Daunt Books – serie

Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, 'Take What You Need' traces the parallel lives of Jean, and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who's sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah's urban life with her young family, she's revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother's hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition.

But with Jean's death, Leah must return to sort through what's been left behind. What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled the house with giant sculptures she's welded from scraps of the area's industrial history. There's also a young man now living in the house who's played an unknown role in Jean's last years and in her art.

Over the course of one year, Thomas Gardner records his runs.

Fifty-two entries, none exceeding a paragraph. Each run is simultaneously captured in its precise moment and opened up to something timeless and limitless.

As the seasons and miles pass, Gardner moves through inner and outer landscapes. Freed by disciplined physical effort, the runner's mind roams and mourns and remembers. Luminous with beauty, 'Poverty Creek Journal' is a singular and remarkable work, a miniature marvel of nature writing, philosophy and poetry.

Michele is the beloved only son of a large, dysfunctional family in 1970s Italy. He has disappeared to London without explanation. Michele's departure sets forth a series of events that will bring together everyone in his life.The story of the Prodigal Son turned on its head, Happiness, As Such is an absurdly funny novel-in-letters.