UNP staff members are always reading new books, both within our list and outside of what we publish. Here are some of the titles where our noses have been buried.

“Since I’m attending AWP at the end of the month, I decided to finally read one of the books that I picked up from the conference last year to ease my guilt about inevitably bringing home more books. Medusa’s Daughters edited by Theodora Goss is a collection of gothic poetry and short stories written by fin-de-siècle women writers.” -Sarah Kee

“I recently finished Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson. This is a dark but beautifully written reflective journey of a woman slowly unveiling her childhood traumas to the reader. I’m a huge fan of Jacqueline Woodson’s work, and this is yet another book to add to my favorites list.” -Lacey Losh

“To mark off the ‘weird horror’ component in my reading challenge, I chose Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. It is a collection of stories inspired by the Indigenous belief that one should never whistle at night for fear of conjuring evil spirits. The tales of ghosts, curses, family legacies and more are a nod to the imaginative culture and history of Indigenous traditions, and I’m really looking forward to getting further into it!” -Taylor Gilreath

“I seem to have become obsessed with nautical stories this last year and have come across another one. I just started reading Eleanor Mathews’ Ambassador to the Penguins: A Naturalist’s Year Aboard a Yankee Whaleship. Basically, this story is a reworking of her grandfather’s book, Logbook for Grace, Robert Cushman Murphy’s journal and letters describing his life aboard one of the last U.S. whaling ships, the Daisy, in 1912-13. The new account includes Murphy’s photographs as well as details about his scientific research and the men with whom he sailed. He was especially interested in the lives of penguins and went on to become an expert on oceanic birds for the American Museum of Natural History.” -Clark Whitehorn

“I recently picked up Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses from a secondhand bookstore when I was in Tucson for the Tucson Festival of Books. I had really enjoyed The Road and No Country for Old Men (but was not so fond of The Passenger…), so I have high hopes for this one. I’ve been interested in reading more westerns, given that so much of our backlist is about the American West and I’m the kind of person that wants to get all the references, haha!” -Taylor Martin