You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson is a queer, political, and feminist collection guided by self-reflection. The poems range from close examination of the deeply personal to the vastness of the world, exploring the expansiveness of the human experience from love to illness, from space to climate change, and so much more in between. One of the most celebrated poets and performers of the last two decades, Andrea Gibson's trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display in You Better Be Lightning, welcoming and inviting readers to be just as they are.

Essun has found shelter, but not her missing daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request that would seal the fate of the Stillness forever.

From one of the most important American novelists of the twentieth century—a novel of sexual, racial, political, artistic passions, set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France. Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.

'An extraordinary, necessary book' Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland'[Jason Allen-Paisant] intimately explores ideas around class, leisure, economics and self-discovery, looking closely at the life of his farmer grandmother, as well as the plants and people that shaped who he is today' Observer'Strangely restorative and tenderly written. Hold it in your hands and then dream of the green world' Monique Roffey, author of Passiontide'This book is a triumph' Professor Corinne Fowler, author of Our Island Stories'An unforgettable read' Tice Cin, author of Keeping The House'Profound and lyrical' Ekow Eshun, author of The StrangersThe Possibility of Tenderness is a personal history narrated through the lens of the ‘grung’ and plants. It’s also a people’s history of the land, a family saga, an archival detective story through time. It’s the migration tale of a young scholar who arrives in Britain from rural Jamaica to study at Oxford to achieve ‘upward social mobility’ and who now lives in Roundhay Leeds. Suddenly, amidst his journey of dreams and class aspiration, the plants and people of his native district, Coffee Grove, begin to offer different ways of living, alternative dreams, and the possibility of tenderness and the permission to roam England.Marrying the local and the familial with global history and unfolding as a timely and immersive tale of land, environment, and the world of plants, The Possibility of Tenderness reveals how the history of a tiny rural village in a mountainous region of Jamaica is interlinked with that of modern Britain. And, also what that rural village can teach us about leisure, land ownership and reclamation today.Mama, the author’s grandmother, is a central protagonist of the story. Alongside her, herbalists, plant workers, farmers, and plant lovers help forge an intimate portrait of Coffee Grove, as do the plants themselves; fever grass, jointa, search mi heart, leaf of life, helping Allen-Paisant revise his sense of self and solidify a new understanding of his place in the world.The Possibility of Tenderness is a cross-pollinating book about the transformative power of plants, the legacy of dreams, and the lessons they offer for living with the earth.

Award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper transports readers through the 400-million-year history of insects and the remarkable entomologists who have studied them. This visually immersive work of graphic nonfiction dives into a world where ants, cicadas, bees, and butterflies visit a library exhibition that displays their stories and humanity’s connection to them throughout the ages. Kuper’s thrilling visual feast layers history and science, color and design, to tell the remarkable tales of dung beetles navigating by the stars, hawk-size prehistoric dragonflies hunting prey, and mosquitoes changing the course of human history. He also illuminates pioneering naturalists, from well-known figures like E. O. Wilson and Rachel Carson to unheralded luminaries like Charles Henry Turner, the Black American scholar who documented arthropod intelligence, and Maria Sybilla Merian, the seventeenth-century German regarded as the mother of entomology. Galvanized by the sixth extinction and the ongoing insect crisis, Kuper takes readers on an unforgettable journey.

The extraordinary inner-workings of the world’s amazing, adaptable insectsA tiny textbook to learn on your ownHow Insects Work goes beyond the typical field guide to show us not only what insects look like but why. Arguably the most successful land animals—still going strong after five mass extinctions—insects have evolved a spectacular array of real-life superpowers to help them thrive in virtually every environment: Bumblebees’ wingbeats leave a faint electrical signal at each flower they visit to show that the nectar’s already been taken (see page 57), and houseflies defy gravity with tiny leg hairs that stick to the smoothest wall or ceiling (see page 69). In this in-depth, photo-filled handbook, discover the ways insects are even more astounding than you know—inside and out: Evolution Exoskeleton and Body Segments Senses Circulation Digestion Respiration Reproduction Metamorphosis Movement And much, much more!