Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. Harlem. Ever since her body grew into curves, Xiomara Batista has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. She pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers-- especially after...

Impulsively taking a cruise to reconnect with an estranged friend, Violet suffers traumatic memories about her lost friendship and abandoned career before connecting with the voyage's dancing host, who harbors a shady agenda and inadvertently promotes her healing.

While vacationing in the country, eleven-year-old Toby, a cancer patient, learns some important lessons about living and dying from an elderly poet and her cow.

"Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaels's moving, innovative novel about an aging poet laureate who "sells out" by agreeing to collaborate with a Big Tech company's poetry AI"--

Jesper Humlin is a poet of middling acclaim who is saddled by his underwhelming book sales, an exasperated girlfriend, a demanding mother, and a rapidly fading tan. His boy-wonder stockbroker has squandered Humlin's investments, and his editor, who says he must write a crime novel to survive, begins to pitch and promote the nonexistent book despite Humlin's emphatic refusals. Then, when he travels to Gothenburg to give a reading, he finds himself...