial catastrophe, leads a double life as a highwayman. The arrival of wealthy, well-connected Miranda, whose kiss he can't forget, presents a lawful opportunity to increase his coffers.
A Key to Treehouse Living by Elliot Reed.
A Key to Treehouse Living is the adventure of William Tyce, a boy without parents, who grows up near a river in the rural Midwest. In a glossary-style list, he imparts his particular wisdom on subjects ranging from Asphalt Paths, Betta Fish, and Mullet to Mortal Betrayal. Unlocking an earnest, clear-eyed way of thinking that might change your own, A Key to Treehouse Living is a story about keeping your own record straight and living life by a different code.
Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett.
Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father dead. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. For example, her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make lewd art with the taxidermied animals. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, the Mortons reach a tipping point.
People I’ve Met from the Internet by Stephen Van Dyck.
This annotated bibliography of encounters bridging the virtual and real worlds of desire feels like a nineteenth-century erotic novel transposed onto the present, filled with salacious stories and characters.
This is the emotional journey of Abdulla and Hind who live with the pressure of the culturally mandated marriage set before them. He’s not a real Muslim man if he remains single, and she will never be allowed freedoms without the bondage of a potentially loveless marriage. It’s an impossible situation dictated by a culture that they still deeply respect.
Award-winning poet Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and must reckon with her own struggles with depression and the birth of her first child. Told in short, poetic snippets, this book examines how mental illness can affect a family across generations and how crying can express women’s agency―or lack of agency―in everyday life.
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl.
Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents--her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father--and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child's transition to caregiver.
Homesick: A Memoir by Jennifer Croft.
Sisters Amy and Zoe grow up in Oklahoma where they are homeschooled for an unexpected reason: Zoe suffers from debilitating and mysterious seizures, spending her childhood in hospitals as she undergoes surgeries. Meanwhile, Amy flourishes intellectually. Amy's first love appears in the form of her Russian tutor Sasha, but when she enters university at the age of fifteen her life changes drastically and with tragic results.
The Tradition by Jericho Brown.
Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are presented in a clear and searing collection.
A Fortune for Your Disaster: Poems by Hanif Abdurraqib.
In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'."